Word: fasts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...oddly, Gore's apparent inevitability is casting an early spotlight on his vulnerabilities--and helping fast-forward the entire election cycle. Some of Gore's problems come with his job, which has a history of diminishing the men who hold it, but the most glaring are of his own making--beginning with the assumption that he could set the game's pace, seizing his moment to step from the mottled shadow of Bill Clinton and lay out his vision for the country. Gore's moment is now. Miss it, nervous Democratic veterans say, and he could squander his chance...
...that's a problem for computer makers, whose industry is fast becoming commoditized. "It's no longer a technology business. You don't need a team of engineers to build a PC today," says Steven Dukker, CEO of eMachines. These issues have computer executives shuddering as the PC business matures into one in which price trumps brand and profit margins are narrowing. Dukker's company is the upstart leader in the ultracheap market that is suddenly rewriting the business model of the personal-computer industry. It's partly to blame for the recent sell-off of technology stocks that...
...saturated consumer market to better-heeled corporate customers. Margins in that market are shriveling as Dell and Compaq bundle heaps of services, software and support to sweeten the deal for finicky clients who have plenty of negotiating leverage. "All brands come with an unbelievable amount of management software, fast CPUs [central processing units] and everything else you need," says Roger Baumann of Affiliated Networks, a small Miami marine-parts e-commerce firm. "It comes down to who's going to sell me those features for the lowest price...
...outweighed by the drug's lifesaving potential. But even if the FDA goes along with the decision--which it need not but generally does--the very fact that the meeting took place raised questions about the agency's approval process. Rezulin got its thumbs-up via the so-called fast-track system, which slashes through some of the FDA's red tape in order to get an important medication into patients' hands quickly. Drug companies love it, since it gets profits rolling in sooner...
Critics insist that the fast track cuts back on not just bureaucracy but safety too. The FDA has always insisted that any shortcuts it takes are balanced by the tight monitoring of fast-track drugs once they're in use. But in this case, at least, the monitoring was badly inadequate. The panel learned, for example, that 200,000 patients have taken Rezulin for a year or more--or maybe it's 400,000. No one could say if the risk leveled off after six months or kept growing. No one knew if the 35 deaths represented all those...