Pharma Roundup: Pfizer and Wyeth, Best Coverage

Today's big pharma news is, of course, that Pfizer is buying Wyeth (a story broken by the Wall Street Journal last week) for $60 billion. The deal has seen a flurry of analysis and commentary from the blogosphere; today's Roundup highlights the best content out there.

First, Corey Nahman says he read 25 straight articles about the deal and picked the AP's first story, from last Friday, as the best. I trust his judgment.

BNET's Jim Edwards notes that Pfizer rather cleverly announced its quarterly earnings right when everyone was distracted by the Wyeth deal, probably hoping that investors would overlook the fact that Pfizer's "earnings were down 90 percent due to a $2.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice" for off-label marketing of Bextra.

PharmaTimes notes that the Pfizer buyout means Wyeth's talks to buy Crucell are definitely over. As a press release tersely explained, "Wyeth has withdrawn from discussions regarding a potential combination of the two companies."
CNBC's Mike Huckman notes that the companies have hurried a new website onto the scene, the unsubtly named PremierBiopharma.com. Whatever else the deal means, it represents the embrace of new media by an old, stodgy company.

And, on a more melancholy note, In the Pipeline's Derek Lowe remembers Pfizer's past history of destroying the companies it acquires, obvserving "if people had internal organs that behaved the way Pfizer has the last ten years, we'd be developing drugs to treat them."