While You Were Going Hollywood

Have you seen 'Duplicity', the Clive Owen/Julia Roberts vehicle about rival pharmaceutical companies and the ex-CIA, ex-MI6 spies who work for them in counterintelligence? We saw it this weekend at the only cinema we seem to frequent: on a plane. Let's just say it has an interesting view of the drug discovery process (a view that has none of the verisimilitude of this). We could probably excuse that if the rest of the movie were more watchable. But at 40,000 feet above the Atlantic (admittedly with several interruptions from our three-year old and one-year old traveling companions) we could only come up with one solid takeaway: Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson would make spectacularly fun Big Pharma CEOs.

While you were sadly getting swept by the Marlins ...

• We know you're all up to speed from reading 'The Pink Sheet' and The RPM Report, but have a look at the New York Times primer on the issues in the health (care/insurance) reform debate.


• Reuters previews the FDA ad-com for Amgen's denosumab, surely one of the big events of the coming week.


• Alkermes reported only $4.2 million in Vivitrol sales for the second quarter of this year. 'The Pink Sheet' DAILY takes a look at what Alkermes has to do to get the alcoholism drug on track.


• A UK study on swine flu suggests changing the country's vaccination strategy, reports Bloomberg.


• Last night we caught this pretty incredible segment on 60 minutes about using brainpower--and only brainpower--to communicate, move robotic arms, and in the future, to do much more.