Quote Of The Day: Fred Hassan
4 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 17th, 2008 // 12:49 pm
The Enhance trial continues to reverberate. Investors are again pummeling Schering-Plough stock. Docs are scurrying to calm patients worried about whether they should continue taking Vytorin (or Zetia, which is part of the combo therapy), and Congress is pressing ahead with an investigation into how Merck and Schering-Plough execs ran the clinical trial, advertised the drug and sold their own shares.
The controversy is undermining what, until now, has been Hassan’s successful turnaround of Schering-Plough, which hoped the trial would show Vytorin to be a more effective cholesterol treatment than Merck’s Zocor, the other half of the Vytorin combination. The trial, of course, failed its primary endpoint, but Fred is trying to take it all in stride.
“Things happen with the media, and things happen sometimes with the way people react on a short-term basis. But in the end, science dictates what the real strength is, and here, the science is solid,” Fred tells The Wall Street Journal.
That misses the point. The issue is the way the science was handled - an unexplained two-year delay in releasing results; a brief change in the primary endpoint orchestrated by the drugmakers without the involvement of their lead investigator, and the naming of an independent review panel boasting members with financial conflicts.
As ceo, Hassan has more to do than babysit a clinical trial. And Merck is equally responsible for this mess. Yet Fred, who is finely attuned to perceptions, knows this is no way to run a drugmaker. Beyond the science, there’s no substitute for sound policies and procedures.
PRSP
Ed,
You are 100% absolutely, positively correct. It’s not the negative result of the ENHANCE trial that’s a problem. Ezetimibe lowers cholesterol and may very well help patients in the long run. Unfortunately, we won’t know until 2011 at the earliest.
The whole problem is the way Fred Hassan, Carrie Cox, their cronies and their counterparts at Merck handled the whole thing. If they would have come clean when they knew there were issues with the data (Summer of 2006?), it would have been much better for them. Instead, they lied by ommission of any trial information in order to make billions by selling Zetia and Vytorin.
In addition, many of the arrogant SP Big Shots sold off huge blocks of stock for bundles of money, with the worst being Carrie Cox herself! In 4 days, their house of cards has nearly collapsed. These executives deserve everything they get and more - they’re sitting on millions and millions of dollars at everybody’s expense. Honesty, trust, integrity do not exist at SP. They’re all just nice words that they tell employees and others, when the opposite is true. Big Pharma hypocrisy at its’ worst!
They really believe that everyone else is stupid and they will never be caught or have to pay for their indescretions. After all, for years the Big Pharma companies do whatever they want, pay fines out of the shareholder’s pockets, admit no wrongdoing and laugh all the way to the bank! It’s the American way!
PRSP
Paul
Fred,
Please help. Who knew what when? Courtesy of Yahoo finance
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AV Block
The media once again hyped up a story about a 300 or so patient trial with little significance to the general population of folks on cholesterol-lowering drugs. Irresponsible journalism for the sake of increasing ad revenues during what looks to be a recession.
AV Block
correction: 720 patients or so…