Top of the morning to you and a fine one it is. A delicious breeze and shiny warm sun are enveloping the Pharmalot campus, where the short people have left for their productive destinations and our official mascot is happily snoozing under our feet. This means we are free to brew cups of stimulation and, most important, forage for interesting tidbits. Speaking of which, here are a few items of interest to help you on your own journey. Hope all goes well and feel free to send along hints and allegations. We enjoy a mysterious hunt. …
Former Manhattan society staples David and Joss Sackler are fleeing town and heading to Florida in a bid to escape the imperishable stain of their scandal-soaked family’s OxyContin business, The New York Post dishes. David — whose family’s company, Purdue Pharma, is accused of igniting the opioid crisis by aggressively marketing the painkiller, then directing efforts to mislead the public about its addictive risks — and wife Joss lived it up in a $6.5 million Upper East Side apartment. The couple were mainstays on the New York social scene, as well as big art patrons and donors to major museums.
In a boost for Merck (MRK), the U.S. Supreme Court tossed a lower-court ruling that had revived more than 500 lawsuits accusing the drug maker of failing to properly warn patients about thigh-bone fractures traced to its widely used Fosamax treatment for osteoporosis, STAT reports. The justices want a federal appeals court to reconsider its 2018 ruling that allowed the lawsuits to proceed. Merck has argued that it tried to update warnings on the product labeling, but that the Food and Drug Administration rejected its efforts over disagreements with proposed wording about fracture risks.
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