Patent Expirations Threaten Drug Industry Profits

The loss poses a daunting challenge for Pfizer, one shared by nearly every major pharmaceutical company. This year alone, because of patent expirations, the drug industry will lose control over more than 10 megamedicines whose combined annual sales have neared $50 billion.

This is a sobering reversal for an industry that just a few years ago was the world’s most profitable business sector but is now under pressure to reinvent itself and shed its dependence on blockbuster drugs. And it casts a spotlight on the problems drug companies now face: a drought of big drug breakthroughs and research discoveries; pressure from insurers and the government to hold down prices; regulatory vigilance and government investigations; and thousands of layoffs in research and development.

Morgan Stanleyrecently downgraded the entire group of multinational pharmaceutical companies based in Europe— AstraZeneca, Bayer,GlaxoSmithKline,Novartis, Novo Nordisk and Roche— in a report titled“An Avalanche of Risk? Downgrading to Cautious.” The analysts wrote,“The operating environment for pharma is worsening rapidly.”

The same concerns apply to drug giants in the United States. They are all struggling with research failures as they scramble to replace their cash cows, like Pfizer’s multimillion-dollar gamble on a replacement for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, which failed miserably in clinical trials. Drug companies cut 53,000 jobs last year and 61,000 in 2009, far more than most other sectors, according to the outplacement company Challenger, Gray&Christmas.

“This is panic time, this is truly panic time for the industry,” said Kenneth I. Kaitin, director of the Center for the Study of Drug Development atTufts Universityin Medford, Mass.“I don’t think there’s a company out there that doesn’t realize they don’t have enough products in the pipeline or the portfolio, don’t have enough revenue to sustain their research and development.”

While industrywide research and development spending has nearly doubled to $45 billion a year over the last decade, theFood and Drug Administrationhas approved fewer and fewer new drugs. Pfizer andEli Lillyhad major setbacks last year in once-promisingAlzheimer’sdrug experiments.Merckstopped testing its top acquisition from its merger with Schering Plough, a blood thinner that caused dangerous amounts of bleeding.

Drug company executives have begun addressing the calls for reinvention.

“We have to fix our innovative core,” Pfizer’s new president, Ian C. Read, said in an interview recently. To do that, the company is refocusing on smaller niches incancer, inflammation, neuroscience and branded generics— and slashing as much as 30 percent of its own research and development spending in the next two years as its scientists work on only the most potentially profitable prospects.

Consumers should see a financial benefit as lower-cost generics replace the expensive elite drugs, but may suffer in the long term if companies reduce research and do not produce new drugs that meet the public’s needs.

“You don’t lay off R&D if it’s just a cycle,” says Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at theUniversity of Michiganbusiness school who follows the pharmaceutical industry.“That kills progress.”

The federal government is also concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming from the industry.Francis S. Collins, director of theNational Institutes of Health, recently proposed a billion-dollar drug development center at the agency.

“We seem to have a systemic problem here,” Dr. Collins said, adding that government research efforts were intended to feed the private sector, not compete with it.

Mr. Read of Pfizer says new products can replace some but not all of the patent losses.

“The hurricane is making landfall,” said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, an analyst at Charles Stanley Securities, but he added that Pfizer is among several drug companies giving solace to shareholders by returning money through stock buybacks and dividends. Pfizer’s best asset, he said, is its $20 billion stockpile of cash. Yet since 2000, Pfizer’s and Merck’s share prices dropped about 60 percent, while the Dow rose 19 percent.

Several of the drug titans have bought competitors with newer products to fill their own sales gaps, essentially paying cash for future revenue as their own research was flagging. In the last two years, Pfizer paid $68 billion for Wyeth, Merck paid $41 billion for Schering-Plough, Roche paid $46 billion forGenentech, andSanofi-Aventispaid $20 billion forGenzyme.

Henry G. Grabowski, a professor of economics and director of theDuke Universityprogram in pharmaceutical health economics, likened the recent pharmaceutical megamergers to those that occurred in the banking and telecommunications industries when they were hit by financial shocks in the 1990s.

But he warned that this wave would not guarantee significant research developments in the long term.

“It’s never been shown that these big horizontal mergers are good for R&D productivity,” Dr. Grabowski said.“I’m in a show-me mode that they get you any real advances other than some short-term cost efficiencies that wear out.”

