Four members of the Two Six Nation street gang and four of their associates have been indicted for their roles in a racketeering conspiracy spanning more than 20 years, as well as murder and drug trafficking charges

The United States has partially intervened against defendants in two whistleblower lawsuits in the Federal District Court for the District of Colorado alleging Evercare Hospice and Palliative Care submitted false claims for the Medicare hospice benefit.

The owner of a Florida mortgage company, seven employees of the company and two real estate developers were indicted in the Southern District of Florida in connection with an alleged $50 million mortgage fraud scheme.

Eduardo Santiago-Rivera, 45, admitted that in June and July 2012, he caused at least three minors, who ranged in age from 12 to 15, to engage in sexual activity for the purpose of creating videos.

The Justice Department announced today the filing of a lawsuit with the Executive Office for Immigration Review against Louisiana Crane Company LLC (Louisiana Crane), which is headquartered in Eunice, Louisiana.

Omni Surgical L.P., doing business as Spine 360, a manufacturer of devices used in spinal surgery, and Dr. Jamie Gottlieb, an Indiana spinal surgeon, have agreed to pay $2.6 million to the United States to settle allegations that Spine 360 paid illegal kickbacks to Gottlieb to induce him to use the company’s products.

Life Care Services LLC, a manager of skilled nursing facilities based in Des Moines, Iowa, and CoreCare V LLP, doing business as ParkVista, a skilled nursing facility in Fullerton, California, have agreed to pay a total of $3.75 million to the government for causing the submission of false claims to Medicare for unreasonable or unnecessary rehabilitation therapy purportedly provided by RehabCare Group East Inc., a subsidiary of Kindred Healthcare Inc.

A federal court has permanently barred a Rancho Santa Margarita, California, man from promoting and selling an alleged nationwide tax scheme that involved using welfare benefit plans to unlawfully increase and accelerate tax deductions and avoid income taxes.

The United States has filed two complaints under the False Claims Act against Michigan neurosurgeon Dr. Aria Sabit, spinal implant company Reliance Medical Systems, two Reliance distributorships—Apex Medical Technologies and Kronos Spinal Technologies—and the companies’ owners, Brett Berry, John Hoffman and Adam Pike.

A dual United States-Costa Rican citizen pleaded guilty today for his role in a $1.88 million sweepstakes fraud scheme that defrauded hundreds of elderly Americans.

A federal court has permanently barred Sea Nine Associates Inc. from promoting and selling an alleged nationwide tax scheme that involved using welfare benefit plans to unlawfully increase and accelerate tax deductions and avoid income taxes.

Episcopal Ministries to the Aging Inc., a Maryland not-for-profit corporation that owns skilled nursing facilities, has agreed to pay $1.3 million to the government for submitting false claims to Medicare for unreasonable or unnecessary rehabilitation therapy purportedly provided by RehabCare Group East Inc., a subsidiary of Kindred Healthcare Inc.

A Detroit-area hematologist-oncologist pleaded guilty today for his role in a health care fraud scheme, admitting that he administered unnecessary chemotherapy to fraudulently bill the Medicare program and private insurance companies. According to court records, the scheme enabled the doctor to submit approximately $225 million in claims to Medicare over six years.

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Special Agent in Charge John Kelleghan for Philadelphia, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Special Agent in Charge Sidney M. Simon of the New York Field Office, Office of Export Enforcement, U.S. Department of Commerce announced that yesterday Harold Rinko, 72, of Hallstead, Pennsylvania, appeared before Senior District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik in Scranton and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to illegally export laboratory equipment, including items used to detect chemical warfare agents, from the United States to Syria, in violation of federal law

A Plus Home Health Care Inc. and its owners, Tracy Nemerofsky and her father, Stephen Nemerofsky, have agreed to pay $1.65 million to the United States to settle allegations that A Plus paid spouses of referring physicians for sham marketing positions in order to induce patient referrals.

A true cooperator – whether a mobster or a company – must forthrightly provide all the available facts and evidence so that the most culpable individuals can be prosecuted. If a corporation wants credit for cooperation, it must engage in comprehensive and timely cooperation; lip service simply will not do. Corporations do not act criminally, but for the actions of individuals. The Criminal Division intends to prosecute those individuals, whether they’re sitting on a sales desk or in a corporate suite.

