by Betty Martini
Mission Possible
August-13-2002
from Rense Website

For years the planet's premier poisoner, Monsanto, ego driven and destroyed by debt, tried to peddle itself off to stronger firms with sane, profitable management. American Home Products asked for Monsanto's hand in marriage, but when announcements went out activists worldwide emailed them with warnings: You're marrying the plague!

Next week AHP declared they needed to know more about their partner before they danced, and dropped the acquisition. Finally a deal was struck with Pharmacia Upjohn, but first Monsanto had to sell G. D. Searle and its NutraSweet/Equal business to eliminate the liability baggage. At least Monsanto could hide its losses in the balance sheet of a larger, profitable international company.

 
The honeymoon must have been a disaster, for now PU's Monsanto operation is being spun off to stockholders as separate shares. Call it a divorce! Shareholders will receive shares of isolated Monsanto plus shares in Pfizer, the international giant which is acquiring PU for 60 Billion.

Poor Monsanto is alone again, a tired divorcee with no place to hide its losses. So the words of Mohammad Ali are fulfilled: THEY CAN RUN, BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE.

 

To which we add the immortal admonition of another great black athlete, baseball's Satchel Paige:

Never look back, something might be gaining on you!

PS: It's us!

Read on for the news release below. Remember while all this is going on, Neotame, a more potent aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful, Canderel) has been approved. FDA would not approve it for years so Monsanto sold the rights to Child's in Boston.

 

FDA knows Aspartame Disease has been declared a global plague and there is a new medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic.
 

This act by the FDA after being saturated by complaints from consumers for 20 years on aspartame goes down in the history books as showing that the FDA has absolutely no concern at all for consumer health or safe food and drugs, but as Ed Horton, Editor of the prestigious Lancet wrote in May a year ago:

"FDA takes money from industry and endangers the lives of the people."

Whoever approved it should be immediately removed. Information will be put on www.dorway.com on how to object and ask for a hearing.

 

Everyone in this country needs to get involved. Aspartame Disease may end up being one of the largest plagues in world history. It's synergistic effect with Neotame is just continued mass poisoning of the public. I have just returned from speaking with representatives of the European Union, and asking for the ban of aspartame.

 

A Citizens Petition has also been filed with the FDA who has disregarded every effort for 20 years showing not only have they committed the heinous crime of approving a deadly chemical poison for human consumption but saturated with complaints, and after three congressional hearings they want to poison the public even more.

Betty Martini

Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599
www.dorway.com

New York Times

article below
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002

12:31:43 -0400

To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: "John T. Linnell" <admin@aspartame.ca>
Subject: Monsanto getting yet another new owner
New York Times

15 July 2002

Pfizer Said to Buy Large Drug Rival in $60 Billion Deal
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

The drug giant Pfizer Inc. has agreed to acquire the Pharmacia Corporation for $60 billion in stock, making it by far the most dominant drug maker in the world, according to executives close to the deal.

The transaction, which was approved yesterday by the boards of both companies and is expected to be announced today, these executives said, would be the largest of the many recent mergers in what remains a troubled and fragmented industry.

Drug companies, under intense pressure from politicians, employers and managed care companies to limit price increases, are having a hard time finding breakthrough products that would assure the robust earnings growth investors demand. Pfizer's acquisition of Pharmacia, resulting in a company that would still control only 11 percent of the global market, is likely to hasten the industry's continued consolidation.

The merger would create a behemoth with $48 billion in projected sales and many of the nation's most widely used drugs.

Pfizer "which already owns Zoloft, the antidepressant; Lipitor, the nation's most widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drug; and Viagra" would also gain control of Pharmacia's Celebrex and Bextra, two high-selling arthritis drugs, and Detrol, a drug that treats bladder problems.

Pharmacia, formerly Pharmacia & Upjohn, is also the maker of the Nicorette gum smokers use to help them quit, the Rogaine baldness treatment and Luden's throat drops.

Executives close to the deal said that by creating economies of scale, the merger would help Pfizer to limit price increases. Pfizer is already being conservative about raising its prices, they say, noting that it has increased its price for Lipitor only modestly since acquiring it in the 2000 acquisition of Warner-Lambert.

Pfizer's headquarters would remain in Midtown Manhattan. Pharmacia is based in Peapack, N.J. It is unclear how many of the combined company's 150,000 employees would be let go.

