Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[Birdbrain Ideas]

Keep in mind that "60 Minutes" is a newsmagazine. Although it does do what amounts to breaking news if it scores an occasional interview nobody else can get, it usually works on stories for months before they air.

There are numerous things that might attract it to Amarin as a feature, particularly because Vascepa dispels so many false notions about fish oil supplements and predecessors like Lovaza. If I were to write the intro to a story about Amarin on "60 Minutes," it would be along these lines:

NARRATOR: For decades, millions of Americans and tens of millions of people around the globe have been ingesting fish oil supplements in the hopes that the pills are a fountain of youth, a bulwark against disease and protection for the body's most important organ: the heart.

Many doctors have willingly embraced the movement and urged their patients to buy the supplements to treat everything from heart disease to inflammation in the eyelids.

Yet, the enthusiasm comes even though study after study has shown little to gain from the supplements and, perhaps, even some damage might result.

Caught up in the confusion over fish oil is a company that created a drug, Vascepa, that the Food and Drug Administration says has proven can reduce the chance of heart attack or stroke by over 25 percent. It relies on a purified version of fish oil or its equivalent that has proven to have nearly miraculous and surprising positive effects on the body. Now, we're learning, it might even be a doctor's best friend in the fight against COVID, as Leslie Stahl learned during a recent trip to Argentina.