Free The Cell Game: Sam Waksals Fast Money And False Promises--and The Fate Of ImClones Cancer Drug Translated By Alex PrudHomme Provided As EPub

tale about greed and how the system works

This is about the Cancer Game, which might be seen as a part of the Cancer Industry, a kind of bizarre and ghoulish phenomenon of modern times that exists precisely because there is no cure for cancer.
Indeed, Alex Prud'homme, who is a gifted researcher and prose stylist, whose work has appeared in such prestigious journals as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, etc.
, might very well have called his book "The Cancer Game, " I wonder why he didn't, Would such a title have offended those who play the game

It is specifically about the rise and fall of one Sam Waksal, oldest son of Jewish emigrants and Holocaust survivors, a man of irresistible charm, fabulous energy, and great intelligence, a man driven to success and the high life, a man who had bounced around academia without much success until in thes he saw an opportunity to become a player in the cancer game, and, along with his younger brother Harlan, founded ImClone Systems, Inc.


It is also about an anticancer drug called Erbitux, originally known as Cbecause it was theth drug tested by its discoverers, John Mendelsohn and Gordon Sato in.
It showed promise because in tests it stopped the growth of tumors in mice,

And finally it is a story about how drugs get discovered, how they are developed, and especially how they get approved or not by the Food and Drug Administration.
And of course it is about the Byzantine and incestuous relationship that exists between that August government agency and the massive pharmaceutical industry,

The curious thing about all this is that Imclone never turned a profit, Erbitux never came to market, and most of the people associated with Waksal and ImClone either made out like bandits or got stuck holding the bag.
The drug itself, which works against cancer tumors, particularly colon cancer, by cutting off

the blood supply to the tumors an "antiangiogenesis" drug, was touted as a miracle that would save the lives of innumerable patients and make possibly billions of dollars for ImClone.


At least this was the hype delivered by Sam Waksal, and bought hook, line and sinker by pharma giant BristolMyers Squibb, and by desperate cancer patients as well as salivating Wall Street investors who jumped on the bandwagon as ImClone's stock rocketed skyward.
Because of the promise of the drug, Waksal himself was able to live his dream life as a New York socialite, throwing lavish parties for celebs including Martha Stewart while he dated her daughter, collecting fine art, popping openbottles of Chateau LafiteRothschild while secretly selling stock on the side, sending the proceeds overseas, buying expensive apartments and houses for himself, etc.
, etc.

But the cold hard facts of Erbitux, like those of almost any cancer drug one can name, are very far from the hype, As Prud'homme notes on pages, "these agents, . . Erbitux and others like Avastin and Iressa are remarkable scientific advances, but they still only benefit sometopercent of patients, and they only extend patients' lives by a matter of months.
"

That's it. That's the bottom line. And yet these drugs are so valuable that the companies that end up selling them can make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars,

Waksal apparently came to this understanding sometime during the early eighties, He realized first the simple fact that the way the cancer industry works is doctors have to prescribe something rather than nothing, Then he realized that living a few months longer can mean a lot to people, Therefore any FDAapproved cancer drug will automatically fill a need, What this means is that the PROMISE of a cancer drug, if cleverly promoted, will spark a rally in the shares of the company that owns the patent.
If, like Sam Waksal, you own millions of those shares, you can get rich on mere promise alone,

Furthermore, should the drug have any real value at all, and be approved or even look like it's going to be approved by the FDA, you might be able to get some pharmaceutical giant like BristolMyers Squibb to front a whole lot of money on that promise since they are desperate to find a cancer drug to replace those that have gone generic.


This works because even drugs with very limited effectiveness are better than no drug at all, This is true for many patients, for many doctors, and is especially true for the big pharmaceutical companies,

Note that these drugs are valuable because the people who need them are typically people of relative means who can afford to pay large sums of money for them, either through their HMOs, their government, or their own funds.
In contrast a drug that would prolong the life of poor people in third world countries would be of only marginal value to the big pharmaceutical companies,

I should also mention that Prud'homme spends some serious ink in this book on Waksal's longtime friend Martha Stewart and her troubles, Her personality, her empire, and the way she handles herself are vividly detailed, In fact, some readers might find her story the most interesting part of the book,

Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
It began with a promising cancer drug, the brainchild of a gifted researcher, and grew into an insider trading scandal that ensnared one of America's most successful women.
The story of ImClone Systems and its "miracle" cancer drug, Erbitux, is the quintessential business saga of the lates, It's the story of big money and cuttingedgescience, celebrity, greed, and slipshod business practices the story of biotech hype and hope and every kind of excess,

At the center of it all stands a single, enigmatic figure named Sam Waksal, A brilliant, mercurial, and desperatetobeliked entrepreneur, Waksal was addicted to the trappings of wealth and fame that accrued to a darling of the stock market and the overheated atmosphere of biotech IPOs.
At the height of his stardom, Waksal hobnobbed with Martha Stewart in New York and Carl Icahn in the Hamptons, hosted parties at his fabulous artfilled loft, and was a fixture in the gossip columns.
He promised that Erbitux would "change oncology," and would soon be makingbillion a year,

But as Waksal partied late into the night, desperate cancer patients languished, waiting for his drug to come to market, When the FDA withheld approval of Erbitux, the charming scientist who had always stayed just one step ahead of bankruptcy panicked and desperately tried to cash in his stock before the bad news hit Wall Street.


Waksal is now in jail, the first of the Enronera whitecollar criminals to be sentenced, Yet his cancer drug has proved more durable than his evanescent profits, Erbitux remains promising, the leading example of a new way to fight cancer, and patients and investors hope it will be available soon,

Not really my type of book, But I trudged my way through and finally finished it, Interesting but a little too heavy in technicalities, This book is more like a biography of Imclone's cofounder Sam Waksal, a very charismatic person, It describes his personal life with great details, The author portrayed Sam Waksal as a habitual liar, someone who is hungry for money and luxurious living, who could easily attract people and used to get what he wanted of course, until, when he went to prison for insider trading and related charges.


Sam Waksal had been running Imclone for almostyears, The fact that he managed to keep the company alive for so long without having a single product does indicate that he did has an extraordinary qualities, People thought he was a great scientist with great social skills, In late, Imclone made headline news in USA by revealing itsbillion deal with BristolMyers Squibb to develop and commercialize cancer drug erbitux EGFR antagonist, It was the largest deal in biotech world at that time, However, within nextyears, almost all of the Imclone's top executives were either in prison or no longer with the company,

What happened Imclone's story is a classical example of corporate illusion, After reading this book it becomes clear how easy it is to manipulate people and data, Imclone's story reminds us about the disconnect between making science and making money,

posted by David Usharauli

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