Readers React Regarding Drugs and Gas

Editor's note: Every six weeks or so, the author of the SuperModels column answers his mail as readers implore, "Hey Modelman!"

Hey Modelman: In your column on presidential stocks, you reported that big pharma wrote the prescription-drug bill. Where did you get that information? I work for "big pharma," and it didn't help us a bit. It helped generics more than us, especially outpatient chemotherapy infusions.

Example: Reimbursement for brand-name chemotherapies like Taxotere, a drug that I sell for Aventis (AVE Quote), has declined so much that sales have taken a serious drop. It hasn't helped Eli Lilly (LLY Quote) sell its chemotherapy drug Gemzar, either.

--M.V., Thousand Oaks, Calif.

SuperModels: Maybe there's just a problem in your pitch. The Medicare reform bill doesn't go into effect until 2006. And the fact that Aventis is up a big 40% since the Medicare bill was passed kind of undercuts your point.

You raise an interesting issue, though. I hit the Web to look for public companies that make generic chemotherapy drugs. This Cancerquest page at Emory University's Web site lists all the generic chemo drugs; this Food and Drug Administration Web page lists generics the government has approved since 2000 month by month.

The winners in this three-way intersection of science, capitalism and bargain-hunting may be the shareholders of these two companies: SuperGen (SUPG Quote) and GenVec (GNVC Quote).

SuperGen has traded down to support recently after announcing positive preliminary results for Dacogen, a candidate to treat the bone marrow illness myelodysplastic syndrome. For its part, GenVec has advanced smartly to resistance in the past six months and is the maker of TNFerade, a promising chemotherapy drug candidate aimed at treatment of pancreatic and esophageal cancer, as well as candidates for HIV, SARS and malaria vaccines.