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Ole Vern: Yeah we got trouble right here here in River City! Unfortunately our most active vounteers on the fire department feel multiple buckets of kerosene and ofal make for a pretty fire. Perhaps they believe the Big Lie told often enough etc.
A lot of us invested in DNAP for the science concept that still hasn't been destroyed by the bash brigade. We've seen setbacks, but we've also seen accomplishments. More will be learned today when the executives have to put up. I think few investors here are happy with monetary gains DNAP has achieved. Defecit Spending, and now dilution on the horizon make for rising tensions and despair. You've been around a long time and have watched DNAP for many years. I've been in DNAP a while too. When I get down on myself or feel bad with the constant bashing, I look at my original DD and try to look at things in the light of "why I got in" in the first place. I can't say the investment has gone well as an investment to this time. And it doesn't look all roses and orchids going into the future. But I have faith in Doctor Frudakis and feel the growing pains will abate. The gestation period isn't over, and so I look at my past reasons for investing and I continue on to term. The scalawags who "burn the wires" with negativity are doing so for a commercial interest. I find it hard to believe that so much effort is put to such an "unworthy" target as DNAP. Perhaps more telling is the vitriol sphewed by the ones who contend they are invested! Such humanists are they, that they lambaste the vehicle that could reward them financially. Unless of course they seek financial reward from destruction rather than sucess.
I expect much information to come forth from the shareholder meeting. A restatement of DNAPS goals, perhaps even a midcourse correction beyond what we've seen. I hope a vocal componenet of the attendees will hold feet to the fire, and not accept witticism like "Orchid will crash in 6 months". We have made an investment in DNAP. Not a contribution. Market forces have hindered our advancement, blind alley missteps, and the recent rejection of a submitted patent application is alas dishearening. It slows the process and more costly time must be expended to resubmit.
Heres to all us longs, we've supported DNAP when it was looking good, and now we have to choose to let our support flag in troubled times or believe in our original conviction and investment.
Stakddek
Lancaster CA. West Nile near Edwards AFB:
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http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%257E20943%257E2908904,00.html
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Los Angeles Daily News
West Nile virus detected in Lancaster
Officials say risk of infection is low
By Charles F. Bostwick
Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 08, 2005 - LANCASTER -- West Nile virus has been detected in central Lancaster, mosquito-control officials said Tuesday.
The virus was found in a chicken living in a flock kept near Division Street by the Antelope Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District to detect mosquito-borne diseases.
"We will be increasing our surveillance in that area, to see which mosquito species is responsible for transmitting the virus," said Karen Mellor, an entomologist for the mosquito-control district.
Potentially fatal to humans -- especially chronically ill and elderly people -- and to horses, West Nile virus is spread by mosquitoes that bite infected birds and then pass it on to people or other animals.
Outbreaks commonly strike in late spring and summer, as mosquitoes multiply in warming weather.
Despite the confirmation of the disease, that area has relatively few mosquitoes, Mellor said. A mosquito trap near the flock has been catching only one or two mosquitoes a week, far fewer than other local traps, she said.
Flocks of chickens are set out to detect the virus because it is not fatal to them as it is to ravens, jays and other wild birds, and because there is no chance they picked up the disease in another area, as wild birds might.
So far this spring, West Nile virus has been detected in 22 counties around California but there have been no reported human cases.
West Nile virus last year infected more than 300 Los Angeles County residents, including 190 who became ill enough to be hospitalized and 13 who died. The largest outbreak was in the San Gabriel Valley. The human case closest to the Antelope Valley occurred in Saugus.
While the Antelope Valley had no human cases last year, two horses became sick -- one so seriously it was euthanized.
Earlier this spring the virus was detected in wild birds found dead in Rosamond and at Edwards Air Force Base.
Health officials say the risk of acquiring the virus is low. About 80 percent of people who become infected with the virus show no symptoms, and most of those who become ill show only mild flu-like symptoms.
In rare cases, the virus can cause encephalitis and death. People over age 50 are most at risk for severe cases of the disease. There is no specific treatment for the virus.
Dead birds are an early sign of the arrival of the virus, which is not spread by person-to-person contact -- though it has been spread by breast- feeding and blood transfusions -- or directly by birds.
Charles F. Bostwick, (661) 267-5742 chuck.bostwick@dailynews.com
AT RISK
People at the highest risk of life-threatening disease are over age 50 or have weak immune systems from another illness. Most mosquitoes do not have West Nile virus.
Eighty percent of infected people have no symptoms. People typically develop symptoms between three and 14 days after they are bitten by an infected mosquito.
Mild symptoms include fever, headache, body aches, vomiting and sometimes swollen lymph glands or a skin rash. They pass on their own. Of those infected, one in 150 can develop severe symptoms or even die. Severe symptoms can include high fever, neck stiffness, tremors, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis. Neurological effects may be permanent.
The best way to protect against the disease is to protect against mosquito bites.
Source: Los Angeles County Health Department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
MOSQUITO TIPS
To reduce exposure to the virus, health officials suggest residents follow the precautions recommended for all mosquito-borne diseases:
Get rid of standing water, where mosquitoes can breed. Empty all small containers at least once a week, keep pools and spas chlorinated or drained, and avoid overwatering that lets water form puddles on lawns or in gutters.
Get mosquito-eating fish (Gambusia affinis) for free from the mosquito district if you have sources that cannot be drained, such as fish ponds and large horse troughs.
Wear long-sleeve shirts and pants and use mosquito repellent containing DEET when outdoors during dusk and dawn.
Keep tight-fitting screens on doors and windows to prevent mosquitoes from entering homes.
Horse owners should make sure their horses are properly vaccinated. Report stagnant pools and other backyard sources to the mosquito district so technicians can treat them.
The mosquito district can be reached at (661) 942-2917. Its Web site is www.avmosquito.org. Crows and ravens that have recently died -- without obvious trauma -- can be reported by calling (877) WNV-BIRD. Use gloves, a shovel or an inverted trash bag to pick up any dead bird.
Source: Antelope Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District
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Stakddek
Hi all: Hey Chris have a great time in Scotland! Just don't turn "BLUE" on us. Hagus a good time!
Ann your efforts are appreciated. It is unfortunate that the efforts you've made has been denigrated by highlighting ommissions of date when the content is of so much import.
Hopeful, you can attack anyone here for being in error but your style in those attacks speaks volumes about your personal style. Yes the price per share can go up and we will all see rewards. You used the example of sixty cents. Well in recent times we could have gone from .006 to .016. I think that corresponds to your .60 cents going to say $1.50. That is nice and all, BUT. Market forces, lack of headway, have kept DNAP in the startup phase so long that expenditures have been necessary for survival rather than advancement. The upcoming stock split "consolidation" has the net effect of reverse splitting all our shares but notm the total authorized shares. This in effect means the company takes the remaining shares in the treasury and multiplies them by the split ratio. Let's use a 1 for 16 consolidation.
On that day, your 1600 shares becomes 100 shares. At that time, the instant price would be 16 times the preconsolidation price per share. Let's say 1 cent. So your account balance that had a monetary value of $16.00 at 1600 shares at 1 cent now reads 100 shares at .16 cents or $16.00. Thats the normal "reverse split" part of the equation.
Now the bitter pill.
As I understand the consolidation, the 16 million (just a convenient number) in the company account, have a value of 1 cent, and if issued to a financier for operating cash will reflect a discount to the purchaser, "in some form". The institutional purchaser will get some form of average price, or such.
At the date of the consolidation, the shares in the DNAP Authorized Kitty will turn to 1 million. BUT! Because The number of authorized total shares is not being reduced, DNAP will have a significant number of "post consolidation" shares to finance the company. Those post consolidation shares would be issuable at the new post consolidation price of .16 cents less the usual discounts. If DNAP was maxed out with those 16 million being the ceiling amount, they would become 1 million, and then to get back to the ceiling, 15 million shares at the .16 cent price are created for the company to issue or market as required as the Board of Directors sees fit. If you believe in DNAP, no change from business as usual for DNAP. If you don't trustr the BOD, then you expect the new available shares to be awarded as bonus and lieu of salary contributions to the BOD and favored contractors.
I believe Chris Baskett was pointing out to you, he felt as a result of the additional shares being created the percentage of ownership he has in DNAP is being reduced. Of course at the instant of the change, and until those "post consolidation shares" are put in the market, we are not dilluted. If the company never issues them, they are not dillutive by my reckoning. Do I think they will be distributed? Well certainly YES! Why bother with this exercise at all then. DNAP needs money. We have alliances with a number of people who expect payment for services. Without payment, well I fear the "contractors" are not as willing to have faith in DNAP and would prefer some form of actual payment for services rendered.
In any case, that is my understanding of this matter. However Hopeful, your comments to Chris were unnecessarilly combatitave and at least the words were ill chosen. I think you did a disservice to this board is commenting to him as you have.
Stakddek
Yeah Geob, but they're gonna' take 16 of our pennies to make that pound! I don't know where they are going to take us, or if they are just going to take us! But I am and will be on board. I just put some more money where my mouth is. Unlike having absolute faith in DNAP, I've tried to weigh the ponderables against the imponderables; I developed a headache. I see the PPS down to insulting levels, and I hear the pain in the posts of fellow owners. I still see the promise of doing good for all of us, socially, monetarily and in the end, changing the way our whole healthcare system operates for the better. Will DNAP and it's shareholders be rewarded for rocking the big pharma boat??? Can the moneychangers be chased from the temple??? Well, we all feel the winds of change billowing our sails, but are they blowing us toward our goal?!? Okay so we have to throw the deck chairs and the cabin walls into the firebox to make the steam we need. The voyage won't be any more comfortable in the weeks ahead, but if I have to personally swim for shore I"ll have a rope around my waist to pull my friends along.
Sometimes times try mens souls (and ladies), but I was always told it builds character. Heaven knows we have a lot of characters here!
So mend the sails and grease the oarlocks! DNAP isn't done yet. And though the seas ahead are choppy, and the shore isn't in sight yet, I haven't lost faith in the original reasons I invested in DNAP. I've been battered and bruised, bashed and ridiculed, but I still ain't done rowing! Now I can only say that I decided to buy more shares, and my average cost is down, and I would be really happy if stupendous news precedes or is released at the shareholders meeting. I don't think significant news will be released any time soon, but I have decided that I will trust the same people I originally trusted to carry this off. Time will tell if I'm right or wrong, and maybe it's good money after bad, but I have this tenacious streak, and so giving up and walking away just isn't in my genes.
My best wishes to all the longs, and I hope soon congratulations are in order for all DNAP shareholders.
Stakddek
You mean like this?
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Posted by: samlion
In reply to: None Date:6/16/2005 9:50:43 AM
Post # 27901 (On DNAP Board) of 27910
StockGate: German Chancellor Says Stock Lending Endangers International Stability / FinancialWire®
June 16, 2005 (FinancialWire) German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is saying what Bush Administration officials are afraid to confront as it tries to portray a stock market plagued by counterfeit shares and hedge fund manipulation as a safe place for Social Security dollars – “lending” of shares need to be controlled.
June 16, 2005 (FinancialWire) German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is saying what Bush Administration officials are afraid to confront as it tries to portray a stock market plagued by counterfeit shares and hedge fund manipulation as a safe place for Social Security dollars – “lending” of shares need to be controlled.
In the U.S., hundreds of public companies and their shareholders have been victimized by the illegal, but unchecked practice, according to the Regulation SHO lists, containing such companies as Cal-Maine Foods (NASDAQ: CALM), Array Biopharma (NASDAQ: ARRY), IBIS Technology (NASDAQ: IBIS) and Internet Initiative Japan (NASDAQ: IIJI), recently in the center of a massive up and down price struggle.
Chancellor Schroeder said his proposals will be presented to the Group of Eight world leaders when it holds its summit next month.
“We need effective supervision world-wide and much improved transparency on the hedge-fund market,” Schroeder was quoted as saying.
Among the proposals are reporting restrictions on stock lending by hedge funds, and greater transparency.
In the U.S., the Depository Trust has been mentioned by the media, in protests and in lawsuits as having a role in the counterfeit securities scandal known as Stockgate that several U.S. Senators have complained about regarding illegal short selling of public companies on the “threshold lists” such as Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBC), Generex (NASDAQ: GNBT), IMAX Corp. (NASDAQ: IMAX) and Sharper Image (NASDAQ: SHRP).
Such a relationship could catapult DTCC and its oversight agency, the SEC, into violations of the First Amendment to the Constitution over DTCC’s admitted interference in the publication and distribution of FinancialWire via Investors Business Daily to Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and other portals served by IBD.
The DTCC is also a strong suspect in the sudden and inexplicable “postponement” of an expose of the organization that had been scheduled by Dateline NBC, owned by General Electric (NYSE: GE), that could parallel the interference into Viacom’s (NYSE: VIAb) CBS show, 60-Minutes, by the tobacco industry when that network was owned by Westinghouse, that was profiled in the award-winning motion picture, “The Insider,” starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.
A demonstration at DTCC’s headquarters in Manhattan has been scheduled July 29.
The “National Counterfeit Conspiracy” event is profiled at http://www.americaneedstoknow.com/DC_trip.htm .
