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CNBC picks up BrandweekNRX story on Pfizer CEO supporting Hillary.

Pfizer's Kindler: Does He Want Hillary In White House?

Posted By:Mike Huckman CNBC

CNBC.com

Peter Rost, who burst onto the business news landscape a few years ago as a Pfizer [PFE  25.32    -0.13  (-0.51%)   ] whistleblower and the subject of a piece on CBS' "60 Minutes", is enjoying a new career as a blogger and a reporter for Brandweek.

And late yesterday he blitzed some of his reporter contacts with this item  about the apparent 180-degree change in presidential politics at the world's biggest pharmaceutical company. The former Chairman and CEO of Pfizer, Hank McKinnell, was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican and one of President Bush's "Rangers"--no, not a player on the baseball team he used to own, but someone who brought in six-figures to the Bush campaigns.

And while the industry knows it has to play both sides of the aisle these days, it's conventional political wisdom that big pharma, in general, is friendlier with the GOP than the Dems.

But based on the campaign contribution record of the new Pfizer Chairman and CEO, Jeff Kindler, it appears he likes the Dems better. You can check it out here.

For example, last April, Kindler gave $2,300 to Senator Hillary Clinton. Over the past few years, he's written checks worth several thousand dollars for Virginia Democratic Governor Mark Warner. Last year he contributed more than $4,000 to the campaign of a Democratic Congressional candidate in his homestate of Connecticut.

And earlier this year, he also supported Connecticut Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd to the tune of $2,300. You have to go back to 2003 to find a contribution to a Republican--$1,000 to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

I've got emails and voicemails into Pfizer's top spokespeople requesting a comment on Rost's report. I will update this entry if/when I hear back, even if it's a "no comment".

Questions?  Comments?  Pharma@cnbc.com

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Pfizer CEO Kindler supports Hillary Clinton for President

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: Pharma's biggest CEO goes for Hillary?

Perhaps it was a secret hiding in plain sight. But Peter Rost at BrandweekNRX got our attention this morning by saying that Jeff Kindler at Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) not only contributes to Democrats but is a major supporter of Hillary Clinton for president. He bases this on a clear pattern of pro-Hillary campaign donations, and he poses this question:

Question is what this means as far as Hillary goes - if the big drug companies start to support her, she sure has come a long way since she tried to implement healthcare reform.

We also might wonder how this might play with other C-level pharma executives, who by and large are Republicans and support Repblicans, according to our experiences and a raft of research. Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK)'s CEO Dick Clark is a registered Republican in Montgomery County. So is Wyeth's R&D chief Bob Ruffolo. The list could go on. Them again, the political landscape for Big Pharma, of course, began changing last year with the Democratic takeover of the House. Stay tuned.

- Thomas Ginsberg

Pfizer CEO Kindler supports Hillary Clinton for President

Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler supports Hillary Clinton for president. This is an abrupt departure from the path taken by Kindler's predecessor, Hank McKinnell, who was a Bush ranger and right-wing Republican.

Kindler has a history of supporting Democrats, and his public contribution record shows that Kindler recently supported Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. Kindler has also, according to some recently revealed accounts, been outspoken inside Pfizer about his support for Hillary.

Since Kindler is a lawyer, and the trial bar often supports Democrats, his position may not be all that surprising - if it wasn't for the fact that he is now CEO of Pfizer and used to work for McKinnell and did McKinnell's bidding to get Pfizer employees to vote for Bush.

Question is what this means as far as Hillary goes - if the big drug companies start to support her, she sure has come a long way since she tried to implement healthcare reform. Click to enlarge image or go here to view web site with contribution details.

One more thing - I can't help but feeling bad for Pfizer employees. One day they're supposed to give money to Bush and vote Republican to be promoted, next day they're supposed to give money to Hillary Clinton. If it wasn't real life it would be something out of a Monty Python film. No wonder so many senior Pfizer execs have been terminated since Kindler took over.

SCHIP - what was it? Colbert explains.

Health: The blue people

The blue Fugates were a tight-knit family living in the Appalachian Mountains. The patriarch of the clan was Martin Fugate, who settled along the banks of Troublesome Creek near Hazard, Kentucky, sometime after 1800. His wife, Mary, is thought to have been a carrier for a rare disease known as hereditary methemoglobinemia, or met-H.

