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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Allan Harris who wrote (6135)	6/21/1999 9:59:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

Allan re<<<<<<< If I told you that Geron had discovered both a cure for 90% of the known cancers and a technique to stop and reverse cell aging, both of which would take 10 years to get FDA approval, would you evaluate that investment based on a 5 year projection of sales and profits?>>>>> If you told me that I might say you were spending too much time listening to Michael Murphy on biotechs. Actually I have been intermittently keeping an eye on GERN to see if they are close to an actual product in human trials. Modulating telomeres and telomerase may eventually be a huge breakthrough though the mechanisms might prove quite complex. Besides if endostatin which is entering human P1 trials at three locations works on humans anywhere close to how well it seems to work in mice we may not need too many more drugs for cancer<g>. Yes ENMD is a significant stock holding of mine I had intended to end my post there but I think you made a great analogy to the internets perhaps without intending to. In the late 80's and/or beginning of the 90's developmental biotechs went wild based on the "obvious" fact that they represented the future of medicine. The concepts these companies had which came from the most brilliant researchers in the country were clearly expected to revolutionize the relatively rimitive drugs and methods of drug discovery at the time. Even though most had no earnings or revenues other than possible licensing deals they were bid up to gigantic prices. In the early 90's the bubble burst and most of these companies disappeared off the face of the earth with most of the rest dropping 90% or so off the highs. The ones who ended up succeeding you could count on on hand such Amgen, Biogen and Genentech which itself remained a disappointment for a long time. I can't vouch that this account is 100% correct but I think is pretty close to the mark. We can argue the validity of analogies forever but I suspect most internet companies that survive may have a similar 80% plus drop from their highs especially if we run into a bear market. Marc