Talk:G. D. Searle & Company

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Illinois, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Illinois on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

	Chicago Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles related to Chicago.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.33.56.207 (talk • contribs) 05:07, 21 August 2005

This page needs better grammar, syntax.

It could also benefit from less tin foil and more substantiated facts. --Dachannien 14:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Many things wrong here, but the thing that jumps out at me is the unsourced assertion that "In 1977...The FDA did not want to legalize aspartame"

The account at the FDA website is quite different; while I wouldn't say that disproves the statement, it does indicate that we need more than the assertions of the article's author, so I have changed some of the wording.

Similarly, according to his Forbes profile, Arthur Hull Hayes did not work for Searle. He was clinical professor of medicine and pharmacology at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, from 1981 to 2004. From 1986 to 1990, Dr. Hayes was President and Chief Executive Officer of E.M. Pharmaceuticals, a unit of E. Merck AG.

Anti-aspartame websites vary their story about Hull and Searle post-FDA. One site says he took a job with Searle, another says he went to work for their PR firm (Burson Marsteller), and a third says that he was paid $1000 a day as a consuultant for the PR firm...this in turns sounds likely to have derived from this:

"The employee said Burson Marsteller has hired numerous scientists and physicians, often at $1,000 a day, to defend the sweetener in media interviews and other public forums. Burson Marsteller declines to discuss such matters."

(see http://www.wnho.net/upi_1987_aspartame1.htm)

It strikes me as a conflation of myths. I'm not saying that aspartame isn't dangerous...just that there is no documentation for the particular deletia.

Much of the questionable aspartame content comes from a critic named Mark Gold, who claims as source documents that he received from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act. If Gold has not publicly archived these documents so that his claims can be verified, there's more aspartame content here that still wants gutting.

Anyone who wishes to restore the deletia should take care to cite appropriate sources. Bustter 11:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 more deletia 2 Rummy's "bonus" 3 Requested move 3.1 Survey 3.2 Discussion 4 WikiProject class rating

[edit] more deletia

Deleted entire section, reproduced below. No argument about Rumsfeld, but all other items lack any authoritative source. The only apparent basis for saying that Searle hired these people is the possibility that some or all may have received a consultant's fee at some point in time, but even this minor corruption is not something I've been able to document:

G.D. Searle & Company & FDA heads Many heads of the FDA left the FDA and joined G.D. Searle & Company for higher paying jobs. In some cases, the opposite occurred. These transfers have been criticized as a union of government and big business, and a legal form of bribery of government (FDA) officials.

• Donald Rumsfeld was president & CEO of G.D. Searle & Company. Now he is the Secretary of Defense.
• Arthur Hull Hayes was a defense contractor, then head of the FDA (FDA Commissioner)(1981-1983), and then joined G.D. Searle's public-relations firm as a highly paid senior medical advisor.
• Several members of the FDA board of advisor left their jobs after Stevia (aspartame's main competitor) was banned in 1991. They were all hired at the Nutrasweet Co. in higher paying jobs, according to government records.
• In 1999, Dr. Michael Friedman quit the FDA when Jane Henney was selected to become the permanent FDA commissioner. Friedman signed on with G. D. Searle as a senior vice president at a purported $500,000 a year.
• Since leaving the FDA, Dr. Jane Henney has been a Senior Scholar in Residence at the Association of Academic Health Centers, and has begun service on a wide variety of Board’s of Directors in the health care field….including the Commonwealth Fund in New York City, the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, AmerisourceBergen Corporation in Philadelphia, and AstraZeneca PLC in London and the Science Board of MPM.Capital in Boston and the Advisory Group to the Pew Science and Society Institute.

Bustter 21:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rummy's "bonus"

I suspect that the "$12 million bonus" referred to in the text has to do with the enhanced value of stock and options after the merger, and not someone handing him a check. Rummy's not my favorite, but half-truths are even less popular with me. Executive compensation of this nature is a matter of public record, yet all the allegations of such a "bonus" on the web say "reportedly" or "allegedly." I'm leaving this unchanged for the moment, in hope of finding an opportunity to research this more closely. Bustter 23:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

According to [this blog], Rumsfield got just 12 bucks from the sale of Searle! Anyway, every other site I can find repeats the same canard in the exact same phrase. As I mentioned above, such executive compensation is always a matter of record. And, since these mergers always effect stock valuation, and since company officers imvariably have dandy options deals, the likelihood that Rummy gained 12 million in the deal is not remarkable, UNLESS it can be shown that the common stockholders somehow suffered in the deal. I'm removing this sentence from the article:

"He reportedly received a $12 million bonus when Monsanto acquired the G.D. Searle & Company in 1985."

To restore this we need a source, and we need to know the nature of the alleged "bonus," and whether other stockholders were similarly rewarded, or not. Bustter 11:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 14:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)