Health Care

Parallel traders in medicines are claiming a breakthrough in their long-running battle with drug manufacturers. They are portraying a preliminary opinion delivered by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on 1 April as “a landmark”. Advocate-General Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer is recommending that drug firms which limit supplies to wholesalers in order to combat parallel trade should be considered as abusing a dominant position.

There was a tell-tale edge of hysteria to Beijing’s denunciation of a British newspaper editorial which last week (23 March) compared the Chinese regime to the Nazis and the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Games in Nuremberg.

Consumer groups back ban, and want higher safety standards on both sides of the Atlantic.

MEPs will on Tuesday (1 April) call for the new Health Commissioner Androula Vassiliou to publish the European Commission’s proposals on access to cross-border health-care services.

Architects make a brave — or faux-naif — choice. The Architects’ Council of Europe is holding a conference on 10 April to discuss  “a quality built environment”. …

The European Commission is split over an attempt by Günter Verheugen, the European commissioner for industry, to win special treatment for American poultry imports in order to improve trade relations with the US.

The internet has certainly helped feed the growing appetite of patients and consumers for health-related information. But it has also given a new intensity to a longstanding European debate about what people should be told about medicines and who should tell them.

More than half of healthcare budgets are spent on preventable diseases.

Cancer’s unnecessary death toll, and the necessity of further restrictions on tobacco.

Direct advertising to patients is still controversial in Europe, writes Jennifer Rankin.

The children of Europe’s ‘baby boomers’ – a generation sometimes called the ‘baby losers’ – are paying the price of their parents’ good fortune.