Long enough by far

A bridge far enough?

T he publication in this issue of Circulation of the Evaluation of the HeartWare Left Ventricular Assist Device for the Treatment of Advanced Heart Failure (ADVANCE) trial by Aaronson, Slaughter, and colleagues 1 tracks continuing advance in the rapidly expanding field of mechanical circulatory support. As implantable device technology and the clinical learning curve have supported better outco...

The future of health economic modeling: have we gone too far or not far enough?

This is a summary of the presentation given by A. Mark Fendrick at the ISPOR 10th Annual International Meeting Second Plenary Session, May 17, 2005, Washington, DC, USA. Dr Fendrick is Professor at the Department of Internal Medicine and Health Management & Policy, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. This presentation immediately followed the presentation, Bringing Health...

The Paris Declaration Does Not Go Far Enough

40 Years Is Long Enough!

In 1975, Stanley Plotkin and coworkers developed one of the first live attenuated cytomegalovirus (CMV) vaccines, called Towne 125, which was isolated from a congenitally infected infant and attenuated by cell culture passage and plaque purification [1]. Hundreds of subjects, including renal transplant recipients and healthy men and women, received the early investigational vaccine [2, 3]. The ...

Drug patent protection: how long is long enough?

Bill S-17, Parliament’s effort to comply with international trade rules by extending pharmaceutical patent protection to 20 years, inadvertently opened the door to a broader investigation of the inner workings of the country’s pharmaceutical patent legislation. Industry Minister Brian Tobin says the bill must become law by August or Canada “will be in trouble with the World Trade Organization.”...