Posted by Scott1
on December 25, 2005, 3:35 pm, in reply to "Blog Surfing: What does the bird flu have to do with Donald Rumsfeld?"
Actually, Rummy was not CEO of Gilead but was for a time a member of the board of directors.
Gilead is, in fact, a very high-quality biotech company that invents ground-breaking new drugs, mainly antivirals. The CEO, John Martin, is a very good scientist as well as a business administrator. He has a PhD from my own alma mater, and I have met him. I was sufficiently impressed with the quality of the work I saw at their central lab that I bought some shares in the company. It has done very well for me.
Tamiflu, by the way, is not marketed by Gilead; they have licensed Roche to manufacture and market the drug.
Tamiflu was not developed specifically for the possible transformation of bird flu into a transmissible human disease. Rather, it is the most effective drug one can take to reduce the severity of flu once one has caught it. And it does work, though no one is recommending that it be used in lieu of flu shots administered before the flu season.
Gilead's main products are anti-HIV drugs.
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