Two former Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you, Professor [Jennifer] Arlen, for that kind introduction and for everything you and your colleagues have accomplished at NYU

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you, Buddy [Wilmer Parker], for that kind introduction

ALEXANDRIA, Va

Today's Daily Dose brings you news about Cassava Sciences' research grant from the National Institutes of Health for developing Alzheimer's disease drug; Edwards Lifesciences' Q1 financial results; Enzo Biochem's launch of the next-generation COVID-19 test kits and Johnson & Johnson's deal with Emergent BioSolutions related to COVID-19 Vaccine candidate.

The FDA has issued emergency use authorization for Gilead Science Inc's (GILD) antiviral drug Remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19 in adults and children hospitalized with severe disease.

Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. is recalling Pink Lite Cranberry Juice Drink citing potential for undeclared sulfites, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a statement. The recall involves a single production lot of 5.5oz cans of the drink with lot number MH0030LPK4 and Best Before Date of 24JAN21. The product is sold in boxes containing six 5.5oz cans. They were distributed to retail

Baltimore, Maryland-based Medifast, Inc. is recalling certain Optavia Oatmeal products citing undeclared milk, a known allergen, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a statement. The recall involves around 24,923 boxes of OPTAVIA Essential Old Fashioned Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal. The product is packaged in yellow and white cardboard boxes with the brand name.

Today's Daily Dose brings you news about aTyr Pharma joining the COVID-19 battle; Cara's pivotal KALM-2 trial; LabCorp's at-home collection kit for COVID-19 testing securing Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA, and Myovant's much-awaited clinical trial catalyst.

Pew’s substance use prevention and treatment initiative sent a letter to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on April 27 encouraging the agency to expedite a final rule that will help opioid treatment programs (OTPs)—federally regulated facilities where patients take medications for opioid use disorder under the supervision of medical staff and receive counseling and other care services—...

This blog post was written by Aoife Brennan, CEO of Synlogic, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. My first job at a public company was when I joined Biogen or Biogen Idec as it was then

The post Call Me, Maybe appeared first on LifeSciVC.

M&A is an omnipresent reality in the biopharma industry, from Big Pharma mega-mergers to smaller acquisitions of emerging startups. We’ve recently witnessed several large M&A transactions get closed or announced, including BMS-Celgene, Takeda-Shire, and AbbVie-Allergan; according to BMO Capital Markets

The post BioPharma M&A Drives More Efficient Resource Allocation appeared first on LifeSciVC.

BASF recently announced the launch of Accelon™ absorption accelerating technology, developed as a breakthrough solution to the bioavailability challenge of today’s omega-3 supplements.

From access to capital to dispute resolution.

“Ten, twenty, thirty years ago, you were in the best position to go global if you were a large company and had a lot of resources and access to a lot of attorneys and advisors who could help you navigate regulations and issues that get more complicated as you go abroad.”

Ministers in charge of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the APEC region issued a statement following their meeting in Concepcion, Chile, on 5-6 September 2019.

We need it for inclusive policymaking

Ministers address developments in the global economy and take action to safeguard the region’s growth.

Malaysia, incoming host of APEC, will rally the forum to ensure that the ‘”benefits from trade, investment, and economic cooperation are felt and enjoyed by our people,” said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as he launched APEC Malaysia 2020.

Stronger cooperation is essential for APEC as economies address inequality, environmental health, and the digital economy – the region’s critical challenges – said the APEC Secretariat’s Executive Director Dr Rebecca Sta Maria.

The challenge: Innovative mobile apps and platforms that empower the aging society

What can small sponsors do to secure the outsourcing resources they need as large CROs form strategic alliances with Big Pharma?

Partenships between large pharmaceutical companies and large CROs have become the norm.  The advantages for sponsor companies include shared risk, knowledge transfer, dedicated resources, shorter time to market, and the ability to implement the massive data integration that clinical development requires.  Strategic alliances are arguably as advantageous for their outsourcing partners, providing a steady pipeline of work that’s larger in scope and longer in duration than is typical under traditional arrangements.



