Henry: re your quote of AP saying "Widely heralded new AIDS treatments that seemed to stop the virus' advance and revive patients from near death are now beginning to fail in about half of all those treated, doctors said Monday..."
As we all know by now, the press has chosen to present the darkest possible picture of the astonishingly positive news for AIDS patients coming out of the ICAAC conference. Amusing, humourous, silly, asinine maybe but that is how it works with breaking news. They slam something down on paper, file it, and measure how well they did not by how true it was but by how popular it was. IMHO, there definitely is a conspiracy, but its just to sell newspapers (or in internet parlance, to get hits). Could you sell more papers with "More good news on AIDS treatment" or with "New AIDS treatments failing - millions to die." Pick one, then write the story.
And the master spin doctors at Agouron put all of their good news in one long convoluted press release, accompanied by prescribing data understood by 0.5% of the readers, and then we wonder why the short pithy story got the lead.
In terms of the real news from the conference, it looks to me like Agouron produced jsut about all of the good news they promised:
===Good news on cross resistance, giving (IMO) any thinking AIDS specialist all the information necessary to at least tentatively conclude that patients should probably start out on Viracept as their protease inhibitor, and switch if and when resistance develops.
====Good news on longevity of effect on viral load, although possibly overshadowed by Merck's 24 month study.
====Good news on the effects of double protease treatment, with the implicit suggestion that Viracept and saquinivar together might be especially effective. The double protease treatment study, though, is not close to where it needs to be to really boost this mode of treatment. Agouron should definitively study the impacts of double protease treatment for a minimum 16 week period, IMHO.
I think the stock drop reflects the well orchestrated and strong presentations by Merck as much as anything else. These guys know a thing or two about the drug biz.
IMHO the fundamentals are intact and the stock is almost 50% undervalued. That is my trigger point so Monday I joined you rabid bulls. |
