Pfizer in New London- The True Story of Market-Driven "Development"
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Pfizer in New London- The True Story of Market-Driven
"Development"
Date: Nov 18, 2009 2:57 PM
ARTICLE BELOW
==================================
Mike Dunne, Pfizer's head of the
Infectious Diseases Division
on the New London side, has only
an MBA and is not a scientist.
When I asked Pfizer to do a clinical
trial of Lyme and Ehrlichiosis victims
(Zithromax, Trovan, and Diflucan),
Dunne lied to me and said they
don't make Trovan any more:
http://www.actionlyme.org/080924.htm
Now, did Pfizer miss the boat
because of that? Were Malp-2
and Pam3Cys the really *BIG* ones?
Way. Too big to even calculate
at this point in time because of
1) the nerve regeneration results,
which need to be repeated, 2) because
Malp-2 (Pam2Cys) as THE REAL adjuvant
was missed, and because 3) Pam3Cys
blows everything we thought we knew
about *CANCER,* HIV, and vaccines out
of the water.
Don't take my word for it.
The links to the Medline reports
are here:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Pam3Cys_Version15.htm
^^^Confirm with the authors of
those reports.
<drumroll>
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627593/?tool=pubmed
"Recently, mycoplasmas have been linked as a
cofactor to AIDS pathogenesis and to ***malignant
transformation, chromosomal aberrations,*** the
Gulf War Syndrome, and other unexplained and
complex illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome,
Crohn’s disease, and various arthritides
(4-8)."
:)))
See there was no point in having
the market analysts in charge
of drug development. Now all of
BigPharma (not to mention all the
sick and dead and dying people who
suffered as a result of these crimes
and not to mention all the Eminent
Domain victims) and in particular,
the one nearest to the problem... is
out all them patents and royalties.
Dunne.
Over.
LOSERS.
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
===================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/18-13
Published on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by Mother Jones
Let Them Eat Zoloft
by James Ridgeway
As the Senate takes up health care reform, we're sure to be treated to
yet more scenes of our elected officials bending over backwards to
kiss the gold-plated butts of the pharmaceutical and insurance
industries. So far, just about every new turn in the health care
battle is confirming what many have known for some time: The US health
care system is run largely for the benefit of these corporate giants,
rather than for the American people, and no piece of legislation is
likely to change that fact.
But to fully appreciate the license these industries have been given
to run roughshod over the public interest, you have to take a trip to
Connecticut. The state is a longtime home base for the insurance
industry, with 72 companies and the nation's highest concentration of
insurance jobs. It also has more than its share of drug and biotech
companies. What luck then, for these industries, that the man who
appears to hold a swing vote on health care reform is their own
Senator Joe Lieberman, who has enjoyed enormous financial support from
the insurance companies and plenty from Big Pharma, as well.
While Connecticut may be loyal to its health care companies, the
opposite clearly is not true. This week the giant drugmaker Pfizer
sent shock waves across the state when it announced its decision to
shut down its huge research facility in New London. While some workers
will be transferred to a facility in a nearby town, the closure
represents a devastating loss of industry and tax base for this
working-class coastal city. It also marks the disintegration of an
elaborate publically financed urban development scheme that began a
decade ago.
After the closure of a naval installation in the mid-1990s left New
London in desperate economic straits, Pfizer swept in with promises to
revitalize the city with a state-of-the-art R & D headquarters. To
serve the company's interests, the state government decided to use
eminent domain to seize private property, uproot residents, and
destroy a neighborhood in order to revamp the surrounding area. The
state won the right to do so in a landmark Supreme Court case, Kelo
vs. New London. But it built nothing on the vacated land. And now
Pfizer, as the Wall Street Journal put it, has decided to "bug out."
One local resident told the New York Times, "They stole our home for
economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and
walk away."
