Links

• National Pharmaceutical Congress III
  Often described as the only non-boring pharmaceutical industry conference, the 2009 version will take place in Toronto on March 25.
  
  
• Chronicle Companies
  Publishers of The Chronicle of Healthcare Marketing, along with other fine periodicals for medical practitioners, patients, and the life sciences industry.
  
  
• COPD Canada
  Organization providing advocacy for patients living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

• www.MitchellShannon.com
  

Top of the Pops 

• Tommy Douglas
  You have to put T.C. Douglas, Canadian Medicare's Papa, at the very top of any list acknowledging influential parties in healthcare. No, really: you have to, under the "Greatest Canadian of All Time" laws recently enacted by Parliament. I know people who have actually gone to jail for not complying with the mandatory canonization of Saint TCD. You're also playing with the prospect of a stiff fine or sentence if you tactlessly mention his early blathering about eugenics and his college-boy anti-Semitism, but we can look the other way, with the best of them. What anti-Semitism?
  
  
  I even have a Tommy Douglas story of my own, from the 1960s. My father and I were taking my recently widowed grandmother to Malton airport to fly her back to Winnipeg for a visit. We found the great man standing in front of a urinal in the men's room. "Mr. Douglas," my father said, "are you flying to Winnipeg?" Tommy Douglas nodded. "Would you keep an eye on my mother, please? She's travelling alone and she's not well," my father said. In my recollection of this childhood incident, the politician does not appear overjoyed, rather, he seems as if he's keeping some mild annoyance tamped down. These days, I understand his reaction completely. I currently do my share of air travel, and I wouldn't wish to encourage the approach of strangers in bathrooms. I remember Douglas looking thoughtful for a moment or two through his famous rimless spectacles, and then he remembered to smile, though thinly and with the opposite of warmth. "Yes," he said. "Of course." He nodded at my father, washed his hands, and walked out into the departure area. I'd see Douglas on television for years after this encounter, before he rose to the role of Greatest Canadian. I couldn't shake the impression that he should have been much more enthusiastic about the honor of watching out for my grandmother's wellbeing on the two-and-a-half hour flight to Manitoba. Well, what do we ever know, we eyewitnesses to history? Most likely he was tired, or cranky at the prospect of facing his dozen or so remaining years of life in the public eye, bringing grand life to the glorious social gospel and serving as the conscience of a nation, even while being pestered to do small favors for small men? Who can ever know what irritations and sorrows lie beneath the robe worn by the holiest spirit of Canadianity?

  
  W. Stuart Maddin, MD, FRCPC
  Ever the instructive medical professor, Stuart Maddin sat on a tabletop and recited the anatomy of his foot -- the fibula, the tibia, and a couple of bits whose names I failed to catch -- and griped that they hurt. "I always had pretty good wheels," he said, "but lately..." more...

• Fred Hassan
  Talk is usually cheap, but Wall Street values Fred Hassan's verbiage at around US$275 million an hour.
  
  The Schering-Plough chairman, who recently outlined his company's prospects to a group of 100 investment analysts, spent a morning emphasizing his organization's strong international growth, strict cost management, diverse group of business units, and, not least, seven prospective Rx blockbusters.
  
  The Street liked the message, sending Schering's stock price 4.5 per cent higher in the next trading session. The bounce added a tidy US$1.1 billion to the company's market value, on a day when overall pharmaceutical stocks declined. That outcome should qualify as a decent morning's work for Mr. Hassan, 62, and his executive team.
  
  Mr. Hassan is now in his sixth year of helming SP, which was once considered one of Big Pharma's sad-sacks. Just prior to 2003, the company's manufacturing processes were found wanting by regulators, which resulted in some harsh words, along with fines totaling a then-record US$500 million. (The penalty shattered the FDA's previous benchmark, a $100-million slap against Abbott Labs.) Schering's troubles ran even deeper, with management unable to replace $3 billion revenues after antihistamine loratadine went OTC, and, even worse, incapable of conveying a credible action plan to investors. Richard Jay Kogan, who presided over this mess, famously told analysts 2003 earnings would be ''terrible." His candor counted for nothing, since the audience had already figured things out on their own. more...
  
  
• Ted Simon
  Mr. Simon, the acclaimed British correspondent, landed in Toronto some years ago on a media tour. He had just published "Jupiter's Travels," a diary of his extended travels around the world aboard a Triumph motorcycle. It was and is a very good book that has inspired many readers to head off on their own strange adventures, which, we needn't add, often tend not to work out all that well. In that sense, he's been a very good friend to marketers of analgesics, antibiotics and the anti-rejection drugs used  in performing skin grafts. It was our pleasure, as a child-editor, to buy him a plate of chop suey at Kwong Chow's, and shoot the breeze about journalism and motorcycles for a couple of days -- after which we completely lost track of him. Pity, because we've never forgotten his fine practical advice on how to cover political conventions, despite the obvious fact that no one's ever asked us to do such a thing. In any case, it seems Mr. Simon's back on bookshelves in 2008, having recently repeated his round-the-world motorcycle stunt at the sprightly age of 70. He'll no doubt be pleased to tell you all about it on his website.

• Herbie Popnecker
  Decades before the emergence of Popnecker protegé Ignatius J. Reilly, before childhood obesity was regarded as a significant global health problem, resulting in adult pathologies such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a compelling, if unsung, hero of the day's Dada movement was young Mr. Popnecker, the subject of a little-known series of 1960s comic books. Plans are currently underway to acknowledge the rightful place in our popular culture of this glorious figure, perhaps including the acquisition of his intellectual property rights by a not-for-profit foundation. A Herbie museum may follow, though the exhibits would be minimalist, given the subject's terse reticence: "[I] hate talk."
  
  
• Bill Veeck
  It would be a better world if Bill Veeck were still around and promoting the St. Louis Browns, but he isn't, and so it falls to each of us to conduct ourselves each day on a Veeck-like basis. A war amputee and thus no stranger to the North American healthcare system, Mr. Veeck famously made use of an old-school leg prosthesis: not merely a 'peg-leg' seemingly inspired by an old movie about pirates, but one in which he'd installed an ash-tray, for the convenience of flipping his Old Gold butts -- as well as an inspired means of making onlookers uncomfortable. Ted Rogers may think he's an MLB owner, but while there are still memories of Bill Veeck, Ted is just a jumped-up pretend-pirate toting half a scabbard. And, if you're scoring at home, Veeck's hilarious, scholarly and honest autobiography, "Veeck As In Wreck" makes Rogers' recent autobiography look like a tawdry exercise in self-gratification. But, then, who are we to criticize anyone on that count?