Meanwhile, a stock transfer agent, Transfer Online Inc., has asked U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair William Donaldson to put a stop to the control the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and Automatic Data Processing (NYSE: ADP) are fast gaing over the transfer business, and to demand DTCC transparency.
Excerpts from the letter, posted at http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/LettersToEditor/1012.html , states
The letter to Donaldson and to market regulation states: ”“Over the years as the amount of shares held at DTC has increased it has become more and more difficult to determine who owns the shares, who is trading them and if the trading is proper. This trend, and the resulting problems I will detail below, continues to increase because a minority of the total number of shareholders are reflected on the books and records of the corporation, most activity takes place behind the wall of ownership that is designated as Cede & Co. and neither the company nor the transfer agent has any access to the underlying information.
“Furthermore, DTC recently managed to put through a rule change (Release No. 34-50758A; File No.S7-24-04) that prohibits a transfer agent from representing any company who seeks to withdraw from the DTC system. This change effectively leaves companies with no voice or choice in the management of their stock and their ability to have any transparency as to what is actually taking place in the market in regard to their stock.
“I receive calls from companies seeking information as they watch millions of shares trade in a single day, who watch their share price decrease in value and who have no access to information regarding who is behind the trading of these shares, or if in fact the trades are at all legitimate. As the system now operates, most companies have a large percentage of shares on their books registered to Cede & Co.
“Given the importance of shareholder voting and communication one would assume that the same requirements placed on transfer agents as to accuracy and reporting would be placed on ADP and Cede & Co. as they usually hold or service the majority of the shares owned in any given company.
“I have found; however, that when presented with the tabulation reports from ADP the share totals they report sometimes exceed the total number of shares outstanding for the company. Let me restate this because it is a very important part of my concern about a system that is more and more headed in the direction of increased control by DTC. The shares presented by ADP, that are the shares voted by the brokers on behalf of the shareholders for whom they hold accounts, EXCEED when added to the shareholders of record the total number of shares outstanding.
“Where are these extra shares coming from? Why are there no controls on the number of shares held in the nominee name Cede & Co. vs. the ownership on the books and records of the brokers and why is the company not privy to any information unless it pays whatever fees it is told it must pay by the organizations that control the data?
“In fact, as the system is evolving, DTC is de facto becoming the largest transfer agent in the industry even though it is an organization formed by and working for the interests of the brokerage community. If, ultimately, the S.E.C. is in place to protect investors then this issue can not be ignored because in the end when the market is completely under the control of the brokers and the organizations that represent them then the market can neither be transparent nor fair.”
In other Stockgate news, Senator James Talent (R-MO), has joined U.S. Senators Richard Shelby (D-AL), Susan Collins (R-ME), Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) in questioning U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair William Donaldson about what they call the “failure” of Regulation SHO to curtail unlawful, predatory securities trading.
The current Senate line-up carries significant heft. Senator Collins is chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, Senator Shelby is chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Durbin is Assistant Democratic Leader and Senator Bennett is Republican Whip. The Senators’ letters are posted at http://www.americaneedstoknow.com
“Stockgate Today” publisher David Patch said that the Senators have 23 good reasons, citing that many companies, including Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO), Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL), Krispy Kreme (NYSE: KKD) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), that remain “not settled” on the official threshold lists maintained by the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq five months later.
“Stockgate Today” is published at http://www.investigatethesec.com . The Senators’ letters to shareholders and the SEC are posted at http://www.americaneedstoknow.com
Patch said that most of the 23 companies hardest-hit by unlawful stock manipulations in full sight of market regulators, including those at the SEC, such as Annette Nazareth, head of market regulation, who belittles complaints as coming from those who “want to see their stock go up,” have had double-digit declines in stock valuations over the 94 days they have been on the highly-public list.
He also noted that in the March, 2005 Euromoney Magazine article on illegal naked short selling, Head of Market Regulation Annette Nazareth’s assistant, James Brigagliano said that prior lawbreakers were “grandfathered” because “we were concerned about generating volatility where there were large pre-existing open positions, and we wanted to start afresh with new regulation, not re-write history.”
“So does Ken Lay, but he can’t,” retorted Patch.
This disputed “grandfathering” has not yet been taken up by Congress, but the 23 companies on the threshhold list for over days are new transgressions, and presumably they can’t be dealt with either because Nazareth and Brigagliano are concerned about “generating volatility.”
Also, in a blockbuster event almost equal to the mysterious “postponement” of the announced expose of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. by General Electric’s (NYSE: GE) “Dateline NBC,” the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has inexplicably given the DTC’s National Securities Clearing Corp. “immunity” in the form of limited liability for willful misconduct or violations of Federal securities laws.
The Notice regarding the SEC’s action is at http://www.nscc.com/impnot/notices/notice2005/a6029.pdf
These and other events, including the proposed nomination of Director of Market Regulation Annette Nazareth, who has characterized opponents of illegal market manipulation as people “who just want their stock to go up,” to become a Commissioner, is providing more and more fodder for the organizers of public demonstrations and lobbying in Washington June 6 and in New York June 7. The organizers, who are filming a documentary, say demonstrators now number over 600.
Some legal experts are questioning whether the SEC, without the approval of Congress, has the authority to limit the NSCC’s liability. There have been similar questions about the SEC’s authority to unilaterally “grandfather” securities violations prior to Regulation SHO.
The new regulation is sure to be litigated since the DTCC and the NSCC were the subject of lawsuits claiming their “stock borrow program” is illegal counterfeiting, prior to the rule approval by the SEC.
The DTCC has also admitted to interfering with the media in impacting the distribution of FinancialWire on Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and elsewhere through malicious interactions with Investors Business Daily. The “Important Notice” from the DTCC regarding the NSCC demonstrates that the entities are a “self-regulatory organization” under the auspices of the SEC, which ramps up the media interference to First Amendment violations. FinancialWire’s counsel, Marshal Shichtman, Esq., is returning to the U.S. today and will be reviewing the new evidence.
The DTCC said that the “approved changes create a uniform standard limiting NSCC’s liability to direct losses caused by the NSCC’s gross negligence, willful misconduct, or violation of Federal securities laws for which there is a private right of action.”
In addition, the organization stated, “the changes memorialize an appropriate commercial standard of care that will protect NSCC for undue liability, permit the resources of NSCC to be appropriately utilized for promoting the accurate clearance and settlement of securities, and are consistent with similar rules adopted by other self-regulatory organizations and approved by the Commission.”
The DTCC had asked for the rule December 8, 2004. It is not known how the proposed rule slipped through the cracks on the public and Congressional levels prior to the approval.
The National Coalition Against Naked Shorting stated that the action was sought and approved hastily because “they have been willfully violating securities laws for years, know that it will come out in court, and want to have a piece of paper to fall back on,” adding that it corroborates “the theory that the stock borrow program violates a host of securities laws, that the NSCC knows it, and that they have been counterfeiting stock for years and just now are starting to catch on to the idea that they will get caught.”
Nazareth was quoted in February in the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) as “doubting” that threshold companies such as Overstock (NASDAQ: OSTK), Martha Stewart Living (NYSE: MSO) or Novastar Financial (NYSE: NFI) were being “manipulated,” and that victims of illegal naked short sales are simply people who want their “stocks to go up.”
She said those who complain of their losses to illegal trading activity have an attitude that “it’s a criminal conspiracy when stocks move the wrong way, and the government should do something about it.”
“What is criminal,” said one who believes Nazareth’s appointment, so far championed by U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Harry Reid (D-NV), would be disastrous for small investors who someday expect justice and a fair playing field in the markets, “is that someone could be in a position of authority at all with this kind of anti-investor attitude.”
In his communication to SEC Chair William Donaldson, Sen. Durbin also contested the claim by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., a unit ot the New York Stock Exchange and NASD, that it has no responsibilities under Regulation SHO.
Senator Durbin’s letter to Donaldson appears to sharply contest the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.’s contention that it has no role in Regulation SHO.
“I am writing to request information regarding the June 23, 2004 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) short sale regulation, designated Regulation SHO. On March 9, 2005, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing on Regulation SHO, in which Chairman Bennett spoke with you about the regulation’s effects on the illegal practice of naked short selling. I thank you for your testimony and I hope that you can follow up on some of my concerns not fully addressed by the Banking Committee hearings.
“I appreciate the efforts of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to control abusive short selling practices. As a result of Regulation SHO, the names of firms with large amounts of unsettled shares are published on the Threshold Security List daily. This list assists individual investors in making informed decisions about potential manipulation of the market, and gives regulators and investigators a centralized list of firms with significant numbers of undelivered shares. However, it has come to my attention that Regulation SHO may not be curtailing abusive naked short selling practices.
“Several of my constituents have contacted me since the SEC introduces Regulation SHO. They have raised concerns about potential loopholes in settlement regulations. During your recent testimony before the Banking Committee, Chairman Bennett asked you about the ability of brokerage houses to shuttle unsettled shares every 13 days in order to avoid settling the borrowed shorted shares. Due to time constraints at the hearing, the committee did not receive a complete answer. This issue is worthy of a full response.
“Additionally, my constituents have expressed concern about SEC enforcement of Regulation SHO. While the Threshold Security List publicizes securities that might have been manipulated, I am concerned that some securities repeatedly appear on the list. What steps is the SEC taking to investigate trading practices that result in vast quantities of unsettled shares, and to punish those people who violate SEC naked short selling regulations? What is the SEC doing to ensure that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is complying with Regulation SHO, and what actions does the SEC undertake when the DTCC identifies large quantities of shares that have not been delivered?
“It is important that the SEC identify abuses and prevent manipulative naked short selling practices that undermine faith in the market. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your timely response,” Senator Durbin concluded.
Wells Fargo had written to Smith:
“The other broker/dealer who is short shares of your security is E*Trade. Though this type of activity makes it difficult to issue physical certificates, it is legal and within regulations.
“There is no definite date by which E*Trade would have to purchase the shares. In many cases, a broker/dealer will sell shares they don't hold hoping that the price will fall. If it does fall, the broker/dealer will buy the shares at that time, and deliver those newly acquired shares, making a profit. If the stock price continues to rise, the broker/dealer will eventually buy the shares and deliver them to prevent any additional losses.
“According to our trading desk, E*Trade was the only broker/dealer offering shares of GLKC yesterday. This has been the case since you originally requested your certificate. Anybody who has purchased this security in that time period has likely purchased the shares from E*Trade.
“You are free to sell the shares anytime. When E*Trade acquires shares, they would be delivered to the current owner. However, a certificate cannot be issued until the shares are actually received.
Pink Sheets head Cromwell Coulson has asked the SEC to publish short positions on all over the counter and bulletin board stocks, and that request is currently in a comment period.
The request for rulemaking, which Coulson has told companies traded on the Pink Sheets, is needed “to make regulators turn on the lights and protect investors from the menance of hidden short selling in the OTC market,” is at http://sec.gov/rules/petitions.shtml
In an email to Donaldson, Coulson had said “I believe that it is very important to require the disclosure of short positions because the lack of transparency is allowing promoters to defraud investors by blaming all selling on naked market maker short selling. Disclosure and transparency can easily remedy the issue.”
In other news on the naked short-selling front known as “StockGate,” adding to what TheStreet.com founder James Cramer calls the “Hedge Fund Relief Act,” the termination of the Uptick Rule, is the fact that those using illegal naked short selling in the past have been granted a kind of amnesty for acts before the first of 2005. The SEC just “grandfathered” those illegally-begotten gains and resultant counterfeit shares into the system, so these windfall gains are now available to downtick with reckless abandon on downticks.
The “grandfathering” admission is at http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/keyregshoissues.htm
In the same document, the SEC has inexplicably stated that not all forms of illegal naked short selling, the equivalent of counterfeiting shares in public companies, are actually “illegal.”
The DTCC actions in the StockGate mire are the most serious, if not notorious since the agent of two SROs, the New York Stock Exchange and NASD is also peopled by some 21 directors whose companies, such as Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER), State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), are unlikely to support the DTCC in what attorney Marshal Shichtman, Esq., has termed “strong-arm” tactics.
The DTCC has admitted it has engaged in an act of censorship of this newsletter in squelching its redistribution by Investors Business Daily, and via Investors Business Daily, to Yahoo Finance, a portal owned by Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), and it is a suspect in the sudden and so far unexplained “postponement” of a widely anticipated expose by Dateline NBC.
In a wide-ranging letter to the DTCC, Robert J. Shapiro has charged statements made by Larry Thompson, DTCC Deputy General Counsel, were “inaccurate or misleading,” and asked the DTCC to correct the record and respond to his comments and questions.
Shapiro is chair of Sonecon LLC, a private economic advisory firm in Washington, D.C., who served as U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs from 1998 to 2001, Vice President and co-founder of the Progressive Policy Institute from 1989 to 1998, and principal economic advisor to Governor William J. Clinton in the 1991-1992 presidential campaign.
He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has been a Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard University, and the Brookings Institution.
Shapiro currently provides economic analysis to the law firms of O’Quinn, Laminack and Pirtle, Christian, Smith and Jewell, and Heard, Robins, Cloud, Lubel and Greenwood, on issues associated with naked short sales, which he noted includes “matters raised in an interview published by @DTCC with DTCC deputy general counsel Larry Thompson.”