Due to an enzyme deficiency, the blood of met-H victims has reduced oxygen-carrying capacity. Instead of being the usual bright red, arterial blood is chocolate brown and gives the skin of Caucasians a bluish cast. Hereditary met-H is caused by a recessive gene. If only one parent has this gene, the peson will be normal, but if they both have it, there's a good chance he'll be blue.

None of Martin and Mary Fugate's descendants would have been blue had they not intermarried with a nearby clan, the Smiths. The Smiths were descendants of Richard Smith and Alicia Combs, one of whom apparently was also a met-H carrier.

Because of inbreeding among the isolated hill folk--the Fugate family tree is a tangled mess of cousins marrying cousins--blue people started popping up frequently thereafter. A half dozen or so were on the scene by the 1890s, and one case was reported as recently as 1975.

Television stations tried to interview them, but were repeatedly chased away.

In 1960 a doctor named Madison Cawein heard about the blue Fugates and succeeded in tracking down several of them. Luckily some cases of hereditary met-H among native Alaskans had been written up in the medical literature not long before, so he was able to diagnose the problem fairly quickly. He also prescribed a simple, if temporary, cure--the chemical methylene blue, which replaced the missing enzyme in the blood. The results were dramatic. Within minutes after getting a dose, the blue Fugates became a normal pink for the first time in their lives.

Credit Straight Dope.

Much more information here.

BBC slammed for HIV sex video

BBC has created an HIV awareness campaign, including a web site and a video starring GI Jonny and Captain Bareback, which are animated action hero figures. The video shows no "real" sexual acts, however, its images are still very explicit and speaks to the need for safe sex.

The video yesterday caused a very strong reaction in Britain, which may or may not have been what state-owned broadcaster BBC hoped for.

Viewer and reader discretion is strongly adviced.

The interactive online campaign is aimed at 16- to 24-year-olds and was created by BBC Learning with the help of sexual health charity Terrence Higgins Trust. The BBC claims "the viral commercial is aimed at the over-18's."

The National Confederation of Parent Teachers Associations is very upset and a spokesperson said "This is just disgusting. I think the BBC needs to have a long hard look at itself if it thinks this is the best education it can provide for our teenagers with licence payers' money."

And the national spokesman of the campaign group Media Watch UK David Turtle said: "This film is degrading to women and encourages casual sex and normalises certain kinds of sexual behaviour."

A Terrence Higgins Trust spokeswoman defends the campaign and said: 'It's clear that we need new ways of getting those safer sex messages out to young people – one in nine of whom has chlamydia.

BBC also defends the film and a spokesperson said, "'We know that light-hearted virals like this can be really effective at getting more serious messages across. GI Jonny is an interactive online campaign designed to target young heterosexuals who are at increased risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, yet display high levels of complacency towards the diseases.'

Below is the film and while it doesn't depict real or live action, it could be upsetting to certain readers, so a warning is in place:

Three drinks of vodka an hour for three days saves one man's life.

A 24-year old Italian tourist travling to Australian decided to kill himself and was succesfully treated with a case of vodka in the intensive care unit over several days.

Vodka was administered through a nasal-gastric tube and  he was given the equivalent of three standard drinks an hour for three days.

The reason for this unusual treatment was that the 24-year old had swallowed a fatal amount of ethylene glycol, found in antifreeze.

Ethylene glycol and alcohol are metabolized in the liver. The problem is that during the elimination of ethylene glycol it is metabolized to glycolic acid which causes a profound acidosis and the molecule may then be transformed into highly toxic oxalate.

Regular alcohol binds much more easily to alcohol dehydrogenase than ethylene glycol, so the alcohol blocks this dangerous transformation and is metabolized to sugar.

"The hospital's administrators were very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka," the doctors said.

The patient regained full health and was discharged from hospital after twenty days.

There was no word what brand vodka the hospital used.

She's ready. But for what . . . ?

This ad sure makes you wonder . . . what were they thinking over at Amgen when they approved this visual?

It turns out this image is part of a campaign, with the same knob . . . making clear this message is aimed at chemo patients.

Want to know what that pointy thing is? Check this image:

Hat tip WhiteCoat Rants.

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Some claim men do and that they shouldn't procreate beyond a certain age. Check out story in Psychology Today.