when a country's stock market gets crushed due to wider economic concerns, some promising often stocks get unfairly punished. Here are five foreign companies whose shares are trading now at attractive prices, along with explanations for why they're such bargains.
Officially, it's the FDA's job to ensure that pharmaceutical ads adhere to guidelines. But the agency's annual compliance budget is $9 million, while drug companies spend $58 billion a year on marketing. So it comes as no surprise that only 18% of ads are in compliance with the rules. But it's still disturbing: This is your health.
They call it the Great "Recession," but there's no question that these are depressing times. And doctors are writing scripts for antidepressants at an alarming rate -- especially given that many of these doctors aren't psychiatrists. What are the effects on patients who haven't been properly screened?
During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, much criticism was leveled at World Health Organization officials, accusing their response of being too heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. But according to a panel of independent experts, that wasn't the case.
The pharmaceutical industry is ready to fall off a cliff -- a "patent cliff." Over the next few years, some of the world's most popular and lucrative medicines will go off patent, and generic competition will siphon an estimated quarter of a trillion dollars from drugmakers' bottom lines.
Pfizer reported fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday that nearly quadrupled from a year ago as revenue rose 6%. But it also lowered its sales guidance for 2012, due to some of its bestselling drugs going off patent. What's ahead for the world's biggest drugmaker:
Sanofi-Aventis announced its cancer drug candidate iniparib failed in a late-stage clinical trial. Other pharmaceutical companies have also experienced recent setbacks as they scramble to bolster their pipelines ahead of the patent cliff, when they will be forced to compete with cheaper generics.
Diabetes is a growing global scourge, but for Big Pharma it's more of a lifesaver -- and many drugmakers are cranking up their research efforts. After all, many existing drugs will soon be losing their patents, and diabetes could be a $55 billion market by 2019.
The government recouped a staggering $4 billion in fiscal 2010 that was stolen from federal health care programs, the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services announced Monday -- the highest annual amount ever. More than half of the fraud money recovered came from drug companies.
Led by the health insurance reform law, a flurry of drug and food recalls, key medical breakthroughs and plenty of layoffs and lawsuits, 2010 proved to be an exciting -- if not always positive -- year. Here's our rundown of the biggest health care stories.
The FDA disappointed AstraZeneca and its investors by not approving its heart drug Brilinta, a blood-thinner that the company -- facing a severe patent cliff -- has high hopes for. If approved, it could be a multibillion-dollar blockbuster. But the FDA wants to see more analyses of results from a major study.
More than a year after AstraZeneca filed for approval, the FDA will make its decision on Thursday. A large study showed the blood thinner worked better than Plavix for treating acute coronary syndrome -- but approval isn't a sure thing, due in part to some oddities in the study's results.
As the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker looks to divest assets, it seeks a buyer for its dental implants and medical devices unit Astra Tech.
