Pharma, p.81
Pharma, page 81
51. The American pharma industry engaged the New York Patent Bar Association to draft the language eventually adopted in the Patent Act of 1952. See legislative history of the act at http://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/lipa/patents/patentact.asp. Also see Dutfield, “Intellectual Property Rights and the Life Sciences Industry,” 85–86.
52. Denise Gellene, “Lloyd Conover, Inventor of Groundbreaking Antibiotic, Dies at 93,” New York Times, March 12, 2017; Rosen, Miracle Cure, 233.
53. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, “Economic Report on Antibiotics Manufacture,” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958), 78–79. Fleming quoted in Pagan Kennedy, “The Fat Drug,” New York Times, March 8, 2014; Rosen, Miracle Cure, 235.
54. Fleming quoted in Kennedy, “The Fat Drug.”
55. In later years, those surviving bacteria morphed into super versions of salmonella on farms and a related form of staph infections in hospitals. Kennedy, “The Fat Drug.”
56. Phil Davison, “Drugs mogul with a vast philanthropic legacy,” Financial Times, April 23, 2010.
57. Purdue Frederick was at 15 Murray Street in Manhattan’s immigrant Lower East Side. Before World War I, the company moved to 298 Broadway. And in 1922 it relocated to 135 Christopher Street, in the West Village. That was its location when the Sacklers bought it. See “About New York: A Paean to 4 Ageless Girls Who Happily Defied the Storms of a Changeful Era,” New York Times, October 24, 1956, 58. See also Stacy Wong, “Thrust Under Microscope: Stamford Drug Company’s Low Profile Shattered by Controversy Over Abuse of Painkiller OxyContin,” Hartford Courant (New Haven, CT), September 2, 2001, 1.
Chapter 11: “A Haven for Communists”
1. “Administered Drug Prices,” Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, 12323.
2. US v. Chas. Pfizer & Co., et al Defendants, United States District Court, Southern District New York, 245 F. Supp. 801 (1965), September 9, 1965.
3. Administered Prices Hearings before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 86th Cong. 2nd sess., Part 23 (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1957), 12261–86, 12949–51.
4. See Lear, “The Struggle for Control of Drug Prescriptions,” 37.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 38–40.
7. Podolsky, Era of Antibiotics, 3.
8. David Greenwood, Antimicrobial Drugs: Chronicle of a Twentieth-Century Medical Triumph (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008), 245.
9. Nelson, “The History of the Tetracyclines,” 21.
10. John E. McKeen, “Antibiotics and Pfizer & Co.,” Armed Forces Chemical Journal, Vol. III, No. 8 (April 1950), 37–38.
11. Lloyd Conover quoted in Abe Zaidan, “Inventors To Be Inducted Into Hall Of Fame: Chemist Says Luck Played Role In Wonder Drug,” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), April 24, 1992, 1B.
12. McFadyen, “The FDA’s Regulation and Control of Antibiotics in the 1950s,” 161.
13. “Administered Drug Prices,” Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, Part 23, 12949.
14. Symposia Registration, Box 1089, Miscellaneous (2 of 6), RG 46; Dwight Eisenhower to Henry Welch, 10/28/54, in preface to Antibiotics Annual (1954–1955).
15. McFadyen, “The FDA’s Regulation and Control of Antibiotics in the 1950s,” 161.
16. Lear, “The Struggle for Control of Drug Prescriptions,” 38.
17. Administered Prices Hearings before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 86th Cong. 2nd sess., Part 23 (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1957), 12678–79.
