Schering-Plough’s shares tumbled today after the drug maker announced third-quarter results that were up but that missed Wall Street’s lofty expectations. In an interview with the Health Blog, chief executive Fred Hassan tried to calm investors’ nerves. “You always end up with some quarters where there can be an undershoot, some quarters where there is [...]
Think positively, have hope, and you’ll live longer, patients with cancer are often told. But researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have concluded from a study of patients with cancer of the head and neck that emotional well-being doesn’t prolong survival.Optimistic thinking has been much talked about in people with serious illnesses. But research on [...]
After more than a year of bad news, safety concerns anddeclining sales, what’s the next big question for stents? The Health Blog joins you from the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference in Washington, looking for an answer.The next battleground could be the use of coated stents in patients with heart attacks–currently an “off-label” use not [...]
Kirin Holdings, of Kirin beer fame, is looking at a $2.6 billion deal with Kyowa Hakko Kogyo, a mid-sized Japanese pharmaceutical company, the FT reports. It’s the latest effort by a Japanese brewer to keep earnings up as beer sales decline, notes this morning’s WSJ. Several are in health-related businesses. Asahi sells diet aids, and [...]
For 125 bucks a month, Vic Wood will take care of you and your family. You’ll get unlimited primary and urgent care, including office visits, lab work, X-rays and certain generic drugs. Wood (pictured) is one of several hundred doctors across the country now offering pre-paid primary care plans, the WSJ reports. It’s not supposed [...]
Merck and Schering-Plough, two of the current darlings of Big Pharma, posted strong third-quarter earnings today. (For an update on the market’s sour reaction to Schering’s earnings, see below.)Merck, which is nibbling in M&A for new drugs, took a $325 million charge for its acquisition of NovaCardia, which has been developing a heart-failure drug called [...]
Following scads of other companies to China, AstraZeneca is outsourcing the manufacturing of a key ingredient in one of its best-selling drugs to contract factories in the P.R.C.The company said last month that it plans to get out of manufacturing (never a particularly strong suit for the industry, the Health Blog noted at the time) [...]
The Health Blog looked for stories you might have missed over the weekend. Here’s our short list.Cardiologists who snake balloons and stents into clogged heart arteries are meeting in Washington at their version of the Detroit Auto Show. But the showcase for new technology and techniques is downbeat, the WSJ’s Ron Winslow reports, despite a [...]
Herb Kohl, the chairman of the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, asked the federal agency that runs Medicare some tough questions about the billions of dollars it may have to spend if lots of Medicare patients with a serious eye disease use Genentech’s Lucentis instead of the company’s Avastin.Kohl’s letter, sent yesterday, cites a story [...]
What do the ACLU, Gun Owners of America, the Free Congress Foundation and Microsoft have in common? A hankering for patient privacy, it seems.With some 40 other groups, they sent congressmen a letter yesterday urging them to “establish basic privacy protections” for health records, and soon. (Or see the press release.) They complain that no [...]
