Biotech and Barry Bonds

by Michael Shulman
BiotechBlitz



The connection here is not as tenuous as you might think.

Mr. Bonds has been accused -- with a great deal of anecdotal evidence and by witnesses with increasing verisimilitude (I have always wanted to use that word, finally got it in print!) -- of using science to boost his performance. Doubters, in my mind, fall somewhere between liars and morons. It is almost inconceivable foreign molecules were not altering Mr. Bonds performance, for the better, for several years. It is, however, at this time, technically, speculation.

Someday, performance enhancing drugs a la Bonds (again, unproven) will be legal and common. But not now, and this is why Bonds has become a pariah outside of San Francisco, as well he should be.

I love baseball. I am a purist and a prude about many it as with many things -- and while he did not technically violate any baseball rules by using drugs (if he did), he did violate baseball rules by buying illegal steroids (if he did). It's a felony, which, obviously, violates baseball rules.

And for this reason he will break Hank Aaron’s record, but when he lays down his bat, either to retire or go to jail for perjury or tax evasion or lying to a federal law enforcement or a combination of all three (speculation, mind you), he will be forgotten, a freak of history leaving no legacy behind himself except new rules to help pro sports combat steroid abuse.

So be it. But the case of Barry Bonds is important for biotech because it raises a very critical ethical question that drives drug development, right now. Should companies be developing performance enhancing drugs? The question, my friends, is moot – they already are doing so, big time!

Are you shaking your head? Every hear or Ritalin or Adderall or perhaps Concerta?

These drugs manage attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and related maladies that are increasingly common and increasingly diagnosed in teens and adults. Because the issue here is academics and brainpower and training future citizens, that makes performance-enhancing drugs are just fine.

Of course, as in baseball and other sports, the real issue is usage by people who do not need the drugs, but simply want an edge. In the case of these drugs, many children get them not because of the extremity of their own problems, but because the needs and failures of their school systems – and parents.

The current structure of schools, classrooms and curriculum cannot meet the needs of the students who have an attention disorder problem. So, because our institutions of learning are radically inflexible, we drug our children. Makes sense to me, doesn't it to you?!. By the way, a great knock on these drugs is found in mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman’s first book, When the Bough Breaks -- and Kellerman is a child psychologist.

I write from the experience of someone who has watched children take these drugs – for some, it is just to get an edge, for others it is necessary. And these drugs, like steroids for baseball players, work and work well, and improve their academic performance, their learning and their self esteem. In many cases they provide an invaluable boost to the experience of childhood.

My concern is about overuse and wrong-headed use. But no matter how we use them, they are performance-enhancing drugs that alter what nature or God has done to the child's internal programming. And in that sense, steroids, growth hormone and other performance enhancing drugs for physical performance, do the same.

Let’s have some fun: Imagine if Sparta had beaten Athens and Spartan-type rule had evolved for 2500 years, so that our children were brought up as Spartans. They would not be taking Ritalin but Human Growth Hormone, not Adderall but the “clear and the crème” maybe branded as Bonds Magic (just speculation). They would also be bi-sexual, at least the men serving as soldiers – and the children would be raised communally.

My point? The baseball issue is not that Bonds may have used a performance enhancing drug – the issue is he cheated if he did so and committed a felony.

For the rest of us, the issue about performance enhancing drugs is simple: They will continue to evolve in sophistication, safety and usage until one day these physical boosters enter the mainstream like Ritalin and all its cousins.

Until that happens, is there an investment opportunity right now? Take a look at Shire Pharmaceuticals (SHPGY): It has a chart to die for, good survey results from ChangeWave, and an increasingly manic population of parents over-managing their children in every way -- even including giving them performance-enhancing drugs. I had to get some investment thoughts in here some place, right?



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- Cal Ripken: A Biotech Role Model



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