NEWS OF THE WEEK

pores, and you can fill those pores with polymers, metals, semiconductors, or oth­er materials. The size of the nanostructure you make is limited by the pore diameter. Tom [Bein] now has the record—3 nm is pretty small/'

According to Sailor, "Living systems can communicate on a molecular-size scale. For instance, (3-carotenes conduct energy or electrons over a truly molecular wire. Thomas Bein's work shows you can do this in a size regime that's pretty close to that." Achieving conductivity in such a small fiber, he says, "is a key achievement in pushing electronic devices down to­ward the molecular level."

Stu Borman

Merck chooses outsider to head firm in new era In a move that has stunned the industry, Merck has named Raymond V. Gilmartin, an outsider to the world's largest drug maker with no experience in the pharma­ceutical field, as the company's new pres­ident and chief executive officer (CEO).

In succeeding P. Roy Vagelos to head the New Jersey-based firm, Gilmartin, 53, will also take the title of chairman upon Vagelos' retirement on Nov. 1 at age 65. Gilmartin is currently president, CEO, and chairman of Becton Dickinson & Co., a $2.5 billion medical supply company also based in New Jersey. Vagelos has headed Merck, which had sales of $10.5 billion last year, for nine years.

Gilmartin comes to Merck at a tumul­tuous time, with the drug industry under attack for its pricing practices. He brings to Merck seven years of experience gained at Becton Dickinson to guide the drug company through the pressures of health care reform and managed health care. He is known for his success in strategic plan­ning and marketing, aggressive cost cut­ting, and reorganization.

At the same time, says Vagelos, Gil­martin understands and respects "the crucial link between business and sci­ence and technology" and is expected to continue Merck's more than $1.2 billion annual investment in R&D.

The choice of Gilmartin surprised in­dustry observers because he lacks direct experience in pharmaceuticals and he is the first outsider to become CEO in the firm's 103-year history.

Speculation about Vagelos' successor has been rampant since he announced

about two years ago that he would retire in 1994. And the candidates whose names surfaced changed as frequently as Merck executives came and went.

In early 1993, Richard J. Markham, now 43, was promoted to president and chief operating officer of Merck, and it was generally assumed that he was the most likely successor. However, he re­signed about seven months later for "personal reasons" and became Marion Merrell Dow's president in late 1993. John L. Zabriskie, 54, executive vice president and president of Merck's man­ufacturing division, left the company in late 1993 to become Upjohn's chairman and CEO.

And just last month, another candidate, Martin J. Wygod, resigned. Wygod, 54, was chairman of Medco Containment, the managed health care and pharma­ceutical distribution firm that Merck took over for $6 billion in late 1993.

Ann Thayer

Dow Coming mulls over filing for bankruptcy Dow Coming's handling of litigation re­lated to problems with its silicone breast implant materials has taken a new and unusual turn.

Earlier this month, company chairman Keith McKennon told a Wall Street Journal reporter that, although the company was not thinking of filing for bankruptcy now, it could be an option in the future if too many women decide to sue the company individually rather than join a proposed $4.2 billion settlement.

His comments, in response to rumors about the company's plan to file for bank­ruptcy, led some financial analysts to sug­gest the chairman was trying to "scare" women into joining the settlement, which could potentially save the company mil­lions of dollars in litigation fees.

William R. Young, a vice president and principal with investment bankers Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, New York City, says McKennon's comments were made "to scare those [women] thinking of opting out" of the proposed settlement, under which women would receive com­pensation for claims that the implants compromised their health. The deadline for joining the settlement was June 17.

The company, Young points out, has already set up reserves it can live with to fund the proposed settlement. However,

if too many women decide to pursue their individual claims instead, Dow Corning could face billions of dollars more in litigation costs than it now faces in its $2 billion commitment in the pro­posed implant settlement.

In addition to Dow Corning, which had sales of $2 billion and income of $128 mil­lion from its 1993 operations, companies participating in the proposed settlement are other implant makers and silicone suppliers: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Baxter Health Care, 3M, and Union Carbide. But Dow Corning, which at one time supplied almost half of all silicone breast im­plants, has the most to lose if the settle­ment falls apart.

Paul Raman, vice president of bro­kerage firm S. G. Warburg, New York City, agrees with Young's assessment. As Raman figures it, women who sign on will get an average $4,800 each— barely enough to remove the implants. Judging by settlements to date, women might receive awards of $6 million or more on some of the more than 10,000 federal lawsuits outstanding, he says.

If women opt out, however, they will have to prove that silicones made them sick or that the implant manufacturers misled them. Both assertions could be difficult to prove, Raman says.

A new study reported in the New En­gland Journal of Medicine last week [330, 1697 (1994)] may, in fact, influence more women to accept the implant settlement than reject it. The study, based on data from the Mayo Clinic, casts doubt on claims that breast implants lead to dis­ease. Researchers compared the records of 749 women with implants with those of 1,498 women who do not have im­plants. They found no increase in the likelihood of developing disease among implant recipients.

