Canada has become only the second country in the world to approve a generic form of the blockbuster drug Ozempic (semaglutide), made possible after its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, did not pay a $C250 annual fee. Two generic versions of the injectable form of semaglutide were approved by the country’s drugs regulator, Health Canada, in recent […]
BMJ
The fall of the Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump
Under Donald Trump the EPA is being systematically hobbled. How has the world’s premier environmental research and regulatory organisation come to work against its very mission, asks Brian Owens, and what are the global consequences for health? For decades, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not only safeguarded the natural resources of the United States—ensuring […]
US National Institutes of Health has become a political target—how did we get here?
One of the most admired research agencies in the world, the US National Institutes of Health, now has a huge target on its back. How did an organisation supported by both Democrat and Republican politicians become so vulnerable? The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been the gold standard for biomedical research around […]
Frontiers’ journals saw large scale retractions—where does that leave the publisher’s reputation with researchers?
Frontiers, like other for-profit open access publishers, has struggled with a perception it has low editorial standards and weak peer review. But is that true? In September 2023 Frontiers—one of the world’s largest open access scientific publishers, with a stable of 230 journals covering just about every field of science—retracted 38 papers. All had been […]
Why is nitroglycerin in short supply in Canada?
Canada is experiencing an acute shortage of nitroglycerin, forcing emergency measures. But with drug manufacturing being international, will it be the only country to suffer? Patients with coronary artery disease in Canada have been facing months of shortages of the nitroglycerin drugs used to treat angina pain, forcing government regulators to extend the expiry dates […]
How “long covid” is shedding light on postviral syndromes
The global burden of long covid has put a spotlight on the long neglected mystery of postviral syndromes. Brian Owens asks what’s changing Long covid really shouldn’t have been a surprise, says Vett Lloyd, a biologist at Mount Allison University in Sackville, Canada. “When the pandemic started, the general assumption was that there were two […]