Weapons inspections challenge pharma industry

David Oliver: Why shouldn't hospitals challenge inspections?

England’s health regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), recently judged Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge as “inadequate” and instigated special measures. The hospital’s reputation guaranteed headlines, as did the resigning chief executive’s self defence. Commentators fanned the flames, questioning the value of over-zealous regulation. The CQC then published a blog, Shooting theMesseng...

Nuclear weapons proliferation, medicine's supreme challenge.

Nuclear proliferation, because of its ability to threaten human survival, is fast coming to overshadow all other global issues.1-7 When the renowned explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau addressed the UN General Assembly in 1976 he observed that atomic power had "reshaped what we may fear, what we may dream, how we live and how we may die." He was emphasising as many before him had done that since Aug...

BRIC Health Systems and Big Pharma: A Challenge for Health Policy and Management

BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India, and China – represent 40% of the world’s population, including a growing aging population and middle class with an increasing prevalence of chronic disease. Their healthcare systems increasingly rely on prescription drugs, but they differ from most other healthcare systems because healthcare expenditures in BRIC nations have exhibited the highest revenue gr...

Good pharma? Bad pharma? Better pharma.

Bacteriophages as Weapons Against Bacterial Biofilms in the Food Industry

Microbiological contamination in the food industry is often attributed to the presence of biofilms in processing plants. Bacterial biofilms are complex communities of bacteria attached to a surface and surrounded by an extracellular polymeric material. Their extreme resistance to cleaning and disinfecting processes is related to a unique organization, which implies a differential bacterial grow...