Word: said
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When the subcommittee asked Merck & Co.'s President John T. Connor for an explanation, he was well prepared. The big companies, said he have different selling costs for individual sales and bulk sales to Government, could not stay in business if they sold to everybody at the same price. Connor turned out to be such an expert witness that Kefauver complained : "Every time I ask you a question you start reading." Replied Connor, who had 22 assistants with him and had spent six months getting ready to testify: "I thought I would do you the honor of coming well...
Three Classes. Drug firms, said Connor, fall into three classes: 1) "creators"; 2) "molecule manipulators" who change basic drugs around but seldom score "home runs"; and 3) "coattail riders." who do no research, wait for a market to develop, then jump...
Illustrating the job of the creators, Connor said that his company spent 15 years trying to develop a cure for the rare (800 new cases a year) Addison's disease. In the search it found out, in 1949, how to mass-produce cortisone, today used by millions, and with its derivatives the most broadly prescribed chemical compound for disorders from arthritis to asthma and hay fever. Instead of profiteering, Connor said, Merck cut the price from $200 to $20 a gram before it had a competitor, then licensed so many other manufacturers that last year...
...high cost of medicines is the growing army of salesmen. The major drug firms employ an estimated 20,000, or one for every ten physicians, and they make 18 million calls a year to get doctors to prescribe and druggists to stock their products. Is this necessary? No, said Dr. Louis Lasagna, head of clinical pharmacology at Johns Hopkins. Too many new drugs, he said, often are "not as good as what they replace...
...employees), plus other promotional activity. Research costs: 9%. Despite the high overhead, the companies are immensely profitable. The Kefauver subcommittee presented tables showing that the drug companies averaged profits of 21.4% of their net worth, compared with 11% for all U.S. industry. Part of the answer, said the subcommittee, was the pricing policy...