Pharma Blog Watch

Forward-Motion for Consumer Freedom Issues (DrugWonks.com)
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is posting detailed information on its website about what Medicaid pays for inpatient treatments and other hospital services. Blogger Robert Goldberg praises this decision and berates industry members who have implied that consumers "are too stupid to decide what's best for them when it comes to health care."

The Pharma-Nonprofit Connection (EyeOnFDA.com)
Is it necessarily a bad thing when healthcare nonprofits accept donations from Big Pharma? Blogger Mark Senak cites a recent Philadelphia Inquirer article about this topic, and discusses how grants from large companies can benefit nonprofits without running into issues of ethics.

Continued Woes for Merck? (In the Pipeline)
A statistic mixup in Merck's APPROVe trial — in which both log-time and linear time were used as measurements, affecting the trial's risk-time statistics — is the latest in the drugmaker's chain of foibles, says blogger Derek Lowe. This affects "the believability of the conclusions, and once again, the revision makes things look worse for them," adds Lowe, discussing the problems faced by the company in the wake of the Vioxx scandal.