This news item was released by the Department of Health and Human Services Today:
The J&J drug, Remicade, generated $3,8 Billion in sales in 2008.Arthritis drugs that generated $16.9 billion last year for Amgen Inc., Wyeth, Abbott Laboratories and Johnson & Johnson warrant U.S. review as part of an Obama administration push to overhaul health care, a report said.
Outside advisers told the Department of Health and Human Services today that studies should compare the effectiveness of the drugs, including Remicade from J&J, and Enbrel, marketed by Wyeth and Amgen, in a family of medicines linked to cancer.
But how is this a cooperative effort to manipulate the media you ask?
Because, the bad news about a planned investigation into concerns that these incredibly expensive drugs (annual cost for one person can easily exceed $20k) may be overused and may be linked to cancer was held until Today..... less than 24 hours after Johnson & Johnson received this bit of great news:
J&J Wins Record $1.67 Billion Verdict From Abbott: Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor unit won $1.67 billion, the largest patent verdict in U.S. history, from Abbott Laboratories over an invention used to produce the Humira arthritis drug.
The negative information about Humira and Remicade came from a report completed some time ago by "outside advisors" who waited until today to reveal this bad news to the Dept. of Health and Human Services (in fact, since HHS was aware of this information long ago, it wasn't actually revealed to HHS today, HHS just admitted it was knowledgeable about the information today).
The J&J/U.S. Government cooperative, by holding its really bad J&J/Remicade news until one day after yesterdays' great J&J/Remicade news, was able to blunt the affect of the negative news on J&J's stock price.