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W. Virginia Hospital Overradiated Brain Scan Patients, Records Show

The patients, atCabell Huntington Hospitalin Huntington, W.Va., were overdosed with radiation until late November, records show, even after theFood and Drug Administrationhad publicly issued its final report on hundreds of overdoses involving brain scans at other hospitals and the errors had been discussed publicly in Congress and by state officials and professional organizations.

Federal records indicate that Cabell knew of some of the overdoses for three months, but it did not disclose them publicly until The New York Times called the hospital for comment late last week. Within hours, the hospital issued a news release that was picked up by the local media.

Charles Shumaker, a hospital spokesman, declined to say how many patients were overdosed, why the mistakes occurred or whether any hospital employees were disciplined as a result.

But Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a radiology professor who has testified before Congress about the need for more controls over CT scans, called the dosage report for one Huntington patient— provided to her by The Times—“grossly and unacceptably abnormal.”

Richard A. Patterson, a Los Angeles lawyer who is representing patients who were overradiated at other hospitals, said he and his associates represent at least 20 patients at Cabell who were sent letters from the hospital saying they had received too much radiation.

One of those patients, Marcie Iseli, a 36-year-old mother of two teenagers, lost large patches of hair in a band around her head, a pattern ofhair lossthat matches dozens of other patients who were overradiated in 2008 and 2009 atCedars-Sinai Medical Centerin Los Angeles and atHuntsville Hospitalin Alabama.

Ms. Iseli had her CT procedure on Nov. 16 after experiencing nerve weakness on one side of her face. She said she immediately became nauseated.“The only thing I can remember is the weakness, being tired, my hair started coming out in clumps, my head was burning, my face was really hot,” she said.

Her patient records indicate that she received at least 10 times too much radiation, Dr. Smith-Bindman said.

“The events of the past year have certainly raised awareness of the issue,” said Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration.“However, we suspect that overexposures continue to occur and that incidents are underreported.”

Problems with the procedure, called a CT brain perfusion scan, first began to surface in the summer of 2009 at Cedars-Sinai, and then later at several other hospitals. These errors set off an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration into why patients tested with this complex yet lightly regulated technology were being overradiated.

The Food and Drug Administration’s final report, issued Nov. 9, 2010, said that most of the overdoses were a result of user error. However, it also said that manufacturers should do a better job of training and educating those who use their equipment and that their machines should have a more effective way of warning operators when radiation levels are too high.

Mr. Patterson, who is Ms. Iseli’s lawyer, said it was unfathomable that Cabell Huntington Hospital could make these mistakes“after the entire radiology world and the universe was aware of the problems.”

According to Food and Drug Administration records, G.E. Medical Systems, the company that made the CT scanner, filed a report in December 2010 about an error that occurred at Cabell in June. According to that report, the prescribed dose“was significantly greater”— or 5.6 times higher— than G.E.’s guidelines.

G.E. said a hospital technician had“manually increased” the radiation output to obtain a clearer picture, though that additional clarity was not necessary for diagnosis. G.E. said its machine did not malfunction, but it also said that technicians had subsequently received“refresher training.”

G.E. filed a second report this January on a similar episode that had happened the previous March.

“It’s not surprising to me that these errors continue to happen,” Dr. Smith-Bindman said.“The only way to fix the situation is to have hospitals be accountable by having to record the dose and reveal that to patients.”

David J. Brenner, who directs theCenter for Radiological ResearchatColumbia University Medical Center, agrees that more needs to be done.“An underlying problem here,” he said,“is that there are almost no federal regulations controlling radiation exposure from medicalX-rayscans, and it seems high time that we consider national legislation.”

Ms. Riley said the industry had responded responsibly to the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations on how to make medical radiation safer.“Individual companies that have been the subject of the F.D.A.’s investigation and other members of industry are now working on improvements to dose information in their labeling, as well as equipment safety features that will reduce the likelihood of additional exposures,” she said.

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Cancer Research Before Activism, Koch Brother Says

Mr. Koch, a billionaire who is perhaps best known for his family’s contributions to conservative causes, got a standing ovation from scientists, Nobel laureates and politicians of various political stripes as he opened the newDavid H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Researchat theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, which he gave $100 million to help build. And in a brief, and rare, interview, Mr. Koch, 70, spoke of his hopes for the new center, his prostate cancer and the prank call heard around the world.

