NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[HappyLibrarian]

Wow...this is like modern lay loan sharking, only worse. I wonder if anyone has ever done an academic study of this.

I'm sure the hedge funds would argue that they are providing liquidity and capital that would otherwise be denied to micro-cap stocks. But if their business model is contingent upon driving promising companies into bankruptcy then this is pretty hard to defend.

One has to wonder how much scientific and medical progress has been retarded by practices like these, a problem made worse by the fact that many Big Pharma companies prefer to let the little guys struggle through trials, only to swoop in at the right moment and "buy growth" rather than fully develop their own pipelines.

This goes beyond a simple issue of fairness since it could well be the case that too much critical research is getting stopped by bankruptcy before it can come to the broader industry's attention and thus never ends up being pursued.

I hope that this is not the case.