Find The Story, Then…

Here’s the headline:

Here’s the name of this new addition to our family of opioids:  Dsuvia.

As I read the article I had two questions:

First:  Why does this country need with another opioid?  Especially when there are nearly 400 opioids currently on the market, including brand name and generic drugs.

Especially in a country where opiod-related overdoses killed 49,000 people in 2017?

Second:  I wonder who owns AcelRx – the company that makes the just-approved Dsuvia – and could it possibly be a bunch of rich guys who will get richer from this?

Rich guys who smiled on October 10, when it looked like Dsuvia was on its way to approval and AcelRx stock skyrocketed nearly 36%?

Rich guys who smiled even more when they heard that AcelRx projects $1.1 billion in annual sales of Dsuvia?

Could rich guys have anything to do with the FDA approving yet another opioid?

So who owns AcelRx?

According to CNN Business, here are the top five of the top 10 owners of AcelRx:

Here’s how Nasdaq slices the owners’ piece of the pie:

To get an idea of the value of these top five, I had to learn about something called AUM – Assets Under Management:

AUM is the total market value of assets that an investment company or financial institution manages on behalf of investors.

Now that I knew what to look for, I spent a fair amount of time looking at (rich) pale males in gray suits.

Here are some of the key people at those top five owners of AcelRx, and each company’s AUM:

#1:

The Vanguard Group, Inc.	F. William McNabb III, Chairman
AUM:  $5.1 trillion in 2018	Tim Buckley, President & CEO

#2:

Blackrock Fund Advisors	Larry Fink, Chairman & CEO
AUM:  $6.3 trillion in 2018	Robert Kapito, President

#3:

Renaissance Technologies	James H. Simons, Co-founder & Board Chair
AUM:  $84 billion in 2018	Howard L. Morgan, Co-founder

#4:

Fidelity Management & Research	Charles Morrison, President
AUM:  $219B in 2018	Gerard McGraw, CFO, Director

#5:

Geode Capital Management	Vince Gubitosi, President
AUM:  $84 billion in 2018	Jeffrey S. Miller, COO

But Dsuvia isn’t just for rich investors – the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars helping to fund AcelRx’s research, and where does the Pentagon get its money?

From us taxpayers.  So you, too – willingly or otherwise – had a hand in bringing a new opioid to our nation.

And there you have it.  With all the readily available opioids in this country, and with all the opioid-related deaths, our FDA saw fit to give yet another opioid the nod.

Is there a connection between that FDA approval, and the owners of AcelRx making more money?

You connect the dots, and then you tell me.

In closing, here’s an old melody, What The World Needs Now, with new lyrics written especially for this occasion:

What the world needs now Is drugs, more drugs. It’s the only thing That we’ve just too little of.
What the world needs now Is more opioid drugs. No, not just for some But for everyone.
Doc, I don’t need another aspirin. I’ve got Advil and Motrin and Tylenol. I need real stuff, the hard stuff That gets me high, the stuff that kills, If you want to know.
What the world needs now Is more opioid drugs. New one just approved Catchy name:  “Dsuvia.”
Just a tiny pill Slides right under my tongue. No needles for me – Got Dsuvia.
Doc, can I have some more Dsuvia? Cause my knees hurt, my back hurts, they’re really bad. Please just write a prescription, and no more pain. I’ll never feel… Anything again.
What the world needs now…