Strategic Partnerships in Big Pharma: Implications for the Rest
Advantages for one segment of the industry can introduce disadvantages for another.  Alliances among the large players increase competition for top-drawer CRO resources. Smaller sponsors may find it more difficult to receive the quality of service and level of commitment they might otherwise expect.  A large CRO is likely to assign their most talented personnel to projects associated with their strategic partners.  And if a partner study were to run into trouble, it would be hard to fault a CRO for pulling experienced staff members off a smaller project in order to help out with the big client.  Though a reputable CRO wouldn’t jeopardize the relationship with the smaller client, their responsiveness to routine requests might suffer.  It might take longer to get a question answered, receive requested documentation, making the job of vendor oversight difficult.

Though selecting a large, well-established CRO at the outset may have seemed like the safe bet, what do you do if you’re a small sponsor or biotech start-up who is dissatisfied with the level of service you’re receiving?

“Let’s Bring It In-house.”
Put off by a negative experience, many companies decide to curtail outsourcing, and bring functions like monitoring and project management in-house.

This response is understandable, but it rarely goes well.  There’s good reason to outsource study functions to a CRO, especially if you’re small, or new, or both.  Mid-study is a terrible time to realize you’re in over your head.  You may find it difficult to contract with the service providers you want in the timeframe you need them.  Services you would have preferred be performed by a single company may now have to be farmed out piecemeal, which has the overhead of multiple contracts and makes vendor oversight more difficult to manage.  You don’t have time to go through a thorough qualification process.  You’re not in a good bargaining position; you’re trying to buy a new car after they’ve towed away your old one.  And now you have to rely on your new service provider(s) – the ones who may not be your first choice, whom you had to choose in haste, whom you didn’t get to thoroughly vet – to jump in midstream and pick up a study that is already in trouble.

Options for Small Sponsors and Start-ups
So what’s the answer?  You have several good options we’ve seen work well for smaller organizations.

(1) Go smaller.  Look beyond traditional outsourcing choices and consider selecting smaller vendors who may well be in a better position to focus on individual projects and give priority to shorter term engagements.  After all, a project that’s small to a big CRO will be comparatively big to a small CRO.

(2) Go long-term.  Consider establishing strategic partnerships of your own.   Doing so would increase the expertise and technology to which you’d have ready access, and could extend your global reach.

(3) Go big, but go vigilantly.  There’s a reason companies hire big, reputable CROs.  ‘Big’ means the CRO has an impressive set of resources at its disposal.  ‘Reputable’ means it has a proven record of successfully completing studies, producing reliable data, and preserving subject safety.  Smaller sponsors can still take advantage of everything a big CRO offers if they can commit to conducting very strict vendor oversight.  They need to closely monitor the quality of the work the CRO performs, frequently assess adherence to the many written study plans, and make sure deadlines are being met.  Service contracts should guarantee a certain level of responsiveness (by specifying maximum turn-around times, for example), especially for those requests that enable these oversight activities.


Qualification is Key
While the key to Option 3 is effective vendor management, the key to Options 1 and 2 is effective vendor qualification.  Resources are tight in a small company, so you need to direct them where your exposure is greatest, where they’ll do the most good.  What could be more essential to the success of your study than choosing the right company to conduct it?   Many sponsors conduct on-site vendor audits.  That’s good.  That’s necessary.  But it’s not sufficient.  To consistently choose the best possible CRO for your study, sponsors need to:

• Formally document and maintain vendor selection criteria and qualification process
• Form selection committees that represent all sides of your business – finance, contracting, operations, finance, QA, data management, pharmacovigilance, biostatistics, etc.
• Conduct on-site audits with well-trained, well-prepared QA auditors
• Track the resulting CAPA activities
• Ensure outstanding issues are resolved before the contract is signed
• Periodically re-evaluate vendors to make sure they can continue to deliver the same level of quality they’ve delivered in the past

Strategic partnerships among large companies have reshaped the research environment for industry players of every size.  Small and mid-sized companies who take the time to review current outsourcing arrangements, assess alternative models, and thoroughly qualify new vendors and partners will fare the best.