He asserts the following in his letter:
Thompson begins by asserting that “the extent to which [naked short selling] occurs is in dispute.” While this statement may be narrowly correct, objective academic analysis has established that naked short selling has been a widespread practice and one which, when allowed to persist, can pose a threat to the integrity of equity markets. A recent study by Dr. Leslie Boni, then a visiting financial economist at the SEC, analyzed NSCC data and found that on three random days, an average of more than 700 listed stocks had failures-to-deliver of 60 million-to-120 million shares sold short – naked shorts – that had persisted for at least two months. In addition, over 800 unlisted stocks on any day had fails of 120 million-to-180 million shares sold short that also had persisted for at least two months. The total number of naked shorts, including those that had persisted for less than two months, was presumably considerably greater.
Regarding the extent of naked shorts, Thompson has provided closely-related additional information: “fails to deliver and receive amount to about $6 billion daily…including both new fails and aged fails.” Thompson minimizes this total by comparing it to “just under $400 billion in trades (emphasis added) processed daily by NSCC, or about 1.5% of the dollar volume.” By most people’s standards, a problem involving hundreds of millions of shares valued at $6 billion every day is a very large problem. Moreover, the $6 billion total substantially underestimates the actual value of all failed-to-deliver trades measured when the trades actually occurred. Most of the $6 billion total represents uncovered or naked short sales, many of which have gone undelivered for weeks or months with their market price being marked-to-market every day. As a stock’s price falls, the market price of naked shorts in that stock also declines, reducing the total value of the outstanding failures-to-deliver cited by Thompson.
In other respects, Thompson’s comparison to the “$400 billion in trades processed daily by NSCC” seems disingenuous and misleading, because that $400 billion total covers not only U.S. equity trades which can involve most of the failures-to-deliver at issue, but many other transactions also processed by the NSCC. The value of all equity transactions on U.S. markets in 2004, for example, averaged $82.3 billion/day. If Thompson is correct that the daily value of fails-to-deliver averages $6 billion, that total is equivalent to 7.2 percent of average daily equity trades or nearly five times the 1.5 percent level suggested by Thompson. Furthermore, the DTCC reports on its website that on a peak day, “through its Continuous Net Settlement (CNS) system, NSCC eliminated the need to settle 96 percent of total obligations.” Assuming that CNS nets out the same proportion of trades on other days, $384 billion of the $400 billion in daily trades cited by Thompson are netted out, leaving only $16 billion in daily trades that require the actual delivery of securities. The $6 billion of fails-to-deliver securities existing on any day are equivalent to 37.5 percent of the average daily trades that require the delivery of securities, or 25 times the 1.5 percent level cited by Thompson.
Thompson tries to explain the large numbers of shares that go undelivered – in most cases arising from naked short sales -- by citing problems with paper certificates, inevitable human error, and the legitimate operations of market makers. This also seems misleading or disingenuous. Regarding problems with paper certificates, the DTCC estimates that 97 percent of all stock certificates are now kept in electronic form. Nor can human error or legitimate market-making operations explain the high levels of failures-to-deliver that persist for months – on any day, an average of 180 million-to-300 million shares have gone undelivered for two months or longer – as documented by Dr. Boni’s analysis of NSCC data.
Thompson also disparages the attorneys who represent companies that have been damaged or destroyed by massive naked short sales, and their shareholders, by claiming falsely that the cases in this matter have almost all been dismissed or withdrawn. The legal firms that I advise -- O’Quinn, Petrie and Laminack; Christian, Smith and Jewell; and Heard, Robins, Cloud, Lubel and Greenwood – have not lost any motions against the DTCC or its affiliates and currently have one case against the DTCC pending in Nevada and another case against the DTCC pending in Arkansas. In addition, on February 24, 2005, these attorneys were granted an order by the New York Supreme Court ordering the DTCC to produce trading records involving two companies they represent, including records from the Stock Borrow program, which may establish whether large-scale naked short sales were used to manipulate and drive down the stock price of those two companies.
Thompson also asserts that the plaintiffs suing the DTCC for damages associated with the handling of naked short sales rely on “theories [that] are not an accurate reflection of how the capital market system actually works.” This assertion is inaccurate. There is no dispute about how the capital markets work -- nor any doubt that naked short sales have been used to manipulate and drive down the price of stocks, as seen in numerous death-spiral financing cases. The issue here is the DTCC’s role in allowing or facilitating such stock manipulation through its treatment of extended naked short sales.
In explaining the DTCC’s role in these matters, Thompson rejects the claim that the NSCC’s Stock Borrow program allows the same shares to be lent over and over again, potentially creating more shares than actually exist or “phantom” shares. By Thompson’s own account, shares borrowed by the NSCC to settle naked short sales are deducted from the lending member’s DTC account and credited to the DTC account of the member to whom the shares have been sold. Therefore, those same shares become available to be re-borrowed to settle another naked short sale and, if that happens, to be re-borrowed again and again to settle a succession of naked short sales. Throughout this process, the actual short sellers may continue to fail-to-deliver the shares to cover their shorts and, as Dr. Boni’s analysis of NSCC data found, the underlying failure can age for months or even years. The process which Thompson describes is one in which shares can be borrowed and lent over and over again, introducing more shares into the market than are legally registered and issued. If any ambiguity remains, Thompson can clarify it by responding to the following query: Once a share that has been borrowed through the NSCC Stock Borrow program is delivered to the purchaser, is that share restricted in any way so it cannot be lent again?
It is important to note that the Stock Borrow program is used when continuous net settlement cannot locate the shares to settle. As a consequence, Stock Borrow is usually called into play when there are relatively few shares available for borrowing. These are propitious conditions for market manipulation: Unscrupulous short sellers undertake large-scale naked short sales involving stocks for which few shares are available for trading and lending, relying on the Stock Borrow program to borrow the limited available shares, again and again, at sufficient levels to drive down the market price of the shares.
Thompson notes that of approximately $6 billion in outstanding failures-to-deliver existing on any day, “the Stock Borrow program is able to resolve about $1.1 billion … or about 20% [18 percent] of the total fail obligation.” In this statement, Thompson raises very serious questions about the integrity and operations of the NSCC and DTCC, which he can clarify by responding to the following queries: If the Stock Borrow program “resolves” only 18 percent of total fails, what is the disposition of the remaining 82 percent of outstanding fails? When failures-to-deliver occur that are not resolved through Stock Borrow, does the NSCC credit the undelivered shares to the member representing the buyer, creating genuine “phantom shares”? Finally, how many shares do the borrowing brokers, clearing firms and other participants in the Stock Borrow program owe the NSCC on a typical day, and what is their total value?
In a related matter, Thompson tries to distance the DTCC from charges that shares held in restricted accounts – for example, cash accounts, retirement accounts and many institutional accounts – are improperly lent through the Stock Borrow program by claiming that responsibility for segregating restricted shares from lendable shares falls to the “broker and bank members” of the DTCC, while responsibility for monitoring or regulating their performance in this matter falls to the stock exchanges and the SEC. As a trust company, the DTCC cannot hold that it has no role, duty or responsibility to ensure the probity of its operations. Thompson could address this issue by responding to the following queries: What procedures does the NSCC have to ensure that shares held in members’ accounts for possible loan through the NSCC Stock Borrow program are unencumbered by regulatory or legal restrictions from being pledged or assigned and eligible to be borrowed? On any given day, how many participants in the Stock Borrow program have lent shares that exceed their lendable shares, in what numbers and of what value?
Thompson also tries to distance the DTCC as far as possible from the naked short selling that generates most of the extended failures-to-deliver: “We don’t have any power or legal authority to regulate or stop short selling, naked or otherwise. We also have no power to force member firms to close out or resolve fails to deliver … we don’t even see whether a sale is short or not.” In fact, the DTCC chooses to not distinguish short sales from long sales, chooses to not regulate or stop extended naked short sales, and chooses to not force member firms to resolve protracted naked short sales.
First, Regulation SHO requires that all transactions be clearly marked short or long. If the DTCC and NSCC do not know whether sales are short or long as Thompson contends, they choose to not know. Second, the NSCC has a clear responsibility and adequate means to stop naked short sales of extended duration, with no legal barrier that would prevent them from so doing. As a trust company with an acknowledged duty to provide investors certainty in the settlement and clearance of equity transactions, the DTCC chose to carry out that duty by assuming the role of counterparty to both sides of every equity transaction, through the operations of the NSCC’s CNS system and the Stock Borrow program. By allowing short sellers to fail-to-deliver shares for months or even years, the NSCC clearly fails to provide certainty in settlement to the buyers, sellers and issuers of securities. Since it is widely known that extended naked short sales have been used to manipulate stock prices in cases of death-spiral financing, and the NSCC created the Stock Borrow program to address failures-to-deliver that prominently include naked short sales, the NSCC and DTCC share a responsibility with the SEC and the stock exchanges to protect investors by resolving extended fails.
Third, the DTCC and NSCC have the clear capacity to force member firms to resolve the extended failures-to-deliver of their customers by purchasing shares on the open market and deducting the cost from the member’s account. A 2003 study by Dr. Richard Evans and others provides evidence that forced buy-ins by any party occur very rarely. They found that a major options market maker who failed to deliver all or a portion of shares sold in 69,063 transactions in 1998-1999 was bought-in only 86 times or barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the fails. Thompson can clarify investors’ understanding of their operations by responding to the following query: What proportion of shares that are persistent fails-to-deliver, of one month or longer, are ever bought in?
Thompson acknowledges that the DTCC and NSCC know precisely how many failures-to-deliver exist for each stock and the precise duration of each of these fails. Yet, the DTCC refuses to disclose this information even to the issuer of the stock in question, which Thompson justifies by citing “NSCC rules” prohibiting such a release of data based on “the obvious reason that the trading data we receive could be used to manipulate the market, as well as reveal trading patterns of individual firms.” This response is both disingenuous and revealing. We know now, for the first time, that the DTCC has full knowledge of the extent of protracted, large-scale naked short sales in all particular cases. We also know now that the DTCC has had this information for at least a decade, since Thompson also notes that “fails, as a percentage of total trading, hasn’t changed in the last 10 years.” Yet, based on the DTCC’s own rules, it allowed these abuses to persist and fester. The DTCC and NSCC can change their rules at any time. Moreover, in this case, those rules are unjustified. Data documenting outstanding short sales in each stock are currently issued publicly, so further data on how many of those short sales are naked would not reveal additional information about the trading patterns of individual firms or in any way empower manipulators. In fact, the DTCC could substantially disarm manipulators by both publicly reporting naked short sales in each issue and pledging to force buy-ins of all naked short sales that persist for more than a limited period.
Surely, if large-scale, extended naked short sales have effectively created “phantom” shares, companies have a responsibility to their shareholders and the right to secure this information from the organization which manages the settlement of short sales. At a minimum, the DTCC should respond to requests by issuers for data on extended failures-to-deliver in their own stocks, both in the past and currently, so they can take steps to resist stock manipulators or bring them to account for past manipulation.
Thompson also claims that the DTCC did not create or manage the Stock Borrow program to serve its own financial interest, insisting that the service generates less than $2 million a year in direct fees to the DTCC and that all DTCC services are priced on a “not for profit” basis that seeks to match revenues with expenses. Without further information, these responses beg the question of whose private financial interest has been served by the Stock Borrow program, especially as the DTCC is owned by the stock markets, clearinghouses, brokerage and banking institutions that use its services. Thompson and the DTCC can clarify this serious matter by responding to the following queries: Do DTCC participant/owners receive interest or other payments through or from the Stock Borrow program for lending the shares of their customers and, if so, how much have they received for these activities over the last 10 years? Further, do DTCC participant/owners receive any dividend, interest or other payments or distributions from the DTCC or its subsidiaries?, Shapiro concluded.
In a recent editorial, Investrend Information head Gayle Essary questioned whether the board and principal shareholders would “be party to shenanigans that lead to the censorship or disabling of any media” that he says is “un-American activity.”
The DTCC’s letter to Investrend’s counsel, Marshal Shichtman, Esq., is posted at http://www.investrend.com/Admin/Topics/Articles/Resources/349_1113403487.pdf
Essary said that the arrogance the DTCC expressed in its censorship efforts shows that the entity has “become too large, too encompassing, too powerful, too unresponsive to those it serves, primarily the investing public, and too unresponsive to the Congress under whose auspices it should be operating.
“First, it is time to unconflict it, with real public representations on its board,” he said, and second, “it is time to break it up, with its various duties provided by smaller agencies under separate unconflicted boards.”
