Indian industrialists and scientists want the country"s property rights to be "strengthened", but the powerful drugs industry wants to maintain the status quo

DRUG ADDICTION is not a modern age phenomenon for it seems even the ancients knew the pleasures of junkyism, claim scientists (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8843). Franz Parsche and his colleagues at

Tissue taken from aborted foetuses and implanted into the bodies of patients suffering from several incurable diseases has shown encouraging results

EVER SINCE man realised that sex is not limited to procreation, he has experimented with various concoctions to increase his libido. For scientists, however, aphrodisiacs such as ginseng and the

Doctors and pharmaceutical companies have been slow to respond to growing evidence that peptic ulcers are better treated with antibiotics, rather than the traditional antacids.

AIDS victims the world over are dismayed by the discovery that taking azidothymidine as soon as HIV infection is confirmed does not delay death any further than if they took it after symptoms develop.

Scientists claim a new mode of administering drugs would strip the main AIDS drug Azidothymidine AZT of its side effects.

Though increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is making it difficult to treat diseases such as malaria, pharmaceutical companies do not consider it profitable to invest in research for new drugs.

The days ahead are gloomy for the biotechnology industry in the United States, if the present downturn in the market persists.

The manner in which marijuana and heroin affect the brain can provide useful clues to developing more effective painkillers.