Pharma Industry Archive

A federal court in Vermont has upheld a law preventing drug companies from “data-mining” prescription information from pharmacies. The court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Wyeth v. Levine anti-preemption ruling as one of its reasons in doing so, suggesting that the Wyeth decision will consequences far beyond personal injury class-actions. The Vermont case had nothing to do...

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Nobody wants to say anything about the great Remicade tug of war that has broken out between Johnson & Johnson and the soon-to-be-merged Merck and Schering-Plough. A look at the Q1 2009 numbers suggest that each member of this trio has their own reasons to be quietly desperate over the outcome (which is always the way with threesomes, if you think about it). J&J and Schering share...

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That question will be answered soon as Shire CEO Angus Russell submits to a quiz in which his giant brain (one presumes) is pitted against the children of his employees on “Take Your Child to Work Day.” The Philadelphia Business Journal reports: At Shire, the event will be called: “Are You Smarter than Our CEO?” Russell brings a diverse knowledge base to the challenge. He...

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Executive pay at King Pharmaceuticals rose 12.3 percent in 2008 even though the company’s stock — with which pay is supposed to be aligned — stayed flat. Despite the drama of the AlPharma acquisition, King had a mixed year in 2008, on balance. Revenues were down 26 percent to $1.5 billion and the company posted a net loss of $333 million, primarily due to the cost of the...

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Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines unit of Sanofi-Aventis, has persuaded singer Jennifer Lopez to become its joint spokesperson with the March of Dimes‘ “the Sounds of Pertussis,” campaign. (There’s even a video, in which Lopez looks strangely like Law & Order’s Mariska Hargitay.) The effort is to persuade parents to get their kids* vaccinated against whooping cough,...

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Federal prosecutors in the U.S. will be reading with amusement the Australian press’s coverage of a class action trial down under for patients who took Merck’s now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx. Details emerging in Oz make some of the antics that Merck’s American counterparts got up to look tame by comparison. For example, in Australia, Merck allegedly: Had a doctor sign his...

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Forest Labs is holding a $170 million contingency fee in case it needs to settle allegations by the Department of Justice that it bribed doctors — with such things as $1,000 gift certificates to Alain Ducasse — into  prescribing Lexapro and Celexa for children even though it was not approved for that. The news so hurt Forest’s Q1 2009 results that in its web press release,...

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GlaxoSmithKline’s Q1 2009 results should scare the living daylights out of companies that are heavily dependent on CNS products such as Shire (Vyvanse and Adderall), Forest Labs (Lexapro) and  Eli Lilly (Cymbalta). Generics shaved off 53 percent of GSK’s CNS drug sales, which were down £450 million. Every single CNS drug tanked, from Paxil to Imitrex. Overall, GSK revenue rose 19...

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Yet another gravity-defying quarter at Gilead: Revenues were up 22 percent to $1.5 billion; net income was up 21 percent to $589 million. But same bad news lurks behind the numbers in the form of a shareholder lawsuit that was given the go-ahead by the US Supreme Court a few days ago. The Q1 2009 results came with yet another increase in productivity from its sales force and manufacturing arms....

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Bayer seems determined to make a bad situation worse for itself in the Congressional investigation of an explosion at its Institute, W.Va., crop sciences plant. Congress heard that Bayer destroyed evidence and engaged in a secrecy campaign in order to restrict media coverage and public criticism of how it handles methyl isocyanate at the plant. MIC is the chemical that killed about 4,000 people...

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