Talk:Emergent BioSolutions

In the AfD linked above, the following news sources were found [1] [2] [3]. If someone could make these references, that'd be great. Cheers, Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 06:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Emergent logo s1 rgb.jpg

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Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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EBS article

{{Request edit}} To whom it may concern: I am writing here on behalf of Emergent BioSolutions (EBS), the subject of this article. They would like to see it better organized and updated, and have asked me to represent them. In so doing, I have researched and written a proposed replacement draft, which is available here: User:Stellatarum/Emergent_BioSolutions

The problem with the current version should be apparent. Chiefly, the article is almost entirely unsupported by citations and the few references used now are not true third-party citations. Furthermore, the article is not very well organized. For example, the entire body of the article is listed under "History", and includes some details that aren't really germane to an encyclopedia entry about the company.

My draft aims to address these issues, and give a more accurate picture of the company. The new draft contains 26 citations, from general press and industry journal sources, is more logically organized, and is roughly the same length. I'll note here that if you see a turn of phrase that sounds odd, it's likely because EBS is mindful of FDA regulations regarding their view of what constitutes promotional product information and we want to follow those. For example, in order to make certain statements I would be obliged to include FDA-required "small print" which I'm well aware Wikipedia does not wish to include. I hope this isn't a problem; if another editor makes changes later on with Wikipedia guidelines in mind, I won't object. I just can't be the one to do that.

So I invite all constructive comments, and if you agree this draft is better than the current one, please feel free to move it over, or give me the OK to do so. Thank you. --Stellatarum (talk) 18:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Nice article, it is definitely an improvement. I'll copy it over if you would like. Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 03:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

• Y Done Alpha_Quadrant ^(talk) 03:02, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Alpha Quadrant! I appreciate you taking the time to review and copy it over. --Stellatarum (talk) 14:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

El-Hibri retirement

{{Request edit}}

Hello, I would like to ask on behalf of the company that the article be updated to reflect the announcement that Fuad El-Hibri has retired as the head of the company. While the transition has been planned since December, it becomes official this weekend, and has already been the subject of third-party news coverage.

There are two specific updates that are needed:

• The infobox needs to state that Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi is now the CEO & president.
• The "Overview" section should note El-Hibri's retirement as CEO and his continuing role as executive chairman of Emergent BioSolutions' board of directors.

Both changes can be cited to The Washington Post's Capital Business Blog, Washington Business Journal and Gazette.Net.

The wording I would propose for the "Overview" section is:

Fuad El-Hibri, the former CEO of Emergent BioSolutions led the company since its founding as BioPort Inc. until his retirement on April 1, 2012. He continues to serve as the executive chairman of Emergent BioSolutions’ board of directors.

If you agree to these changes, please can you update the article. Thank you. --Stellatarum (talk) 14:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Y Done--ukexpat (talk) 19:11, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Ukexpat! Your assistance with these updates is appreciated. --Stellatarum (talk) 19:29, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

New government partnership

Hello, on behalf of Emergent BioSolutions, I would like to ask for an update to this article to reflect the company's partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I have written a proposed draft for a new subsection, to add under "History":

===Government partnership===

In June 2012, Emergent, along with Novartis and the Texas A&M University System, was selected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as one of the three Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing. The public-private partnership granted Emergent $163 million over eight years to assist in the development of countermeasures for health, nuclear and radiological epidemics.

If this draft looks to be ok, please can you move it into the article. Thank you. --Stellatarum (talk) 22:14, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Y Done--ukexpat (talk) 13:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Lead section

The lead section is a bit outdated, and doesn't reflect Emergent's current activities, particularly regarding its government partnerships. I would suggest changing this portion:

multinational specialty [[biopharmaceutical]] company headquartered in [[Rockville, Maryland]]. Emergent develops [[vaccine]]s and [[Therapy|therapeutics]] targeting infectious diseases, oncology and autoimmune disorders

It would be more accurate as follows:

multinational specialty [[biopharmaceutical]] company headquartered in [[Rockville, Maryland]]. Emergent offers [[vaccine]]s, [[Therapy|therapeutics]] and specialized products to [[Health care provider|healthcare provider]]s and governments to address medical needs and emerging health threats.

Specialty pharmaceutical company is not a marketing term but an industry sector, as this Research and Markets report shows, and the term is applied to other firms on Wikipedia. The phrase is similar to how Emergent describes itself in press releases, though the wording is necessarily specific, and non-promotional. I am open to alternative wording or quotation marks if others deem it necessary. Stellatarum (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

• The Research and markets shows that the term exists and has some significance, but does not verify that Emergent falls in this category. Can you provide a credible, independent secondary source that specifically refers to Emergent as being a "specialty" company? (not a press release or press release reposting) CorporateM (Talk) 16:57, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello CorporateM, I certainly can. While not a long article, this AP report carried by Businessweek states that EBS "provides specialty pharmaceutical products such as the anthrax vaccine." This language is different from how EBS uses the term but is still accurate. Does this help? Stellatarum (talk) 15:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, giving this a closer lookover. develops - > offers is not an improvement and I see no reason to add "specialized products" when it already says "specialty biopharma..." Adding information about the target market, such as "healthcare providers and government" could be encyclopedic, if it differs somehow from the obvious and the secondary source offers some detailed analysis, but we wouldn't add it to the lead. "to address medical needs" is benefits-oriented language, which is always promotional. I believe the current text is better on all counts and this is not an improvement. I don't think this is a matter of being "outdated" or more "accurate" as is positioned in the request, but when the two versions are compared, it is mostly related to adding positioning aligned with corporate messaging. If something is factually incorrect or outdated, I would encourage you to point out the actual error. CorporateM (Talk) 17:09, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

CorporateM, I am unhappy that you have deemed my request "misleading" when I am trying to operate in good faith with Wikipedia rules, and frustrated that you mark my request as fulfilled after each reply, closing off discussion so quickly. I must also disagree with several assertions you have made, but one stands out: you say I see no reason to add "specialized products" when it already says "specialty biopharma...". This article does not presently refer to EBS as a "specialty biopharmaceutical company". This in fact is one of my requested changes, and I have provided a third-party source (Associated Press republished by Bloomberg Businessweek) to verify it. Within the medical industry it is very important to carefully describe what a business does and does not do (the FDA rules are very strict) and that is what my request intends to address, since EBS has recently changed its focus. This is not about corporate messaging but ensuring that this article does not mislead as to EBS's current business model. If you are able to make this change, please do and we may consider the other changes. If you do not have time to help, I will try to find an editor with more time and attention. Stellatarum (talk) 17:32, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Potential improvement of the lead section

Here is the blurb provided for the company by the Wall Street Journal:

We can't take their prose for reasons of copyright, but in my opinion their capsule is more informative and sounds better than our current lead section. They don't say the company is 'multinational'. They also separate Biodefense and Biosciences which is helpful. Otherwise making an anthrax vaccine and creating anticancer drugs might appear to be unrelated activities. Emergent is mentioned a lot in Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed and perhaps a way can be found to integrate a few things from that article to help our readers understand the company. EdJohnston (talk) 18:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello EdJohnston, thank you for commenting here. The WSJ profile uses an older version of Emergent's language. The current one is found on the company website and reads as follows:

As a global specialty pharmaceutical company, Emergent offers specialized products to healthcare providers and governments to address medical needs and emerging health threats.

In the thread I began above I sought to combine the current wording with the updates about what is new. I too was uncertain about how to phrase it. One possibility I raised was simply quoting what EBS describes itself as, this would be the most accurate thing and avoid copyright issues. Would this be an acceptable solution to you? Stellatarum (talk) 19:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Companies often describe themselves with a lot of buzzwords and not a way that is most informative for our readers. Readers may be curious about several questions that the article doesn't answer:

1. Vaccines used to be a terrible business, at least in the US, due to legal liability. Has something changed? How has Emergent managed to be successful?
2. Emergent has been expanding in the vaccine domain, even buying up UK companies with similar business. Have they found the secret formula? Have they been able to overcome technical obstacles which others could not?
3. BioPort started out by taking over a project of the Michigan Department of Health. Is anything publicly known about how that came about? Did the Michigan scientists wind up working for Emergent? Did those scientists all relocate?
4. The original anthrax vaccine (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed) has been criticized. Is Emergent keenly interested in a successor vaccine?
5. What does current academic medical opinion think about Emergent's vaccine work? Is it highly regarded?
6. Does Emergent distribute all vaccines itself or does it partner with general-purpose pharmaceutical companies? EdJohnston (talk) 19:23, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I just gave the article a quick copy-edit, deleted press release sources, trimmed quotes, etc. Ed has some obvious expertise in this area and I prefer not to handle Request Edits so I'll hand-off to him. But yes, in general we don't want the article to read like the company's website. The current is ok and doesn't need to be re-written to match the company's messaging. CorporateM (Talk) 19:36, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

EdJohnston, you ask good questions, but that is more than I had hoped to address at this time. Meanwhile, CorporateM has made sweeping edits to this article in the past few minutes which in some ways make this article worse. There is now a typographical error in the lead, and CorporateM has ignored my suggestion to add "specialty" as a modifier to the first line (though I have offered a reliable source) and instead CorporateM has removed "multinational" from the lead although the company is in fact multinational. To CorporateM: I don't understand why you have made these changes. To EdJohnston: What do you think of my sugggestion above this thread, and these recent changes? Stellatarum (talk) 19:46, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

We try to describe companies in a neutral fashion, and we are not necessarily guided by how the company describes itself. It sounds as though 'specialty' is a buzzword, and we may not want to take the space needed to explain it to readers not familiar with the concept. (At present there is no Wikipedia article on Specialty pharmaceutical company, though perhaps one could be written}. We try to follow what press coverage says about the company, while filtering out reprints of press releases. It is unfortunate that not many regular editors will get interested in such topics. Luckily CorporateM has chosen to participate as a regular editor. EdJohnston (talk) 20:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

In the previous thread I anticipated the question about "specialty" and noted that it is not a mere marketing term or buzzword but a recognized industry sector, as this Research and Markets report shows, and the term has been applied to other firms on Wikipedia. I am disappointed CorporateM is editing this article without commenting on this discussion thread, but the fact is that EBS is a multinational specialty biopharmaceutical firm, as shown by sources from the company and elsewhere, and I do not understand why it would be considered promotional to note these facts. Stellatarum (talk) 20:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The first edits I made with a COI were embarrassingly awful (really really embarrassing), though if you asked me at the time, I would have sworn up and down that they were improvements. Take a deep breath and really put things in perspective. Would you debate the merits of the word "specialty" with a journalist who wrote about the company, because a BusinessWeek blurb (most likely re-written from a press release) used the word? Would you ask the New York Times to make their language mirror the company website?

The point of Request Edit is not to fulfill every request, but to borrow the judgement of an impartial editor to make sure the proposed edits are indeed an improvement. In this case they are not, though they may seem as though they are from your position. This is the nature of conflict of interest. They appear to be improvements from the company's perspective, but they are not improvements for Wikipedia. CorporateM (Talk) 20:47, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you willing to restore "multinational" to the lead sentence? This Wikipedia article would be more informative with it replaced, and it very easy to source (in full-length newspaper articles). If this can be done, I will be satisfied for now. Stellatarum (talk) 20:55, 18 February 2013 (UTC)