Government report shows low UK medicine prices

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, which is planning a radical overhaul of its medicine pricing system from 2014, already has some of the lowest prices in Europe, according to a government report Thursday.

The findings were seized on by pharmaceutical companies as evidence that existing voluntary price-control measures were working well and that the state-run National Health Service (NHS) was getting good value for money.

Health minister Andrew Lansley, however, sees room for improvement. From the end of 2013, he aims to switch to a new system of "value-based pricing" - a concept that has so far been only sketchily defined.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) is due to start detailed talks on how the system will work in late summer 2012.

Drug prices are under growing pressure across Europe as governments tackle ballooning budget deficits and firms fear the British changes might lead to direct price controls or further obstacles to launching new therapies.

The current Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS), which companies would be happy to retain, controls the prices of branded drugs by regulating profits they are allowed to make on sales to the NHS.

In its latest report to parliament, the Department of Health confirmed that the PPRS was, by and large, doing its job.

In particular, British medicine prices in 2010 were found to be lower than those in any of 10 other comparator European countries. U.S. prices were on average more than 2-1/2 times more expensive. (http://link.reuters.com/fem76s)

The picture was slightly different, however, when average exchange rates over the last five years were used. On this basis, prices were still significantly lower than in the United States and also lower than in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, but not as cheap as in Finland, Spain and France.

Despite low prices, British drugmakers, including GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, argue that patients still struggle to access new medicines, with use of new cancer drugs 33 percent lower than in the rest of Europe.

The increasingly tough environment for drugs is a growing concern for pharmaceutical companies across Europe, some of which have started to relegate the region when it comes to developing new medicines.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said in a report on Wednesday that harsher conditions at home also meant Europe's big pharmaceutical firms had been faster to tap into new emerging markets than their U.S. peers.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler)

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Salvadoran May Be Deported From U.S. for ’80 Murders of Americans

The decision by Judge James Grim of immigration court in Orlando is the first time that federal immigration prosecutors have established that a top-ranking foreign military commander can be deported based on human rights violations under a law passed in 2004, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intended to bar human rights violators from coming to or living in the United States.

Judge Grim found that General Vides assisted in the killings of four American churchwomen on a rural road in El Salvador in 1980, a crime that caused shock there and in Washington and presaged the bloody violence that would engulf the Central American nation for the next decade. The immigration judge’s ruling is the first time General Vides has been held responsible for those deaths in a court of law.

Five soldiers from the Salvadoran National Guard were eventually convicted of the killings and served long prison sentences. General Vides was the commander of the National Guard at the time of the murders.

The effort by Department of Homeland Security officials to seek the deportation of General Vides, who was El Salvador’s defense minister from 1983 to 1989, is a turnabout in American foreign policy. He was a close ally of Washington throughout the war against leftist guerrillas in the 1980s, and was embraced as a reformer despite rampant rights violations by the armed forces under his command.

Judge Grim also determined that General Vides had assisted in the torture of two Salvadorans, Juan Romagoza and Daniel Alvarado, who testified against him in hearings last spring in the immigration court in Orlando.

“This is the first case where the Department of Homeland Security has taken this relatively new law and applied it to the highest military commander of their country to seek their removal,” said Carolyn Patty Blum, senior legal adviser for the Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit legal group in San Francisco that represented several torture victims in the case. She called the decision “hugely significant” for future efforts to bring immigration cases for human rights abuses against the highest-level military commanders and government officials.

Many details of the judge’s decision were not available on Thursday, since in keeping with general practice in immigration courts, the ruling was not published. His main findings were described by lawyers familiar with the case.

Diego Handel, General Vides’s lawyer, said he had not had a chance to read the lengthy decision and could not comment on it.

The deportation case against General Vides was brought by prosecutors from the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, a unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement created in 2003 to focus on preventing rights violators from entering this country and deporting those already here.

General Vides contested the charges, saying he did not have any direct responsibility for, or even knowledge of, the murders and torture signaled by the government. In the hearings, witnesses, including former American diplomats, said that the general had been working to stop rights abuses by Salvadoran soldiers and to change the culture of a military known for brutality.

