To enlighten investors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission last month released a list of companies doing business with nations designated as a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ by the US State Department. Who’s on the list? Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Sudan. Who showed up? AstraZeneca deals with Cuba; Calpyte Biomedical is about to sell into Iran; Canada’s Biotech Holdings cozies up to North Korea; and Cellegy Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Reddys Labs and Immtech Pharmaceuticals are in Sudan.

But if you spent a few minutes, you would have found the list was misleading, at best. For instance, Calpyte is actually awaiting US government clearance to sell an HIV test in Iran and Immtech is conducting a Phase III trial of a drug for African sleeping sickness in Sudan. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Financial Services, slammed the SEC in a recent letter, saying the list was outdated and inaccurate.

So on Friday, the SEC took the site down and SEC chairman Chris Cox explained the move by telling the Associated Press that new technology could make it easier for investors and analysts to “easily discover this disclosure without need of an SEC-provided Web tool at all.” Instead, the SEC posted this notice acknowledging the negative reaction and will try to figure out whether and how to make this sort of info available again. As we indicated earlier, the SEC may be following the letter of the law, but there’s nothing preventing the agency from doing a better job of qualifying its message so that every drugmaker isn’t automatically tarred with a very nasty brush.

Hat tip to Philly Inc