Supreme Court strikes down state drug data mining law; rejects generic drug labeling suits

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
By Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court struck down on Thursday a state law that prohibits the use of prescription drug records for marketing, in a case pitting free-speech rights against medical privacy concerns.

The high court handed a victory to data mining companies IMS Health, Verispan and Source Healthcare Analytics, a unit of Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer, that collect and sell such information and that challenged the law.

(Reporting by James Vicini, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that generic drug companies cannot be sued under state law over allegations that they failed to provide adequate label warnings about potential side effects.

The justices handed a victory to Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Mylan Inc's UDL Laboratories and Iceland-based Actavis Inc by overturning U.S. appeals court rulings that allowed such lawsuits.

(Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Obama Admin Pushing for Warrantless Gov Access to Internet Records

by John Cole on July 29, 2010

Thanks, Team Obama:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.The administration wants to add just four words—“electronic communication transactional records”—to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

People seem to forget that a lot of the crap in the Patriot Act originally was proposed by the Clinton administration, and Republicans back then were wary of letting Democrats have that kind of power (a lot of it was also that they were just like today’s GOP and just opposed anything Clinton suggested). 9/11 changed all that. Now that both parties are essentially weak-kneed pansies who faint if someone so much as whispers the word “terrorism” anywhere near them, it is impossible to think of a situation in which any administration, Republican or Democratic, can not just say national security and get whatever they want. And, as we’ve learned, even if they don’t get what they want, they’ll do it anyway, and the next administration will just “look forward, not backwards.” Unless you’re a whistleblower.