DTCC board members include Michael C. Bodson, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD); Gary Bullock, Global Head of Logistics, Infrastructure, UBS Investment Bank (NYSE: UBS); Stephen P. Casper, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc.; Jill M. Considine,Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC);
Also, Paul F. Costello, President, Business Services Group, Wachovia Securities (NYSE: WB); John W. Cummings, Senior Vice President & Head of Global Technology & Services, Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER); Donald F. Donahue, Chief Operating Officer, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC); Norman Eaker, General Partner, Edward Jones; George Hrabovsky, President, Alliance Global Investors Service; Catherine R. Kinney, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, New York Stock Exchange; Thomas J. McCrossan, Executive Vice President, State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT); Bradley Abelow, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS); Jonathan E. Beyman, Chief Information Officer, Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH); and Frank J. Bisignano, Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Citigroup / Solomon Smith Barney's Corporate Investment Bank (NYSE: C), Eileen K. Murray, Managing Director, Credit Suisse First Boston (NYSE: CSR); James P. Palermo, Vice Chairman, Mellon Financial Corporation (NYSE: MEL); Thomas J. Perna, Senior Executive Vice President, Financial Companies Services Sector of The Bank of New York (NYSE: BNY); Ronald Purpora, Chief Executive Officer, Garban LLC; Douglas Shulman, President, Regulatory Services and Operations, NASD; and Thompson M. Swayne, Executive Vice President, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).
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Stakddek
Sorry if this has been posted, found it interesting.
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http://www.um-jmh.org/body.cfm?id=1817
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Stakddek
Hi Ann: Yeah we are the test animals. And we pay to participate! Nice to know we'll have DNAP on our side someday soon.
Stakddek
"If I knew I was gonna' live this long I woulda' taken better care of myself when I was younger!"
Some doctors shake hands with the Devil:
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http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2005/feature_2005-06-16.cfm
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Feature - June 16, 2005
Pill Poppers
Doctors “just say no” to drug company hype and freebies.
by Ted McDonough
Next time you’re watching TV and feel that sudden urge to “ask your doctor” about your cholesterol level or heartburn, you may want to ask more than simply, “Is the advertised drug ‘right for me?’” Is the expensive pill you want, aside from its pretty color, any different than the one you are already taking? More importantly, does your doctor accept lunch, cash or other freebies from drug companies?
While you’re at it, ask yourself this question: Do you need the drugs, or do the drugs need you?
St. George physician Catherine Bonomo, 46, tries to get her patients, and other doctors, to ask those questions every day. Mostly she finds it’s like hitting her head against a wall.
“You see a commercial on TV 75 times and these nice people on television are telling you this is the medicine you need. They are happy people, floating around. Their lives are good. That is already ingrained in your memory bank. You go to visit the doctor. He makes an attempt to explain to you why this medicine may not be the one for you, but you’ve already been conditioned,” Bonomo says.
It’s an increasingly common predicament for doctors: patients showing up pre-diagnosed by advertising and demanding a drug by brand name. Try suggesting a different drug, or be even bolder—like Bonomo—and tell the patient they don’t need the drug at all, that drug companies may be no different from other salesmen, and you’ll get an earful.
“A few [patients] are receptive, but most of them aren’t,” says Bonomo. “They get frustrated. ‘But it was on TV, so it must be true.’”
Bonomo doesn’t give in. “I make a few people unhappy, but I think medicine is one of those fields that you have to maintain some integrity and some intellectual honesty about what you’re doing. There are business aspects about medicine, but I would hope that most physicians would remember that it’s a little bit more than that.”
Bonomo is hyperaware of the impact of drug-company marketing on patients and the doctors who serve them. She is the only physician in the state of Utah to have sworn off the drug companies—at least officially. Bonomo said drug companies are not all bad: “They peddle some good drugs,” she says. What she doesn’t want is for her medical decisions to be influenced by advertising.
Her quarters at the emergency department of Dixie Regional Medical Center are remarkable for being devoid of pens and calendars bearing logos of pharmaceutical manufacturers. She gets quizzical looks from fellow doctors and patients for the “No Free Lunch” button she wears on her scrubs every day to work. It’s the moniker of a growing movement of physicians who say they can’t be bought off by drug-company giveaways. The same sort of giveaways—free lunches, golfing junkets, cash “consulting fees,” or, a past drug-company favorite, ski vacations to Utah—that were once the staples of U.S. congressmen until public outrage put a stop to them.
For all the money drug companies spend advertising new or improved products—around $4 billion last year—it’s just a tiny portion of the amount drug companies spend to sell their wares in other ways. The total marketing budget of U.S. pharmaceutical companies—everything from ads, to sponsoring medical conferences to buying lunch for doctors—topped $22 billion in 2003, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales for its drug-industry clients. The vast majority of that $22 billion went to directly influence doctors, primarily through $16 billion worth of free drug samples delivered to physicians’ offices by an army of drug reps bearing lunch.
Doctors are routinely paid “consulting” fees to listen to drug-company talks at resorts. And drug companies are significant sponsors of lectures at medical schools and conferences where doctors sit through required continuing medical education courses. In Utah, Bonomo isn’t altogether alone in fighting such tactics. At the University of Utah School of Medicine, American Medical Student Association co-president Nick Warner says he is having little luck trying to get fellow students to “just say no” to the drug reps who routinely take third- and fourth-year students to lunch.
What Drug Companies Feed On
In a recent book, Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, takes issue with the long-touted pharmaceutical-industry assertion that drug prices are high because pharmaceutical companies invest so much in researching new cures for the world’s diseases. Angell claims drug-company marketing budgets now far outstrip the amount spent on research and development. By her estimate, twice as much is spent selling drugs as researching them.
“The drug companies have done very little recently that’s new,” Angell said from her home in Cambridge, Mass., pointing out that cholesterol-lowering Lipitor, the best-selling drug in the world, is patterned after a drug that came on the market in the mid-1980s. “In most cases the basic research is publicly funded, done mainly in universities with [National Institutes of Health] funding. … That’s what they feed on.”
Angell, author of The Truth About the Drug Companies, claims what research drug companies do is devoted to creating their own versions of drugs already invented by others, resulting in an assembly-line stream of pills barely better than generic versions available for years.
Pharmaceutical companies have essentially turned into marketing machines, she says, concerned mostly with promoting diseases to fit the drugs they make. Developing a cure for a previously incurable disease is much less profitable than, for example, making a slight change to the makeup of an existing drug, patenting it, coloring the resulting pill purple and selling it as something new and expensive, as happened with Nexium, the “Purple Pill,” which is chemically similar to AstraZeneca’s earlier acid-reducing drug.
Instead of research, Angell claims the pharmaceutical industry spends most of its time making up scary names for common ailments to sell drugs of little value to a wealthy population. Meanwhile, the industry largely eschews research on diseases such as malaria that kill thousands of the poor.
It’s the market at work, Angell says. “There are more healthy people in the country than there are sick people, so if you want a really big market what you are going to do is push drugs to essentially healthy people,” she said. “If you look at direct-to-consumer advertising, you see that much of it is promoting a medical condition, not a drug, so that people will think that they need drugs when they may not need them.”
She blames drug-company ads for duping many into believing they have “dubious or exaggerated ailments” such as “generalized anxiety disorder”—otherwise known as shyness, “premenstrual dysphoric disorder”—aka PMS, or “gastro esophageal reflux disease”—aka GERD.
Today, thousands of Americans have prescriptions for Nexium—the fourth-best-selling drug in the country—or similar prescription drugs developed to treat the serious problems of stomach acid eating the esophagus. Many, Angell alleges, just have heartburn.
“The implication in the direct-to-consumer ads is if you have heartburn you’re well on your way to cancer of the esophagus,” Angell said with a sarcastic laugh. “It’s playing into a drug-intensive style of medicine that teaches for every ailment or discontent there is a pill. For most people who have heartburn, the best way to treat it is probably to lose a little weight, get out and take a walk or drink a glass of milk, but that somehow is seen as less good than taking a prescription drug.”
An ongoing class-action lawsuit alleges AstraZeneca duped the nation by heavily marketing Nexium just as its old version of the drug was losing patent protection, opening it up for competition from generics.
Drugmaker Eli Lilly took a similar tack when it got approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the antidepressant Prozac for severe premenstrual syndrome. It colored the drug pink and sold it as Sarafem, a “new” drug that costs several times the now-generic Prozac. The condition the drug is supposed to treat has never been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, but the APA is now considering adding “premenstrual dysphoric disorder” to its manual of mental problems based on the FDA approving a drug for it.
Of 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only 17 were new chemical compounds, Angell claims. None of the new drugs put out by U.S. drug companies that year were classified by the FDA as likely improvements over drugs already on the market. And, she notes, drug companies are taking more in profits than any other industry, a 17 percent average profit rake for the top 10 American drug companies in 2002, compared to 3 percent average profits for other Fortune 500 companies.
The No Free Lunch Bunch
Bonomo says most of her professional colleagues deny that drug-company gifts—a slice of pizza or a few logo-emblazoned pens—influence their prescribing habits. However, she knows the impact is real because she sees new drugs in circulation at the hospital where she works every time the drug reps pay a visit. Too often, Bonomo said, a drug rep arriving with lunch from the Olive Garden substitutes for careful review of the medical journals when it comes time to decide which drugs to buy.
Her outlook on drug-company marketing differs because she didn’t enter the medical profession believing perks and constant advertising came with the job.
In her mid-40s, Bonomo has been a doctor just four years. She never thought about entering medical school until after her two children were raised and she was divorced. Then, “I decided if my life is going to change, it ought to really change,” said Bonomo, a former ambulance driver.
Bonomo entered the University of Utah School of Medicine at age 33. She served her medical residency in Los Angeles under a doctor who was a member of No Free Lunch, a New York organization enlisting physicians nationwide with the pledge to “accept no money, gifts or hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry” and “seek unbiased sources of information” apart from drug-company marketers about which drugs are best for their patients.
Bonomo later signed up with No Free Lunch herself because she is convinced the ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment are now so tight that many doctors can’t tell the difference. The result, Bonomo believes, is that some ineffective, possibly dangerous, treatments have become standard despite scientific evidence against them.
Her prime example is the promotion of a blood-clot-busting drug as something of a miracle cure for stroke. The treatment became standard in 2000 when the American Heart Association (AHA) trumpeted that the drug “saved lives” in stroke victims—a claim withdrawn when it came to light the drug’s maker, Genentech, had built the heart association a new conference center.
The AHA’s green light came despite several studies showing that, unless given very carefully, stroke patients given the drug were up to three times as likely to die as patients given a placebo.
Still, ask any doctor today, and nine out of 10 will tell you to administer the drug within three hours of a stroke, Bonomo says.
“The scientific evidence out there does not support this; in fact, it says just the opposite,” said Bonomo, her voice rising. “But this was pushed and marketed so heavily by the pharmaceutical companies that it has been entrenched into the thought processes of many physicians.”
Eight of nine AHA experts who wrote the stroke guidelines had financial ties to the drugmaker. That is not uncommon. In a 2002 review, The Journal of the American Medical Association found 60 percent of doctors defending a drug’s use had relationships with the drug’s makers. Drug companies provide a significant portion of the budget for the FDA. One-third of the experts who recently recommended putting Vioxx and other arthritis medications recalled for increasing the risk of heart attack back on the market worked as consultants to makers of the drugs, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Vioxx is just the most prominent example of alleged bad behavior by drug companies. Patients and lawyers are lining up in huge class-action lawsuits against the makers of some of the most popular medications. Allegations range from hiding information about dangerous side effects, to price-fixing, to paying other drug companies not to market generic versions, to cornering the market on a drug’s active ingredient, then hiking prices.
In April, Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, announced settlements in two lawsuits against drugmakers. In one, Pfizer subsidiary Warner-Lambert paid Utah $1 million to settle Medicaid fraud allegations Shurtleff said demonstrated “the company was more concerned about profits than the health of its customers.”
The company was charged with illegally promoting its epilepsy drug Neurontin for a long list of unapproved conditions, including bipolar disorder for which the drug was found to have no effect. Allegations included paying doctors illegal kickbacks to promote the “off-label” uses, lying about the drug’s safety in medical literature and illegally billing Medicaid. The 50-state $430 million settlement paled in comparison to the drug’s $2.7 billion in sales for 2003, 90 percent of which came through “off-label” prescriptions.
Among the biggest lawsuits are giant class-action cases against the makers of antidepressants linked to suicide in young people and arthritis drugs, like Vioxx, found to promote heart attacks. Scares over some arthritis drugs were exacerbated by revelations that drug companies knew of problems, but hadn’t made findings public.
Among the most startling aspects of Vioxx to anyone who has seen television commercials for the drug is that while it is one of the best-selling medications for arthritis—$1.3 billion in 2004—it has never been proven any better than aspirin at relieving pain. The drug’s maker never claimed it was—at least not in the medical literature—where its benefit was given as a lower incidence of ulcers.
It’s one of the drugs Angell argues is more marketing than drug. “For most Americans, and certainly for Americans who have good insurance, we’re overmedicated,” she says. And in many cases “we’re taking drugs that have never been shown to be more effective or safer than older, cheaper drugs.”
Among the “ask your doctor” television ads running in recent months, one tells viewers that although they may think they have their cholesterol under control, they should think again. That’s because the definition of high cholesterol was changed last year. Eight of nine experts who sat on the government National Cholesterol Education Program panel that recommended the new guidelines had financial ties to companies marketing cholesterol-lowering drugs, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In a letter of complaint, the Center noted no studies had proven that increasing use of such drugs helped elderly men likely to take them, but the drugs were known to increase the risk of cancer.
