Orshe

There have long been safety questions — and lawsuits — over whether bone-building drugs like Merck’s Fosamax can actually increase the chance of femur fractures. Today, the FDA said it was going to take another look at the safety issues.

Another day, another stock-price jump.

First, the preliminaries: An advisory panel this afternoon recommended the FDA approve a lung drug developed by InterMune, with majorities of the outside experts saying the proposed treatment appeared effective and safe.

The FDA is expected to decide by early May whether to go along with the panel’s recommendation on pirfenidone, which is intended to treat patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The FDA usually follows the lead of its advisory committees.

In what could be a win-win decision for both Teva Pharmaceutical and Merck, a federal court said that Teva was entitled to six months of exclusivity to sell generic versions of two hypertension medicines made by Merck.

New Novartis chief Joe Jimenez (right) is looking at beefing up some business segments with acquisitions, but has nothing in mind as big as its $39.3 billion plan to buy the rest of eye-care company Alcon.

Last we heard of Fablyn, an experimental bone drug for the treatment of postmenopausal women, U.S. regulators were holding off on approval after FDA staff and outside reviewers raised concerns and Pfizer, the pill’s maker, was shopping it around to other companies.

As expectations hover at low levels for the outcome of today’s bipartisan health summit, the Obama White House is preparing a modest overhaul proposal in case more-sweeping plans remain stalled in Congress.

The fallback plan would extend health insurance to around 15 million people by expanding current federal-state programs, the WSJ reports this morning. Insurers also would be required to allow family members to stay on their parents’ health-care plans up to age 26, it says.

Doctors are narrowing their recommendation on who should take daily aspirin for heart health, based largely on concerns about the drug’s side effects, which can include bleeding ulcers. See here for more about that.

But there’s another type of person who might someday be advised to steer clear of a daily aspirin: those for whom the pain reliever doesn’t work well as a blood clotter.

Billy Tauzin — the former Louisiana congressman who stuck with the homespun phrases even as he pulled down $2 million a year to represent the drug industry in DC — is stepping down as the head of PhRMA, the big trade group.

The WSJ notes that he was criticized “for his support of the White House’s now-teetering plan to overhaul health care.”

William Chin, Eli Lilly’s senior VP for discovery and clinical research, is going to take a newly created job at Harvard Medical School.

He’ll be the “executive dean for research.” It sounds like at least part of his job will be figuring out how Harvard researchers should interact with industry, as well as working to move research from the lab to the clinic. Here’s a key chunk of a letter posted online today by the med school’s senior dean:

Merck says it reached a proposed settlement on some Vioxx-related shareholder litigation.

This isn’t to be confused with the $4.85 billion megasettlement with people who claimed that they or their family members suffered after taking Vioxx.

It’s also separate from the $80 million Vioxx deal Merck cut with unions and insurers.

Nor is it connected to the Vioxx-related shareholder lawsuit that made its way to the Supreme Court last year. (We’re still waiting to hear back on from the Supremes on that one.)