Pharmacia recently completed the purchase of AT&T's former headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J. It is unclear what would happen to its plans to relocate 2,500 employees there.

The Pharmacia acquisition would lengthen Pfizer's lead as the largest drug maker in the United States and would vault it to the top spot in Europe, Japan and Latin America.

Pfizer's proposed acquisition requires approval by regulators in both the United States and Europe. Pfizer currently has about 8 percent of the global market, while GlaxoSmith-Kline, the second-largest drug company, controls 7.3 percent.

Analysts and investors have long speculated that many pharmaceutical companies would be engulfed in a rash of mergers, leaving only a handful of gigantic survivors. But so far, the largest expected mergers have not materialized, analysts said, because the companies and investors have questioned the long-term benefits.

Pfizer's deal could pressure rivals like GlaxoSmithKline, which has been struggling to discover enough new drugs to make up for those now losing their patent protection, to make acquisitions simply to remain competitive.

GlaxoSmithKline's chief financial officer, John Coombe, said last month that his company had been eyeing Bristol-Myers Squibb, itself plagued by problems.

Pfizer's proposed acquisition of Pharmacia would help sustain its growth, the executives contend, because 11 of its 12 combined blockbuster drugs will be protected by patents through 2010. Its pipeline of drugs in late stages of development would be expanded with several promising Pharmacia drugs, including eplerenone, a new category of treatment for cardiovascular diseases; parecaxib, an injectable arthritis treatment; and CDP-870, another drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis.

With an enlarged research and development budget, Pfizer hopes to discover and develop more new drugs faster than its competitors. The combination would have nearly 120 new chemical entities in development and 80 so-called drug enhancement projects.

The deal would also introduce Pfizer to two markets it has never been in before: cancer treatment and ophthalmology.

Analysts have questioned the value of the drugs Pharmacia has in development.

"Although the company's pipeline contains a number of interesting new products," Peter Norman, a pharmaceutical consultant and analyst, wrote in a recent report, "none have clear blockbuster potential."

A swirl of controversy surrounds one and possibly two of Pharmacia's top selling arthritis drugs, Celebrex and Bextra. Last month, Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit-management companies, said that Celebrex and a rival Merck drug, Vioxx, were being overly prescribed and have only a narrow benefit over older drugs like ibuprofen and naproxen, which are available in generic and over-the-counter versions for a fraction of the price.

Express Scripts said it was recommending that its clients, which include many employer health plans, require patients who are not at risk of ulcers to try generic pain relievers first, possibly denting sales of Celebrex and Bextra, which is similar.

Washington lawmakers have been vocal in recent months about rising drug prices and their cost to uninsured senior citizens and states that have to pay escalating Medicaid bills.

But the deal will probably be approved by regulators because the companies have few overlapping drugs. The only possible overlap may be between Pharmacia's Detrol and a competing drug that Pfizer is currently developing. Executives close to the transaction expect the deal to be completed by the end of the current year.

The executives said they expected the deal to create as much as $2.5 billion in annual savings by 2005. They expect savings of $1.4 billion in 2003 and $2.2 billion in 2004. The savings will come from cuts in administrative costs, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution and research and development.

Pfizer's absorption of Warner-Lambert was widely admired as a model of how to fully exploit an acquired portfolio of blockbuster drugs.

Pfizer's chairman and chief executive, Henry A. McKinnell, who conceived of the deal, would run the combined company. Fred Hassan, Pharmacia's chairman and chief executive, would become vice chairman of Pfizer and get a seat on the board.

Under the deal, Pfizer would trade 1.4 of its shares for each share of Pharmacia, according to the executives. That price of $45.08 a share, based on Friday's close, represents a 38 percent premium over Pharmacia's stock price of $32.59. Pfizer shareholders would own 77 percent of the combined company, the executive said, while Pharmacia's shareholders would own 23 percent.

Prior to the completion of the deal, Pharmacia plans to proceed with its previously announced spinoff to its shareholders of its remaining stake in Monsanto, the executives said. As a result of the spinoff, Pharmacia's shareholders would actually receive the equivalent of about a 44 percent premium, they said.

Pfizer also plans to announce today that it will expand its $10 billion stock repurchase to $16 billion, a measure that may help stabilize the value of its stock. After most merger announcements, the acquirer's stock at least temporarily declines.

Pfizer was advised by Lazard and Bear, Stearns & Company and represented by the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft law firm.

Pharmacia was advised by Goldman, Sachs and represented by the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm.