I don’t feel tardy

I’ve been on prednisone for the last 10 days, trying to clear out the ugly ol’ case of poison ivy I picked up from the Memorial Day yard-clearing extravaganza. The pred has left me pasted by heartburn for over a week, which is no fun. I’ve juggled the sleeplessness with some Xanax & gin, which seems to be working okay, but this morning, I finally looked up all the listed side effects of this little corticosteroid and discovered that among of the rarer ones are a “false sense of well-being” and “mistaken feelings of self-importance.”

I don’t even know how you begin to diagnose that. I mean, does the doctor say, “You’re not doing as well as you think! And you’re simply not that important! This is just a side effect!”

Evidently, I may also get them menstrual cramps, real bad.

Update

Sorry I’ve been outta the loop, dear reader. I was just in one of those not-writing-so-much phases. I can’t afford to get caught in that for long, since I’ve gotta write profiles on the top 20 pharma & top 10 biopharma companies this month.

I’ve also been reading that Robert Moses biography pretty devotedly. Since it’s insanely long, I’ve been a little afraid of putting it down for a few days and losing my steam. It’s a phenomenal story, and the author’s just reached the point where all of Moses’ bridges and parkways are managing to create more traffic. The crux of the problem — Moses’ power-thirstiness — appears to be explained as a function of RM’s domineering mother and grandmother, which just sounds kinda boring. I’m hoping that Caro’s interpretation of RM’s personality gets a little more intricate, otherwise I’m afraid that NYC really is just a twisted child’s vision.

In other news, we went to a surprise 40th birthday party for my “big sister” (next-door neighbors who are more family to me than just about anyone beyond my immediate relations) on Saturday night. It was good to catch up with some of them, since we never get together, even though I still live next door to their house (where their mom lives). Just about all my “brothers and sisters” have kids now, so the evening was spent making sure they stayed out of trouble, got enough attention, and didn’t hear my gin-lubricated sailor-speaking mouth. It was good times.

We also discovered a good restaurant earlier in the day, while looking for a birthday present. It’s right across the street from one of the finest pizzerias in NJ, which I had to stare at while eating my rogan josh. It’s a tough life.

On the plus side, official VM buddy (and nearly VM wedding-officiant) Tom Spurgeon is coming to visit this week. We’ll watch the first game of the NBA finals Thursday night, maybe get to the Belmont (if he’s got an extra ticket for me) on Saturday, hit the MoCCA Art Festival on Sunday, and generally shoot the breeze, which I find to be a delightful and worthwhile pursuit.

Across the Transom

Most people get those wacky Nigeria e-mails during the workday. What do I get? An open letter to the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, apparently written by Borat (just out of discretion, I’ve redacted all personal names, except J-P’s):

Jean-Pierre Garnier,
Chief Executive Officer

Sofia, April 29, 2006

Re: GSK in Bulgaria: Lilliputian in One Year

Dear CEO,

Few months ago as the GSK’s chief partner in Bulgaria we’ve revealed the GSK representative was involved in dubious and near corruption practices and have deplored her threatening and intimidating letters in return (all timely & expressly mailed to you). Now, Mrs. XXXX XXXX unilaterally terminated the two GSK cooperation agreements with Commercial League, the largest pharmaceutical company in the territory. Such an illegal act has no material and contractual ground and bears several harmful consequences.

Beyond the severity of the legal and reputationally unavoidable damages I am more concerned about the long term deterioration of CL/ GSK business relations, at the end turning Glaxo to a Lilliputian pharmaceutical company in the fast growing market of Bulgaria, and perhaps other Balkan countries. I am sure you understand, despite systemic anomalies of the representative or any corporate friction by now notwithstanding, as the GSK main contractual partner CL’s unrivaled marketing machine did not compete directly with your product sales. However, this is exactly what your representative, undoubtedly endorsed by Mr. XXXX XXXX, is inviting through the latest hostile and illegal move. Twelve months from now sales of your peers will replace otherwise good portfolio of GSK in all strategic therapeutical arias and only you can take the lead to stop this inevitable down slide, hopefully not too late.

You know, you personally command my enormous respect,
Kindly

[XXXXXXX] Chief Executive Officer

Someday, only meth users won’t be congested

The true cost of the War on Drugs was the 3 minutes of my life that were wasted in CVS on my lunch break when I bought some decongestant.

I had to bring a product-card to the front checkout so they could give me the decongestant. Then was told I had to sign a registry book with my name, address, time of purchase, and quantity of pseudoephedrine.

So I’m afraid that “Ambulatory P. Groin” of “1313 Mockingbird Ln.” might find himself getting a visit from the DEA sometime soon. He probably shouldn’t have bought “one pound” of the product, but hey.

