BLOG: Unraveling at ASCRS

ByDarrell E. White, MD

You know that feeling you get when a thread starts to come undone on a piece of clothing? There it sits, the garment equivalent of a rock at the top of a hill, a potential disaster as powerful as the potential energy in that rock. Some of us can’t resist the urge to give that rock a little nudge, tug just a tiny bit on that thread. Surely this time you’ll be able to break off the dangling end without watching the whole thing unravel. Sure enough, the next thing you’re looking at is your dismembered sleeve sitting on the floor.

That’s the thing about dangling threads, though: You just can’t resist watching what’s gonna happen to them. And that, my friends, was the theme of this year’s ASCRS in NOLA. Deals of all shapes and sizes came apart like so many shirtsleeves falling off after the thread was pulled. Allergan and Pfizer ran afoul of the Obama IRS and called off their mega-merger. Nobody stepped up and took poor B+L away from Valeant. A nutraceutical company was kicked back to the street, and the femto-acquisition that never really was died a pseudo-death as strange as the announcement of its “maybe we’re going to make a deal.”

If AAO Las Vegas was the meeting where nothing happened, ASCRS New Orleans was the meeting where lots of stuff un-happened. You just couldn’t take your eyes off the dangling threads.

It’s about time we had a meeting where some really cool new stuff is presented. Here’s hoping that’s what we get in Chicago. Let’s hope Allergan ties off its Oculeve thread and gets that puppy to market. If Valeant hangs on to B+L, here’s hoping Andy Chang and the surgical team gets some love for all of the cool stuff they’ve brought to market in the last 12 months. Shirtmakers, those guys. And please ... oh please, please, please ... let us have real products from Shire and Sun to talk about using now that we’ve spent a year learning how to spell “Shire” and “Sun.”

Sadly, I won’t be able to party any more on my friend Raj Rajpal’s investment though.