Angell claims the big drug companies control not only the drug-approval panels, but, with heavy political contributions, call all the shots in Congress. Last year, Congress passed a law creating a new drug benefit for Medicare. The industry successfully lobbied for a line in the legislation specifically barring the nation’s Department of Health and Human Services—now headed by former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt—from negotiating lower drug prices. The administration argues the free market will provide lower prices than a government monopoly.
Tommy Thompson, Leavitt’s predecessor in the HHS job, loudly grumbled about the negotiation ban, but Leavitt—to whom the drug-company lobby gave $9,500 over his last two Utah gubernatorial races—hasn’t argued against the policy. The new federal coverage for seniors’ drugs is projected to increase drug-company profits by 38 percent over its first eight years.
Ethics and Erectile Dysfunction
The shock troops in the drug companies’ selling efforts are the “detail men” who descend daily on hospitals, medical schools and doctors’ offices.
“They’ll come in with pizzas. I’ve seen them come in with shaved ice machines, doughnuts, sometimes meals, drop them off in the back, say, ‘Hi,’ smile a lot. They look nice,” Bonomo said, her measured doctor voice giving way to her more usual folksy speech pattern. “They will drop off food, but they also will drop off pens, napkins or calendars, something so their name is seen over and over and over and over again.”
Under pressure from doctors like Bonomo, the drug companies’ lobbying association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), came up with a new code of ethics in 2002 instructing member companies in the ways of influencing doctors. Under the rules, giving doctors cash for writing prescriptions is bad—not to mention illegal. Paying doctors a handsome “consulting” fee to come to a resort golf course for training as company “speakers,” however, is just fine.
So, while pharmaceutical companies cannot bribe docs directly, they can form alliances with them in plenty of other ways, just as political lobbyists often form alliances with elected officials. One maker of a popular erectile-dysfunction drug paid doctors cash after they wrote prescriptions. Ostensibly the money was to compensate doctors for time spent enrolling the newly prescribed patients in a study.
The practice is perfectly acceptable under PhRMA’s ethical guidelines and there is no formal regulation. The rules are purely voluntary.
The American College of Physicians also has a new ethics manual strongly discouraging doctors from accepting “gifts, hospitality, trips and subsidies of all types.” But that didn’t stop the ACP from financing its annual meeting, in April, largely through the drug industry. Drug companies were inspired to fork over money to sponsor $60,000 in tote bags after ACP’s promise that the annual meeting “offers an unparalleled opportunity to meet with physicians of power—prescribing power.” No Free Lunch asked to exhibit but was turned down.
PhRMA spokesman Jeff Trewhitt notes that a large portion of drug-company-marketing spending goes for free samples that give doctors “early hands-on experience with a new medicine” and often are the only source of medication for the poor.
But the more drug companies advertise products, the worse the public’s view of the industry, polls show. PhRMA now recognizes that the brand as a whole needs promotion. As the industry struggles not to become the next “big tobacco” in the mind of the public, PhRMA is getting ready to counter what Trewhitt calls a “barrage of distorted allegations.” If you thought the television was filled with drug ads before, get ready for a blitz.
Trewhitt said PhRMA will be “talking about the innovation of the industry” and advertising its efforts to get drugs into the hands of the one-fourth of Americans who don’t have drug coverage. A new wave of drug-industry commercials already has aired touting drug-giveaway programs for the indigent, to whom PhRMA member companies provided about 40 million free prescriptions during the past two years.
The ads may be just in time. Bonomo is the only No Free Lunch member in Utah, but following last year’s scandals of allegedly dangerous—but widely advertised—drugs being pulled off the market, there is a growing wave of suspicion of the pharmaceutical companies.
In Salt Lake City, family doctor Ross Brunetti hasn’t officially sworn off the drug companies, but he has taken an increasingly common position of limiting his interactions with their reps, whom he refers to as “overdressed used-car salesmen.”
He says he doesn’t have a choice. The number of drug reps plying their wares doubled in the late 1990s reaching the point where, today, there is more than one drug rep for every five office physicians. If Brunetti visited with every rep who dropped by his office, that would be all he could do. He estimates that six reps drop by his office every morning, followed by six more in the afternoon.
“In a week, I might see three people trying to sell me the same thing,” he said. “On Friday, when they want to get out early and go skiing, they’re all here, all in the morning. There are more drug reps than patients. It’s like a minefield.”
Brunetti is offended by the sheer amount of money spent peddling drugs, which he believes drives up costs, but he also thinks constant meetings with drug salespeople are a serious liability issue for doctors. “The biggest cause of medical malpractice is interruptions. That’s their job, to interrupt me. I don’t let ’em. I let ’em stand there ’til I’m good and done with a patient,” he said.
“As far as we’re concerned [drug reps] are lying when their lips are moving,” he said. “We tolerate them only because they leave [drug] samples for people who can’t pay.”
The charity drug programs PhRMA is touting in new ads provide a large portion of the prescriptions issued through the Salt Lake Community Health Centers. David Keahey, a physicians assistant who regularly volunteers at the Central City clinic, appreciates the programs, but says the drug companies aren’t giving it away strictly out of the goodness of their hearts.
The drug companies “have donated a lot of stuff over the years,” he said. “There is another issue. The drug companies, in my opinion, do this not only out of a sense of altruism … but to keep the status quo. They can say, ‘Well, we’re taking care of the problem, we have these programs so we’re doing our part.’”
Twenty years ago, when Keahey began volunteering, drug companies helped by dropping off large numbers of samples. Now, the samples largely have been replaced by charity programs and accompanying large amounts of red tape with which not all low-income clinics can cope.
Keahey’s clinic has resorted to hiring employees who do nothing but fill out drug-company forms. Keahey can’t see much reason for the constant form filling, but noted “anytime you put requirements of paperwork and bureaucracy between patients and service you’re going to reduce utilization.”
Angell remains one of the biggest thorns in the side of the industry. PhRMA’s Website prominently featured a lengthy rebuttal to her book, particularly her claim that drug companies skimp on research spending in favor of marketing and profit.
The drug industry argues with Angell’s numbers, saying she incorrectly lumps administrative costs with marketing when she compares advertising to research spending. Angell shoots back that most drug companies report the costs together, “which obfuscates how much they spend on both.” PhRMA’s numbers, she claims, leave out billions spent on so-called “education” of doctors through sponsorship of medical conferences and meetings of professional societies.
The industry’s own numbers show marketing making up a huge portion of spending, $21 billion in 2003 compared to $33 billion spent on research and development.
PhRMA also looks to different statistics to refute Angell’s allegation that drug companies sponge off government research. Trewhitt points to a 2001 study by Congress that found nearly all top-selling drugs that year were developed without help from the government. Angell says that’s a misreading of the report that found four drugs were certainly developed without government help but couldn’t make a determination for many others because of missing records.
Trewhitt acknowledges the nation faces a drug “crisis,” but paints the problem as one of lack of insurance coverage to pay for drugs.
The drug companies argue it’s a whole new world. Spending on drugs is increasing because drugs are now available to treat and prevent conditions that used to land people in the hospital. Under this analysis, the growing chunk of the health-care pie that goes for cholesterol drugs, for example, is made up for by savings on heart surgeries. Bottom line: Everyone may be on something, but we’ll all be healthier for it.
Indeed, more Americans are medicated than ever before. In the past decade the number of prescriptions ingested by Americans has jumped by two-thirds, according to IMS Health. Americans lead the world in per-person drug purchases, spending 18 percent more than France, the next leading drug-consumer, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Sales have increased at an average rate of 11 percent per year during the past five years. A significant increase also has been recorded in bad drug reactions reported to the FDA, which went up more than 200 percent during the past decade.
To criticism that U.S. drug companies aren’t inventing many new drugs, Trewhitt acknowledges “it would appear” to be the case, but adds that’s a temporary phenomenon. Inventing drugs is a lot harder than it used to be, Trewhitt said. Drug companies are geared to solve medical problems with chemicals, but today’s unsolved conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, must be cured through still-developing biotechnology. “This is a steep learning process for many companies as they make the transition,” he said.
While pharmaceutical companies remain among the most profitable in the nation, it’s getting harder to make a buck as competition heats up and health plans lean on patients to use low-cost generic drugs, notes IMS Health.
“A single point of market share can mean tens of millions of dollars of profitability,” states the Website of IMS Health, which keeps detailed lists of doctors’ prescribing habits to help drugmakers identify “key prescribers driving brand performance.”
“Now, more than ever, brand managers are facing increased pressure to achieve aggressive revenue targets with tighter budgets,” the Website notes. “Marketers must optimize brand performance … focusing on reaching every stakeholder, from physicians to consumers.”
The Website might just as well have added “reaching politicians,” another target of pharmaceutical company largesse.
As the political debate over drug costs heats up, drug companies are making sure politicians know where their bread is buttered. In Washington, D.C., Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch is ferried to speeches in drug-company jets. In Utah, the State Health Department is encountering resistance to its idea for controlling Medicaid spending by promoting generic drug use. The department estimated a generic shift could help save $12 million per year, but some legislators balked, citing states that have tried similar tactics only to lose money on new bureaucracy. Drugmakers gave Utah lawmakers more than $56,000 for last year’s elections.
Increasingly, industry critics see little difference between such campaign contributions and the freebies and cash provided to doctors.
What the typical patient doesn’t know, Bonomo says, is that the typical physician doesn’t know a whole lot about drugs. Reading scientific studies isn’t in the standard course for doctors. While there are widely available sources of information on drugs not written by the drug companies, reading the literature dropped off by the drug reps, along with a pizza, is much easier.
Sporting her “No Free Lunch” badge, Bonomo often gets looked at like she’s a crazy person. She sometimes feels like a lone prophet in the wilderness decrying the false God raining doughnuts and drug samples from the sky.
Often, she’ll walk in on a group of doctors surrounding a pizza dropped off by a drug rep and chide them, “You’re selling your soul to the devil. You guys are eating the drug food again. Haven’t you been listening to me?”
Sometimes, when she hasn’t eaten for 10 hours, that slice of pizza looks good. But “No Free Lunch” Bonomo keeps her fast.
Salt Lake City Weekly and slweekly.com ©1996-2005 Copperfield Publishing, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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offices: 248 S. Main Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101
801-575-7003
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Stakddek
Stock Rookie: Is this the story you refer to?
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http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzdrug4303311jun14,0,6170592.story?coll=ny-business-headlines
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Patents can't restrict drug research
Supreme Court rules proprietary compounds can be used as long as medicines aren't sold before patents expire
BY KATHLEEN KERR
STAFF WRITER; The Associated Press contributed to this story.
June 14, 2005
Pharmaceutical businesses researching new medical treatments do not have to pay royalties to use patented inventions developed by other companies in their work, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
The court's unanimous ruling means drug and biotech companies may use patented compounds to research new products, providing they do not bring them to market before the patents expire.
The court's decision benefits large pharmaceutical and biotech companies by freeing them to use the patented work of smaller business without paying for it.
In the decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court said federal law "provides a wide berth for the use of patented drugs in activities related to the federal regulatory process."
The court set aside a $6.37-million lower court jury verdict against Merck KGaA, a German drug manufacturer. The company is not related to the U.S. company Merck & Co. based in Whitehouse Station, N.J.
Merck used certain molecules patented by Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corp., headquartered in Plainsboro, N.J., to develop a cancer drug - now being tested on humans in clinical trials - that may cut off blood flow to tumors. The molecules patented by Integra contain an amino acid sequence that might accomplish that.
Integra objected to Merck's use of its compound, arguing it was patented until 2006, and sued for patent infringement. Integra officials did not return a telephone call seeking comment.
"I think the headline for us is this was a grand slam home run for the pharmaceutical industry and for patients," E. Joshua Rosenkranz, the lead attorney for Merck, said yesterday. "The court made it clear there's latitude for drug companies to do the sort of research they need to do to bring promising therapies to needy patients."
Rosenkranz pointed to a 1984 federal law that allows pharmaceutical companies to get a head start on drug research by using patented inventions - when such work is aimed at obtaining Food and Drug Administration approval and does not result in product sales until a patent expires.
"It's a big win," said Sarah Lock, a senior attorney for AARP, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Americans 50 and older. "With rising prescription drug costs, consumers are feeling pinched. Consumers are going to end up saving money."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had ruled in 2004 that the 1984 exemption from patent law did not apply to exploratory research on animals, which is what Merck was doing when Integra sued.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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I don't know if I would extrapolate this decision to DNAP, and if it is a matter of patent expiry, we hae no worry about expirations as of yet. Of course Merck or other pharma giants just love to stand on the shoulders of others, even if it means grinding thier face into the sand. But then, they are doing it for the patients. Right?
Stakddek
Sennecio/Jerry Wicks/ DNAPrint Genomics // DNA Phenomics
Our "hard look" started back in August 2003, and we had many curious findings. At last check about this we had been "officially" informed there was no connection, and so, despite all the coincidental material, language, investigative tools used, pictures from a source DNAprint Genomics on the DNAPrint Genomics web site, we accepted the companies official denial of any business connection. Of course Jerry Wicks and Sennecio appear to be linked to both DNAPrint and DNAP Genomics according to mutual posesion of the HIH grant and Wicks being listed on the DNAprint Genomics web site. If there is no official linkage, I would tend to think that Mister Wicks must have a very good reputation or he would be under a very dark cloud for being in the position of knowing certain trade secrets of two firms that appear to be persuing very similar goals.
