{"id":5876,"date":"2011-01-19T18:37:11","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T22:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2011-01-19T18:44:06","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T22:44:06","slug":"tragic-is-as-stupid-does-or-kabbalah-aristotle-arrested-development-and-the-return-of-sam-waksal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tragic-is-as-stupid-does-or-kabbalah-aristotle-arrested-development-and-the-return-of-sam-waksal","title":{"rendered":"Tragic is as Stupid Does? (or, Kabbalah, Aristotle, Arrested Development, and the return of Sam Waksal)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was working on my From the Editor column for the Jan\/Feb issue of my magazine, and I realized that you guys might dig the one I wrote for the Nov\/Dec issue:<\/em><\/p>\n

In October, I received a couple of press releases about a new outfit called Kadmon Pharmaceuticals. The name was familiar, so I broke out my copy of Gershom Scholem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kabbalah<\/a>\"\", a book detailing Judaism\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mystic tradition. I re-learned that Kadmon<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to be precise, Adam Kadmon<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201d means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153primordial man,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153original man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just the first person created by God in the book of Genesis<\/a>\"\", but the primal being, the first emanation of the divine before the universe shatters and becomes the world we know. (As per their interpretation of the Torah and its commentaries. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a scholar, not an adherent.)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good for them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I thought. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I suppose the pharma industry could do with a few more Kabbalists.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Then I noticed the name of the chief executive officer of privately financed Kadmon: Samuel P. Waksal, Ph.D. You may remember him as the former chief exec at ImClone. You may also remember the insider-trading scandal<\/a> that put him in federal prison for five years and led to Martha Stewart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s imprisonment. And you may remember that I once called him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a great example of man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capacity for delusion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

That last bit was my April 2009 response<\/a> to a New York Magazine<\/a><\/em> article about Mr. Waksal\u00c2\u00a0intended to pave the way for his return to NYC society. The article mentioned that, much like Mike Tyson, Dr. Waksal read a lot of books when he was in prison:<\/p>\n

He also read. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I reread all the Greeks,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says, smiling. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All<\/span>. I read everything. Euripides, and Sophocles, and every other Greek that had ever written. You just have to read Aristotle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Poetics<\/a>\"\", and you read what tragedy is \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and you look at yourself and think, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc[. . .], man, this is tragic.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in my brief 2009 editorial postscript, I noted, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No matter how \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbrilliant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 a mind you have, you really need to look inside sometimes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Right after calling him delusional.<\/p>\n

Now that Dr. Waksal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back in biopharma, I probably need to expand on that statement. See, one of the major points of Aristotle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Poetics<\/em> is that character is revealed by action. That means, what we do<\/em> is who we are<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 2001, when Dr. Waksal became aware that ImClone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stock was about to tank because the FDA had rejected the Biologics License Application (BLA) for Erbitux, what action did he undertake and what did it reveal about his character?<\/p>\n

He contacted family and friends and told them to dump their shares in the company, before the news got out and wrecked their value. In other words, when faced with a crisis, he chose to defraud those investors who weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lucky enough to be family (or the mother of his ex-girlfriend).<\/p>\n

In prison a few years later, Dr. W. looked at himself in light of Aristotle and the tragedians, and judged himself a tragic figure. An outside observer might look at those same actions and say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What a petty and craven human being!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Apparently, the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed with that outsider\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take, barring Dr. W. from serving as an officer at a publicly held company. Ever.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, some investors now feel that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be trustworthy with $50 million (or more) in financing. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing the last few years have taught us that the smart money isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really very smart.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

All of which brings us back to that name: Kadmon. Is Dr. W. implying that his new private equity-backed biotech is somehow going to partake in the macrocosmic vision of that primordial man? That it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to play a role in restoring the universe to its perfect state (as per Kabbalah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s goal of Tikkun olam<\/a>)? Did he embrace this religion in order to deal with life in prison, a la George Bluth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s religious conversion on the (brilliant but canceled) TV show Arrested Development<\/a>? Is he somehow framing himself as the primordial man, reborn after his stint in the joint? Is he just copying neat-sounding words from Mr. Scholem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book? (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have gone with Zimzum Pharma<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

At press time, Kadmon doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a website up, so all we have to go on is Dr. Waksal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quote from a news release:<\/p>\n

Kadmon is building a new paradigm for bringing pioneering medicines to market more rapidly and cost effectively. This includes the simultaneous execution of a dual strategy, combining an operating commercial business with novel compounds at various stages of clinical development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aha! Apparently, the world can be restored by making sure you have some cash flow while working on drug development. I hope he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s successful in developing some new drugs, but not so successful that he tries to take the company public.<\/p>\n

Sure, you can take my sniping as sour grapes. Am I jealous of the high-flying lifestyle, literary salons and SoHo loft that Dr. W once enjoyed and the tens of millions of dollars \u00e2\u20ac\u201d if not more \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that he banked after Lilly bought ImClone? Heck, yeah!<\/p>\n

On the other hand, my only run-ins with the law have involved speeding tickets, and I never put my parents in a position where the feds could threaten to put them in prison if I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cop a plea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was working on my From the Editor column for the Jan\/Feb issue of my magazine, and I realized that you guys might dig the one I wrote for the Nov\/Dec issue: In October, I received a couple of press releases about a new outfit called Kadmon Pharmaceuticals. The name was familiar, so I broke … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tragic is as Stupid Does? (or, Kabbalah, Aristotle, Arrested Development, and the return of Sam Waksal)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,12],"tags":[1222,533,1223,450,1221],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-literature","category-pharmaceuticals","tag-aristotle","tag-arrested-development","tag-gershom-scholem","tag-martha-stewart","tag-samuel-waksal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1wM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10311,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-216-george-prochnik","url_meta":{"origin":5876,"position":0},"title":"Episode 216 – George Prochnik","author":"Gil","date":"May 1, 2017","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 216: George Prochnik \"Scholem teaches us that the Jewish tradition is so capacious it could embrace its own subversion.\" George Prochnik returns to The Virtual Memories Show to talk about his new book, Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem (Other Press). 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