Tonight on 60 Minutes, drug safety, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the whole history of the Catholic church represented in a single building is what the show is all about tonight.
The worst pharmaceutical disaster in decades, a steroid called Methylprednisolone was contaminated as an outbreak of fungal meningitis has so far killed over 40 Americans and has made hundreds more sick. A technician of the NECC (New England Compounding Company, the company who produced the medication) admits that “they got greedy.” They were producing so much of product so quickly that they could no longer follow the strict procedures for the medication’s manufacture.
Compounded drugs like Methylprednisolone do not have to be FDA-approved. An NECC salesman reveals that the company’s clients were “in” on the company’s fraud. He shares that they even used fake aliases like Bart Simpson to move product. Even the commissioner of the FDA, Margret Hamburg, admits that they cannot back the safety of all the medications out in the market right now. Today, Ms. Hamburg wants Congress to give the FDA greater oversight over compounded medications like Methylprednisolone.
The NECC is now bankrupt but its owners and partners have banked out with at least $16 million dollars as soon as people started to die.
Sheryl Sandberg puts herself out into the limelight to talk about women in the workplace and why there are so few women at the top of America’s Fortune 500 companies. “Men still run the world….I think we’re stalled,” Sheryl says. She admits trying to reignite the revolution for women. In her new book, Sheryl says today’s women are still “leaning back” and it sounds like as if she’s saying that there aren’t enough women at the top because women are at fault. She says in the interview she’s not blaming women, but she isn’t calling out men or society either.
Voted “Most Likely to Succeed” in high school, a graduate of Harvard, and a former employee of Google, Sandberg almost took the job at Facebook without negotiating. That, Sheryl says, would have been a big mistake. Fortunately, her husband persuaded her to negotiate for the position she now holds at Facebook. Speaking of her relationship with her husband, Sheryl says you cannot have a full career and be a housewife at the same time – that a decision to get married is also a career decision.
“Lean In” is Sheryl’s new book where she hopes to empower women. Some criticize that her advice is actually only good for elite women, and that it’s easy for her to give advice given her privileged life, but Sheryl says that it is easy for her say and that’s why she’s saying it. In regard to Facebook’s less-than-spectacular IPO, Sandberg admits it wasn’t fun but that their main goal is still to provide the greatest value to both its users and investors.
Pope Benedict XVI travelled only once outside of the Vatican to oversee the longest-running architecturral project on Earth, “God’s Architect” Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Under construction for over 130 years, only the interiors have been mostly completed as cranes and scaffolds litter its exterior.
Image Credit: 60 Mintues
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About Alexis Higgins
The SEC needs to investigate the Facebook IPO debacle and that includes Sandberg and her boss, Mark Zuckerberg’s role and their dealings with the Wall St. bankers and the firm’s valuation and pricing. Sandberg has refused time and time again to answer specific questions about her role in the IPO and it’s disgraceful. Bernie Madoff must be enjoying this. Sandberg and Zuckerberg did him proud.