Roger Bate, author of the new book, “Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines,” has found some incredibly realistic -- and deadly -- fake medicines. Which are real and which are phony? See if you can tell the difference.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar Scott Gottlieb, MD a former senior adviser to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) warns that a new ruling by CMS will force people to get open-heart surgeries that might have been avoidable.

Successfully translating scientific discoveries requires a sense of urgency, which some disease foundations seem to have, and many big pharmas appear to need. Patients waiting expectantly for medical research to produce important new cures are finding bad news almost everywhere they turn.

Of the many factors that make improving the health system difficult, few challenges are greater than the misty-eyed recollection – often from genuinely distinguished practitioners – of how great things used to be.  Doctors were highly regarded authority figures, pure and beloved, while patients were meek and grateful in the presence of such brilliance and expertise.

In a just-published op-ed in the New York Times, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) international health economist Roger Bate highlights a better way to fight fake pharmaceuticals while still giving poor Americans access to less costly drugs from online pharmacies.

Knowing where all our ingredients come from is the first step toward improving drug quality.

Today, URL Pharma was acquired by Takeda for nearly $800M.  The story here in brief is that for hundreds of years, colchicine was used for the treatment of gout and other conditions; it was an effective drug but had to be used carefully. URL invested in the formulation development and clinical studies required for colchicine, and ultimately received FDA approval in 2009. 

While adding “in bed” may make bland comments amusing, adding “like Steve Jobs” doesn’t make dumb ideas interesting or executable.