GSK's Avandia banned in Europe on heart worries

Now, I found this interesting for a whole bunch of different reasons...

GSK's Avandia banned in Europe on heart worries

First, it appears in the Indy's Business section, but not in the Health section... Second, this:

"I'm surprised the European agency has decided to remove the product from the market," said Savvas Neophytou, an analyst at Panmure Gordon. "I'm not entirely sure there is a massive difference in the response, although one sounds more draconian in that they're withdrawing the product. The restrictions imposed on the product used in the US are effectively the same.

"I expect this decision, although a lot of the impact of the Avandia franchise in the Glaxo investment thesis has been greatly reduced because of what has happened already over the last three years, could lead to some 3 per cent or so downgrades [on profits]."

My first reaction was "what a wanker Savvas Neophytou is"! And then I realized what he thinks is important in the world, and his reaction becomes understandable. "Glaxo investment thesis..." What a crock!

Anyway, let's cut to the chase, shall we? We've got a company that now has a track record of hiding adverse event data. Data, in both the cases of Seroxat and Avandia, that is potentially life-threatening, when withheld (OK, it's harder to prove in the case of Seroxat, but not for those who've experienced the acknowledged side effects). That's the current understood position, I think. There is no argument. And is anybody scrutinizing GSK's other products, to see if they've been pulling the same shit, elsewhere? Well, not as far as I know.

So, GSK produces shit products that are dangerous. Regularly. It hides the data. Regularly. It intimidates those who rumble its activities. Regularly.

And then nothing happens. If the system were true to its declared philosophy, GSK would be a distant memory. Which tells me all I need to know about the system (ie, the system is more accurately described by Savvas Neophytou).

Addendum:
"I expect this decision, although a lot of the impact of the Avandia franchise in the Glaxo investment thesis has been greatly reduced because of what has happened already over the last three years, could lead to some 3 per cent or so downgrades [on profits]."

Now, have another read of that... That is quite a strange use of parentheses... Is it just bad grammar? Re-phrase:

I expect this decision could lead to some 3 per cent or so downgrades [on profits], although a lot of the impact of the Avandia franchise in the Glaxo investment thesis has been greatly reduced because of what has happened already over the last three years.

Dunno, probably just bad grammar - I don't know Neophytou's phraeseology well enough to know whether he deleted something, before saying it, for example. My best guess is that he's given the interview face-to-face, and it's been recorded and reproduced, word-for-word.

So, he's started to have a thought suggesting that GSK will suffer a 3% reduction in profits, and quickly countered that by pointing out that Avandia's significance has been scaled down steadily over the past three years, (possibly in anticipation of a ban(?)), before completing the thought concerning the downturn in profits. In other words, his mind worked faster than his mouth, and he provided a counterproposition to the negative view, even before he'd expressed the negative view in words.