It has been a miserable year for the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. Its shares have gone nowhere (and declined 20% since late 2005), its sales are all but stagnant, and its news feed is a depressing drumbeat of legal and public relations woes. The Avandia story just gets darker: In February Senate investigators accused Glaxo of minimizing data that its diabetes drug caused heart problems; seven months later regulators heavily restricted Avandia's use in the U.S. and took it off the market entirely in Europe. In October Glaxo paid $750 million to settle charges it produced tainted drugs. Last month Food & Drug Administration advisers rejected its bid to get a drug approved for preventing prostate cancer.
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