The 10 Weirdest Drug Stories of the Month

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BNET Pharma provides daily industry trends and news coverage with insights for managers and executives about major manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medicine. In addition to detailed drug company profiles, we bring you industry analysis on new partnerships, drug patents and products, cost management, investments, pharmaceutical related lawsuits, and a host of other important business issues.

Levitra thieves! Cheating in obesity studies! Butterfly hunts! It all happened in the pharmaceutical industry in July.

$6.9M of Levitra stolen from Bayer in Germany
Police are looking for a gang of hardened criminals who face stiff penalties if caught.
‘Tight Throat Tammy’ (pictured) advertises Mebucaine in South Africa
It’s a sore throat lozenge.
Mouse whiskers are key to Ambien sleepwalking events
Boffins chop off the whiskers of mice and discover the reason some people go sleep walking when on Sanofi-Aventis’s Ambien. It puts some neurons to sleep, but others become more active.
Eli Lilly sponsors a butterfly hunt
In Louisiana’s Tippecanoe County, kids with nets chase bugs; they logged 447 butterflies from 31 species.
JAMA determined to look foolish on conflicts policy
The venerable journal’s online conflict policy has been removed from the web. Move comes after a JAMA editor insulted a professor who pointed out a conflict with one of its authors; JAMA later admitted the professor was right.
Viagra-laced coffee seized in Malaysia
That’ll get you up in the morning.
Kids in obesity study put their pedometers on dogs
They wanted researchers to think they’d walked farther than they had. Insert conclusion about lazy fat kids here.
Seroquel is chosen drug of homeless people
AstraZeneca’s “Seroquel puts you to sleep,” said Luis Lopez, 28, a patient at Men’s Addiction Treatment Center in Brockton who used to buy Seroquel tablets from drug dealers. “We all know from the streets that’s how it works.”
Man crippled after using Botox for writers’ cramp
Says Botox caused him to become “fully dependent on his wife and home nursing caregivers for all activities of daily living. He cannot independently bathe, shave or dress.” Conclusion: perhaps this is why Botox is not approved for writers’ cramp?
Amgen lays off 100 people; building then catches fire.
Nice drug company you got here. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.

Tags: Butterfly, Mouse, Mouse Whisker, Seroquel, Mice, Hardware, Peripherals, Jim Edwards

Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.