Australia is attempting a once-in-a-generation reset of its innovation system, and biotech industry leaders have lauded the federal government’s independent review into Australia's slipping R&D ranks and its proposals to reverse the decline.

In one fell swoop March 16, a U.S. federal judge stayed the CDC’s January memo revising the childhood vaccine schedule and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) as reconstituted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, along with everything that committee has done since early June.

The U.S. FDA’s expectations that its new default position of basing marketing authorization of novel drugs on one adequate, well-controlled trial may be overstated. In explaining the policy in a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and CBER Director Vinay Prasad said they expect the initiative will create a “surge in drug development,” substantially reduce development costs and will speed drugs to market. While the initiative could reduce the time to the U.S. market, those expectations don’t take into consideration global norms and payer expectations.

While the annual State of the Union address has morphed over the years from a summation of the state of the U.S. government and the president’s legislative agenda into political theater on both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump did include some recommendations to Congress in his Feb. 24 speech. Among those recommendations was a request for Congress to codify his most-favored-nation pricing policy for prescription drugs.

The ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Feb. 20 that shot down President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are rippling across the world. And Trump’s immediate response to that ruling – a proclamation imposing a temporary 10% import duty on most goods brought into the country beginning Feb. 24 – isn’t helping.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign-imports tariff policies did not hold up well at the Supreme Court, which ruled unconstitutional his edicts under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The sharply worded 6-3 opinion was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Driven by prescription drug prices and oft-repeated claims that nearly every drug developed in the U.S. owes its origins to taxpayer-funded research, watchdog groups and some lawmakers have led demands over the years for price to be considered a “reasonableness” factor in determining whether the government can march in on patents under the Bayh-Dole Act.