Judge Grim’s decision confirmed that General Vides can be deported based on the rights charges brought by the government. Federal officials and immigration lawyers cautioned that there are still several steps to go before the judge will decide whether to issue a final order for the general’s deportation. But lawyers said it would be considerably more difficult now for General Vides to avoid such an order.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Nicole Navas, said, “As a matter of policy, I am precluded from commenting on matters still pending before the immigration court.”

General Vides retired as defense minister in 1989, amid praise from United States officials for his performance, and came to settle in Florida as a legal permanent resident.

But the family members of the four churchwomen, as well as some Salvadorans who barely survived prolonged torture during the war, have been tenacious in seeking to hold General Vides responsible for crimes of that era.

In 2000, a Florida jury acquitted General Vides and José Guillermo García, another former Salvadoran defense minister who retired to Florida, of responsibility for the churchwomen’s murders. But in 2002, in a case brought by the Center for Justice and Accountability, another Florida jury found the two officers civilly liable for the torture of three Salvadorans and ordered them to pay $54 million. The deportation proceedings against General Vides stem from that decision.

The four churchwomen killed were Sister Dorothy Kazel of the Ursuline Order; Jean Donovan, a lay missionary; Sister Maura Clarke and Sister Ita Ford, both of the Maryknoll Order.

Sister Ita’s brother Bill Ford fought vigorously for the prosecution of General Vides. Mr. Ford died in 2008.

“Since the women were killed my father made this the single purpose of his life,” his son, Bill Ford Jr., said Thursday. Mr. Ford, who is the principal of Cristo Rey New York High School in Manhattan, said, “I’m sure he knows and is well pleased that one of the men responsible for ordering the death of the women or for the cover-up may no longer be able to live in this country to enjoy the fruits of his brutality.”

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Mexican researchers patent heroin vaccine

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - While Mexico grapples with relentless drug-related violence, a group of Mexican scientists is working on a vaccine that could reduce addiction to one of the world's most notorious narcotics: heroin.

Researchers at the country's National Institute of Psychiatry say they have successfully tested the vaccine on mice and are preparing to test it on humans.

The vaccine, which has been patented in the United States, works by making the body resistant to the effects of heroin, so users would no longer get a rush of pleasure when they smoke or inject it.

"It would be a vaccine for people who are serious addicts, who have not had success with other treatments and decide to use this application to get away from drugs," the institute's director Maria Elena Medina said Thursday.

Scientists worldwide have been searching for drug addiction vaccines for several years, but none have yet been fully developed and released on the market.

One group at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has reported significant progress in a vaccine for cocaine.

However, the Mexican scientists appear to be close to making a breakthrough on a heroin vaccine and have received funds from the U.S. institute as well as the Mexican government.

During the tests, mice were given access to deposits of heroin over an extended period of time. Those given the vaccine showed a huge drop in heroin consumption, giving the institute hope that it could also work on people, Medina said.

Kim Janda, a scientist working on his own narcotics vaccines at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, said that based on some earlier research papers he had read, the Mexican vaccine could function but with some shortcomings.

"It could be reasonably effective but maybe too general and affect too many different types of opioids as well as heroin," Janda said.

Mexico, a major drug producing and transit country for drugs smuggled into the United States, has a growing drug addiction problem. Health Secretary Jose Cordoba recently said the country now has some 450,000 hard drug addicts, particularly along the trafficking corridors of the U.S. border.

Mexican gangsters grow opium poppies in the Sierra Madre mountains and convert them into heroin known as Black Tar and Mexican Mud, which are smuggled over the Rio Grande.

Every year, the heroin trade provides billions of dollars to gangs like the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas. Since 2006, cartel violence has claimed the lives of over 47,000 people in Mexico.

(Additional reporting by Jorge Lebrija; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

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World Briefing | The Americas: Argentina: Finger-Pointing Over Wreck

In Hollywood, there are untold screenwriters, actors, directors and others invisibly struggling to keep their homes.

The White House strategy of offering prizes to the public for their solutions to critical problems is working.

