Sunday, December 25, 2011

Colorado State University - Pueblo baseball exhibit includes numerous special events

Colorado State University - Pueblo baseball exhibit includes numerous special events

PUEBLO ? Colorado State University-Pueblo, in association with the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, will host Pride and Passion: The African American Baseball Experience, a traveling exhibit which examines the challenges faced by African-American baseball players as they sought equal opportunities in their sport beginning in the post-Civil War era.?
The newly renovated CSU-Pueblo Library and Academic Resources Center (LARC) will host the 1,000-square-foot exhibit and numerous special events between February 9 and March 16. All showings of the exhibit and related programs will be free and open to the public.? The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has provided funding for the exhibit to travel to 50 selected libraries. Pride and Passion is based upon a permanent exhibit of the same name on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y.?

Four, free public lectures on topics associated with the exhibit as well as two videoconferences from the Baseball Hall of Fame have been planned as part of the exhibit.? Award-winning author/illustrator Kadir Nelson will present ?We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,? at 7 p.m. on February 9 in LARC 109. More information on his book may be found at http://www.wearetheship.com/ The New York Times named the book one of the Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008. He also was named the 2009 Coretta Scott King Book Award Recipient. You can visit www.kadirnelson.com for more information on the author.

St Paul Gophers

On February 16 and March 8, special videoconferences will be broadcast from the Baseball Hall of Fame at 5 p.m. in LARC 108.? The February 16 videoconference is titled, ?Civil Rights: Before You could Say Jackie Robinson,? while the March 8 video conference will focus on cultural diversity in baseball.

Two special events will focus on ethnic Colorado baseball leagues. Colorado baseball historian Jay Sanford, an area baseball historian who consulted on "Baseball," Ken Burns' 1994 PBS documentary, will share his collection and research on the Denver Post Tournament, which broke ground in 1936, when black and white teams played one another, beginning at 7 p.m. on February 23 in LARC 109. Gabriel and Jody Lopez, authors of From Sugar to Diamonds: Mexican/Spanish Baseball, 1925-1969, Stories of the Greeley Grays and the Teams that Dared to Challenge Them, will discuss their research and collection about the Greeley Grays, a minor league team composed primarily of Hispanic men who worked the sugar beet fields, at 7 p.m. on March 8 in LARC 109. The Greeley Grays became one of the premiere teams in the Northern Colorado Baseball League.

Toledo team with Moses Fleetwood Walker 1884

On March 1, Adrian Burgos, author of ?Cuban Star,? will discuss the life of Negro League team owner Alex Pompez, a proud and passionate advocate for Latino players, at 7 p.m. in the Occhiato University Center Ballroom. Pompez rose to prominence during Latino baseball?s earliest glory days, but like many in the era of segregated baseball, he found that the game alone could never make all ends meet, and he delved headlong into the seedier side of the sport?gambling?to help finance his beloved team, the New York Cubans. He also brought the Cubans, with their incredible lineup of international players, to a Negro League World Series Championship in 1947 and later helped his players make the transition to the majors. That today?s rosters are filled with names like Rodriguez, Pujols, Rivera, and Ortiz is a testament to the influence of Pompez and his contemporaries.

The final event associated with the exhibit will occur on March 12 and feature Drs. Lawrence Hogan and Robert Cvornyek, both nationally recognized baseball scholars, presenting ?If It Ain?t Got That Swing,? a tribute to black baseball and music in the Jim Crow Era. Their appearances, as well as Kadir Nelson?s, are possible through a $5,000 grant from Colorado Humanities and CSU-Pueblo Diversity Initiatives Grants.

For more information on local events, contact Julie Fronmueller, assistant professor of library services and exhibit coordinator, at 549-2826 or julie.fronmueller@colostate-pueblo.edu.