18. New York State, Division of Incorporations, DOS ID 65755, May 11, 1950. Frohlich opened a branch in his native Germany, in collaboration with Thieme Medical Publishing, under the name Institut für Medizinische Statistik. It soon expanded in Europe. The companies, as was the habit with Frohlich and the Sacklers, changed over time with new ones formed with slight name variations. The original was Intercontinental Medical Information Service, Inc., New York Department of State, Division of Corporations, DOS ID May 11, 1950, Dissolution December 23, 1992. Intercontinental Medical Book Corp, DOS ID 92644, was incorporated November 13, 1953, and on that same date so was Stratton Intercontinental Medical Book Group, DOS ID 92644. Intercontinental Medical Statistics International Ltd was not incorporated until October 23, 1973 (DOS ID 236752), followed by Intercontinental Marketing Corporation, March 2, 1982, DOS ID 754499 and Intercontinental Marketing Group, Inc. April 21, 1983, DOS ID 836630, and Intercontinental Marketing Source, Inc. May 1, 1998, DOS ID 2255205, and finally Intercontinental Medical Statistics International Inc, April 24, 1998, DOS ID 2252767.
19. New York State, Division of Incorporations, Stratton Intercontinental Medical Book Corp, DOS ID 92644, November 13, 1953, and Intercontinental Medical Book Corp, DOS ID 92644, November 13, 1953, both with Thieme Medical Publishing listed as the registered agent. Thieme acquired both companies in 1985.
20. Tanner, Our Bodies, Our Data, 27–28.
21. Michael Sonnenreich interview with author, January 19, 2019.
22. FOIA collection on documents released pursuant to the request of Professor Ben Harris, 1999.
23. Interview with Donald F. Klein, by John M. Davis, in Boca Raton, Florida, December 12, 2007, for An Oral History of Neuropsychopharmacology, The First Fifty Years, Peer Interviews, Vol. 9: Update, Thomas A. Ban Ed, (Brentwood, TN: ACNP Publisher, 2011), 269.
24. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, SM-C, July 5, 1956, 12 pages, 100-HQ-419511 v. 1 Serial 6, NARA, 4.
25. “2 Doctors to be Privates: Dropped by Hospital for Refusal to Sign Army Loyalty Oath,” New York Times, May 8, 1953.
26. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 4.
27. “Business Notes,” New York Times, July 25, 1954, 116; “Executive Changes,” New York Times, July 1, 1958, 47; “Seymour Lubman,” Obituaries, New York Times, November 30, 1982, 44.
28. T. B. Schwartz, “Henry Harrower and the turbulent beginnings of endocrinology,” Ann Intern Med, 1999 Nov. 2;131(9):702–6.
29. Listerine was developed for the dental profession and not sold over the counter to the public until 1914. Jordan Wheat Lambert, a pharmacist, named his mouthwash after a British surgeon, Joseph Lister. Lister was most famous for his nineteenth-century discovery of carbolic acid, which became the most widely used germ killer in hospitals and medical practices. http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/lambert-pharmaceutical/98741/. See also Podolsky Cures Out of Chaos, 377–78.
30. “Vice-President, Director of Purdue Frederick, Co.,” New York Times, June 13, 1953, 24. Schneider moved to Purdue too early to enjoy the benefits of a 1955 merger between Lambert and another company Schneider had worked at, Warner Drugs. Warner-Lambert doubled in size by that merger. It later added Parke-Davis (1976) before Pfizer bought the company in 2000. See also “Practical Pharmacy Edition,” Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, Vol. 21., No. 2, February 1960.
31. “Elected to Presidency of Drug Manufacturer,” New York Times, May 8, 1954, 25.
32. “About New York: A Paean to 4 Ageless Girls Who Happily Defied the Storms of a Changeful Era,” New York Times, October 24, 1956, 58. The Times mistakenly referred to him as “Dan” instead of “Benjamin” Schneider.
33. See “Medical Award Set Up,” New York Times, June 22, 1957, 23.
34. “Manhattan Transfers,” New York Times, December 25, 1957, 47.
35. “Top Medical Award,” New England Journal of Medicine, July 7, 1960, 263:46.
36. Tanner, Our Bodies, Our Data, 22, 29.
37. “News of Advertising and Marketing,” New York Times, March 27, 1956, 58.
38. Pharmaceutical Research Associates, Inc. Filing Date New York State June 25, 1945, DOS ID. 56217. Pharmaceutical Advertising Associates, Inc. Filing Date New York State May 9, 1947, DOS ID 62641. The telephone number listed for Pharmaceutical Advertising Associates in the Yellow Pages Directory was (212) 223-0368. That was the main business line for the American “office of admissions” for an eponymously named School of Medicine the Sacklers incorporated in 1964 in Israel. Both entities shared the same office at 17 East 62nd Street.
