Newt Gingrich, Andrew von Eschenbach and Wayne Oliver, of the Center for Health Transformation, wrote a blog post recently that you might find interesting.

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

Had been checking for updates on this for so long that I missed last week's closure. 

Are we spending our drug development dollars wisely? It's not a new debate, but a new study from U.S. medical researchers suggests no. Industry funding of drug R&D is aligned with the needs of high-income countries, the report says (no big surprise), and that funding is not producing the results we should all expect.

Every so often, one gets a major reminder of the strategic importance of manufacturing and the largely invisible "CGMP set" to the drug industry and, yes, its bottom line. Former FDA chief Mark McClellan gave pharma a good one years ago with his famous "potato chips and soap flakes"  comment, immortalized in a Wall Street Journal piece. Typically, manufacturing continues to be thought of something that will get done....quietly, invisibly, wherever and by whomever.

This "Datganiad I'r Cyfryngau" just arrived. (That's Welsh for Press Release, by the way)... Scientists at Abersystwyth and Cambridge Universities have developed "Adam" ....(perhaps they should have called him Igor...) a prototype robot to handle modelling and manage data involved in scientific research.So far, Adam has developed and tested hypotheses that certain genes in baker's yeast code for enzymes involved in key biochemical reactions. It has also stored and managed the resulting data.

Has anyone missed the bold "Jaws" cover of Pharmaceutical Executive? In this feeding frenzy of M&A, Pfizer has been at the center of much discussion. So, many who might not otherwise have attended SOCMA’s luncheon yesterday flocked to hear a presentation by John LaMattina, former head of R&D at Pfizer and author of a new book. This is a very quick summary of points he made in his speech.

The University of Michigan announced that, after several months of secret negotiations, it will purchase Pfizer's Ann Arbor, Mich., research facility. Pfizer had planned on closing the facility by the end of 2008, and may have ended up razing the site rather than selling off the buildings piecemeal, so the university is clearly playing the role of white knight. What it gets is 30 buildings and 174 acres of top-notch research facilities into which it can expand, for a fraction of the cost, $108 million, that it would have to spend to create the facilities itself.