Okay, so I'm a day late on this, but I spent much of the day yesterday on a plane unable to transmit anything from my BlackBerry.
I'm writing this post with the wireless feature turned off.
The trip back from the ADA meeting in San Francisco gave me the rare chance to watch my Netflix rentals (they must love me as a subscriber because I hang onto my rentals for so long) and to read all of the major newspapers pretty much cover to cover, which is where I found my inspiration for this entry.
As Bob Pisani blogged earlier this week Pfizer shares continue to trade at new nearly 11-year lows over concerns the dividend might get cut, in addition to the lack of anything visible to replace Lipitor when it goes generic in a couple years or so.
But on two of the op-ed pages in Wednesday's "Wall Street Journal" Pfizer got a plug.
The first one was obvious. The company's Chief Medical Officer penned a piece that I'm assuming is part of Pfizer's new media defense plan for the embattled stop-smoking drug Chantix.
In the article Dr. Joe Feczko takes issue with the recent report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices that identified more suspected side effects of Chantix. He also criticizes the media for "sensational" and incomplete coverage of the ISMP study for not mentioning the health hazards and costs of cigarette smoking.
Then, two pages deeper into the "A" section of the paper was another op-ed with a more obscure reference to PFE.
Two men with a group called the "Abigail Alliance" dedicated to getting more promising experimental drugs to patients faster wrote the item endorsing federal legislation to help accomplish that goal.
They're trying to use Senator Ted Kennedy's cancer diagnosis as a rallying and lobbying point. Specifically, they mention that the Senator should be able to try the Pfizer/Avant Immunotherapeuticsbrain tumor vaccine that I reported on from ASCO last week. It's the one Bobby Murcer is getting.