A complete list of events follows:

???? Frank RobinsonFebruary 9,? Opening Event: Kadir Nelson ?We Are the Ship,? 7 p.m., LARC 109
???? February 16, Videoconference from the Baseball Hall of Fame,? "Civil Rights: Before You Could Say 'Jackie Robinson, ? 5 p.m., LARC 108
???? February 23, Jay Sanford, ?Denver Post Tournament? and Colorado Baseball, 7 p.m., LARC 109
???? March 8, videoconference from the Baseball Hall of Fame, cultural diversity in baseball, 5 p.m., LARC 108
???? March 1, Adrian Burgos, author of ?Cuban Star, ? 7 p.m., OUC Ballroom,
???? March 8, Gabriel and Jody Lopez, authors of? ?From Sugar to Diamonds, ? 7 p.m.,? LARC 109
???? March 12, Closing Event, Drs. Lawrence Hogan and Robert Cvornyek,? ?If It Ain?t Got That Swing: Black Baseball and Music in the Jim Crow Era,? 7 p.m., LARC 109

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: The traveling exhibition is composed of colorful freestanding panels featuring photographs of teams, players, original documents and artifacts in the collections of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and in other institutions and collections across the

U.S. The traveling exhibition content is arranged in six thematic sections, a breakdown that separates the story into cohesive chronological sections and allows flexibility to participating libraries in the display of the exhibition.?
1.??? Finding a Way in Hard Times (1860-1887)
2.??? Barnstorming on the Open Road (1887-1919)
3.??? Separate Leagues, Parallel Lives (1920-1932)
4.??? Paving the Way to Integration (1933-1946)
5.??? Signposts for Opportunity (1947-1959)
6.??? Baseball?s Post-Integration Era (1959-present)
Through a cultural timeline of American history that will be part of the ?Pride and Passion? exhibit, visitors will be able to place the African American baseball story into the larger context of American history.? For more information about the exhibit, visit www.ala.org/publicprograms.

Source: http://www.colostate-pueblo.edu/Communications/Media/PressReleases/2011/Pages/12-16-2011.aspx

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Art Brodsky: Yes, Virginia, Consumers Won A Couple in Washington

Treasure this past week in Washington. It's not often -- no, it never happens -- that that consumers get a multitude of good tidings from Washington. Is it too much to hope that this is the start of a trend? Of course. The FCC then approved AT&T's purchase of Qualcomm spectrum without strong interoperability (and poor media ownership rules, to boot.)

Still, think of it. In one week, AT&T dropped its ill-fated takeover of T-Mobile after spending dozens of millions of dollars. The U.S. Department of Justice, which provided the leadership in scuttling AT&T's anti-consumer strategy, also said it would look at Verizon's new spectrum/marketing deal with leading cable companies, including Comcast. And on a smaller scale, an administrative law judge at the FCC smacked Comcast for anti-competitive behavior through its banishment of the Tennis Channel to a higher, pricier tier while favoring Comcast's home-owned channels.

Does one see a common thread here? Or a more unlikely series of events?

The AT&T takeover was certainly most audacious of the three events. It was nothing less than a direct assault on the concept of antitrust -- the second largest wireless carrier buying out the fourth largest. The result would have totally altered the wireless landscape. AT&T did what it always does, and usually does successfully. It marshalled all the economic resources it could buy. It marshalled all of the political resources it had bought in Congress and in state houses around the country. It put its captive union in harness to make sure recalcitrant and/or uninformed Democrats went along. And, for good measure, it started a massive TV advertising campaign full of hopeful notes for a better tomorrow, rural deployment and, in the face of all logic, lots of new jobs . Of course Wall Street, which sees only deals and profits (and competition is bad for profits) assumed it was a done deal, adding to the chorus of inevitability.

And on the other side? A bunch of public-interest and consumer groups, many of them utraged consumers (many of them T-Mobile customers) and one company -- Sprint. In the currency of Washington, it's the companies that count. Based on past history, no one had any faith that the institutions of government which are supposed to prevent deals like thi,s, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission, would actually do their jobs.

And yet they did. Whether it was Occupy Wall Street (and other places) or election-year populism, or the public outcry or just the plain facts of this deal, DoJ sued to stop the takeover. The FCC conducted an intense staff inquiry and then released that scathing document when AT&T tried to use a procedural trick to squash it. Then a Federal judge indicated she wasn't pleased with the whole matter.