“It’s a case of identity theft,” Mr. Koch said of the call in which the liberal blogger got through to Gov.Scott Walkerof Wisconsin, drew him out about his plans to weaken unions andposted a recording of the call on the Internet, making news and embarrassing the governor. Mr. Koch, whose company,Koch Industries, had given major campaign support to Governor Walker, among other conservative candidates and causes, added,“I didn’t even know his name before this brouhaha erupted.”

Mr. Koch joked that the call could cause him problems.“I was thinking to myself,‘My God, if I called up a senator or a congressman to discuss something with them, and they heard‘David Koch is on the line,’ they’d immediately say,‘That’s that fraud again— tell him to get lost!’ ” he said with a laugh

Mr. Koch said that only a relatively small portion of his giving goes to politics and public policy— most, he said, goes to cancer research, followed by cultural and educational institutions.

But he said that he felt he had been vilified for his support of conservative causes, which have ranged from opposition to the health care bill and pushing for small government and low taxes, to questioning whetherclimate changeis caused by humans. He and his brother Charlesare known, on the left, as the billionaires who bankrolled the public policy and citizen action groupsthat helped cultivate theTea Party.

“I read stuff about me and I say,‘God, I’m a terrible guy,’ ” he said.“And then I come here and everybody treats me like I’m a wonderful fellow, and I say,‘Well, maybe I’m not so bad after all.’ ”

The new institute here is taking an innovative approach by uniting cancer scientists and engineers under one roof— an approach that the institute’s director, Tyler Jacks, who is also the David H. Koch Professor of Biology, said should yield results.

“Engineers are more problem-solvers; cancer scientists tend to be more discoverers,” Dr. Jacks said in an interview.“And the combination is actually extremely powerful.”

“So we have engineers who are interested in nanotechnology, for delivering cancer drugs more effectively and more specifically to cancer cells— that’s an engineering problem,” he said.“We have other engineers who are interested in building new devices that can monitor the state of an individual’s health more sensitively and more continuously— imagine implantable sensors that would allow you to know whether your disease is in remission or undergoing relapse. Again, that’s an engineering problem.”

In his speech at the opening ceremony, Mr. Koch warned that government spending cuts could impede cancer research. And he urged donors to fill the gap.

“TheNational Institutes of Health, and theNational Cancer Institutein particular, are facing serious cutbacks in their funding due to the massive deficits the federal government is incurring,” he said in his speech, in a tent outside the seven-story building.“If the cutbacks happen, it will significantly diminish the level of research that can be carried on at the Koch Institute. I earnestly ask you to do all you can to help maintain the superb research at the Koch Institute at its maximum level.”

Mr. Koch is tied with his brother Charles as the fifth wealthiest American in Forbes magazine’s most recent ranking, and came in 45th in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of donors who gave the most in 2010. Stacy Palmer, the editor of the Chronicle, said that Mr. Koch was unusual in the wide range of his philanthropy, which supports cancer research, the arts and the public policy sphere.

His roles do not always fit neatly together.

His gift here means that one of the biggest donors to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, home to some of the top climate scientists in the nation, is an owner of a company thatGreenpeacecalled“a kingpin of climate change denial.”

Koch Industries— which owns oil refineries, pipelines and consumer brands like Dixie cups and Lycra— responded that“it is Greenpeace that is the denier here— denier of any rational and honest dialogue on the underlying scientific debate regarding climate change.”

And while he has become a major financier of cancer research around the country, one of his companies, Georgia-Pacific, which produces formaldehyde, has beentrying to convince the government not to list formaldehyde as a human carcinogen. Koch Industries said it would respect and comply with any new governmental regulation.

Mr. Koch said that he and his brother had not decided how much money to spend to influence the 2012 elections.

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Pharmacists Fight Mandatory Mail-Order Prescriptions

Community pharmacists in New York are lobbying state lawmakers to pass legislation that would prevent health plans from requiring patients taking medications for chronic ailments to fill their prescriptions through the mail.

While some plans had shifted to mail delivery long ago because it was often cheaper for both employers and consumers, drugstores have been offering more competitive prices and pushing lawmakers to level the playing field by ensuring that people can still visit their local pharmacy for their drugs.

