Thankyou for taking the time, energy and effort to help educate us, so that we can make more informed and healthy decisions.

I have a long way to go…the only good thing about the hypo weight gain….if we ever hit a famon, I have more than enough junk in my trunk to live a loooong life!

Abbott Labs posts 27% rise in profit
Sees strong earnings growth continuing in 2009
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
Last update: 9:39 a.m. EST Jan. 21, 2009
Comments: 4

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Abbott Laboratories on Wednesday said fourth-quarter profit climbed 27% and reiterated expectations for strong earnings growth in 2009 despite a slumping global economy.

In the final three months of 2008, the drug manufacturer posted net income of $1.54 billion, or 98 cents a share, compared with $1.20 billion, or 77 cents a share, for the same quarter in 2007.

Revenue rose 10.1% to $7.95 billion, helped by a 41.6% increase in sales of Humira, a rheumatoid arthritis drug. Humira sales totaled $1.35 billion. A unfavorable exchange trimmed revenue by 2%, Abbott said. [too bad!]

Excluding various accounting items, Abbott would have reported adjusted earnings of $1.06 a share versus 93 cents in the year-earlier period. On average, analysts polled by FactSet Research had expected Abbott to show earnings of $1.06 a share on sales of $8.07 billion.

For 2009, the Abbott Park, Ill.-based company reaffirmed its prior outlook of double-digit earnings growth, on a percentage basis. The company expects to generate an adjusted profit, which excludes one-time items, in the range of $3.65 to $3.70 a share. Analysts were projecting $3.66 a share, according to FactSet.
In early Wednesday trades, shares of Abbott (ABT:
Abbott Laboratories
News , chart , profile , more
Last: 46.65-0.24-0.51%
4:00pm 03/09/2009

Sponsored by:
ABT 46.65, -0.24, -0.5%) moved up 1.4% to $49.86.
Aside from surging Humira sales, Abbott has benefited from a strong lineup of vascular and stent-related products. Worldwide vascular revenue jumped 58.9% to $663 million.

Abbott recently received U.S. approval for its new drug-coated stent Xience, which is simultaneously being marketed by Boston Scientific (BSX:
BSX

Sponsored by:
BSX, , ) under the brand name Promus. The Xience/Promus stent has already been available overseas for some time.

Also, Abbott’s nutritional products sales climbed 11% to $1.32 billion.
Earlier this month, Abbot said it will acquire Advanced Medical Optics Inc. (EYE:
EYE

Sponsored by:
EYE, , ) for $2.8 billion, including assumed debt, as part of a move to boost sales of medical products overseas.
Santa Ana, Calif.-based Advanced Medical Optics is a provider of cataract and laser vision-correction surgeries.

End of Story

Jeffry Bartash is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.

They must be either insane or absolutely ruthless, or both.

They prefer to prescribe drugs such as for instance statins (from which people died even faster than from hypothyroidism alone – remember the Lipobay scandal?!) rather than to relieve their patients from their illness.

This is not only gross negligence, because it was already known in the 50ies and 60ies that high cholesterol was one of the symptoms of hypothyroidism, but an outright criminal conduct.

Not to mention the unbearable arrogance and complete lack of compassion patients are usually treated with.

Words are not enough to express the contempt that I feel for such a despicable spawn, who are capable of – metaphorically – stabbing the very people in their hearts who trustfully lay their already badly bruised lives and fates into the hands of these wolves in sheep’s clothings.

Guttler, on the other hand, is dangerous. I can’t help but wonder how many drugs he gives his poor patients that have “problems other than hypo”?