(I wonder what expression the clerk would have had if I walked up with 200 product-cards and dumped them on the counter. I swear: when I get over this headcold, I oughtta start a meth lab. This is worse than those Truth commericals.)

More on Job Destruction

Last July, I wrote about the nuttiness of the American Jobs Creation Act, a one-time tax break for companies bringing overseas profits back to the U.S. (the tax rate on such earnings drops from about 38% to about 5%). Michelle Leder at Slate just wrote about the subject, calling it an “absurd provision of a law designed to create jobs.”

It’s a good piece, but she makes a “numbers in a vacuum” argument about Pfizer, which leads me to wonder if she’s not being fair toward the other companies, which are in fields that I don’t cover. She writes,

At Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant that announced the single largest repatriation—$37 billion—the one-time windfall works out to approximately $11 billion. That kind of tax savings buys a lot of $600-an-hour lobbyists, though not, apparently, many scientists and salespeople. In its annual report, Pfizer doesn’t list employees by region. But the company’s total head count dropped to 106,000 at the end of 2005, about 8 percent fewer jobs than at the end of 2004.

Thing is, those layoffs weren’t at all related to Pfizer’s overseas profits. They were a result of Pfizer acquiring Pharmacia and Warner-Lambert, along with a raft of smaller companies. Those acquisitions basically guaranteed layoffs in the thousands; this is what’s known as “generating efficiencies by combining operations.” So those layoffs were in the works long before the AJCA was passed in 2004.

Now, you can argue that the acquisitions were foolhardy or unlucky (especially the Pharmacia one, which pivoted on the Celebrex/Bextra franchise), but complaining that the company should have kept ‘redundant’ employees on because it had this one-time tax refund coming is flat-out stupid.

The Passed Over & the Elite

Greeted Passover on a flight home from Chicago. I haven’t held or been to a seder in a few years. The last one was the time I ended up meeting the Zionist Conspiracy To Get Me Married To A Nice Jewish Girl. It’s nice to see that the Jewish lobby isn’t as effective as Drs. Mearshimer and Walt think it is.

But I made it in safe and sound, with a little in-flight bumpiness and traffic delay. Just about finished Geek Love, which I’m enjoying a bunch. I sorta disagree with Dunn’s use of an X-Men-like character in the midst of an otherwise believable world of a really demented sideshow freak family.

The BIO conference went well; I had some good interviews and got a lot of good anecdotes & bits of intel about various aspects of the industry. I also got to meet several people with whom I’ve been in work-e-mail contact for years. That usually helps facilitate the working relationship, except when one of the two parties doesn’t remember having met the other face-to-face at a previous conference.

Anyway, the conference was described to me as “a singles club for CEOs and VCs,” and it’s true that a lot of the conversation was about funding, in-licensing developmental products (as in, a big company looking to buy the rights to a smaller company’s drug that’s currently in clinical trials). The conference is also filled with regional economic development councils for various states or countries (like that Malaysia group I mentioned a while back). They work hard to get companies to choose their regions for R&D or manufacturing facilities, and I like hearing them explain their virtues. The Maine pavilion had a slogan on one of its displays that read (paraphrasing): “Bangor: more metropolitan than you think!”

Well, duh.

Anyway, one of the funnier moments of the last day occurred as we were getting ready to board the plane back to Newark. It was one of the first Continental flights after show’s end, and the gate area was filled. The clerk called for all Elite Access passengers to board. None of us stepped back to make room. Turns out, when you have a conference that’s as money-centric as BIO, with so many attendees who constantly travel, everyone has Elite status.

Except my associate editor, who felt that her non-Elite status was a badge of honor.

What $20 will get you

The first day of the conference was good, but I did a bunch of running around and interviewing, punctuated by a long lunch with a client who revealed that his first marriage ended because his wife was making it with the landscaper. He is not very happy that his second wife enjoys Desperate Housewives so much.

Unfortunately, that lunch ran over into an interview, so I had to reschedule. My subject was only free at 5pm, after the conference ended. We talked till about 5:45, and I headed out from there.

The taxi line was approximately 2 miles long. I took one look at the massive queue and said, “Screw this! I’m goin’ home!”

Unfortunately, the McCormick convention center is pretty remote, so this was not going to be achieved on foot, especially after a full day on a convention center floor.

So I started walking over to the hotel connected to the center. Unfortunately, plenty of people got that idea and were already on line for cabs.

I couldn’t find a shuttle bus, and thought I could be risking things by sneaking onto the bus for the Sanofi reception; after all, that event could’ve been located even further from my hotel. I kept walking.

Then I saw a trolley-bus. The driver was standing outside it, leaning against the door. Three guys in good suits were walking by it. One said, “How much to get us uptown?” His buddies laughed and they walked on.