Photo Credit: FreeImages.com/Svilen Milev

- Libtayo decreased the risk of death by 32.4% compared to chemotherapy

Objective responses seen in 29% of patients with locally advanced basal cell carcinoma (BCC)

FDA — along with NIH, CDC, and other front-line public health agencies — is caught up in the urgent COVID-19 efforts. Appropriately, enormous resources are being devoted to fighting the pandemic and more funding will come, if needed. At the same time, we are getting positive reports on the FDA’s efforts to carry out the […]

by Joshua Kaplan and Benjamin Hardy

On April 17 in Toledo, Ohio, a 19-year-old black man was arrested for violating the state stay-at-home order. In court filings, police say he took a bus from Detroit to Toledo “without a valid reason.” Six young black men were arrested in Toledo last Saturday while hanging out on a front lawn; police allege they were “seen standing within 6 feet of each other.” In Cincinnati, a black man was charged with violating stay-at-home orders after he was shot in the ankle on April 7; according to a police affidavit, he was talking to a friend in the street when he was shot and was “clearly not engaged in essential activities.”

Ohio’s health director, Dr. Amy Acton, issued the state’s stay-at-home order on March 22, prohibiting people from leaving their home except for essential activities and requiring them to maintain social distancing “at all times.” A violation of the order is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. Since the order, hundreds of people have been charged with violations across Ohio.

The state has also seen some of the most prominent protests against state stay-at-home orders, as large crowds gather on the statehouse steps to flout the directives. But the protesters, most of them white, have not faced arrest. Rather, in three large Ohio jurisdictions ProPublica examined, charges of violating the order appear to have fallen disproportionately on black people.

ProPublica analyzed court records for the city of Toledo and for the counties that include Columbus and Cincinnati, three of the most populous jurisdictions in Ohio. In all of them, ProPublica found, black people were at least four times as likely to be charged with violating the stay-at-home order as white people.

As states across the country attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, stay-at-home orders have proven instrumental in the fight against the novel coronavirus; experts credit aggressive restrictions with flattening the curve in the nation’s hotbeds. Many states’ orders carry criminal penalties for violations of the stay-at-home mandates. But as the weather warms up and people spend more time outside, defense lawyers and criminal justice reform advocates fear that black communities long subjected to overly aggressive policing will face similarly aggressive enforcement of stay-at-home mandates.

In Ohio, ProPublica found, the disparities are already pronounced.

As of Thursday night in Hamilton County, which is 27% black and home to Cincinnati, there were 107 charges for violating the order; 61% of defendants are black. The majority of arrests came from towns surrounding Cincinnati, which is 43% black. Of the 29 people charged by the city’s Police Department, 79% were black, according to data provided to ProPublica by the Hamilton County Public Defender.

In Toledo, where black people make up 27% of the population, 18 of the 23 people charged thus far were black.

Lt. Kellie Lenhardt, a spokeswoman for the Toledo Police Department, said that in enforcing the stay-at-home order, the department’s goal is not to arrest people and that officers are primarily responding to calls from people complaining about violations of the order. She told ProPublica that if the police arrested someone, the officers believed they had probable cause, and that while biased policing would be “wrong,” it would also be wrong to arrest more white people simply “to balance the numbers.”

In Franklin County, which is 23.5% black, 129 people were arrested between the beginning of the stay-at-home order and May 4; 57% of the people arrested were black.

In Cleveland, which is 50% black and is the state’s second-largest city, the Municipal Court’s public records do not include race data. The court and the Cleveland Police Department were unable to readily provide demographic information about arrests to ProPublica, though on Friday, the police said they have issued eight charges so far.

In the three jurisdictions, about half of those charged with violating the order were also charged with other offenses, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct. The rest were charged only with violating the order; among that group, the percentage of defendants who were black was even higher.

Franklin Country is home to Columbus, where enforcement of the stay-at-home order has made national headlines for a very different reason. Columbus is the state capital and Ohio’s largest city with a population of almost 900,000. In recent weeks, groups of mostly white protesters have campaigned against the stay-at-home order on the Statehouse steps and outside the health director’s home. Some protesters have come armed, and images have circulated of crowds of demonstrators huddled close, chanting, many without masks.

No protesters have been arrested for violating the stay-at-home order, a spokesperson for the Columbus mayor’s office told ProPublica. Thomas Hach, an organizer of a group called Free Ohio Now, said in an email that he was not aware of any arrests associated with protests in the entire state. The Columbus Division of Police did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

Ohio legislators are contemplating reducing the criminal penalties for violating the order. On Wednesday, the state House passed legislation that would eliminate the possibility of jail time for stay-at-home violators. A first offense would result in a warning, and further violations would result in a small fine. The bill is pending in the state Senate.