The proposedlegislation, which was introduced in both state chambers in late February, would ban mandatory mail-order programs.

It would also forbid plans from demanding that people pay more for drugs if they buy them at the drugstore.“What we are asking is to make mail order an option, not mandatory,” said Craig M. Burridge, the executive director of the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York, whose members traveled to Albany on Wednesday to plead their case.“We are not opposed to mail order as a convenience to the patients. But right now, they don’t have a choice.”

Pennsylvania is considering similarlegislation. The federalMedicareprogram already requires drug benefit plans to allow members the option of filling their prescriptions at the drugstore.

In making their argument, the pharmacists say some people, particularly the elderly who are taking multiple medications, benefit from going into a store and having a pharmacist oversee their prescriptions. They say many customers prefer being able to shop at places where they have longtime relationships with pharmacists.

The large companies that manage prescription drug programs, known as pharmacy benefit managers, say mail order is attractive because it is less expensive and more convenient.

“There’s going to be use of more home delivery, not less,” said Mark Merritt, the president of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents the pharmacy benefit managers.“It saves money and is pretty popular with consumers.” He says employers choose mail-order programs because they believe them to be a better alternative, and the legislature should not take away their choice of plans.

But as the business of filling prescriptions also shifts from expensive brandedpharmaceuticalsto much cheaper generic alternatives, retail pharmacists, particularly large chains likeWalgreen’s, are having much more success in persuading employers and health plans to allow people the choice of using drugstores for their medications for chronic ailments.

To increase sales at their stores,“retail pharmacies can offer and compete with mail order” by being willing to make less profit on the prescriptions they fill, said Adam J. Fein, an industry consultant in Philadelphia.“They are essentially trying to offer these products at mail-order pricing,” he said.

The decision byWal-Martseveral years ago to offer generic drugs for only $4 and the move by retailers to compete aggressively on price has damped the enthusiasm for mail order as the least expensive option, Mr. Fein said. Medicare’s insistence on including retail drugstores as an option has also helped slow the growth in prescriptions being filled by mail-order pharmacies, which he said lost market share in 2009.

Mr. Fein also points to Walgreen’s new marketing campaign, promoting its ability to fill prescriptions for the 90 days, the same as mail order. Walgreens, which claims many customers do not know their plans allow them to get three months’ worth of medicine at a drugstore, says it filled nearly 700,000 more 90-day prescriptions in January than it did at the same time last year.

Some benefit managers say they are now less convinced that mail is always better than retail, even in trying to save money.“I don’t know if mail service is a vastly superior cost containment tool today,” said David R. Kwasny, the president of Restat, an independent pharmacy benefit manager that does not have a mail delivery service. He says employers and insurers can instead try to steer patients to certain retail pharmacists, including independent stores, that are willing to compete on price.

But he also emphasized the personal touch of a retail pharmacist.“We feel there’s a lot of value and underutilization behind the pharmacy counter,” he said.

Take the case of an elderly patient who came into Family Medical Pharmacy, an independent drugstore in Williamsville, N.Y., near Buffalo. The patient had run out of Aricept, to treatdementia. She had already been to a chain drugstore where the pharmacists told her they could not help because she had mandatory mail-order prescriptions. Dennis C. Galluzzo, a pharmacist who is the co-owner of Family Medical Pharmacy, said he called her plan to try to get permission to refill her prescription.

“I relentlessly stayed on the phone for hours until we finally get it resolved and had to get an override from two supervisors,” he said. Only after he threatened to send the woman to a hospital to get the medication did the plan give the drugstore permission to fill her prescription, he said.

For their part, the prescription benefit managers say mail-order programs are better able to convert a patient to a less expensive generic drug, and that the plans they offer are better equipped to oversee a patient’s prescriptions.

Because these companies have invested in sophisticated computer systems to monitor all prescriptions, they argue they can intervene when someone is taking drugs that interact. If a patient has a particular question and needs privacy, they can simply telephone one of the plan’s pharmacists. In a drugstore, someone may feel rushed or uneasy about asking a question.“It’s just not an optimal environment,” said Timothy C. Wentworth, a senior executive atMedco Health Solutions, a large pharmacy benefit manager.