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Posted by: early_retirement1
In reply to: None Date:8/4/2003 2:46:16 PM
Post #2538 of 27841
I got a reply back from Jerry Wicks at Senecio:
Dear Mr. ?: I blanked out my last name
Senecio Software Inc. is working with DNAPrint genomics Inc. on several NIH applications. We have also had wide ranging discussions about possible business ventures. I am prevented from talking about these discussions, but I’m sure you can understand why.
Senecio Software is working closely with an influential group of business leaders and scientists in Malaysia and Singapore to establish a Malaysian-owned company called DNA Phenomics in Kuala Lumpur. The web address of that venture is www.DNAphenomics.com. DNA Phenomics will soon begin work on several significant research projects. Given a host of very favorable conditions, that company, which is privately held, should grow rapidly. If you are interested in companies working in this research area, I recommend you sign up for that company’s eNews emails at http://www.dnaphenomics.com/emailalert.php.
Thank you for your inquiry. I sincerely hope this limited information answers your questions.
Jerry W. Wicks
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You have to review that whole stream of posts from early August 2003 to get the "gesthalt".
Stakddek
A question for Stockholders meeting?
Sennecio: We are cogranted with Seneccio and Jerry Wicks for an NIH Grant.
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http://www.dnaprint.com/2003/pressreleases/pr_02_02_05.htm
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On the Sennecio website, DNAPrint Genomics is not listed. However a company with a similar name and apparently similar goals is listed.
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http://www.senecio.com/salliance.html
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This other company lists Sennecio
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http://www.dnaphenomics.com/pressrelease8-07-03.php
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Is this confusion on the part of Sennecio???
Or is this a case of irrattional expectations????
Stakddek
Looking at Edwards AFB and noted NASA DRYDEN is sort of "built in." Nice website, and found this section for NASA:
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http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/business/UAV_BU/facilities.html
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Stakddek
The NASA "consultancy" is a valuable asset. How long have they been gathering athmospheric data? Globaly. -- Who can get those records to run simulations? -- It is a guarantee that no taxpayer money, will be contributed to GTE by NASA. It is certain that a certain portion of lift capacity will be provided to the government. It may be beyond meteorological. It may be funded by other agencies who will not have a logo on the skin. How needed the "high ground" is will determine the level of cooperation and funding that NASA delivers.
Can you imagine the fuel cost saving for a thirty day deployment of a stratalite instead of a JSTAR or AWACs? I can remember a show a year or so ago describing early recon satelites. They used FILM cameras and dropped the film for mid air retrieval. When the film was used up, so was the satelite.
Miniaturization and superlight and energy efficient electronics packages will be key to Stratelite value. Payload is limited and golly gee, who does that real good?
Hope in the short future NASA becomes Need Another Stratelite Above.
Stakddek
Remenbering the anology of "all in the same boat". What do you call it when all the occupants are rowing but one. And that one is complaining the loudest and most frequently about how the boat is leaking and the waves are too rough and the sun is too hot, makes it a point to alert the crew that there is no land in sight and we've run out of food, and we'll never make it unless/// ad nauseum. Forsaking an oar the vociferous one proceeds (with great industry) to scoop water from the sea and dump it gleefully inside an otherwise tight ship. Asked the why of his behavior he smiles and says "So when we go under I can say I told you so!" "But if we don't go under, I'm going to sit here and rock the boat."
Now I had always wondered why on occassion it was necessary to throw a passenger from a craft. I have learned that a continual browbeating by a self promoting fraud is going to be of little value when it comes to my survival. Perhaps being the gentle spirit that I am I might pay out a long line to a raft to be towed behind, well beyond earshot. It's not that I don't appreciate the discussion of ideas to get to shore, but when the discussions generated by a paraiah offer no value content, and really seem designed by subject and frequency to demoralize people, I see no valid reason to keep the malfactor aboard.
Perhaps Matt would accept the number of "ignores" as a reflection of board consensus as to the level of offensiveness that any poster has stooped.
Stakddek
Uncxman: I guess even an accountant can have trouble with "New Math". Of course it's far easier to pronounce oneself an expert when you can make up your credentials. Sort of a fraud based on fraud. Then you can play the expert and spend countless hours belittling the efforts of real people doing real things. Heck you can even perpetuate your fraud making up trades that never happened so you bolster your self reported acumen.
However, one must be given credit where due. When perfection is achieved it should be noted, hence I find our hero perfectly obnoxious.
Stakddek
Thanks Bors. I'll have more dumb questions!
"Good evening Mr and Mrs America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea." -- Walter Winchell --
Stakddek
It's nice to get one right once in a while!
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Posted by: stakddek
In reply to: None Date:1/20/2005 10:54:50 PM
Post #of 27595
A fuzzy photo? Maybe a sculpture?
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http://www.3dsystems.com/products/multijet/index.asp
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We've all seen the foreensic recreation of the mummy faces, the art used to create a "bust" of long long removed ancestors. Much skill and yes artistry goes into these facial reconstructions. I wonder if a little cross polinnation might be in order with DNAP? Perhaps certain gross features presentable in 3d are not as "vibrant" in a two dimensional photo. If the biometric info is quantifiable and can be "translated", it might be possible to "reconstruct" a face when the only clue is a single tooth with viable DNA. A DNA modeled sculpture might be useful as a source of biometric information simply using the common biometric qualified scanners for input. That image would then be used for comparison against the millions of images gathered each day. Perhaps there is no need for this model as possibly they can just work with the numbers to do this now. But then, when you present to the jury in a case, intangible mumbers against a solid object, most people are more comfortable relying on something they can touch and feel.
Might give Zach Gaskin another angle for his demos.
Stakddek
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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Bors, Thanks for answering. I must have been absent from school that day. My thought area was the Hawaiin Islands, but given the distance to Continental US that is a lot of Strats to relay-link just to replace undersea cables. I seem to recall some 2500-3000 miles, to hit US soil- so a 500 mile line of site between Strats would require say 5 Strats as relay duty units, and if you lose any one of those 5 you have a broken chain and no communications.
I would still think from your math two strats could provide 100% coverage and excellent reliability for the Island Chain, ( I looked quick, but a guess using the map scale eyeballed onto the computer screen was maybe 400 miles from tip to tip of the most populated islands). Perhaps a reasonable economic expenditure, but I don't know if the subscribers are there to support the placement. Sure would save a lot of towers and undersea cabling that would be needed.
Anyway thanks for doing math on my question. I have trouble when my electronic dashboard goes to KM instead of MPH! I also like to ask lot's of dumb questions so I can learn enough to ask more involved dumb questions. Every once in a while you can make someone else come up with a bright idea!
Stakddek
Striking on our turf????
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http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzmed094296546jun09,0,5491341.story?coll=ny-business....
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An RX just for you
Personalized tests and drugs, instead of one-size-fits-all treatment, is wave of the future, experts say
BY KATHLEEN KERR
STAFF WRITER
June 9, 2005
When Donna Delfyett-White, a Queens assistant high school principal, found a cancerous lump in her breast last year, she started researching treatment options.
After doctors diagnosed Delfyett-White, 48, with Stage 2 breast cancer, tests showed it was a type that would not respond to Tamoxifen, a drug that can help prevent reoccurrences of the disease.
The feisty educator had a mastectomy to remove two tumors at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset and soon became acquainted with the complicated world of personalized medicine - the use of blood and tissue tests to find gene mutations that will help match patients to the drugs most likely to work for them.
In years to come, personalized medicine is expected to spur important changes in the pharmaceutical industry.
Tests of Delfyett-White's tumors revealed a genetic mutation that put her in a small group of women - 20 to 30 percent - whose breast tumors produce high levels of a protein, HER2, associated with metastatic breast cancer.
The kind of cancer Delfyett-White has responds to Herceptin, a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1998 and made by California-based Genentech.
"I had no idea there was more than one kind of breast cancer," said Delfyett-White, who lives in Bayside with her husband and two children.
"I thought everybody got Tamoxifen," she said, silver bracelets jangling, in her office at The Newcomers High School in Long Island City, where she oversees health, physical education and guidance.
Delfyett-White enrolled in a clinical trial at North Shore and after traditional chemotherapy began receiving Taxol and Herceptin, a cutting-edge drug that fits the personalized medicine mold.
Personalized medicine is the wave of the future, experts say. It is also referred to as pharmacogenomics or pharmacogenetics.
"It's the way medicine is going," says Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of thoracic oncology at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "If we're really going to be effective in cancer the way everyone wants, my feeling is the only way to do it is to use these targeted approaches."
Increasingly, pharmaceutical houses are focusing on drugs tailored to work in smaller groups of patients rather than widely prescribed blockbusters. One-size-fits-all drugs may lose their luster, especially for cancer patients with tumors that resist certain medications. And it is hoped new tests will help spare patients from drugs that may cause side effects while doing little to defeat their diseases.
"It's a much more rational way of treating cancer," says Dr. Lora Weiselberg, Delfyett-White's oncologist and chief of North Shore's breast cancer service. "We didn't appreciate the differences [between tumor types] in the past."
The need for tests that predict which drugs will benefit individual patients could also spur new diagnostic businesses and help older ones grow.
And such tests could mean important changes in medical care, said Dr. Lawrence Lesko, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Clinical Pharmacology and Biopharmaceutics.
For example, Lesko said, the FDA recently approved a test that can tell whether some drug dosages for certain patients should be higher or lower, depending on their metabolic rates.
One company, Perlegen Sciences of Mountain View, Calif., is searching for genetic mutations that affect patients' responses to drugs.
"This is where the future's going," said Perlegen senior vice president Paul Cusenza.
Dr. Pam Klein, senior director of oncology for Genentech, said there are already two tests to check women's responsiveness to Herceptin. But Klein warned that developing such tests is difficult and the research can be tedious.
"Herceptin is the gold standard that is so beautiful, but when you look at the whole story, it's not going to be that easy," Klein said.
The drug Tarceva, developed by Long Island's OSI Pharmaceuticals in cooperation with Genentech, is a case in point.
In November, the Food and Drug Administration approved Tarceva for treatment of nonsmall-cell lung cancer in those who have undergone chemotherapy to no avail. Clinical trials showed Tarceva's median increase in life extension was about two months.
A test would be useful to tell exactly which patients would respond best to Tarceva.But right now, there is no approved test.
"I think there's going to be a lot of progress down this road," said Colin Goddard, OSI's chief executive. "With Tarceva, although it's a target therapy, it appears to be a lot more complicated."
Goddard says targeting subsets of a disease in small groups of people could help streamline research and speed up the process of bringing drugs to market. Later, broader uses may be found for the same drugs.
Tarceva has proven effective where a similar lung cancer drug, AstraZeneca's Iressa, failed to extend life. But despite fears that AstraZeneca's investment in Iressa would be lost, the company hopes to find a new market. In some cancer patients of Asian descent with genetic mutations and in people who have never smoked, data suggests Iressa can extend life.
The Iressa experience illustrates one hope for personalized medicine - that some people will benefit from drugs that don't work in others.
Still, Dr. Roman Perez-Soler, chairman of the oncology department at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, predicts slow growth for personalized medicine.
"I think at this point we have a vision," Perez-Soler said. "It's a vision that tells you more or less where we are going but it's hard to define exactly where."
Personalized medicine offers no guarantees, at least not yet.
About a month ago, Delfyett-White, the Queens school principal, developed heart failure, an expected result in about 4 percent of Herceptin users, and was forced to stop using the drug.
A June 2 heart scan showed Delfyett-White's heart has improved but is not back to normal. She can't resume Herceptin for now but is grateful for the 31 weekly infusions she had.
"I'm putting things in perspective and thankful for what I had," Delfyett-White said.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Stakddek
As a possible local for deployment, how about the Hawaiian Islands? I don't know if one Strat could handle the geography, but two looped/linked probably could.
Using one Strat to relay to another would also benefit HI going to mainland. If I recall the bandwidth is limited on existing cable.
The govt also has existing infrastructure on I believe Hawaii to allow testing of aircraft. I believe they have flight tested some solar powered electric UAV's at that facility. They would be familiar with FAA concerns, and although the population isn't as great or condensed as the greater North East, I'm sure the good folks on Hawaii would appreciate an alternative source for good communications.
Some of you sharp guys have any thoughts on Strat to Strat range? I could wonder about but not figure out the line of sight distance for that altitude vs earth curvature. I got as far as imagining an inverted triangle atop a sphere and then spacing the strats apart until the hypotenuse intersected the sphere surface. That would be the max line of sight, less a wiggle waggle factor for altitude and movement. Of course the Strats have a fixed operational "desired altitude" so somewhere in that figuring you have to drop the triangle through the sphere to rationalize the outcome.
Any rocket scientists on this board????
Stakddek
TRUE or FALSE TEST:
..."no legitimate biotech/pharma company has ever expressed an interest in buying, licensing or joint venturing what DNAP has to offer to any significant degree"...