Penalties for violating stay-at-home orders vary across the country. In many states, including California, Florida, Michigan and Washington, violations can land someone behind bars. In New York state, violations can only result in fines. In Baltimore, police told local media they had only charged two people with violations; police have reportedly relied on a recording played over the loudspeakers of squad cars: “Even if you aren’t showing symptoms, you could still have coronavirus and accidentally spread it to a relative or neighbor. Being home is being safe. We are all in this together.”

Enforcement has often resulted in controversy. In New York City, a viral video showed police pull out a Taser and punch a black man after they approached a group of people who weren’t wearing masks. Police say the man who was punched took a “fighting stance” when ordered to disperse. In Orlando, police arrested a homeless man walking a bicycle because he was not obeying curfew. In Hawaii, charges against a man accused of stealing a car battery, normally a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail, were enhanced to a felony, which can result in 10 years in prison, because police and prosecutors said he was in violation of the state order.

The orders are generally broad, and decisions about which violations to treat as acceptable and which ones to penalize have largely been left to local police departments’ discretion.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a legal organization focused on racial justice, said such discretion has opened the door to police abuse, and she said the U.S. Department of Justice or state governments should issue detailed guidelines about when to make arrests. That discretion “is what’s given rise to these rogue practices,” she told ProPublica, “that are putting black communities and communities of color with a target on their backs.”

In jails and prisons around the country, inmates have fallen ill or died from COVID-19 as the virus spreads rapidly through the facilities. Many local governments have released some inmates from jail and ordered police to reduce arrests for minor crimes. But in Hamilton County, some people charged with failing to maintain social distancing have been kept in jail for at least one night, even without any other charges. Recently, two sheriff’s deputies who work in the jail tested positive for COVID-19. “The cops put their hands on them, they cram them in the car, they take them to the [jail], which has 800 to 1400 people, depending on the night,” said Sean Vicente, director of the Hamilton County Public Defender’s misdemeanor division. “It’s often so crowded everyone’s just sitting on the floor.”

Clarke said the enforcement push is sometimes undercutting the public health effort: “Protecting people’s health is in direct conflict with putting people in overcrowded jails and prisons that have been hotbeds for the virus.”

Court records show that the Cincinnati Police Department has adopted some surprising applications of the law.

Six people were charged with violations of the order after they were shot. Only one was charged with another crime as well, but police affidavits state that when they were shot, they were or likely were in violation of the order. One man was shot in the ankle while talking to a friend, according to court filings, and “was clearly not engaged in essential activities.” Another was arrested with the same explanation; police wrote that he had gone to the hospital with a gunshot wound. The Cincinnati Police Department did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

In Springfield Township, a small, mostly white Cincinnati suburb, nine people have been arrested for violating the order thus far. All of them are black.

Springfield Township Police Chief Robert Browder told ProPublica in an email that the department is “an internationally accredited law enforcement organization” and has “strict policies ... to ensure that our zero tolerance policy prohibiting bias-based profiling is adhered to.”

Browder said race had not played a role in his department’s enforcement of the order and that he was “appalled if that is the insinuation.”

Several of the black people arrested in Springfield Township were working for a company that sells books and magazine subscriptions door to door. One of the workers, Carl Brown, 50, said he and five colleagues were working in Springfield Township when two members of the team were arrested while going door to door. Police called the other sales people, and when they arrived at the scene, they too were arrested. Five of them, including Brown, were charged only with violating the stay-at-home order; the sixth sales person had an arrest warrant in another state, according to Browder, and police also charged her for giving them false identification.

Brown said one of the officers had left the group with a warning: They should never come back, and if they do, it’s “going to be worse.”

Browder denied that the officers made such a threat, and he said the police had received calls from residents about the sales people and their tactics and that the sales people had failed to register with the Police Department, as required for door-to-door solicitation.

Other violations in Hamilton County have been more egregious, but even in some of those cases, the law enforcement response has stirred controversy. On April 4, a man who had streamed a party on Facebook Live, saying, “We don’t give a fuck about this coronavirus,” was arrested in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, the setting of a 2001 riot after police fatally shot an unarmed black man.

The man who streamed the party, Rashaan Davis, was charged with violating the stay-at-home order and inciting violence, and his bond was set at $350,000.

After Judge Alan Triggs said he would release Davis from jail pretrial because the offense charged was nonviolent, local media reported, prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor and said they would focus on the charge of inciting violence, a felony.

