She's mad-and she's not going to bake it anymore… I don't know if you saw Martha Stewart boohooing on network television about how last year's ImClone Systems insider trading debacle has cost her in the neighborhood of $400 million…
It would be just another sleazy episode in "Lives of the Rich and Famous" except for one thing: The good old FDA is partly to blame. Its warped rules about information disclosure actually promote insider trading. Here's how: They don't prohibit the FDA from discussing the progress of pending drug applications with the companies who've made those applications-but they do prohibit the FDA from disclosing this information to the public. So the FDA gives drug company higher-ups information about future circumstances (like the status of a pending drug approval) that are likely to have a dramatic effect on stock prices. And they get it long before it's public. Is any surprise that these execs warn family and friends who've invested in company stock when the news is bad (or a tip when it's good)? Sure, it's illegal, but it's a temptation that's almost impossible to resist-Martha couldn't.
My point in telling you all of this is to further expose the corrupt relationship between the government and the drug business. Because of FDA rules, drug companies can manipulate their own stock prices more easily than any other segment of the business world. It's just another sordid example of a relationship that's more focused on protecting the profits of drug companies-not the health of all us tax paying American citizens. At bottom, it's all about money.
The really sad part is that this kind of hanky panky probably goes on all the time, but unless someone that everybody knows (like Martha Stewart) gets caught, we'd probably never hear about it.
Here's to getting the small fry moving (and NOT the big bucks),
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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