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Should Reporters Have Agreed To The Vertex Embargo?

This article is more than 9 years old.

This morning at 7 a.m., Vertex Pharmaceuticals released big news: adding a new drug, lumacaftor, to its existing cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco increased by an order of magnitude the number of patients the medicine can help -- although the combo is still not as effective as Kalydeco is in patients who have a particular, rare mutation. I had a story up at 7:05. Adam Feuerstein at TheStreet.com, Andrew Pollack at the New York Times, and Meg Tirrell at CNBC all published their stories at the same time.

None of us -- not even Meg, who's on TV -- has Clark Kent's ability to type at the speed of sound. We all completed our stories under an agreement with Vertex called an embargo, in which a company, scientific publication, or other organization shares information with reporters who agree not to publish their stories on an agreed upon time. But that's not all I agreed to. Vertex asked me to agree that the result "represent highly sensitive non-public information" and to promise "I will only discuss the timing, data and related documents ahead of the announcement" with a list of five Vertex representatives, including CEO Jeff Leiden, Bonnie Ramsey, one of the outside researchers involved in the study, and Preston Campbell of the CF Foundation.

I agreed. I can only imagine that my colleagues did, too. It was a no brainer: this was one of the most-watched data releases in biotech this year, and billions of dollars of Vertex's market cap were at stake. More than that, this is a drug that I have been writing about since 2008. I wanted to know what happened. I also thought that I'd be able to ask some point questions, and that my past reporting and cache of analyst reports would give me plenty of context in order to write a story. If I didn't feel that I had enough information to publish this morning, I could have taken that reporting, woken up in the morning, and made some calls. I didn't -- I went with what I had.

I don't have any regret about taking the deal. But I made a point to disclose it in the story and to point out the disclosure on Twitter . It led to a vigorous discussion, and there were some readers who thought I should have told Vertex that if they were going to tell me who to talk to, I wouldn't be talking to them. The most pointed argument came from Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University.

twitter-tweet" lang="en">.@matthewherper @embargowatch I think the answer should be a resounding no. Giving up yr reporting options leaves you open to manipulation.

— Charles Seife (@cgseife) June 24, 2014

Kelly Hills also had some very thoughtful arguments. She worried that Vertex was manipulating the media.

I don't think any of us were uncritical. I'm sure that Vertex could have done without Andy Pollack noting that "[s]ome doctors have protested the price, including authors of a commentary published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in October." Or pointing out, as I also did, that the results were below what some doctors and Wall Street analysts thought would count as clinically significant. But this was data that sent Vertex shares up 40%, and I think that would have been true regardless of the embargo. The data set the tone for the stories, not the fact that some of us got a head start. I think Vertex's reason for structuring the agreement the way it did was exactly what it looks like: the company was trying to prevent insider trading. Do government sources and corporations sometimes use agreements to leave the press hamstrung? Yeah. And there are times when reporters should barter with sources. (I remember, in a similar situation, agreeing to the embargo only if the company allowed me to call one source of my choice. They went for that.) But there are also times when someone has information and you don't really lose much by being willing to honor their embargo and demands -- especially, if after a period of time, all the conditions evaporate. If you don't have enough to write, you can just wait. I am trying to be more transparent about situations like this, but I don't want to get bogged down, either. The important thing, today, is that a new cystic fibrosis drug combo delivered promising results that may help 22,000 Americans. And there are other questions that are more important than whether Vertex was able to spin my and my colleagues. For instance:

  • Vertex's clinical investigators haven't had a chance to review the data. Will there be any changes between what was presented this morning and what makes it into the medical literature?
  • One thing not included in the press release was the rate of liver enzyme elevations. They were low, but seem to be the most important side effect of this drug.

And then there's the question of whether this drug combo makes patients feel better. I think it's worth reading the experience of one trial participant, Jay Gironimi, who blogged about his experience and shared it on Twitter. It's far from a resounding endorsement.

And now I'm going to move on to something else.

Update: Just to be crystal clear: I'd take the deal again, and I don't think Vertex did anything wrong by offering it.