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Meat Industry Spreads MRSA: Go Vegetarian Now

COMMENTARY | When I first went vegetarian seven years ago, I chose to do it for the environment. Knowing the impact of the meat industry on our planet -- the pollution of waterways, the emission of greenhouse gases, and the clear-cutting of ancient rainforest -- I could not, in good conscience, allow myself to eat meat. Concern for the planet still plays a role in my decision to avoid meat, but another factor also comes into play: concern for the health of my fellow humans. The meat industry is largely responsible for a dangerous, looming pandemic that currently claims the lives of 20,000 Americans each year. Out of concern and respect for those people, I choose not to eat meat.

According to a report by ABC's Mikaela Conley, new strains of the bacterium methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureas, or MRSA, are continuously discovered in livestock, and these strains may be spreading to human beings. On large-scale factory farms, where animals are kept in unnaturally confined, unsanitary quarters, livestock must be fed massive amounts of antibiotics in order to prevent infection. Bacteria quickly build up resistance to these drugs, with the particularly virulent "superbug" MRSA becoming increasingly untreatable. When these bacteria jump from animal to human, severe infection and death can ensue.

My personal experience with MRSA makes the bug an especially sensitive topic. At 17, I developed a horrendously painful boil under my arm. After two minor surgeries and three mysteriously ineffective rounds of antibiotics, a culture revealed that MRSA was to blame for the infection. Even after the doctors discovered this, it took a year and a half of monthly minor surgeries, combined with regular injections of the world's strongest antibiotics, before the infection finally resolved. I was young, healthy, and blessed with access to medical care. Had I been older, immunocompromised, or uninsured, the bug could have easily claimed my life.

MRSA can and does claim new victims each day, and the numbers of casualties will grow higher as we continue to overuse antibiotics -- especially in livestock. Although the increasingly resistant MRSA strains aren't likely to jump to human victims through prepared meat, they can easily spread to the people who work on factory farms. I find this particularly disturbing, since many factory farm workers are undocumented immigrants, and almost all lack access to medical care. This means that the infections in farm workers are likely to go undiagnosed and untreated, so they can spread rapidly to the general population.

The abuse of antibiotics absolutely must stop. Overuse of these miracle drugs has led to a new era of untreatable illness, and we are mere decades away from pandemic if we don't change our ways. While antibiotics are necessary in many cases for human health, the factory farm industry is a colossal and dangerous machine that we do not need, that does no good to humans, animals, or the environment.

You do not have to be a tree-hugger or an animal lover to see the benefits of vegetarianism. Respect for human life, and a desire to halt the spread of untreatable illness, can and should be an equally valid motivation. I can't change the world or stop the spread of MRSA myself, but I'll keep declining my friends' invitations to McDonald's -- not just for myself, for cattle, or for the planet, but also to help save the lives of other human beings.

Juniper Russo is an activist, freelance writer, health advocate, and full-time mom living in Chattanooga, Tenn.

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Profits Over People Mean Drug Shortages and Suffering

COMMENTARY | Did you know that if you are diagnosed with cancer any time in the near future, you may not get the drugs you need to stay alive? News on WebMD states that patients are suffering as drug shortages snowball. I first read about drug shortages early last year, as some of my cancer survivor blogger friends dealt with the terror of trying to stay alive without the drugs they knew would keep their disease at bay. According to Daniel J. DeNoon of WebMD, shortages have been going on since 2001 and are steadily increasing.

The WebMD article specifically mentions leukemia drugs. I provide massage therapy in a children's hospital, and many of the patients I see are fighting leukemia. Modern medicine has made enormous strides in the treatment of this childhood cancer. Some types of leukemia are largely curable with the right chemotherapy. Without it, these children will not beat their cancer and they will die. How can this be? In whose world is this acceptable?

In April last year, ABC News made a video about a shortage of cytarabine, a drug used to treat leukemia. Not having this drug means that people will die needlessly.

