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Vermont Legislature Passes Law Regulating All Drug/Device Company Marketing, Requiring Disclosure Of Gifts To Doctors
The Vermont Legislature has passed legislation (S 48) that bans nearly all gifts from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to health care providers, administrators and facilities in the state, the New York Times reports. The legislation specifically would prohibit drug and device makers from giving providers no-cost meals. Vermont"s legislation would go further than similar laws in other states like Massachusetts and Minnesota by requiring drug and medical device manufacturers who give gifts to health providers to publicly disclose recipients" names and dollar amounts of payments and gifts. The measure would not require manufacturers to disclose payments for clinical research of products undergoing FDA review, the Times reports. The legislation also would eliminate a loophole that allows manufacturers to conceal certain expenses by claiming them as trade secrets. In a recent report, the Vermont Office of the Attorney General said that medical product makers spent about $2.9 million on promotional efforts to the state"s health care providers in fiscal year 2008 and that nearly half of the state"s 4,573 licensed providers had received some type of incentive from drugmakers in the same year. The report, which was developed prior to passage of the new legislation, offers only aggregate data, as 83% of the manufacturer-declared payments were deemed to be trade secrets, the Times reports.Gov. Jim Douglas (R) is expected to sign the law, which would take effect July 1. Several state medical groups -- including the Vermont Association for Mental Health and the Vermont Medical Society -- have indicated support for the legislation.Marjorie Powell, a senior lawyer for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the requirements under the new law appear redundant with new voluntary guidelines the group has issued on physician gifting practices. She said, "We think this is unnecessary, and it is not going to improve patient care," adding, "It makes it onerous not only for the company but also for the physician in Vermont, because this is going to be on a Web site" (Singer, New York Times, 5/20).
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No Change To Swine Flu Treatment Routes In Wales
Wales, along with the other devolved nations, will not be part of the National Pandemic Flu Service (NPFS) when it is launched next week in England, Health Minister Edwina Hart said today.
News of the day
Innovative Medicines Initiative: 246 Million Euros To Support Public-private Research Cooperation For A Fast Development Of Better Medicines
Today, 15 new research projects aimed at bringing innovative medicines more quickly to the market have been selected to receive 246 million euros from the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The projects will foster understanding of health issues such as diabetes, pain, severe asthma and psychiatric disorders while increasing drug safety. They will also help improve the training of researchers and clinicians involved in medicines development. The projects were chosen following the first call for proposals launched within the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership - so called Joint Technology Initiative- between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry. With this selection, IMI has reached a key milestone. This initiative marks the first time that pharmaceutical competitors are pooling their res, together with research organisations, patient groups and other stakeholders in large consortia, in order to develop generic, pre-competitive knowledge. The Commission"s contribution of €110 million is backed up with €136 million provided in-kind from the pharmaceutical industry. The successful projects will now enter into the final negotiation phase.
Public Health

Assumptions About Human Behavior Challenged By First Live 'Cloning' Of Faces

Computer scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a new way of cloning facial expressions during live conversations to help us better understand what influences our behaviour when we communicate with others. Published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Language & Speech, the new technique tracks in real time facial expressions and head movements during a video conference and maps these movements to models of faces - producing a "cloned" face. These facial expressions and head movements can be manipulated live to alter the apparent expressiveness, identity, race, or even gender of a talker. Moreover, these visual cues can be manipulated such that neither participant in the conversation is aware of the manipulation. Developed by Dr Barry-John Theobald of UEA"s School of Computing Sciences, in collaboration with Dr Iain Matthews (Disney Research), Prof Steven Boker (University of Virginia) and Prof Jeffrey Cohn (University of Pittsburgh), the new facial expression cloning technique is already being trialed by psychologists in the US to challenge pre-conceived assumptions about how humans behave during conversations. For example, it is well-known that you move your head differently when speaking to a woman than when speaking to a man. The new software has helped show that this difference is not because of your conversational partner"s appearance, but instead due to the way they move. If a person appears to be a woman but moves like a man, others will respond with movements similar to those made when speaking to a man. It is also likely to have application in the entertainment industry where life-like animated characters might be required. "Spoken words are supplemented with non-verbal visual cues to enhance the meaning of what we are saying, signify our emotional state, or provide feedback during a face-to-face conversation," said Dr Theobald, lead author of the new paper. "Being able to manipulate these properties in a controlled manner allows us to measure precisely their effects on behaviour during conversation. "This exciting new technology allows us to manipulate faces in this way for the first time. Many of these effects would otherwise be impossible to achieve, even using highly-skilled actors." The work is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Mapping and Manipulating Facial Expression" by Barry-John Theobald (UEA), Iain Matthews (Weta Digital Ltd, New Zealand), Michael Mangini (University of Notre Dame, US), Jeffrey Spies (University of Virginia), Timothy Brick (University of Virginia), Jeffrey Cohn (University of Pittsburgh) and Steven Boker (University of Virginia) is published in the June edition of Language and Speech. Simon Dunford, Press Officer University of East Anglia


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