The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week

3. Waiting to Exhale

Pfizer (PFE Quote) finally stopped huffing and puffing about inhalable insulin drug Exubera.

Six years after it began touting the supposedly revolutionary needle-free technology, Pfizer on Thursday took a $2.8 billion charge to discontinue the drug.

"Despite our best efforts," CEO Jeffrey Kindler said Thursday in a press release Thursday, "Exubera has failed to gain the acceptance of patients and physicians."

That's an understatement. Pfizer paid Sanofi-Aventis (SNY Quote) $1.3 billion last year for full worldwide rights. Pfizer, which developed Exubera along with Nektar (NKTR Quote), projected the drug would generate well over $1 billion in peak-year annual sales.

But Exubera never gained wide use. It posted a paltry $5 million in sales last year and similarly wan figures in the first three quarters of 2007.

Part of the problem was the design of the pump that delivers insulin to users' lungs. One blogger deridied the pump as "an aesthetic nightmare, in the age of cool gadgetry." Others took to referring to Exubera as the billion-dollar bong.

Yet Pfizer spent more than a year ignoring the drug's obvious failure. Execs promised in January that Pfizer's advertising staff would hit consumers in the second half of this year with a "full-court press" that would boost sales.

"We still believe in the potential for this innovative medicine," Kindler said on a conference call in April, "and we're taking significant steps to make it successful."

Success for Exubera? Don't hold your breath.

Dumb-o-Meter score: 88. Kindler called Exubera "a product for which we initially had high expectations."