Did an Israeli anesthetic cause M. Jackson's death?

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Did an Israeli anesthetic cause Michael Jackson's death?
By The Associated Press
Tags: Michael Jackson, drugs, Teva

United States federal drug enforcement officials have contacted Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals - the maker of the powerful anesthetic Propofol - as part of their investigation into Michael Jackson's death.

A spokeswoman for Teva Pharmaceuticals says the Drug Enforcement Administration asked the company about a specific batch of the drug.

Teva voluntarily recalled two lots of propofol after investigators found

Bacterial contamination in some samples caused up to 40 patients in Florida, Arizona and Missouri to develop fevers and chills.

Teva spokeswoman Denise Bradley says the DEA asked about a different batch of the recalled drug.

Propofol is the generic version of Diprivan. The anesthetic normally used in hospitals was found in Jackson's home after his death June 25.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1100333.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Teva: The king of generic drugs
CEO Shlomo Yanai runs the world's biggest generic-drug maker. Watch out, Pfizer. (Looks like a typical J-Tribe Scammer of American-European Goyim--CSR)

If anyone is tough enough to face down Teva's rivals, it's Yanai. Like all Israeli citizens, Yanai joined the army at the age of 18. He originally intended to leave after the required three years, but during the 1973 Yom Kippur War he was wounded when a missile hit his tank in Egyptian territory. The sole survivor of the attack, he spent the next six months in a hospital. It was then, he says, that he decided to stay in the military.

When he was 45, Yanai became the top strategist of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), heading Israel's security delegation to Camp David in 2000. He says the Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, told him to take a sabbatical to attend Harvard Business School's advanced management program, after which he would become deputy general chief of staff. Soon after he returned from the U.S., however, Barak gave the job to someone else, and Yanai quit the army. Lacking business experience, he nonetheless persuaded the chairman of agrochemical company Makhteshim Agan to appoint him CEO in 2003.

"I first decided to join the business sector. Then I made a decision that I'd like to take an executive role," says Yanai nonchalantly. Teva chairman Eli Hurvitz, who's considered by many to be the Bill Gates of Israel for his success in building wealth for his shareholders, was impressed by Yanai's knack for strategic thinking and hired him as CEO in 2006 despite the fact that the general had no industry experience. "So he's not in pharmaceuticals, not very experienced -- so what?" Hurvitz says. "I saw that he was clever, and I put an eye on him."

With dark, flashing eyes, Yanai looks intimidating even when wearing an ill-fitting lab coat and protective booties over his shoes. His hands are scarred from injuries incurred during battle. As he strides through Teva's Jerusalem factory, he names the different Tic Tac-like pills falling into open containers. The key to Teva's success? It started selling many of these generic drugs even before the originals' patents had expired.

By Mina Kimes, writer-reporter
Last Updated: August 5, 2009: 12:35 PM ET

Shlomo Yanai, CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries
Generic drug superstars
The top-selling generic drugs and the branded drugs they're displacing.More

Eli Hurvitz, chairman of Teva, masterminded the drugmaker's fast-growth strategy


(Fortune Magazine) -- No one knows what the CEOs of the biggest drug companies dream about, but their nightmares probably look a little like this:

Perched on a hill in Jerusalem, there is a factory that makes more than 8 billion pills a year. Its rooms contain giant metal vats of powder and tablet-making machines. Pipes run through the floors, spewing out pills that fall, like colored raindrops, into plastic crates. Workers pour them into bottles, which are slapped with unrecognizable labels. Their names don't matter: These generic drugs are inexpensive copies of blockbuster pills, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, the owner of the factory and 37 others like it, is swallowing Big Pharma's market share.

Israel's Teva (pronounced teh-vuh) is the world's biggest generic-drug maker. By making knockoffs faster and in bigger quantities than the competition, the company now accounts for 22% of all generic prescriptions written in the U.S. Teva's worldwide revenues are on track to grow 27% this year, to $14 billion, and investors have taken note. In the past year its stock has risen 13% at a time when the S&P 500 dropped by 25%. Locals are outspoken about their pride in Teva (TEVA); many call it "Israel's stock." A $20,000 investment in the company in 1990 would be worth $1.6 million today.

The country's interest in Teva resembles America's fascination with Apple, and local media cover CEO Shlomo Yanai's every move (think Steve Jobs). A hard-driving Israeli ex-general, Yanai, 57, last year stunned company watchers when at an investor conference he boldly announced that Teva, then a $9-billion-a-year company, would attain $20 billion in revenues and 20% profit margins by 2012. So far the drugmaker is on target to reach that goal, helped in part by its $7 billion acquisition last year of generics maker Barr of Montvale, N.J.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/04/news/co ... l.fortune/