Whiplash Read Free Page B

Internet searching out everything on the Culovort shortage, but found little more than Dr. Kender had already told her. Everywhere the same thing, in other words, the company line: Production line problems , overexpansion, it was being worked on, but it would take time. It was when she read about how the oncology departments at major university medical schools were beginning to ration Culovort that she kicked her desk.
    Why didn't someone in power question what the drug company said? Didn't any of these vaunted medical reporters remember the drug companies' record of gross misconduct-hiding negative data from the FDA, practically bribing physicians, failing to publish negative results, ghostwriting journal articles-and start waving red flags immediately, when it might make a difference? Didn't they remember the Vioxx scandal? How many people had died before Merck was forced to pull that drug?
    Was this simply the way all drug companies operated worldwide? Come to think of it, was this the way politicians operated? Was self-interest the only driving force?
    She was depressing herself.
    What she needed was rock-solid proof that Schiffer Hartwin was doing this knowingly, and for profit. By midnight, she'd decided her old lock picks were her best shot at getting proof and forcing the Culovort production line to get up-and-running again.

3
    STONE BRIDGE, CONNECTICUT
    Monday morning
    As Erin chewed on her English muffin, she reread the nineteen pages she'd photocopied from the Project A file. There was plenty there, even explanations the PR people were to give for the breakdown in Culovort production they knew would impact cancer patients. Caskie Royal had been wonderfully thorough in his To Do list, including one bulleted sentence that summed it all up: Given current worldwide Culovort supplies and current production levels at our facility in Spain, we estimate it will require four months for Culovort shortages to develop in the U.S. Shortages will force many oncologists to switch to Eloxium.
    And then they shut down production in Spain!
    Erin frowned. She realized all of this would make much more sense if Schiffer Hartwin also owned the patent for the enormously expensive oral drug Eloxium.
    But they didn't. A French pharmaceutical company, Laboratoires Ancondor, produced Eloxium. Dr. Kender had told her one hundred and fifty thousand people in the U.S. were diagnosed with colon cancer each year. The income from Eloxium would end in more zeros than she could count.
    But why would a German pharmaceutical cut way back on its Culovort production in its U.S. and Spanish facilities so a French pharmaceutical company could reap the profits?
    Clearly, antitrust laws wouldn't allow them to profit directly. Was there some other way they were scratching each other's backs? Were there payoffs involved? Swiss bank accounts? Or were they so arrogant as to believe there would be no legal action if they violated the antitrust laws?
    Erin smeared more crunchy peanut butter on her English muffin as she read about Serono, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company, that had tried to bring an AIDS drug to market "by concocting a dubious medical test," U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had alleged. The company "put its desire to sell the drug above the interests of patients." Serono had even offered doctors an all-expenses-paid trip to France to prescribe the drug.
    Did she have to add doctors to the growing list of endlessly greedy professions?
    She laid aside the stack of printouts that documented incredibly creative bad deeds by the pharmaceutical companies. What she needed now was to act. She began to refine her list of media people to contact with the papers she'd copied off Royal's files. It was going to be tricky since she didn't want to go to jail for breaking into Caskie Royal's computer. She finally selected Paul Bradley at The Wall Street Journal and Luther Gleason of The New York Times, as both had reported on the Culovort shortage.