Marc Reisch

Exxon found reckless in 1989 Valdez oil spill A federal jury in Anchorage last week found that Exxon's reckless conduct caused the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident that spilled 10.9 million gal of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.

The decision, the first phase of a four-part civil case over the spill, opens Exxon to punitive damages as high as $15 billion and compensatory claims as high as $1.5 billion. Most of the plain-

8 JUNE 20,1994 C&EN

Boats and booms clean up Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 in Alaska's Saw Mill Bay.

tiffs, at least 14,000, are commercial fishermen and native Alaskans.

The trial's second phase, to consider compensatory damages, begins this week; punitive damages are on the docket of a third phase, scheduled for later this summer. The fourth phase will consider thousands of individual claims brought by other plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs argued that Exxon was reck­less in allowing Joseph Hazelwood to serve as captain of the supertanker knowing that he had a history of alco­holism and had resumed drinking. Wit­nesses testified he drank up to 14 shots of vodka the afternoon before the Valdez grounded, says one of the plaintiffs' at­torneys, Lori Wagner, from the Minne­apolis firm Faegre & Benson. "As a re­sult of being impaired, he left the bridge to an unendorsed mate," she says. "Exx­on was aware of all of the things that led up to the spill. And with Hazelwood's position, as managing agent of the com­pany, his act should be attributable to the company."

Hazelwood, whom the jury found negligent and reckless, admitted to drinking but said he was neither im­paired nor negligent in leaving the bridge.

"We are disappointed with the jury's finding," says Exxon chairman Lee Ray­mond. "We believe, however, that the evidence presented in the next phases of the trial showing what Exxon has al­ready spent and done will convincingly demonstrate that no award of punitive damages should be made."

Exxon has voluntarily spent $2.2 bil­lion on cleanup and $300,000 on set­tling damage claims. It has also paid

$1.1 billion in settlements of state and federal litigation.

Wagner says the $300,000 has not off­set the spill's impact on the salmon and herring markets, the long-term damage to fish stocks, and the decline in value of commercial fishing licenses.

Industry analysts do not expect that a large award would destroy Exxon or push it into bankruptcy as a $10.3 billion award forced Texaco to do in 1987. Exx­on had $111 billion in revenues in 1993. Michael Mayer, director of the invest­ment banking firm Wertheim Schroeder, New York City, calculates that every $1 billion in damages, assiiming a tax de­duction and no insurance, would affect the company's 1.24 billion shares by 50 cents per share. By June 15, two days af­ter the verdict, Exxon stock had dropped to a 52-week low of $57 a share.

Elisabeth Kirschner

Platelet growth factor cloned and characterized In work with potential implications for cancer chemotherapy, the long-sought platelet regulatory factor thrombopoietin (TPO) has been cloned and characterized.

Platelets (thrombocytes) are neces­sary for blood clotting. Cancer patients treated with chemotherapy or bone marrow transplants often develop thrombocytopenia, a dangerous reduc­tion in platelet levels that can cause hemorrhaging. Researchers have long believed that the blood factor TPO can in­crease platelet levels, but no one has been able to purify it. Now, TPO has been iso­

lated, cloned, and tested by several re­search groups.

Dan L. Eaton of Genentech, South San Francisco, Calif., and coworkers report purifying TPO from the plasma of pigs and cloning the human gene for the pro­tein [Nature, 369, 533 (1994)]. The re­searchers show that recombinant TPO significantly increases platelet produc­tion when injected into animals.

Donald C. Foster and coworkers at Se­attle-based ZymoGenetics Corp., a sub­sidiary of Novo Nordisk in Denmark, also report cloning the TPO gene [Na­ture, 369, 565 (1994)]. They find that in­jecting mice with the recombinant pro­tein increases circulating platelet levels more than fourfold after seven days. Other thrombocytopenia drugs in devel­opment have shown only 30 to 70% in­creases in platelet levels, according to the company.

Further work by Kenneth Kaushansky of the University of Washington's School of Medicine, Seattle, and coworkers there and at ZymoGenetics shows that TPO stimulates in vitro proliferation of megakaryocytes (cells from which plate­lets arise) and increases platelet levels in mice [Nature, 369,568 (1994)].

Currently, thrombocytopenia is treat­ed with transfusions of platelets, which are often attacked by the body's immune system. Several interleukins act to in­crease platelet levels, but they work slow­ly and have undesirable side effects. TPO could potentially be a more effective drug—assuming clinical trials show that it can improve platelet counts significantly.

Foster says the TPO development "represents a major step forward in our understanding of the regulation of blood cell production and potentially in the de­velopment of a treatment for life-threat­ening platelet deficiencies."

In a commentary in the same issue of Nature, Donald Metcalf of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria, Australia, a researcher who has also sought to iso­late TPO, says, "Prospects look good that [TPO] will quickly find wide clinical applications, provided that there are no unforeseen side effects."

Novo Nordisk and Genentech have both filed patent applications for recombi­nant TPO, and Metcalf comments that "with at least one other group rumored to have cloned TPO, it will... be a busy time for the lawyers arguing who has the patent rights to what should prove to be a . . . valuable new therapeutic agent."

Stu Borman

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