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Biotech / Medical : Clinical Research Organizations-CROs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RWReeves who wrote (4)	11/29/1999 3:27:00 PM
From: alexis s	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46

Ethical CRO's.. I'm interested in this topic. I recently read a NYT article re contracted studies, and the pressure on researchers to rapidly enrole patients. How that sometimes led to people being squeezed into categories they really didn't match. Hence the science is not as good, the trials are skewed, etc. Any comments / knowledge re any of these companies in regard to their performance? Saving money doesn't matter if the research can't be used-- or worse, the inconsistency doesn't get caught and is used to get a drug approved, make early trials look better than they would, etc. Alexis

To: RWReeves who wrote (4)	12/2/1999 8:50:00 PM
From: RWReeves	Respond to of 46

talking to myself it seems... Interesting stock I've been looking at is VTIV. Spun off from Snyder Communications (SNC), they are really more of a marketing communications/contract sales/training in-service organization serving pharma. They claim to be the largest in the world, however. So whic technically not a CRO, they are a clinical service organization. That said, looks like SNC shareholders didn't have a clue what to do with it and dumped, dumped dumped the stock, now rebounding. Now in a re-org and spin-off like this there are LOTS of costs, turnover, etc. until things settle in so I'd be very cautious about earnings especially. That said, this is a very valuable service area and one I'd expect to see much more growth in come the future. Last I looked, the cost of fielding a sales rep was about 200K a year fully burdened- many smaller companies really can't afford the S&M infrastructure (but everybody wants one of their very own!) so this looks like an interesting "pure play" to watch. More on these guys over time. RWR