Some companies, however, are trying to develop programs that provide more flexibility.CVS Caremark, for example, has made use of its CVS retail drugstore chain to offer a program called maintenance choice, where people can go to one of their stores or use mail order to fill a long-term prescription.Express Scriptssays it has developed a program that allows customers to choose whether to use mail order for all or some of their medications, and many people decide they would rather have their drugs delivered.

And while mandatory programs are still relatively rare, consultants say employers are increasingly likely to use financial incentives to try to steer workers to the least expensive options. In some cases, plans may have programs where customers pay less when they go to a limited network of retail pharmacists that are willing to offer less expensive prices or they may ask customers to pay more when they go to the drugstore.

Edward A. Kaplan, a benefits consultant with the Segal Company, recalls a recent client that instituted a co-payment when any of its employees used a retail pharmacist to fill a long-term prescription. Many of the employees happily paid for the privilege.“They didn’t vote with their wallets,” he said.

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Patient Voices: Sickle Cell Anemia - Multimedia Feature

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City Council Earmarks Flow to Brain Scan Group

And each year, the Council responds, turning down food banks, after-school programs and arts groups in favor of the foundation, which provides free brain scans. The group has received nearly $2 million since 2005, making it one of the top recipients of discretionary funds, known as earmarks.

But in doing so, the Council has given the city’s imprimatur to a use of a medical tool that theNational Institutes of Healthhas said“may not be ethical” and whose usefulness in fighting cancer scientists have passionately debated.

And the money has kept flowing, even though the centerpiece of the foundation’s work, a 70-foot tractor-trailer equipped with anM.R.I.machine, has until recently sat idle for four months.

The popularity of the Brain Tumor Foundation raises questions aboutwhether the Council monitors earmarksas closely as it should after a series of fraud and abuse scandals.

For all their passion, lawmakers seem largely unaware of the potential downside of cancer screenings, and several said they did not realize the Council had devoted so much money to a single cause.

The president of the foundation, Dr. Patrick J. Kelly, a retired New York University neurosurgeon, acknowledged that the potential of his work, which focuses on the early detection oftumors, has not yet been proved.“It just makes sense,” he said in a recent interview.“Can I demonstrate that scientifically? No.”

Some cancer researchers oppose Dr. Kelly’s methods because of concerns that early treatment does not improve, and in some cases might worsen, a person’s health. But the Council does not seem worried: 21 of its 51 members provided $233,000 last year to support the foundation’s trailer, named for Bobby Murcer, the Yankees outfielder who died of complications from brain cancer in 2008.

Even Dr. Kelly was startled to learn that his group was one of the biggest recipients of Council money.“Is it as important as feeding people up in Harlem?” he said.“Well, probably not.”

“But,” he joked,“I won’t turn it down.”

Thousands of groups apply for a share of the Council’s discretionary money each year. The Council speaker,Christine C. Quinn, determines the size of each council member’s pot, ranging from $80,000 to more than $1 million. The Council gives out about $18 million annually.

A familiar list of organizations consistently wins a large share of the money: the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the City Parks Foundation and the Doe Fund, a group that provides jobs to homeless people.

But there are also highly specialized organizations that are frequent recipients of earmarks, like Chess-in-the-Schools, an educational program. Some groups are so competitive that they hire lobbyists to corner council members on the steps of City Hall at the height of budget negotiations.

The Brain Tumor Foundation suggested in its application for financing last year that its trailer would operate 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, year-round.

But the foundation, an official said, could not afford to keep the trailer running on a regular basis— it costs about $25,000 a week. In total, it has visited each of the city’s boroughs about five times, sometimes staying for several weeks.

Some council members said that the oversight process should be more rigorous and that groups should be made to follow up with the Council in a detailed way.

“Moneys are being given out, but whether we’re being successful or not is not clearly measurable,” said Councilman Jumaane D. Williams of Brooklyn, who provided $10,000 to the Brain Tumor Foundation last year.

Politicians are eager to appear at the foundation’s screenings, which are so popular in some communities that waiting lists total in the hundreds. The foundation focuses on low-income neighborhoods where access to health care is limited.

James S. Oddo, a councilman from Staten Island who gave the foundation $20,000 last year, said its programs were crucial for residents who would not otherwise go to a doctor.

