The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy 2012 has a new method for determining the price ceiling, called a market-based pricing mechanism. This is problematic, to say the least. It can create the illusion of regulating prices without actually doing so, and will have no impact on other members of the same therapeutic class outside the National List of Essential Medicines or on existing fi xed dose combinations, rational and irrational. It will reduce the prices of certain top brands, but not close potential escape routes for good.

An influential US advocacy group has set a deadline to beat breast cancer by 2020. But it puts public trust at risk by promising an objective that science cannot yet deliver. (Editorial)

In one half of a PLOS Medicine Debate, Jeff Collin argues against Simon Chapman's proposal for a smoker's license, saying that it is strategically flawed and ethically unsound.

In one half of a PLOS Medicine Debate, Simon Chapman lays out a case for a smoker's license designed to limit access to tobacco products and encourage cessation.

The objective of this study is to estimate the number of premature deaths that can be attributable to cigarette and bidi manufactured and consumed over the last 100 years in India. Nearly 4.52 trillion cigarettes and 40.3 trillion bidis have been produced between 1910 and 2010, which are estimated to be responsible for nearly 100 million premature deaths (in which bidis contributed 77 million deaths) in adult men of ≥35 years. Some of these deaths will occur up to the