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It was a negative day for General Electric, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Boeing Aerospace.
NBC anchor Brian Williams looked at the stock market ticker and saw "grim" news about his employer. General Electric owns NBC Universal, which operates NBC News and CNBC, the financial news cable channel. So Williams sat down with CNBC's David Faber and asked what was happening to GE. The Meatball, "an enormous company" that employs 300,000, was once capitalized at $500bn; today about $60bn. Faber blamed its overextended financial services arm, which "makes loans around the world" on mortgages, credit cards, real estate development. "A feeding frenzy," he called it nihilistically. "Nobody believes anything anymore."
Wyeth, the manufacturer of Phenergan, a migraine headache medicine, knew that the drug had caused gangrene, sometimes leading to amputation, in 20 cases when administered intravenously. Yet it did not add an IV warning to its label because the Food & Drug Administration had not ordered it. When Diana Levine, "a popular Vermont musician," as NBC's Pete Williams called her, had the IV Push, the drug got into an artery. Her hand had to be cut off. Levine sued in state court and was awarded $7m in damages. The Supreme Court rejected Wyeth's appeal, calling the firm responsible for its own labels. "This ruling means that future drug safety cases--the next Vioxx, the next Fen-Phen--can move forward," CBS' Wyatt Andrews concluded, "as can other state court claims against the railroads or carmakers."
On ABC, Lisa Stark found trouble for Boeing in the investigation of last week's crash of a 737 jetliner on approach to Amsterdam Airport. Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 was flying on autopilot when it plowed into a field, leaving nine dead. The autopilot was following a faulty altimeter, which registered that the plane was about to land when it was in fact 1950 ft airborne. The autopilot reduced power and "it was not until they were 450 ft above that ground, after a stall warning, that the crew applied full power but they were too low and too slow." Boeing sent out an alert to the nine airlines operating some 1300 737s nationwide. "Are more warnings needed?" Stark asked. "Does Boeing need to tale a look at how the altimeter and autopilot work together?"
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