A third patient contracted PML taking Tysabri

Shares in Irish drug maker Elan Corp. PLC and Biogen Idec Inc. of the U.S. tumbled Thursday after the companies confirmed that a third patient taking their suspended drug Tysabri had contracted a rare neurological disease.

Analysts said the latest suspected link between Tysabri and a usually fatal disease called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, or PML, deeply dented hopes that the drug would return to sale this year.

Elan Chief Executive Kelly Martin was counting on Tysabri, which won U.S. approval for treating multiple sclerosis in November, to help return the Dublin-based company to a profit in 2006. Martin, 46, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. banker, was hired in 2003 to turn the company around and has sold about $2 billion in assets to pay down debt.

The two companies said the Crohn’s patient died in December 2003 after taking eight doses of Tysabri over an 18-month period. They said the cause of death was originally misdiagnosed.

Analysts said that until now, those optimistic about Tysabri’s medium-term prospects had been gambling that the PML risk would be restricted to MS sufferers who took Tysabri in conjunction with Avonex, a well-established MS drug produced by Biogen Idec.

That was the situation in the first two confirmed cases. But the latest case uncovered involved a Crohn’s patient who was not taking Avonex alongside Tysabri.

Shares of Elan Corp. sank as much as 58 percent.
Shares of partner Biogen Idec Inc. fell as much as 9.9 percent.

“This greatly reduces the likelihood of the drug coming to the market,” said Ian Hunter, an analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin. “And given the U.S. regulators’ stance on drug safety, it also implies a longer timeline to potential re-emergence onto the market.” (more…)

Joan Kennedy found unconscious on street by a neighbor

A neighbor found Joan Bennett Kennedy lying on Beacon Street suffering a concussion and broken shoulder earlier this week. She said that she had no idea the woman was a member of one of America’s best-known political families when she helped her up and they waited together for an ambulance.

“We’re indebted to some anonymous pedestrian who found her and picked her up and got her help,” Patrick Kennedy said. “I’m enormously grateful for whoever it is out there who did that. She wouldn’t be here in this hospital, recuperating, if that person hadn’t called and gotten someone to come.”

Constance Bacon, 35, an artist who lives in the affluent Back Bay neighborhood where Kennedy has a condominium, said she was returning home from the gym on Monday evening when she saw a well-dressed woman sprawled on the sidewalk in the rain. There was a visible cut on her head.

“She said she was OK, but she didn’t look OK,” Bacon said.

Bacon helped her to her feet and called EMS. She held her umbrella over Kennedy’s head as the two waited together on the sidewalk until an ambulance arrived five minutes later. Bacon said she didn’t know who Kennedy was until a television crew came to her home on Wednesday.

Bennett Kennedy, 68, was taken to Tufts New England Medical Center around 3 a.m. on Tuesday. She was later transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was recovering yesterday.

A close friend and neighbor, Stephanie Warburg of Boston, said yesterday that Joan Kennedy called her from the hospital and told she’d hurt her shoulder and elbow and would be unable to keep their dinner plans for Wednesday night.
“She’s just a lovely, decent person and everyone adores her,” said Warburg, who said she’s known Kennedy for 25 years. “All of us just feel badly.”

Details of what happened were unclear and there was no police report on the incident. Joan Kennedy, who splits time between a home on Cape Cod and a Boston condominium, has struggled with alcoholism. She spent time in a number of rehabilitation programs following a series of arrests for drunken driving. (more…)

Presidential commission reports spy agencies Failer

The nine-member Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was appointed by President Bush a year ago.
The report was led by Laurence H. Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former Democratic governor and senator from Virginia.

It gives a grim account of the spy agencies’ capabilities, despite a steady increase in the intelligence budget since 2001, to $40 billion a year from roughly $30 billion a year.

The report, recommends dozens of major changes at the 15 intelligence agencies. But even before its public release, officials at some intelligence agencies privately expressed fatigue and scant enthusiasm for further reshuffling, noting the agencies have been in a continuous state of flux since the September 2001 attacks.

“We’ve been spending so much time reorganizing, we haven’t had time to see if the changes we’ve already made have worked,” said one intelligence official

The members met Wednesday at commission offices in Arlington, Va., to review the report and plan its presentation to the president on Thursday.

The report, which focuses its main criticism on the Central Intelligence Agency, proposes the creation of an anti proliferation center to gauge the threat posed by chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It calls for specific changes at agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is urged to create a more independent intelligence unit inside its existing structure.

The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, was signed by the President on February 6, 2004. The Commission is charged with assessing whether the Intelligence Community is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and resourced to identify and warn in a time to support United States Government efforts associated with the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century and their employment by foreign powers.

US Army officer guilty of voluntary manslaughter

US Army tank company commander was tried in a Germany military court on charges related to the shooting and killing of a wounded Iraqi last year. The panel will reconvene later Thursday to consider his sentence. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Capt. Rogelio “Roger” Maynulet, a 30-year-old from Chicago, stood at attention as the Lt. Col. Laurence Mixon, the head of the six-member panel, read the verdict at the court-martial.

Mixon did not give reasons for the ruling, which followed 2½ hours of deliberations.

Maynulet told a military court in Germany he killed the unarmed man “to put him out of his misery,” adding that it was “honorable.” He maintained throughout his trial that he shot the man to end his suffering.

But the military court in Germany found him guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter. The panel will reconvene later Thursday to consider Maynulet’s sentence. The charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Prosecutors had sought a conviction on a more serious charge of assault with intent to commit murder, which carries a 20-year maximum.

Maynulet’s 1st Armored Division tank company had been on patrol near Kufa on May 21, 2004, when it was alerted to a car thought to be carrying a driver for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and another militiaman loyal to the Shiite cleric.

The U.S. troops chased the vehicle and fired at it, wounding both the passenger, who fled and was later apprehended, and the driver. The killing was filmed by a U.S. drone surveillance aircraft.

Maynulet’s patrol wounded the man when it fired on a car during a search for militiamen south of Baghdad last May. Maynulet maintains the man was too badly injured to survive. He fired two more times.

Prosecutors said he violated rules of engagement. But Maynulet said he had more important priorities on the mission than saving the Iraqi man.

Military surveillance video apparently shows the U.S. soldier shooting a wounded Iraqi.

The shaky footage from a spy drone shows military Humvees chasing a car in a city south of Baghdad. After the car crashes, the camera zooms in on a man lying on the ground, waving one arm. The outline of a soldier in battle gear can then be seen aiming a weapon at the man, followed by a flash. (more…)