In June, ABC News published another video, about a Taxol shortage. I am alive today because my aggressive cancer was successfully treated in 2007 with Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Herceptin and Taxol. I was 45 years old, and my children were 7 and 9. Not having Taxol available has terrifying consequences. The speculation is that Taxol production has slowed because it is a generic drug, rendering the profit margin insignificant. A doctor on the video said, "this is not where the money is, so it does paint an unfavorable picture of the industry." Indeed.

Last week, an article was published on the Vancouver Sun about a Canadian company suspending production of numerous drugs, as it makes adjustments to bring the company into compliance with safety regulations. Why wasn't it meeting these in the first place? Profits?

Another problem is that drug companies have been under no obligation to report impending shortages to the Food and Drug Administration, so the FDA has not had the opportunity to try and prevent shortages.

Fortunately, last year President Obama signed into law legislation mandating that drug companies alert the FDA of impending shortages, so a solution can be found before lifesaving drugs become unavailable. Slowly, public awareness is growing and people are putting pressure on our lawmakers to address this problem proactively before it gets worse. Unfortunately, this does not address the needs of patients who are doing without right now.

As I approach the five-year anniversary of my diagnosis, I shudder to think what would happen to me if my cancer recurred and there was no Herceptin or Tykerb for me. I would probably die. This is the reality for many of today's cancer patients.

I hope no one you love is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness until the drug companies get their priorities straight.

Elizabeth Danu is a survivor of inflammatory breast cancer, celebrating five years on Feb. 22. She maintains a cancer resource blog at the Liberation of Persephone.

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Health Highlights: Feb. 23, 2012

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Teen Drivers' Marijuana Use Causes Concern

Teens who drive while high on marijuana appear to be a growing problem.

Pot smoking is up among teens and use of the drug among high school students is higher than it has been in three decades, finds new survey data compiled by Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) and the insurance industry, the Washington Post reported.

Survey results also show that 19 percent of teens said they'd driven a vehicle while stoned, and more than one-third said marijuana causes no distractions to their driving, according to the information released Wednesday.

"What keeps me up at night is that this data reflects a dangerous trend toward the acceptance of marijuana and other substances compared to our study of teens conducted just two years ago," Stephen Wallace, senior adviser for policy, research and education at SADD, told the Post.

Last week, the Governors Highway Safety Association said that teen highway deaths increased in the first half of 2011, reversing an eight-year downward trend.

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Male Y Chromosome Won't Vanish: Study

Men's Y chromosome may not wither away to nothing after all, according to a new study.

The male Y and female X chromosomes once had about 800 genes in common but the Y now carries just 19 of its ancestral genes, along with its male-determining gene, and is just a fraction of its original size, The New York Times reported.

This has led some scientists to wonder if the Y chromosome will eventually vanish and make human males a thing of the past.

But a new study suggests that the Y chromosome's gene-shedding is finished and it will shrink no more, The Times reported.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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State Can't Force Pharmacies to Sell Emergency Contraceptives: Judge

Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

State regulations require pharmacies to stock and dispense drugs for which there is a demand. The regulations were implemented in 2007 after reports that some women in the state were denied access to Plan B, the Associated Press reported.

A pharmacy and two pharmacists filed a lawsuit that said the rules infringed on their religious freedom. U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton agreed with them.

The judge ruled that the intent of the state regulations was not to promote timely access to medicine, but to override religious objections by pharmacists who believe that emergency contraceptives have an effect that's similar to abortion, the AP reported.

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U.S. Releases Draft Strategy to Fight Alzheimer's Disease

Finding effective ways to treat Alzheimer's disease by 2025 is the main goal of the Obama administration's draft of a national strategy to fight the disease.

That could be a huge challenge. Current treatments only temporarily ease symptoms of Alzheimer's and efforts to develop better medications have been slow, the Associated Press reported.

The draft also recommends improved training and support for caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer's, campaigns to raise awareness about the early warning signs of the disease, increased education for doctors and other health care providers, and improved early detection of Alzheimer's.

The draft was released Wednesday and is open for public comment through March. The final strategy will be released this year, the AP reported.

More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's or similar dementias and that number is expected to reach as many as 16 million by 2050.

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