Word: bayer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Just two months ago, shares in the German chemical giant Bayer fell sharply after the company withdrew a cholesterol-lowering drug from the market in the wake of 52 related deaths. Now those shares have partly bounced back because of another tragedy: Bayer?s antibiotic Cipro is the drug of choice for treating anthrax, the deadly illness that has infected one person in Kenya, several in the U.S. - and terrorized millions around the world...
...lining. As worried Americans rushed out to buy Cipro - 14,800 prescriptions were filled in New York City in just one week at the end of September - the U.S. government announced it would stockpile enough antibiotics to treat 12 million people for 60 days, a huge amount. In response, Bayer said last week that it was tripling production of Cipro in the U.S. and increasing the supply of the active ingredient by 25% worldwide to make 200 million doses available in the next three months. Bayer also said it was talking to rival firms in the U.S. about manufacturing Cipro...
...even as demand soared, controversy erupted in the U.S. over the steep price of Cipro, which sells under different names across Europe. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said negotiations were underway with Bayer to relax its patent on Cipro; the company wouldn?t comment. No wonder: a month?s supply of Cipro retails for a steep $350 in the U.S., while the generic version in India costs about $10. The Cipro patent has expired in Germany but will run until December...
Thompson promised last week that the U.S. wouldn?t violate Bayer?s patent, though lawyers say the federal government has the authority to do so. Bayer sells its drug to the government for about $1.50 a dose, about one-third of the usual wholesale price. The Bush Administration has announced plans to spend $643 million increasing the nation?s drug stockpile, not only of Cipro, whose active ingredient is ciprofloxacin, but also of two other anthrax fighters, penicillin and doxycycline. Though they are much cheaper than Cipro, they are not as effective against genetically engineered anthrax...
Cipro was introduced in 1987 as a broad-spectrum antibiotic useful in combatting urinary tract and respiratory infections. With $1.4 billion in sales last year, Cipro is Bayer?s biggest-selling drug. As the anthrax scare spread in the U.S., Bayer?s shares bounced up about 45%. But analysts caution that the anthrax fears will produce only a short-term benefit for Bayer. "We think that the upside from Cipro is full-priced into the share price," Deutsche Bank said in an e-mail to its clients last week...