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office declined to comment on Davis’ case.

In Toledo, there’s been public controversy around perceived differences in the application of the law. On April 21, debate at the Toledo City Council meeting centered around a food truck. Local politicians discussed recent arrests of young black people at house parties, some contrasting them with a large, white crowd standing close together in line outside a BBQ stand, undisturbed by police. Councilmember Gary Johnson told ProPublica he’s asked the police chief to investigate why no one was arrested at a party he’d heard about, where white people were congregating on docks. “I don’t know the circumstances of the arrests,” he said. But “if you feel you need to go into poor neighborhoods and African American neighborhoods, you better be going into white neighborhoods too. … You have to say we’re going to be heavy-handed with the stay-at-home order or we’re going to be light with it. It has to be one or the other.”

Toledo police enforcement has not been confined to partygoers. Armani Thomas, 20, is one of the six young men arrested for not social distancing on a lawn. He told ProPublica he was sitting there with nine friends “doing nothing” when the police pulled up. Two kids ran off, and the police made the rest stay, eventually arresting “all the dudes” and letting the girls go. He was taken to the county jail, where several inmates have tested positive, for booking and released after several hours. The men’s cases are pending.

“When police see black people gathered in public, I think there’s this looming belief that they must be doing something illegal,” RaShya Ghee, a criminal defense attorney and lecturer at the University of Toledo, told ProPublica. “They’re hanging out in a yard — something illegal must have happened. Or, something illegal is about to happen.”

Lenhardt, the police lieutenant, said the six men were arrested after police received 911 calls reporting “a group gathering and flashing guns.” None of the six men were arrested on gun charges. As for the 19-year-old charged for taking the bus without reason, she said police asked him on consecutive days to not loiter at a bus station.

With more than 70,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus, government officials have not figured out how to balance the threat of COVID-19 with the harms of over policing, Clarke said. “On the one hand, we want to beat back the pandemic. That’s critical. That’s the end goal,” she told ProPublica. “On the other hand, we’re seeing social distancing being used as a pretext to arrest the very communities that have been hit hardest by the virus.”

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SECOND UPDATE: On July 8, 2019, the judge issued an order setting aside the CMS rule. The full opinion is available here.

UPDATE: On July 8, 2019, the judge in this suit is due to provide a ruling on whether the rule will take effect on July 9. The judge might issue a stay on the rule's implementation. For more details, see this report from MM&M.

On June 14, 2019, Amgen, Merck, Lilly, and the Association of National Advertisers filed a complaint challenging the CMS rule requiring TV ads to include drug pricing information.

Here's a link to the original complaint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w5I5kvuYIedGaFGOYzl_VtzZEDFGA7vQ/view

If there is no action on this complaint, the rule will go into effect on July 9.

Exclusive: Pharmacy staff in care homes are being redeployed to cover other roles during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though demands on care homes are increasing rapidly, The Pharmaceutical Journal has learnt.

To read the whole article click on the headline

Pharmacists will not be automatically eligible for a new government life assurance scheme for healthcare workers in England who die from COVID-19 during the pandemic.

To read the whole article click on the headline

April 6, 2020 – The Coalition for Healthcare Communication last week endorsed an urgent request to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) to veto HB 732, which would put in place the nation’s first tax on digital advertising. The request, sent March 31 by national media and advertising trade associations and members of The Advertising Coalition, […]

I recently read “The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor” by Howard Marks, Chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management. While I’m not an investor, Juan Serrate (@JPZaragoza1) brought the book to my attention during a Twittersation about risk. In my job developing a discovery into an actual drug, I think

Biotech venture funding metrics continue at historic highs, highlighting that the robust financing environment in the public markets continues to fuel the private markets as well.  – Bruce Booth, partner Atlas Venture in Data Snapshot: Venture-Backed Biotech Financing Riding High, April 2015 Here in Madison, Wisconsin, you might not know that was true if you

With the overwhelming vote in the Parliament in favor of the Commission proposal to amend the MDR it is politically basically a done deal now that the MDR will be amended. After the vote there were people that immediately stated that the amendment was formally approved – not so. We are looking at law making […]

In several states and in parts of California, black and Latino people are dying of COVID-19 at higher rates than their white and Asian counterparts.