39. Lutze, Who Can Know the Other?, 141, 162, 164.
40. FOIA collection on documents released pursuant to the request of Professor Ben Harris, 1999, 5, 19.
41. Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy was the moving force on the committee starting in the late 1940s. He was out, however, by 1954, censured by his colleagues for his smear tactics. FOIA collection on documents released pursuant to the request of Professor Ben Harris, 55–57.
42. With only a few exceptions, one at the San Francisco Chronicle and three at The New York Times, journalists were dismissed for refusing to cooperate with the congressional Red investigations. Edward Alwood, Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 149.
43. It was concern about possible espionage that put the former journalists on the FBI’s radar in the 1950s. A decade earlier the Bureau had intercepted a September 13, 1939, Soviet cable to American Communist Party leaders in the U.S., emphasizing the importance of recruiting “journalists of a solid bourgeois newspaper who will be able to live in Europe and to move from one country to the other.” While journalists who traveled to Europe frequently were under the most suspicion, the Bureau and HUAC also put a high priority on newspaper editors because they often had the power to affect the slant of content in their papers. Alwood, Dark Days in the Newsroom, 95, 100; Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 79; Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 279–80.
44. A. B. Magil, a Communist Party member who later got a job at Medical Tribune, had first applied after he heard from a “reliable source” that upward of a dozen blacklisted writers and journalists were working there. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 5.
45. Bernstein’s name had been uncovered by the National Security Agency intercept of a Soviet cable discussing American communist assets. The so-called Venona Papers comprise twenty-one volumes of KGB archival material, nine notebooks written by a Russian espionage historian, Alexander Vassiliev, and twelve compilations of Soviet telegraphic cables deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency from 1943 to 1980. The project became public in 1995. Historians generally agree that those named were likely contacts or informants for Soviet intelligence. Most Americans in the papers were never charged with any crime and in many instances there is no independent evidence other than the Venona Project to determine what role they might have had. West, Venona.
46. The companies at that address were Medical Press, Medical Science and Communications, World Wide Medical News Service, and Medigraphics.
47. See also Signers of 1939–40 Communist Party Petitions for State and City Elections, Boroughs of New York City: Official Report, the Names and Addresses of the Signers of Petitions for Candidates of the Communist Party for State and City Elections, 1939–40, for the Confidential Use of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, 137.
48. Alwood, Dark Days in the Newsroom, 102.
49. Gordon’s middle name was Alex; he merely dropped his first name and used it instead.
50. Among them were Bernard Segal, Medical Press’s managing editor, Leo Schlessinger, a copy chief for William Douglas McAdams, and Gabriel Zakin, a copywriter there. Ray Lynch, “Max Gordon, Former Editor at Socialist ‘Daily Worker,’ ” Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 2–3. See also The Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), January 19, 1990.
51. Sackler hoped Medical Tribune would become a daily but he never managed more than three times weekly. It fell off to twice monthly in the 1980s when there was considerably more competition from other journals. Letter from A. B. Magil to Professor Alan M. Wald, September 4, 1991, transcript provided to the author in an email from Professor Wald, March 27, 2017.
52. Jerry Schwartz, “A Life Tainted Red by McCarthyism Ends,” Courier-News (Bridgewater, Somerset, New Jersey), July 26, 1998, Sunday Edition, 77.
53. Judy Klemesrud, “Woman Sets Fine Record,” Cumberland Evening Times (Cumberland, Allegany, Maryland), May 21, 1969, 20; Testimony of William Marx Mandel (Accompanied by his counsel, Joseph Forer), Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, Vol. 2, 83rd Congress, First Session, 1953, 935–943; Institute of Pacific Relations; Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 82nd Congress, second session on the institute of pacific relations Part 8 (1952): I–XXXIV. As for Mandel’s father, see Letter, Joseph M. Proskauer to Governor and Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, March 26, 1942, City Housing Council of New York Collection, Columbia University. And see “ ‘Mutual Admiration Society’ of Browder, Senator Meets,” Florence Morning News (Florence, SC), March 25, 1953, 5; “Reds’ U.S. Boss,” Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, AL), March 25, 1953, 2.
54. Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 79, 89–90; West, Venona, 279–80.
55. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 5; Alwood, Dark Days in the Newsroom, 36, 42, 45.
56. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 5.
57. Martí-Ibáñez used MD Publications to release Sigerist’s writings, and sometimes was his coauthor. The reason the FBI took note was that Sigerist in his 1937 book, Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union, presented the case that the Soviet medical system was a model for the world. https://philpapers.org/rec/SAUOTH.
58. Memorandum from Supervisor in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Changed, David Alex Gordon, 5.
59. Ibid., 6.
60. The three were Medical Science and Communications, World Wide Medical News Service, and Medigraphics. All moved in tandem in June 1955 to 130 East 59th Street. Another Sackler-controlled company, Medical Press, signed a lease there for three full floors (14–17). The William Douglas McAdams agency later also moved to East 59th Street. McAdams, Medical Tribune, and Medical Press all used PLaza 9-6300 (in Arthur’s ever-changing name-swapping game, years later Medical Tribune became Avalon USA and then M.T. Business Corp.). The public listing for Medigraphics (MUrray Hill 6-2734) was also the number for Communications Associates, World Wide Medical News Service, and Sol Feuerman, a private person. Feuerman was a director of Medigraphics and a former film editor who had lost his job when it was disclosed he had signed a petition to place communist candidates on the New York ballot. See Signers of 1939–40 Communist Party Petitions for State and City Elections, Boroughs of New York City: Official Report, the Names and Addresses of the Signers of Petitions for Candidates of the Communist Party for State and City Elections, 1939–40, for the Confidential Use of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities.
61. Arthur Sackler was chairman of the board for Medical Press, treasurer of World Wide Medical News Service, president of McAdams International, and had been secretary-treasurer at William Douglas McAdams before becoming its CEO. Although Arthur and his first wife, Else, had been divorced nearly eight years, she remained a director and shareholder at some of his firms. Else’s friend, Helen Haberman, was a William Douglas McAdams vice president and part owner of the agency. Haberman was also a director of World Wide Medical News Service and McAdams International. Kefauver investigative committee staff notes on Haberman ownership stakes, in collection of author.
62. Incorporation and annual filings of corporations, in collection of author.
63. 270 Broadway, later to 1440 and then to 250 Broadway before the McAdams midtown Manhattan address.
64. Martin Greene was also a director.
65. See, for instance, Arthur M. Sackler, M.D. and Lawrence H. Sophian, M.D., “The Effects of the Ingestion of Amino Acid on Gastric Secretion, with Particular Reference to L-Lysine Monohydrochloride,” American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Vol. 28, Issue 3, September 1, 1957, 258–63.
66. See Memo, Medical Tribune, From: Joseph Gennis, M.D., Executive Editor} and Frederick Silber, Managing Editor, To: Drs. Adriani, Bracelmld, Dameshek, Dubos} Master, Ochsner} Palmer, Rigler, Sabin and Schick, Subject: Report of Medical Tribune Advisory Board Meeting held in New York on January 13, 1967, collection of author.
67. Memorandum, from Supervisor Agent in Charge, New York, to Director, FBI, Subject: Mary Jane Keeney, May 17, 1950, 1 of 1, released to author by FOIA request from NARA, 101 HQ-467 v. 13, Serial 267. See also The Competitive Status of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry: The Influences of Technology in Determining International Industrial Competitive Advantage, Charles C. Edwards, Chairman, Lacy Glenn Thomas, Rapporteur, Prepared by the Pharmaceutical Panel, Committee on Technology and International Economic and Trade Issues, Office of the Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Engineering Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, National Research Council (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1983). Arthur Sackler was one of twelve participants for the Committee on Technology and International Economic and Trade Issues.
