No, no Halloween scares here folks...the FDA did just approve ArteFill, an injectable product made from cow hides and tiny plexiglas beads, used to permanently fill wrinkles.

The New Scientist's recent survey describes how some patient groups get substantial funding from drug companies.

A Harris poll from last month shows that 4 out of 5 adults support reimportation of prescription drugs from other countries, if drug prices are much lower.

Who knew treating "restless leg syndrome" would generate the latest blockbuster drug? The Wall Street Journal Online yesterday reported on how GlaxoSmithKline turned a disease no one had ever heard of into a new $500 million market for one of its old drugs.

At a conference yesterday in New Jersey of pharmaceutical marketing specialists, drugmakers and their ad agencies were warned that drug ads to consumers need to be more truthful and transparent.

Former FDA chief, Lester Crawford, who resigned after 2 months on the job, has plead guilty of charges of conflict of interest and lying about stock he and his wife owned in companies the FDA regulates.

“When is a citizen not exactly a citizen? When it’s a pharmaceutical company looking to increase its profits,” writes Consumers Union President Jim Guest in a column in the current issue of Consumers Reports. Jim’s column explains how brand-name drug companies interfere with the marketplace by unfairly blocking generic drugs from competing with the brand names.

We called 261 pharmacies in Florida to get their prices for 6 top drugs, then compared them to the new Medicare prescription drug benefit's private insurance plans. It turns out that out of the 44 Florida plans, the private plan "donut hole" prices were usually higher than the lowest retail price.

An article just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine echoes the growing consensus of physicians and other experts calling for major FDA reform.

Only two countries on earth allow drug companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers: New Zealand and the U.S. Yes, that’s right, residents of the other 191 countries in the world miss out on those omnipresent TV ads we see every night.

In yesterday's editorial, the NY Times writes that Bayer's excuse for hiding serious side effect information on a widely-used drug doesn't hold much weight.