NEtt&fifTHE WEEK

SET TO GROW Pfizer will add 600 jobs and several new labs to its Ann Arbor research complex.

IN BRIEF-CELEBRATION

The 100th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize and this year's U.S. Nobel Laureates were hon­ored last week by re­ceptions at the White House hosted by Presi­dent George W. Bush and at the Swedish Em­bassy hosted by Am­bassador Jan Eliasson. Representing the chemical community were 2001 chemistry Laureate William S. Knowles (C&EN, Nov. 5, page 37) and ACS President Attila Pavlath.

E X P A N S I O N

PFIZER COMMITS TO MICHIGAN RESEARCH State snags $800 million Pfizer boost to Life Sciences Corridor

I N A DEAL THAT CAME TOGETH-

er just before Thanksgiving, Pfizer agreed to add as many

as 600 jobs by 2008 and spend up to $800 million to consolidate and in­crease its research opera­tions in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The agreement is a big boost to the state's Life Sci-ences Corridor—a gov­ernment-supported effort directed by the Michigan Economic Development

Corp. to promote health-related businesses in concert with state research institutions (C&EN,

Oct. 1, page 31). The Pfizer deal calls for state and local authori­ties to forgo nearly $85 million in tax revenues over the next seven years.

The tax abatement—along with the University of Michigan's agreement to sell Pfizer a 52-acre parcel of land for $27 million-secured the deal for Michigan in­stead of Pfizer's alternative, a re­search site in New London, Conn.

David Canter, director of Pfi­zer's Ann Arbor laboratories, the former Warner-Lambert facility where the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor was developed, says

the existing 92-acre site is already "fully built out." Hundreds of the lab's 2,500 employees must work at satellite sites "strung out in labs like the Florida Keys," away from the main site.

The university land, adjacent to Pfizer's main site, is "perfect for our needs," he says. It would make possible greater and "more pro­ductive" research in specialties such as cancer and cardiovascu­lar, psychological, and arthritic disorders.

Despite some grumbles among Ann Arbor legislators about cor­porate blackmail and corporate welfare, the deal adds significant heft to the Life Sciences Corridor concept. University of Michigan President Lee C. Bollinger says the school anticipates not only new collaborations with Pfizer scientists, but also "career oppor­tunities for our graduates and technology transfer initiatives benefiting the state's economy"— MARC REISCH

E N V I R O N M E N T

PESTICIDE TESTS: EPA ALTERS STANCE Agency may consider results of humans tests in regulatory decisions

E PA LOOKED AT THE RESULTS

of four human studies in its assessment of the pesticides

azinphos methyl and phosmet this year, but those data had no effect on the final decisions, the agency says.

However, an EPA spokesman did say the agency will be devel­oping a proposal on incorporating data from human clinical trials in regulatory decisions on pesticides and soliciting comments on it over the next few months.

This is a reversal of an infor­mal policy established during the Clinton Administration, under which EPArefused to accept new

data from clinical trials in which people were deliberately exposed to pesticides. According to a 1998 policy statement: "EPA is deeply concerned that some pesticide manufacturers seem to be en­gaging in health effects studies on human subjects as a way to avoid more protective results from animal tests under the new Food Quality Protection Act." The purpose of human tests is to avoid the 10-fold safety factor that must be used when extrapo­lating from animal data to human exposure.

"In our opinion, human clini­cal trials with pesticides are un­

ethical, immoral, and unscientif­ic," says Elliot Negin of the Nat­ural Resources Defense Council. They are unethical, he says, "be­cause often the subjects are fi­nancially strapped, not very bright, and don't necessarily know what they are getting themselves into." The tests are unscientific, he explains, because the exposure groups cannot be large enough to detect responses that would oc­cur in only a small fraction (3 to 4%) of the population.

However, Jay J. Vroom, presi­dent of the American Crop Pro­tection Association, says human test data can be collected in an ethical manner and that such da­ta should be used to strengthen regulatory decisions. It is scien­tifically valid to use data from a small number of subjects—10 or 20—he says, because the goals are narrow. "You are basically testing to see whether the human response to the pesticide paral­lels the animal response," he says. -BETTE HILEMAN

1 2 C & E N / D E C E M B E R 3 , 2 0 0 1 H T T P : / / P U B S . A C S . O R G / C E N