Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Will It Never End? Wither the Nobel?

The e-mail lists have been abuzz with the latest allegations of pharmaceutically linked impropriety. I can't seem to get the full link to appear in this post for some reason (I am actually doing this from a hotel in Beijing--go figure) , but go to www.newsmax.com and search for "Nobel Prize bribery." The allegations are that AstraZeneca stands to gain a lot of sales for its human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine as a result of the publicity of the discoverers of HPV winning the Nobel Prize, and so via a couple of intermediary PR organizations, it managed to exert financial influence over the prize committee. The Swedish authorities are investigating this as a possible criminal act, though according to the press account the Swedish media have been notably silent on the matter.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's some additional pharmaceutical impropriety you may have not heard about from China. This week the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Ovation Pharmaceuticals for illegally acquiring the only competing drug for IV Indocin to close a PDA in an attempt to keep their product at $500/vial instead of $36. I blog on this at: http://thecountrydocreport.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/ovation-pharmaceuticals-illegally-profits-from-drug-for-premies/