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Word: valium (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
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Usage:

Last spring the commission recommended that Roche be forced to cut prices even further, partly because the Company was still charging many times more for the drugs than they cost to manufacture. (In Italy, for example, one kilo of diazepam, the generic name for Valium, costs only $28.) More perplexing to Roche executives, the commission concluded that the firm was spending too much money for research (about 15% of revenues, v. 7% to 12% for other firms). Hoffmann-La Roche executives were so incensed by the British order that they called the first press conference in the company...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: DRUGS: Tranquilizer Tension | 11/5/1973 | See Source »

Over the past nerve-rattling decade, millions of patients round the world have shooed the blues or relieved tension by swallowing Librium and Valium, the tranquilizers that are among the biggest-selling prescription drugs ever marketed. Every little capsule adds to the billions of dollars in sales and untold millions in profits reaped by their discoverer: Switzerland's secretive F. Hoffmann-La Roche & Co., which may well be the world's largest seller of drugs (estimated volume: $1.6 billion per year). That phenomenal success has now embroiled Roche in a worldwide dispute that has driven its British prices...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: DRUGS: Tranquilizer Tension | 11/5/1973 | See Source »

...Health Service began getting out of hand. Among other things, the Department of Health and Social Security has urged doctors to prescribe drugs by their generic rather than their brand names, and the government has granted rival drug companies the right to copy patented drugs such as Librium and Valium if they pay a royalty to the developing firm. The remedies have had some effect: after Berk Pharmaceuticals Ltd. came out with a copy of Valium called Atensine in 1971, Roche's British subsidiary cut its prices by 36%. Though the wholesale cost of a kilogram of Valium...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: DRUGS: Tranquilizer Tension | 11/5/1973 | See Source »

Nevertheless, Roche complied with the order, reducing U.K. prices again to a level even further below what it charges in other European countries or the U.S. The average retail price for 100 two-milligram capsules of Valium in Britain has fallen from around $3 in 1970 to about 75?-far less than the U.S. price, which runs from $6.50 to more than $11. Roche is now underselling its British competitors-who must also pay royalties to Roche...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: DRUGS: Tranquilizer Tension | 11/5/1973 | See Source »

...that the order itself be overturned "for want of natural justice"; the other demands compensation from the government for the enforced price cuts if the company wins the main case. Meanwhile, the governments of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and five European countries are beginning their own investigations of Valium and Librium prices. Because no U.S. Government agency now has the power to regulate drug prices, there are unlikely to be any effects on U.S. prices. Elsewhere, controversy is likely to rage for years, during which Roche executives, government officials and judges in several countries are likely to need stiff...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: DRUGS: Tranquilizer Tension | 11/5/1973 | See Source »

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