Kendle hired Jeffrey Zucker as senior director of patient recruitment. A psychologist, he previously worked at Merck, Lilly and CRI Worldwide. Here's a release.

ClinTec International raised $12.4 million from Elephant Capital, a British investor group that is focusing on opportunities in India. The contract research organization will also get three new board members as part of the arrangement. "ClinTec provides high quality clinical research services and resourcing solutions to clients who include 11 of the top 25 global pharmaceutical companies," said ClinTec president and CEO Rabinder Buttar.

The industry's main lobbying group, PhRMA, is considering a return to supporting mostly Republican politicians. In a subscription-only article, the Wall Street Journal reports the group has regrets about its early willingness to negotiate health care reform with the Democratic Obama administration. PhRMA is also anticipating revenge by Republican lawmakers should they seize control of the Congress later this fall.

Archimedes Pharma, a privately held British firm, is setting up a U.S. office in New Jersey to launch its nasally-administered forms of patented products. The firm is expecting to hire 75 people. Here's an article in a New Jersey newspaper, which says the firm decided not to put its offices in Pennsylvania or New York state.

Congress is threatening to block deals that delay the launch of generic medicines. Iowa- and Wisconsin-based politicians want low-priced drugs to reach the public as quickly as possible. Some large firms prefer to offer cash to generic manufacturers in exchange for a delayed market launch. There have been 21 such "pay for delay" deals during the past year, according to this article in USA Today.

The September-October issue of Mother Jones is not online, but contains a sobering article on industry-sponsored research at the psychiatry department at the University of Minnesota. The author of the story is an M.D.-Ph.D bioethicist at the same university. Amid numerous allegations, the most serious is that an academic psychiatrist, pressured by Quintiles and AstraZeneca, manipulated a troubled young man into participating in a clinical trial. The patient soon committed suicide. The kindly lawyers at the midwestern university later sued the patient's mother in retaliation for calling attention to her son's plight. The article alleges that more clinical trials are being driven by marketing objectives, not scientific goals. It also discusses the economics of clinical development, patient recruitment and institutional review boards (IRB).

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