Bioethics.net

Legislators and patients often wonder why the cost of drugs in America is so high relative to the rest of the world. Well, one reason is the rest of the world does not tolerate direct-to-consumer ads aimed at ginning up demand when touted by actors, soap opera stars, sports stars, reality tv icons, quiz show hosts and others selling their fame so you will use a company’s drug.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first drug intended to treat smallpox — a move that could halt a lethal pandemic if the virus were to be released as a terrorist bioweapon or through a laboratory accident.

Pfizer chief executive Ian Read said late Tuesday that his company would delay increasing the prices of dozens of drug products after President Trump publicly berated the firm one day earlier.

In recent years, however, this practice of appraising researchers by counting their publications has become problematic. This is because an astonishing number of journals that bill themselves as “peer-reviewed” do not, in fact, take the trouble to be so. A tally of journals that an American analytics firm, Cabells, believes to falsely claim to peer-review submissions, amounted, on a recent day, to 8,699—more than double the number of a year ago. A blacklist compiled by other experts is even longer.