The View from Pharma-dur

So the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a press release, and the media bleats "FDA Scientists Blast Agency Priorities." In the interest of brevity, the qualifier that these blasts emanated from 20% of those surveyed was omitted. Presumably, the other 80% were cowed into submission by their hyperpolitically charged overlords or were just too busy and overworked to be bothered. Of the 20%, various responses indicated various misgivings as noted in the survey summary on the UCS web site. Job dissatistisfaction at the FDA? Undue influence by outside interests? Poor morale?…
Doc Bushwell here, pharmaceutical bogeyperson of the fast food-pharma-medical establishments' collusion against the fundamentalist fat activists (FFAs). Yes, that's right. We bench monkey pharma researchers lie awake at night, tossing, turning and vigorously scratching our nether regions, while we plot new ways of wresting money and adipose tissue from these hapless souls. Truth be told, many large pharmaceutical companies have major obesity research programs which have fed, and intend to feed, the pipeline with compounds as clinical candidate hopefuls in the war against obesity. Some, like…
What a day! Between the scintillating launch of the new blogs (really, I am all aquiver) and doing my best to be irksome in my actual day job, I am more than ready to knock back a dry vodka (Grey Goose, preferably) martini at my favored watering hole in Einsteinville. Part of my job is to pass judgment on protein targets gearing up for screening campaigns. "Screening" refers to high throughput screening which is the bread and butter of discovery research in Big Bad Pharma. It's an automated process in which the general idea is to increase that needle in the haystack factor. This is…