Merck & Co.’s HIV-fighting drug Isentress has been on the market for adults since October of 2007. Now the FDA is letting Merck market the product to children and teens, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Isentress is what’s known as an “HIV integrase inhibitors,” that “work(s) by interfering with the virus's ability to replicate itself,” the Journal notes. 

U.S. clinical trials were done with the drug on 96 children and teens between the ages of 2 and 18 years old with HIV. It “found that 53% of these patients had an undetectable amount of HIV in their blood after 24 weeks of treatment with the drug,” WSJ adds.

Merck also is joining five other drug manufacturers to provide discounts on HIV drugs to state drug-assistance programs, according to FiercePharma.com. Starting this week, Merck is discounting Isentress through 2013 to help out the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.

"With the economy the way it is, there are many more people without jobs and many more people who are qualifying for the programs," said Murray Penner, the organization's deputy executive director. "The need has ballooned."

Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, Boehringer Ingelheim and the Pfizer/GlaxoSmithKline joint venture ViiV Healthcare have all also discounted drugs for the state programs.

Change is coming to your Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo, but it’s going to take two years for it to happen. In fact, your baby may have grown right out of using these products by then. Following the recent dust-up, the company will remove a chemical from its baby shampoos that is potentially carcinogenic, but it will take two years for the shift to totally take place, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The change isn’t just to shampoos, actually. The formaldehyde-releasing preservative, Quaternium-15, will be taken out of hundreds of J&J products, the paper notes. The nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics first raised its concerns with J&J about the chemical back in 2009 and the company began phasing its use out then. But it is still pervasive and the company promised to have it gone from its products in two years. 

CEO William Weldon told the group in a letter that “the company is making the effort even though the trace amounts of formaldehyde exposure pose little risk,” the paper notes, writing that a full bottle of shampoo has the same amount of formaldehyde as what a person would endure "by eating an apple or pear, in which it occurs naturally."

AIG's former CEO, Hank Greenberg, sues U.S. government and Federal Reserve Bank for $25 billion over takeover.

Bill Gates testifies in Novell suit vs. Microsoft.

Cadbury's trademarks its distinctive shade of purple.

David Beckham's legacy starts to be assessed as Los Angeles Galaxy ending looms and Paris beckons.

Donald Trump estimates the Trump name's worth at $3 billion.

eBay buys Hunch to help discern individuals' taste. 

GE expands to Iraq.

GM retools former Saturn site and prepares to manufacture China autos in Egypt.

HP reports spending $3.3 billion on WebOS as Meg Whitman sets course for turnaround.Continue reading...

In America, everything remains political, and that includes brand preference. According to YouGov BrandIndex, Republicans and Democrats (surprise!) do not completely see eye to eye on brand trustworthiness.

But there is hope that our nation's partisan divide will be healed… with Cheerios.Continue reading...

Nothing activates activists like products that could harm babies. Johnson & Johnson's signature baby shampoo sold in the U.S. contains trace amounts of two chemicals considered harmful and potentially cancer-causing, 1,4-dioxane and quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde.

Compounding the situation, the company produces versions of the brand without those elements according to a coalition of health and environmental groups led by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics that has been targeting the world's largest health care company on this issue for 2 1/2 years. 

"Johnson & Johnson clearly can make safer baby shampoo in all the markets around the world, but it's not doing it," commented Lisa Archer, director of the San Francisco-based Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, to AP (via USA Today). "It's clearly a double standard, something they can easily fix."Continue reading...

K-Y debuts its first TV spot featuring a lesbian couple today in the US, part of its campaign featuring real-life couples. The Johnson & Johnson-owned brand (in the lubricant business since 1917) felt it was time to show support for the LGBT community with a same-sex spot for its Intense female arousal gel. According to The Daily Mail:

K-Y Brand said it made the decision to create the ad because they had been a long-time supporter of gay and lesbian couples but had never featured two females as part of their advertising campaign. A spokesman said: 'Since 1998, [KY-Brand] has sponsored dozens of LBGT and HIV/AIDS organisations and has also participated at LGBT Pride celebrations and other community events.  Gay male couples have been featured in print advertising since 2008 and now the brand is continuing its tradition of support and visibility with advertising that is inclusive of lesbian couples.'

It's come a long way since 2006, when BC contributor Abe Sauer wrote about the brand's coming out party, shirking its medical lubricant past to embrace its identity as a sexual lubricant.

The tents being assembled at Lincoln Center as Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week gears up to kick off next week in New York. The massive undertaking aims to be greener this time around by eliminating the noisy and odiferous diesel generators that provoked the ire of neighborhood residents in the spring.

Locals have complained that the chic circus burns as much diesel fuel for lighting, heating and blow dryers as three Broadway musicals combined. Going forward, the generators will (according to the New York Times) plug into nearby Fordham University and the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, requiring two fewer portable generators, while the remaining generators will run on a cleaner biodiesel fuel blend. 

Also causing gripes as the fashion world gets ready to descend on New York to check out the Spring 2012 collections: what's being seen as overreaching by Tumblr to get brands to pony up for coverage by bloggers. It's all to do with a perceived faux pas by Tumblr’s fashion director, Rich Tong, who asked brands and agencies to pay select Tumblr bloggers to cover the events this year as opposed to previously when it was done gratis.Continue reading...

Johnson & Johnson released this video marking its 125th Anniversary on August 3rd (when its employees rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange), celebrating "our history, our products and our community." Watch below to see how J&J celebrated around the world.Continue reading...