Essay:
Please define >Legitimate<
Please explain >has ever expressed an interest in etc.< (I must have missed the PR reflecting this so I'll have to accept the expressed view as accurate, because of insider knowledge it reflects, as valid.)
Please define >significant degree<
This term has me confused. I find it hard to quantify. Is it Celcius or Kelvin. Perhaps arc seconds?
Possibly by comparing actual results to all possible or potential results (including little green men requiring assistance from DNAP) the phrase significant degree can be put in perspective. Of course and just perhaps when we look back a few posts and see all the items in the pipeline, a reasonable person could infer that the items that could be bought licensed or joint ventured are just of too high a future value to be surrendered lightly by DNAP. Perhaps even when an offer has been made, the potential suitors have been turned away with gentle words to keep the options for DNAP open. Of course I haven't been there to observe these negotiations, so we are fortunate that those who have these delusions of superiority are willing to foam vitriol and postulate doom for our mutual benefits?
Please note the exclusion of anything except biotech pharma.
Why would you want to consider any of the forensic products and the growing market?
Well to be fair, could we wiggle a little and include Beth, Orhid, and maybe just maybe because they do medical related computing, the folks at that software company? Oh well. I always had trouble with these names.
Please keep your answers brief, as I do not intend to grade any replies. Those of you who will pass or fail, have indicated by your work and conduct in class on just which side of the "curb" you will fall.
Stakddek
Henry Ford -- Need rubber for tires? Buy the land and grow it. Ford had limited sucess with his first plantation. Crop disease. I believe the 2nd attempt is still producing.
Besides insuring a source of technology and keeping pastcontactors loyal, this bringing in house people who have become intimate with the project and so limits the "spread of technology". GTE has to provide a "turnkey" system to avoid an advanced technical competitor from sending a kludge system overhead. I seem to recall there are militiary applications, so it's not a scenario that can be counted out. There is no real guarantee that Japan or China or the Philiphines cannot create an airship. They can hire any help they need. The trick is to get there first-est with the most-est.
Economy of scale is the winner for players in this game, I predict. The hazardous environment with temperatures that alter the characteristics of most common materials, acts of God and just plain problems with finding out about failure modes first will reguire GTE to be producing airships on an assembly line basis just to cover failures. NASA has tried to run a shuttle program with 4 shuttles. We are down two and they are still on a learning curve. ("foam can't do that!".) Because of that shortsightedness, "all eggs in one basket" we are looking at losing the Hubble Scope and possibly the International Space Station. Being supplied currently by good ole' 1960's Soviet tech!
Once you sell the service, you have to deliver. Most of us are despondent when our internet is lost. WE go whacky when we lose TV too. How happy will users be if the GTE stratbird is no longer providing all those links and services? How quickly will they demand blood if it is not restored "in a timely fashion?" What do you think is a timely fashion? We are used to occasional hours of service loss. Not Days or (perish the thought) weeks or months! GTE cannot afford delays in getting materials ot technology. Acquisitions aimed at preventing this are sound business sense.
Stakddek
GEOB: I note that the PR you have cited is a confirmation of the oft cited by us DNAP'ers use of wirness in the Derrick Todd Lee apprehension. The publicity generated in this case has had many different versions from many different sources. This current PR by DNAP is to confirm that DNAP was instrumental. Read, "KEY" to forwarding the investigation.
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SARASOTA, Florida, June 5, 2003 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent reports have suggested and today DNAPrint Genomics, Inc. (DNAPrint or the "Company") confirms that one of it's proprietary genome tests was instrumentally involved in the successful resolution of the Louisiana Serial Killer case.
The Louisiana Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force (Task Force) detectives used physical information about the subject obtained from the DNAPrint's DNAWitness test to hone in on high value leads that otherwise might have been prioritized differently. DNAPrint believes the investigative focus provided by the test helped enable a more rapid apprehension of the suspect.
DNAWitness is the world's first forensic test to measure BioGeographical <><><><><><><>
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Having been involved in DNAP since before that time, I followed the News reports closely. We have posted here many storied that did not include this favorable introduction of DNAwitness to the police community. The stories have waffled and been slanted in some cases. Perhaps even constructed to reduce the importance of a new and "darn near first application" scientific method.
I believe in light of this it has become necessary for DNAP to issue this reminder, and to state in no uncertain terms the importance of DNAWitness in catching Derik Todd Lee, and in so doing perhaps even saving a few lives by getting this drek before he went on one last spree.
I recall at the time watching I believe CNN or Fox and in an interview with a commentator Dr. Henry Lee was able to comment very briefley on the genomic test that assisted and then the other news of the day intervened.
This press release was not for the benefit of the shareholders to create warm and fuzzy feelings about DNAP. It is a firm reitteration of a clouded past accomplishment, and it is aimed I believe as a tool to promote the marketing of DNAWitness to those agencies that can employ it.
Thanks for bringing this to the boards attention. I guess you have to fight FUD on many fronts, not just IHUB and RB.
Stakddek
DNAwitness.NET
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http://dnawitness.net/
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Worth a look and a short explore.
Stakddek
Chris: Shouldn't the "P" in president be capitalized? EOM
You would not know the meaning of sacrifice. Your extra comments directed at GCBR are mis-directed and should be offensive to all familiar with his background. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with that background. He is a veteran. If you don't like or believe this, fine. However I tend to side with GCBR in his view of your name and your postings.
Sometimes the Ideals of the Freedoms we fight for are ill used by those we served with our blood.
Stakddek
Familiar names:
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_....
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1: Nat Genet. 2005 May;37(5):449-50; author reply 450-1. Related Articles, Links
Getting the science and the ethics right in forensic genetics.
Shriver M, Frudakis T, Budowle B.
Publication Types:
Comment
Letter
PMID: 15858585 [PubMed - in process]
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Stakddek
From Forbes:
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http://www.forbes.com/home/healthcare/2005/05/10/cx_mh_0509racemedicine.html
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Pharmaceuticals
Race-Based Medicine Arrives
Matthew Herper, 05.10.05, 6:00 AM ET
In November, a tiny company called NitroMed unveiled results showing that its drug combo, BiDil, reduced deaths due to heart failure by half.
The results were astounding, but there was a catch. The drug was only tested on African-Americans and had previously failed to show a benefit in a broader population. An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine by M. Gregg Bloche, a Georgetown University medical ethicist, warned of the need to manage the downside of "race-based therapeutics"--and predicted that it was only a matter of time before race was linked to the effects of other drugs.
Only six months later, Bloche seems prescient. A flood of studies has emerged showing racial differences in how patients suffer from disease--or benefit from drugs--in ailments ranging from osteoporosis to cancer. And several more have looked at the effects of drugs on particular racial groups. Many of the doctors conducting the studies are African-American.
Click here for a slide show of race- and gender-based medical differences.
There is even evidence that some drugs work differently in women than in men. For instance, aspirin seems to prevent heart attacks and cause strokes in low-risk medicine, but a controversial study showed it did the opposite in women. "There is nothing in evolutionary biology more based on genetics than whether the embryo develops into a man or into woman. But people generally haven't studied drugs this way," says Harvard researcher Paul Ridker.
Part of the problem is that clinical trials have too often focused on white men. Over the years African-Americans, in particular, have been absent from many trials.
"Much of the data we have on medicines in general have been in white populations," says Keith C. Ferdinand, a pharmacology professor at Xavier University. "How do we know that any of this is true across the board?" asks Gary Butts, an associate dean at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
For many drugs, just doing a study looking at the effects of medicines on African-Americans might be useful. Ferdinand conducted such a trial with Crestor, a cholesterol drug from AstraZeneca (nyse: AZN - news - people ). Patrick Griffith, a neurologist at the Morehose School of Medicine, conducted a trial of Aricept, the Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ) and Eisai Alzheimer's medicine, in African-Americans. Both studies, funded by the manufacturers, found the drugs to be effective in those populations.
But issues emerged from cases where racial groups are compared, and differences are found. The labeling for AstraZeneca's cholesterol drug Crestor suggests starting the drug at a lower dose in Asians. Another AstraZeneca drug, the lung cancer pill Iressa, failed to extend life in a clinical trial but seems to have worked in Asians.
Perhaps the best-studied example is African-Americans with heart disease. Just as BiDil may have been more effective in African-Americans than others, a widely-used class of heart medicines does not work as well in black patients.
Medicines called ACE inhibitors are cornerstones of cardiology. But for reasons that are still unclear, they seem not to work as well in African-Americans. This outcome was confirmed in a recent analysis of a government-funded 33,000-patient study of blood pressure medicines. For all patients, old-fashioned diuretics, or water pills, are the preferred first treatment. But blacks do less well with ACE inhibitors.
Jackson T. Wright, a cardiologist at Case Western Reserve University who co-authored the study, says that as firms like Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people ) and Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ) develop new blood pressure medicines, they should be careful to look at racial subgroups.
"I have yet to see a downside to doing studies that might point out differences in populations," Wright says. "One could always envision potential harm, but thus far that has not been a major concern."
Many hope that this brief fling with differences that correlate to race and gender is just a short step on the path to using genetic tests to match a drug to a patient. Race and ethnicity may act as surrogates, either for slight genetic differences based on ancestry, or physical differences based on upbringing or environment. In the U.S., it may be a marker not only for differences in ancestry but also for differences in environment, diet, exposure to pollution and other factors.
Mount Sinai's Butts says he worries that using race to match medicine to patient is too crude a measure. Genetically speaking, race is actually a rather bad marker for genetic difference, he says. "Proceed cautiously," he warns. "It may not be race--it may be something else."
But until those tests emerge, doctors and drug companies may be eager to find something to fall back on--especially if it means they can save lives. "All I want is to pick the right drug for the right patient," says Susan Desmond-Hellmann, head of product development at Genentech (nyse: DNA - news - people ). "If that's a PET scan, or if that's gender...I would caution all of us not to get too focused on a genetic test."
Click here for a slide show of race- and gender-based medical differences.
Want to track news by this author or about this industry? Forbes Attaché makes it easy. Click here.
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Matthew Herper is a Medical & Science Writer at Forbes.com.
Contact Information
Tel: 212-366-8926
Fax: 212-366-8804
E-mail: mherper@forbes.net
Press releases and public relations contact by e-mail.
Send a Letter to the Editor
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Stakddek
This company thinks getting their methods and genetic sample sites patented is very important.
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URL To Story: http://press.arrivenet.com/hea/article.php/645014.html
Xenomics Files Provisional U.S. Patent for Transrenal-DNA Detection of Down Syndrome for Prenatal Tests
Patent Filing comes as Company Launches Human Clinical Trials of Revolutionary Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening for Down Syndrome
Distribution Source : PRWeb
Date : Friday - May 27, 2005
New York, N.Y. (PRWEB) May 27, 2005 -- Xenomics, Inc. (OTCBB:XNOM), a developer of next-generation medical DNA technologies, has announced that it has filed a provisional patent connected to its discovery of methods to detect the genetic abnormality Down syndrome through the Company's proprietary Transrenal-DNA (Tr-DNA) detection technology.
"This is a major milestone accomplishment because it demonstrates the progress we are making in the development of noninvasive prenatal diagnostic tests for the public," said Xenomics' CEO Dr. Randy White. "The discovery of these markers by our scientific team and the filing of this patent also underscore the viability of our primary mission to create and market a simple urine test that effectively, easily and safely screens for Down syndrome in the fetus of pregnant mothers, based on our Tr-DNA technology platform."
The Xenomics provisional patent provides for methods that use a comparative analysis of carefully selected fragments of DNA contained in Chromosome 21, where the abnormality in Down syndrome patients occurs. Among certain of these fragments, called CpG islands, very specific markers referred to as methylation sites, have been found which are clearly distinct from normal chromosomal DNA. This invention is expected to be useful for diagnosing the presence or absence of Down syndrome using DNA samples taken from maternal bodily fluids, including urine, plasma, serum and amniotic fluid.
In the Xenomics study, two distinctive genetic markers were found in repeated studies of DNA obtained from nine volunteers who have Down syndrome. Those two markers were not present in samples collected from a control group of people who do not have Down syndrome.
The provisional patent filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office validates Xenomics' continued progress in the development of its revolutionary Tr-DNA technology platform, which can detect DNA that traverses the kidneys and eventually are eliminated in the urine. The Company is using its unique technology platform to develop a range of tests for genetic abnormalities, HIV, TB and other diseases and conditions.
Xenomics recently announced execution of signed contracts to begin human clinical trials to test prenatal tests based on its proprietary Down syndrome detection technology. The clinical trials will be conducted in collaboration with two prominent healthcare centers, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, one of the nation's largest healthcare institutions, and Eastern Virginia Medical School, a leading research and healthcare institution.
"We are anxious to begin further validation of these important markers on clinical samples," said Dr. Samuil Umansky, Xenomics co-founder and President. "Even as we begin our clinical studies we will continue our efforts to look for additional markers for Down syndrome and other life-threatening genetic problems like trisomy 13 and 18."
