The Real Story: American Pharma's Tangled Web

The success of the rest of American BioScience's pipeline is anyone's guess, according to Morningstar's Laegeler. With early-stage development drugs, "You can't say, one or two out of 10 should hit. Sometimes it's none out of 10."

The drugs may be good. The company may see profits grow. But perhaps investors in American Pharmaceutical Partners should be asking themselves a more important question: Do you need to put up with conflicts of interest, secretive deals, questionable committees and CEOs lining their own pockets with shareholders' dollars?

That's up to you. But I wouldn't.