News assignment

Like many of his fellow Americans, James Downey was a bit surprised to see Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, satirically protesting the treatment she has received from the news media.

Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes.

The experience with Cerezyme and other biological drugs defies conventional wisdom on drug marketing, which holds that blockbuster drugs — generating revenues of a billion dollars a year or more — are generally those that can be sold to vast numbers of people.

“It tells you that you might have articulated something that was vaguely out there, but had yet to be stated in a comedy form,” he said in a telephone interview. “Some things make you laugh because they’re funny, and other things, the effect is: ‘Hey, that’s right. That makes sense.’ ”

“To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’ ”

This is hard to take, given that the federal government did much of the scientific work that led to development of the drug and provided contract money that got the company started.



References:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/arts/television/03down.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/magazine/02sex3-t.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02teenfilmwe.html