I said, “I’ll give you twenty dollars right now to get me to the Embassy Suites.”

He said, “Okay!” and jumped into the bus. I ran on and shouted to the three guys to follow me. They did. The trolley took off and started maneuvering through the traffic.

At one point, the driver said, “I hope I don’t get in trouble for this.”

One of the suits (they were all business development/arbitrage guys for biotechs) said, “Don’t you remember? The cops told you to move your bus, because of the safety issues with the protesters! You had to get going, and now you’re stuck in traffic!”

“Man, you guys are smart!” he told us.

Twenty bucks later (about $5-8 more than a cab ride), I was home.

Here’s a pic of the convention center:

Toddling with Mr. 3000

Off to Chicago for the BIO Conference. I’ll try to get Bernie Mac’s autograph at his plenary session.

I’m also hoping to get out and meander in the city for a bit. I was in Chicago in March 2000 for a small conference, but that was my only visit. I remember that the architecture in the core area (I forget what it’s called: the Loop or something?) was interesting because, while grand, it didn’t have the sheer vertical overwhelmingness of NYC’s major buildings. It felt more welcoming, in the way that the buildings seemed to sweep away and up, rather than upupUP.

Anyway, if I take any good pix, you’ll be the first to know.

Also, I just finished re-reading the Shakespeare’s Henriad (Richard II, Henry IV 1&2, and Henry V), and have decided to make my next couple of readings “books other people really like and told me to read.” So I’m taking along Geek Love (my wife adores it) and Clockers (my buddy Mark contends it’s like good Charles Dickens, with crack).

Moon Over Malaysia

Check out the Virtual Memories Podcast!

I’m headed to the BIO conference in a few weeks. It’s in Chicago this year, a city that I haven’t seen much of. I had a parenteral drug conference there in the spring of 2000, and enjoyed the environs and architecture. I’m hoping for a little more time to get out and explore this time. This trip will unfortunately be contrasted by another conference two weeks later in Anaheim.

The BIO conference is dominated by regional economic development councils, which are intent on bringing biotech companies and their manufacturing facilities into their areas. These EDCs have a lot of incentives to offer and different ways of enticing companies to set up shop. I wrote all about it in the April issue of my magazine; I’ll post a link to that piece when it’s available, in case you’re interested in the stuff I spend my days working on.

A lot of these EDCs want trade magazine editors to visit during BIO, so they can explain to us what their region has to offer. Sometimes this evolves into a trip to that region; that’s how my Sweden/Denmark trip in August 2004 happened. I’ve been to a few other sites as part of this process: Puerto Rico, Spokane, WA, Phoenix/Scottsdale, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. Generally, I’m too busy to travel on some many junkets, so I make the rounds at BIO and learn what I can about the regions.

Which leads me to the invite I received from a PR firm by e-mail today. They’d like me to sit down for an interview with the CEO of the Malaysian Biotechnology Corp., the government agency devoted to building a biotech industry in that country. It was a pretty gracious invite, and it’s flattering that the firm considers my magazine worth the interview-time.

But I looked at the invite for a few moments, thinking, “Malaysia . . . Malaysia . . . Oh, that’s right! They won’t let you into the country if you have an Israeli passport!”

I spent a few minutes researching to make sure that was the case (which led me to the previous Prime Minister’s anti-semitic comments from 2003). Yup! Malaysia doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence (but does recognize Palestine’s: whew!).

I was prepared to write off the invite then and there, but it occurred to me that Israel might have the exact same policy. You never know. I’d hate to be more of a hypocrite than I already am.

I ended up having to call the Israeli consulate to clear up the issue: Malaysians aren’t treated differently than any other nationality coming to visit Israel; they just need a visa like anyone else. I told the young lady on the phone about Malaysia’s policy. She said, “Ooh. That’s not nice.” We agreed that my mother wouldn’t be happy about it, either.

After that, I struggled to write the e-mail to the PR rep. I didn’t want to take on an adversarial tone, or imply that she was morally compromised by helping represent Malaysia. But I did want to express my point of view about what I wouldn’t meet with them. I went with

I know this is going to sound terrible, but I can’t in good conscience discuss the attractions of a biotech base in a country that would turn away most of my family at the border because of the passports they carry.

As near as I can tell, Malaysia has a blanket ban on entry by Israeli nationals (with case-by-case exceptions), and I’m afraid that I can’t publicize/promote a country with that policy.

If I have my facts wrong, please let me know ASAP.

Thanks,

Gil Roth

Now there’s only a problem if the MBC decides to start advertising. Still, it wouldn’t be as bad as taking an 8-page ad insert from Sudan, like the NYTimes did. I was hoping it would open with the banner: “Sudan: More than Genocide and Civil Wars!”

Check out the Virtual Memories Podcast!