Thank you everybody for all that great information!
Richard, that connection to Merrimack Pharmaceuticals is pretty interesting.
Merrimack is a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company that views cancer as a complex engineering challenge. Through systems biology, which brings together the fields of biology, computing and engineering, Merrimack aims to decrease uncertainty in drug development and clinical validation, and move discovery efforts beyond trial and error. Such an approach has the potential to make individualized treatment of patients a reality. With five candidates in clinical trials, several in preclinical development and multiple biomarkers designed to support patient selection, Merrimack is building one of the most robust oncology pipelines in the industry. Merrimack has a New Drug Application under review for its lead product candidate, MM-398, for the treatment of patients with metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas who have been previously treated with gemcitabine-based therapy.
So, in 2011, Merrimack Pharma received $77 million from private investors, and those investors included WT Investors and WT Investors Advisors Fund.
And, thanks to Petraglyph...we know that the investments were registered in the Caymans.
There is a lot of money in biotechnology...lots. Biotechnology is a high risk playground. You need a lot of money to play.
I am glad to see that you are keeping tabs on Concannon, Nonnie. I didn't know he was a "My Brother's Keeper". Strange.
tenyearsafter: Wow Orphan Crow...thanks for the walk down memory lane! I knew Herk Hutchins quite well, and met Ron Lapin numerous times. I believe they were well intentioned, and Ron Lapin was very committed to pursuing the development of bloodless surgery (and his own fame). I believe that a chiropractor, Ron Austin, was also very involved in the bloodless program at the Norwalk hospital. I remember that program was touted as the panacea for JW's, and they lined up to be guinea pigs for experimental procedures and treatments. Strange times indeed...
Well...we know what they say about good intentions...
The JW guinea pigs were abundant. At one time, Lapin claimed he had done surgical procedures on over 5000 JW patients.
It was that whole network of Hutchins, Austin, Lapin, and the JW "hotline" that became the basis for the Hospital Laision Committees who were the JWs who acted as recruiters for the bloodless surgeons.
It was Lapin who founded the first "bloodless surgery" journal. Why? Well, nobody would publish him so he made a journal that would - his own. It was one of the problems he had to overcome - when he was being hauled into court for his barbaric surgical practises, that had horrible consequences for some of his patients, he had no publications to bolster his crediblity.
Dr. Lapin founded the bloodless network in the States, the WT promoted bloodless surgery for Lapin, and the WT supplied the bloodless network of clinics with JW patients, recruited by the HLC network.
From its very beginnings, bloodless medicine has been tied in with the WTS and the JWs who are invested in it. And some people wonder why the blood transfusion ban remains...and why there have been such strange and odd fractions allowed and such.
There really is no mystery.