Bayer and its workers in Berkeley, California, are embroiled in protracted contract negotiations. Last week, we heard from Craig Merrilees, spokesman for the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents the workers. Bayer owes workers and the community more, said Merrilees, and worker patience with the company is “wearing thin," he said.

Most of the U.S. Department of Justice’s major pharma-related decisions invoking the False Claims Act recently have involved illegal marketing and sales. So far, GSK’s is the only one to deal with current good manufacturing practices (cGMP’s).  Read on for a roundup of the top 20 recent cases from Taxpayers Against Fraud (TAF).

....not a banner season for scientific integrity, as WSJ's Eric Felten points out in a nice editorial, pointing to, among others, Scott S.

Over the past several years, biomedical researchers and scientists from Europe and China have been holding workshops and collaborating on a project to establish an ethical framework for clinical trials and biomedical research conducted across cultures—namely, as a result of partnerships between European and Chinese life science companies. The fruits of the BIONET project are being realized this year, and the project’s final report has recently been released.

When a real or potential public health crisis such as the recent swine flu/Mexican flu/H1N1 pandemic hits, it brings to the fore challenging public and private ethical dilemmas that would normally lie fallow. For example, how can the media provide as much information to the public as it can about a pandemic, without going overboard and fomenting panic among the citizenry?