On September 20, 2007, Sermo's founder and CEO Dr. Daniel Palestrant stepped up to the podium at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco and in less than three minutes summarized how his brainchild, an online community for physicians launched just a year earlier, has forever changed the healthcare media landscape.

Bruce Bellande, PhD, was pleased to learn that regulators accepted the materials he sent them as adequate proof of corporate separation.

The eleventh-hour passage of the FDA Amendments Act of 2007 was a white-knuckle ride for the pharmaceutical and advertising industry lobbies, but by and large, one with a happy ending for business interests that feared draconian prohibitions on medical promotion.

In a medical-education ruling expected to have broad consequences, regulators said they will consider advertising agencies and journal publishers as commercial entities, requiring those that own CME units to spin them off as separate companies, and providing an extra layer of independence to firewalls that may already exist between them.

Strong sales of cholesterol drugs helped Schering-Plough post a twofold increase in quarterly profit in July, but earnings may expose an over-reliance on Vytorin and Zetia.

A pharma-backed study may fuel debate over whether follow-on drugs justify RD investment. The researchers said a list of therapies recommended for use in the developing world provides evidence of the benefit of me-too therapies.

A federal judge’s rationale for overturning New Hampshire’s ban on the commercial use of physician data parallels industry arguments against restrictions on other forms of marketing.

Rep. Henry Waxman, perhaps the most dangerous man in Washington that you could ever want to have a policy disagreement with this side of “Shotgun” Dick Cheney, strode into the lion’s den last month when he addressed the DTC National conference in Washington.

The FDA has stepped up efforts to combat what it sees as the No. 1 pharmaceutical marketing compliance problem, said Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communication chief Thomas Abrams: ads that omit or downplay risk information.

The new Democratic Congress is living up to expectations with plenty of bicameral pharma-bashing rhetoric, but has so far failed to implement price controls and ban DTC advertising. That doesn’t mean the industry should get comfy just yet.