Here's how Jeff Benedict, a Connecticut lawyer and author of a book on
the land grab, described the situation an op-ed in the Hartford
Courant:
Consider the bitter pill that Pfizer Inc. slipped New London this
week. Barely a decade after constructing a $300 million research and
development headquarters in the city, the pharmaceutical giant
announced it was shutting down the facility. Just like that, New
London will lose 1,400 jobs and become home to a gigantic, vacant
office park that sprawls over a 24-acre campus.
Never mind that an entire residential neighborhood was bulldozed
by New London to change the look of a 90-acre landscape around the
Pfizer campus. And never mind that along the way the city used eminent
domain to drive out homeowners and then fought a costly eight-year
legal battle against holdouts Susette Kelo and her neighbors that went
all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Fifth Amendment has always allowed government to take private
property for public use. But in its most universally despised decision
in decades, the court upheld the takings in New London by equating
public benefits-the promise of increased tax revenues and new jobs-
with public use.
In other words, the potential of a massive redevelopment scheme
anchored by the arrival of Pfizer's facility justified evicting
homeowners who stood in the way of progress. There's just one stubborn
fact: It's been four years since the infamous Kelo ruling and the city
hasn't gotten a thing built on the 90 acres it now controls.
After all the shouting, the developer ran out of money and the
city has zero prospective replacements. Barren weed fields are all
that exist where homes once stood.
According to the Times, Pfizer said it was pulling out of New London
and consolidating its operations as a "cost-cutting measure." As the
AP reported last month, Pfizer has managed to boost its profits this
year despite the recession by "slashing costs on everything from
manufacturing and marketing to research and development" and cutting
6,500 jobs. In the immediate future, AP notes:
Pfizer will keep cutting costs, now that it has completed the
biggest drug industry deal of the year. The $68 billion acquisition of
Wyeth last Thursday cements Pfizer's position atop the industry, and
the combined company is expected to eliminate nearly 20,000 jobs by
the time integration is complete.
Let's put all this cost cutting in further context. Pfizer's profits
in 2008 were $8.1 billion. The drugmaker ranked 11th on the Fortune
500's list of most profitable companies, and also made Fortune's list
of "biggest winners," described as "20 firms [that] managed to make
money...even as the economy crumbled." Wyeth's 2008 profits were over
$4 billion, so the acquisition is guaranteed to keep Pfizer in gravy,
despite the $2.3 billion in criminal penalties it recently agreed to
pay for illegally promiting off-label use of its drugs, in the largest
health care fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Justice
Department. Residents of New London and other locales abandoned by the
company may also be interested to know that Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler's
2008 compensation came to a cool $14.8 million-up 17 percent from the
year before.
In other words, Pfizer's determination to slash costs and eliminate
thousands of jobs in the midst of a recession is motivated by nothing
but sheer greed. This is business as usual for the pharmaceutical
companies, which exist to serve the interests of their executives and
shareholders, not the public-and which will be just as ruthless as we
allow them to be.
Yet this lesson seems to have bypassed many of our elected officials,
who persist in pretending that the drug companies can be their
"partners" in health care reform, rather recognizing them as their
adversaries. The rest of the industrialized world seems to have
grasped the notion that it's the government's job to make sure the
private health care industry doesn't gouge the public. These
governments do their job by imposing stiff regulation on these
companies, far beyond anything that we will see in the current health
reform here.
Here, the drug companies are so used to getting their way that they
are indignant when anyone in government finds the gumption to stand up
to them at all. This morning, the Los Angeles Times reports that Big
Pharma is protesting parts of the House reform bill, which it sees as
violating the secret deal it made last summer with the White House.
The paper reports that "senior administration officials, including
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, are warning members of
Congress not to antagonize the deep-pocketed industry at a time when a
major victory appears to be within reach, according to Democratic
aides."
Although they will probably get their way in the end, the drug
companies clearly are pissed off at the Democrats because they think
they've been double-crossed. It's a feeling that that's no doubt
familiar to the residents of New London, Connecticut.
© 2009 Mother Jones
James Ridgeway is the Washington Correspondent for Mother Jones.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci