Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals

The Paris Criminal Court has found pharmaceutical giant Laboratoires Servier guilty of manslaughter for marketing benfluorex, an appetite suppressant, for years after the company discovered that the drug could cause major damage to the heart and lungs, and even kill users. Read More

The algorithms that make social media addictive have become powerful mechanisms for drug dealers to peddle prescription-only medicines and banned substances. One of the more popular tools for pushers is Instagram where dealers market drugs like Adderall, Oxycontin and Xanax, used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, pain and anxiety respectively. Read More

New York city is the latest U.S. city to bring a lawsuit against Purdue Pharmaceutical and other companies involved in manufacturing and distributing prescription painkillers, known as opioids. Some 250 such lawsuits have been filed alleging that deceptive industry marketing practices have caused opioid overdose deaths to skyrocket. Read More

Eli Lilly, an Indianapolis based company, that has sold insulin products to diabetes patients since 1921, has quietly raised some U.S. prices 700 percent in the last 20 years by marketing so-called improved versions to consumers. Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, has also profited handsomely from this practice. Read More

Six executives of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis have been indicted in a South Korean bribery scandal. The indictments follow similar charges in China, Turkey and the U.S. and allegations of falsifying drug trial data in Japan. Korean prosecutors have recommended that Novartis sales be suspended for six months. Read More

Gilead Sciences Inc., a California based pharmaceutical company, has avoided paying $10 billion in taxes by moving its patents to Ireland. This is despite the fact that one of its most profitable drugs was developed with U.S. taxpayer money, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. Read More

Uruguay has defeated Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, in a major international lawsuit over the country's tough anti-smoking regulations. The Swiss-based company sued Uruguay at the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Dispute under the terms of a 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland. Read More

Johnson & Johnson has been sued by over 1,200 women who blame the company's talcum powder products for their ovarian cancer. Not only are U.S. courts beginning to agree with them, juries have started to award victims millions of dollars in compensation. Read More

Sun Pharma, India's biggest drug manufacturer, has been sent a warning letter about violations of manufacturing regulations at its Halol plant in Gujarat by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Indian companies supply as much as 40 percent of the drugs sold in the U.S. Read More

Three major U.S. medical associations - the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Cardiology - have bowed to pressure from activist doctors to stop accepting corporate donations from Coca-Cola. The campaigners say Coke exerted undue influence over the medical groups. Read More