Current medical news and unique business news for anyone who cares about healthcare.
Steve Jobs’s health through the years. Although Steve Jobs didn’t explicitly say why he was resigning Wednesday as Apple’s CEO, we are left to assume his rare form of pancreatic cancer is advancing. (He took his third medical leave in January.) Jobs has a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which appears in only 5 percent of the pancreatic cancers diagnosed each year.
In light of Jobs’s resignation Wednesday, Bloomberg put together an outline of his battle with pancreatic cancer since 2003 and how it’s affected Apple.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
But of course we can’t (and shouldn’t) write anything about Jobs without paying tribute to the way his innovation and vision have changed the industry.
Google settlement: a small price of $500 million to avoid federal prosecution. Google Inc. will pay $500 million to settle an investigation of its distribution of ads for Canadian pharmacies that were illegally importing prescription drugs into the U.S. and selling them here.
“Google was aware as early as 2003, that generally, it was illegal for pharmacies to ship controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs into the United States from Canada,” the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a statement. The forfeiture represents one of the largest in U.S. history and accounts for revenue made by both Google and Canadian Rx companies as a result of the ads.
No love for medical device companies. Yesterday, a Morgan Keegan analyst downgraded the outlooks for Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX) and reiterated the “Market Perform” rating for Medtronic, putting a damper on the outlook for the medical device industry. Cuts in hospital budgets and safety concerns have hurt the medical device industry this year.
Developed vs. developing markets. Faster approval processes overseas are causing more startups to launch in other countries. Should you start up in a developing market?