Xenomics is dedicated to creating and eventually marketing noninvasive, prenatal tests for a wide range of diseases and health conditions. Its first initiatives focus on the development of safe, non-invasive and highly accurate urine tests to screen for Down syndrome, TB, and HIV. The Company believes its proprietary Tr-DNA technology can enable the creation of prenatal tests that are more accurate, more informative and can be conducted much earlier in pregnancy than existing DNA analysis methods, such as amniocentesis. In particular, urine analysis offers none of the risks, discomforts or costs associated with amniocentesis, in which amniotic fluid is extracted through a nine-inch needle inserted into the uterus, to obtain fetal DNA.
About Xenomics, Inc.
Xenomics is a molecular diagnostic company that focuses on the development of DNA-based tests using Transrenal-DNA (Tr-DNA). Xenomics' patented technology uses safe and simple urine collection and can be applied to a broad range of applications, including prenatal genetic testing, tumor detection and monitoring, tissue transplantation, infectious disease detection, genetic testing for forensic identity determination, drug development, and research to counter bioterrorism. Scientists from Xenomics were the first to report that fragments of DNA from normal cell death cross the kidney barrier and can be detected in urine. The Company believes that its technology will open significant new markets in the molecular diagnostics field. Xenomics has three issued U.S. patents covering different applications of the technology for molecular diagnostics and genetic testing and a pending European patent for the same applications. The Company has organized a joint venture to conduct research on infectious disease detection with the National Institute for Infectious Diseases (Instituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive "Lazarus Spallanzani") in Rome, in the form of a new R&D company called SpaXen Italia, S.R.L. For more information, please visit http://www.trilogy-capital.com/tcp/xenomics/website.html. For more investor-specific information, including daily and historical Company stock quote data and recent news releases, please visit http://www.trilogy-capital.com/tcp/xenomics. To read or download the Company's Investor Fact Sheet, visit http://www.trilogy-capital.com/tcp/xenomics/factsheet.html. To view an online video about Xenomics technology and products, visit http://www.trilogy-capital.com/tcp/xenomics/video.html. A TV news report about the Company's next-generation prenatal tests can be viewed at http://www.trilogy-capital.com/tcp/xenomics/ny1_video.html.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements made in this press release are forward looking. Such statements are indicated by words such as "expect," "might," "should," "anticipate" and similar words indicating uncertainty in facts and figures. Although Xenomics believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. As discussed in the periodic reports of Xenomics, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of the following factors, among others: uncertainties associated with product development, the risk that Xenomics will not obtain approval to market its products, the risk that Xenomics' technology will not gain market acceptance, the risks associated with dependence upon key personnel, and the need for additional financing.
(For additional information, please contact Randy White, Xenomics CEO, at 212-297-0808).
# # #
ALEX MICHELINI PUBLIC RELATIONS
Alex Michelini
201 760-6383
E-mail Information
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I guess if you use a collection bottle instead of a cheek swab the process is more than different enough to patent without encroaching on the patents applied for by DNAP.
I imagine that the purpose of predetermining Down Syndrome is to allow early termination of pregnancy and then let the want to be parents try again.
Boy, we thought DNAP was going to have problems with people confusing geographical ancestry traits with racism! These guys are (if I understand the reason for the test) will be branded as promoting abortionists.
It would be great if a fertilized egg could have this determined before implantation, but in a strict theology, failing to implant a fertilized egg would be murder. As is of course the view of abortion held by some people. Doesn't matter when. Abortion is murder.
After all the reactions and activity about Terry Schiavo as a "right to life question" I think any pre-birth screening that might lead to "abortion" will recieve a very hot reception from many groups.
I feel great sympathy for the parents who are now given this option. It's not like they are saying "What! Blue Eyes! No Never!".
I hope I have not misconstrued the intent of such testing. I am unaware of any medical intervention that could reduce or prevent the appearance of Down Syndrome.
Stakddek
Frogdreaming: You should recognize the logic.
Stakddek
Miss Scarlet:
I apologize if my post that covered many thoughts seemed to indicate to anyone here that you were of a negative mindset. Perhaps you will forgive me for including those thoughts in a consolidated posting if I justify my consolidation by the mere fact of the limit imposed by my lack of a paid membership. I like to "keep my powder dry."
I do not believe you personally berate me for my frugalness, but just in case I will apologize for any potential embarrassement this post may have caused you in the eyes of any others.
Stakddek
Frog please don't hide behind me to respond to Bag8ger. Please show me your post where you haven't been editorializing or slanting on others favorable comments about DNAP.
Stakddek
Keep Doing That and You'll Go Blind!
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&e=1&u=/nm/20050527/bs_nm/health_viagra_dc
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Some Viagra users report blindness-Pfizer 1 hour, 16 minutes ago
U.S. health regulators on Friday said they have received more than 40 reports of a type of blindness in men taking impotence drugs, mostly involving Pfizer Inc.'s Viagra.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has received about 38 reports of the rare condition among users of Viagra, four reports of blindness among users of Eli Lilly and Co.'s Cialis and one report of the condition in men talking Levitra, made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc.
Pfizer said outside of clinical trials, Viagra has been used by more than 23 million men worldwide over the past seven years. It said reports are extremely rare of visual loss due to the condition known as non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION).
"FDA is aware of these reports but has not determined there is a cause and effect due to use of Viagra ... We're working with the company to make sure this information is available to doctors and patients," FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan told Reuters.
New York-based Pfizer acknowledged the rare cases of blindness and is weighing a label change. But it emphasized no proof exists that the blindness is linked to the drug, which was introduced in 1998 and had $1.68 billion in sales in 2004.
"We are in discussions with the FDA to update our language to reflect these rare ocular events that have occurred," Pfizer spokesman Daniel Watts said.
Viagra's label currently lists the most common side effects as headache, facial flushing and upset stomach, and says the less common are bluish or blurred visions and sensitivity to light that may occur for a short time.
"There is no evidence showing that NAION occurred more frequently in men taking Viagra than men of similar age and health who did not take Viagra," Pfizer said in a statement.
The FDA's Cruzan said NAOIN is not uncommon for people of the age that use the impotence drugs, who have conditions like heart conditions, diabetes and heart disease. It also occurs in patients who have not taken Viagra.
"FDA continues to evaluate the situation and recommends that patients talk to their health-care provider if they have specific questions," Cruzan said.
Officials for GlaxoSmithKline and Lilly were not immediately available. Cruzan said the FDA "would be talking to them (the manufacturer) about adding that information to the label."
Pfizer shares fell 55 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $28.35 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Eli Lilly & Co. which makes rival impotence drug Cialis, rose 3 cents to $59.13 on the NYSE. GlaxoSmithKline Plc, which makes Levitra rose 31 cents to $49.71 on the NYSE.
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
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Stakddek
Is that poster requesting a name change? I think we should encourage Matt to change that name to some random conglamoration of letters and numbers. Delete the previous name. Advise the previous name he has been reassigned to a new name and password. Don't include the password in the notification.
Frog commented on Bag8gers assunption that something big might be in the offing. Frog noted that all the company has said is we need more shares. Frog stated that the purpose of the "shares" is more dillution. I feel Frog is being shortsighted when he states the only purpose is "more dillution." The previous "dillution" was the selling of shares to provide operating funds. I consider this exercise in share consolidation as a continuation of that "funding need". There are many DNAP products in the pipeline. However Forward Looking Statements are frowned on. Would Frog prefer that DNAP say "We have a cure for cancer and just need this cash to put us over the top for expenses to market it". WE can predict that the company needs more funds to continue operation. Providence and market forces have led to this current state. Without an infusion of funds, DNAP will have to sell out. This will in effect negate any future value my shares may have held. We invested on future value, and have not realized it yet. If you believe the company has it's ducks in a row the future value is near.
If you feel the management team has misled or mis-managed, then you have based your decision to stay here on a desire to prevent the remaining shareholders from ever having any sucess. The management team is the same. The prospects have been improved by the Beth Israel patent agreement. Financing has been arranged. What is the collatteral for the financing? Shares of DNAP? Control of DNAP?
Hanging around to continue to belittle the value of DNAP, it's management and science is fine if your purpose is destruction of any remaining value. For all the tens of hundreds of posts that those "F" posters inflict on our physche, they seldom if ever, offer any constructive input. In an investment, you accept the possibility of being wrong and losing it all. Meanwhile you can gripe about the loss and offer suggestions, or even just bring to the companies attention the activities of competitors. Continued nay-saying and degrading of the character of management and the science when not backed by factual and documented impartial sources is in my view bashing.
Can we say that the failure of DNAP to have any patents issued is an impartial source of non-validation of the company and Doctor Frudakis? -- It is undecided at this time. We knew going in that the patent procedure would be lenghty because the "patents applied for" where quite novel and the Patent Office often has to rely on both it's internal and some external sources for review of such new and leading edge procedures. The decision isn't in yet. DNAP hasn't been rebuffed and I believe most of the patents applied for are still in the review process.
DNAP's future is still an open book. I can't prognosticate if the issuance of a patent is right around the corner. I also can't prognosticate if the all the applications will be denied. (What if they were denied because the Patent Office couldn't understand them, or felt political pressure not to rock the racial boat)? This would not prevent DNAP from using the procesures and markers to further it's work in personalized medicine. It would hurt. But as long as Doctor Frudakis is willing to apply his life and resources to DNAP, I will try to do my best to see him through the fray.
I still take exception to posters who's only reason for posting is to make sure they shovel the last spadeful on the grave. It would be nice to see an occassional variance from the dance of the macabre but I'm afraid the inate inability to look for good is a characteristic of the breed. Must be in the DNA.
Stakddek
Thanks COS Robert for the refresher. I don't know who said it, probably a movie... but "If you give the horse her head she'll take you home." Now Dnap has been a nag for a couple of years and tears, and has turned around and snapped at me on more than one occassion. I've got saddlesores and bow legs, but you've reminded me that we are in the stretch and I still don't have the heart to whip her. Those saddlebags you filled with your informative post are like fresh oats and hay. DNAP still has legs and I'll give her her head and let her take me home. I'll let the doubting bashers populate the trail to the glue factory, and when they look to see us coming all they'll see is behind! Sorta' like a mirror of the soul. Just maybe the walk is about to become a gallop. I'm holding on for dear life and will buy you a red-eye at the saloon!
Stakddek
IS that the smell of news in the air????
Rocky301: I'm new here, but I hope they are giving out balloons!
Stakddek
Altarboy: I did a quick check and this is the cheapest price I could find for what I expect you might need. No guarantee on the comapny, but this is $30 bucks cheaper than anything else I spotted.
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http://directdepot2u.com/item.asp?PID=636
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I have never dealt with these people, and am not recommending them in any way other than to give you a price point. They specify that this is a full install. If you get an upgrade package you need to have a legit version of windows installed to use the upgrade. This "full version" will probably put a "DELL" startup screen on your laptop, but the price is worth the free advertising to DELL
Stakddek
Altarboy: Microsoft has been screwed for years by people who run one copy of "Windows XXX" on multiple computers. Now they are realy cracking down. You may have to bite the bullet and buy another copy of Windows for your laptop. Either that or retire your desktop!
If you do have two copies of Windows, each will have a different key and the registration you refer to might be you pwesonally? You are a registered user. You are registering a 2nd Windows operating system to your name.
If I recall, Microsoft now collects some data for registration purposes that includes the processor ID string. If you have a duplicate "Windows XXX" that is, the same registry string of numbers and letters, with a different processor, they won't let you use Windows Update to keep your Operating System current. All the bug fixes and security patches will be unavailable to you without a great deal of hacking.
Best bet is just get a clean copy to install. When you got that lap top, it might have a system recover function. You could try using it's system recover to install the "windows" that should have come with the laptop.
If the purchase is a hassle, you could call Microsoft customer service and explain it to them that you lost the system recovery capability on the laptop and just have to get it working. They may take pity, or they may just stonewall you, but you can try. Manufacturer of the laptop might be able to supply new system recovery disks for the laptop. That system recovery usually includes the windows operating system.
Can't help more unless you detail the situation?
Stakddek
Ann: I don't bother yakkin' with the hoi poloi! (sp) Just didn't want a nice person like you to get jumped on by the more argumentative denizens! I have great respect for many of the people here, and am proud to consider them friends.
DNAP has bonded many of us in an investment and a cause. We see a good for all people and a chance to profit by helping out. Unfortunately the spirit of the sixties, the "Ask not what your country can do for you..." has been forgotten by a lot of people. I guess some never lived that time, or ever were exposed to that spirit that some of us still hold dear.
Good night, I'm sure brighter days are ahead for us and DNAP.
Stakddek
Hi Ann: Just to keep the record clear, I believe the delisting "accident" was on the part of the NASDAQ and not a move made by the SEC. There had been some filings by DNAP to the SEC at the time, but I believe the "social error" was just committed by NASDAQ. I seem to recall something to the effect of "requested to be delisted" but I might be embellishing my recollection.
As far as crippling the stock movement at that time, it sure did! Something like throwing a wet blanket on the party, or maybe a lot closer to crying "Fire" in a crowded theatre.
I'm reminded of "Murphy's Law", One tenet of which is that "whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time". Murphy had many tenets in his law, and none of them are reassuring. I think the worst thing I ever heard about Murphy and his Law was that he was an opptimist!
"Faith is a rough row to hoe"
Stakddek