“I’m cognizant of the notion of too many scans and all the negatives that come with it, but right now I’m not convinced that people are better off avoiding them,” Mr. Oddo said.

Since 2008, the Brain Tumor Foundation has scanned 2,500 people in the city, meaning each scan has so far cost the city about $778. The group has found tumors in about 1 of every 100 people. By comparison, a 1999 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found two brain tumors in a sample of 1,000 people.

Dr. Kelly has presented his M.R.I. scans as a breakthrough,“the best-known method of treating deadlytumorgrowth.”

But some researchers warn about the risk for false positives, and others argue that treating slow-growing tumors aggressively can have harmful side effects. A division of the National Institutes of Health that specializes in brain tumors has stated that“early detection strategies have not been a priority andtheir use may not be ethical.”

And theAmerican Cancer Societyand theAmerican Brain Tumor Associationsaid they had concerns about Dr. Kelly’s methods because of those risks.

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In Brachiopods’ Eyes, the Theory of Evolution

But Darwin dispelled that seeming absurdity by laying out a series of steps by which the evolution could take place. Making this sequence all the more plausible was the fact that some of the transitional forms Darwin described actually existed in living invertebrates.

Now, a team of American and European researchers report that they have discovered an eye that could represent the first step in this evolution. They have found, in effect, a swimming eyeball.

“This is in no way the ancestor of the human eye, but it’s the first time we have had a model of it,” said Yale Passamaneck, a postdoctoral researcher at theUniversity of Hawaii. He and his colleagues report the discovery in the online journalEvoDevo.

The researchers made the discovery while studying a species ofbrachiopods, or lamp shells, which live in shells but are marine worms unrelated to mollusks like clams and oysters. Lamp shells have existed for over half a billion years, but their biology has long remained a mystery— including the simple question of whether they can see.

Four-day-old lamp shell larvae, for example, have puzzling dark spots on either side of the front end of their bodies. Recently, Carsten Lüter, a biologist at the Berlin Museum of Natural History, and his colleagues dissected the eyespots of some lamp shell larvae. They discovered that each spot was actually a pair of neurons, one for capturing light and one containing pigment. The neurons connected to a brainlike clump of neurons inside the larva.

Their anatomy suggested the spots were simple eyes. So Dr. Lüter and his colleagues contacted Dr. Passamaneck and his colleagues at the University of Hawaii, who are experts on the genes for animal photoreceptors. The Hawaii researchers discovered that, indeed, photoreceptor genes were active in the dark spots.

But to be thorough, Dr. Passamaneck checked to see if the photoreceptor genes were active at other stages.“I thought,‘I’m just going to eliminate that possibility,’ ” he said.

Just the opposite happened. Dr. Passamaneck discovered that the genes were active much earlier, just 36 hours after fertilization, when the lamp shell embryo was merely a cup-shaped mass of a few hundred cells.

Dr. Passamaneck was baffled.“There are no neurons at that stage,” he said. Nevertheless, it was clear that the outer surface of the cup was covered with photoreceptors.

To see if the embryos were doing something with the light, Dr. Passamaneck and his colleagues put a light on one side of a dish of embryos. The lamp shell embryo is covered with tiny beating hairs, which it uses to swim in a spiral pattern. Dr. Passamaneck found that after 20 minutes, twice as many embryos would end up on the illuminated side of the dish as on the dark side.

Dr. Passamaneck and his colleagues hypothesize that the cells can detect the direction of light because it is blocked in some directions by the embryo’s yolk. It can then use this information to change the rhythm of its hair.

It is possible, Dr. Passamaneck said, that in the course of evolution, our own eyes started out as swimming eyeballs. Only later did the job of catching light get relegated to only some cells, which could send signals to their neighbors. And only much later did these specialist cells relay signals to brains.

Todd Oakley of theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, an expert on the evolution of vision, called the results“tantalizing.” But he cautioned that just because the photoreceptor gene was active in the early embryo, that did not necessarily mean that the lamp shells were able to see.“Other possible photoreceptive mechanisms should also be ruled out,” Dr. Oakley said.“Correlation does not mean causation.”

Dr. Passamaneck is making plans for these sorts of studies. For now, though, he remains a bit stunned at what he has stumbled across.

“It’s likeYogi Berrasaid,” he said.“You can observe a lot by watching.”

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