Kevin:
My point was not to amuse or insult you (and I apologize if I did the latter) but merely to point out that most of the arguments have been gone over ad nauseum here and the article will either get printed or it won't. I am very familiar with the NEJM and you will find, if you look at the instructions for authors, that most rejected articles are rejected within 6 weeks. Even if the article is rejected, I personally am not pinning all my hopes on it regarding the stock performance. Why? There are many other publications, but also shorts seem to forget that the authors presented this data with a platform presentation in Greece earlier this year. Also, there are other compelling reasons to think that GUMM will prosper that do not relate to Zicam (they relate to nicotine gum- the company's stated top priority for 1999-2000, and dental gums).
I am sure that there are a number of places that would print this even if the NEJM won't, especially by scientists who attended that conference. They were invited to make their presentation.
Anyway,I do not see what specifically you are calling "my reasoning" that would get laughed out of a high school chem class - if you insist, spell it out and I will respond. I have a pretty good background in chemistry and, as an undergrad, taught lab sections in college alongside graduate students. If you think that your comment "by the same logic...will work" is true, that is nonsense. If you substitute "could" or "might", then it is a testable hypothesis that probably would not work for the reasons I stated and, I repeat, I posted about in a reference about zinc and vasopermeability from Blood, the major hematology publication. So, if you really want to get into it, bring it on (I guess), but it truly does not matter for time will tell in the next several weeks.
All that aside, relevant or irrelevant, shorts seem to forget the inventors of Zicam are not puppets from a bulletin board operation but are Ph.D.'s from the University of Southern California, people with careers and publications and knowledge of chemistry and biochemistry with emphasis on cell membrane physiology. All this is verifiable by simple medline searches, as I have pointed out several times, only to be met with irrelevant one-liners.
All that aside, Kevin, is this the time to short this stock, even if ALL attempts to get this first clinical published (not to mention the second studies) fail? If I personally had no established position, but liked to short stocks, I would wait on this one until the major ad campaign took it to higher levels. People who are convinced of scam and other things (that I think are untrue) would do much better to short at that time. I think that makes safe and logical trading sense, especially since the stock seems to keep establishing higher and higher bases. |