Even AT&T reaches its limits, although not often and not so quickly. The $4 billion break-up fee should help T-Mobile, as should access to more spectrum.

Now that the DoJ has flexed its muscles, it's time for the next challenge -- Verizon. That company played it cooler than AT&T, trying to sneak under the radar by buying $3.6 billion worth of spectrum from Comcast and other cable companies, and planning joint marketing agreements.The revitalized Antitrust Division and the FCC will take a look at this deal, although it may be harder to block outright than AT&T's. The harms would be just as serious -- the quashing of broadband competition that has already been already squeezed to near nothing by deregulation. It would be acceptable if the spectrum deal went through but the joint marketing was stopped. Verizon and the cable companies are, in some areas, competitors as broadband providers, particularly in those privileged places where Verizon has built out its fiber optic FiOS network. In other areas, there is ostensible competition, although the basic DSL offering really isn't as good as cable's broadband network. Cable and telephone should be competitors for consumer dollars. DoJ and the FCC should check very closely the details of the joint marketing plans, and shouldn't approve anything without them. If there are to be those hard-to-enforce "conditions" then the conditions should ban some practices and make resolution of complaints easy to accomplish. Usually, complaints on conditions take a long time and a lot of money to resolve.

If either agency needs more inspiration, it should look no farther than the FCC's administrative law judge, Richard Sippel, who wrote a scathing opinion giving Tennis Channel a significant boost over Comcast. Tennis Channel had complained it was banished to the outer courts of Comcast's lineup when Golf and Versus, channels owned by Comcast providing similar content to similar audiences, were given favored placement on the show courts of the lineup.

In a hearing of the type which are rarely held, evidence is introduced and testimony taken. Sippel's opinion is a great example of what the "paper hearings" composed of comments and replies are missing. When he cited testimony by Michael Egan, Comcast's programming expert as "just not credible" when the Comcast exec tried to say the channels were different, Sippel set the tone for a type of opinion that should have been issued long ago in the cable industry. He cited evidence showing Comcast gives better distribution to programming networks it owns, noting, for example, that Comcast had planned to give a Major League Baseball network a spot on the paid sports tier, until it got a piece of the action. Then it got a better spot in the lineup. Comcast Cable "has taken an active role in ensuring that its affiliated networks obtain favorable channel placement," Sippel found.

The fine he proposed, $375,000, is far too modest, although he limited by law. It's smaller than the $500,000 fine the DoJ wants to impose on Comcast Chmn./CEO Brian Roberts for not reporting stock purchases. More significantly, it strikes a first blow for independent programmers trying to get distribution on dominant distribution networks, a model that has hampered new programming for decades.

If a new day is dawning, there's lots of work to be done. The FCC could approve Sippel's order quickly. It could make sure Verizon and Comcast actually compete. It could make certain that wireless operators AT&T and Verizon don't section off parts of the spectrum for their own use, while eliminating the interoperable features that were supposed to take place.

It's a lot to contemplate. But it's easier to do now rather than a few months back.

?

Follow Art Brodsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/artbrodsky

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-brodsky/yes-virginia-consumers-wo_b_1166883.html

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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Automotive Support Manager Work ? Raising Your Price In your ...

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Source: http://www.swfradar.com/automotive-support-manager-work-raising-your-price-in-your-employer/

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Cleric blames Iraqi politicians for Baghdad blasts

Iraqi security forces inspect a crater caused by a car bomb attack in the neighborhood of Karrada in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iraqi security forces inspect a crater caused by a car bomb attack in the neighborhood of Karrada in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

ADDS NAME OF NEIGHBORHOOD - Iraqi security forces and people inspect the scene of a car bomb attack in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iraqi security forces inspect a crater caused by a car bomb attack in the neighborhood of Karrada in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iraqi security forces inspect a crater caused by a car bomb attack in the Karrada neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iraqi security forces inspect a crater caused by a car bomb attack in the neighborhood of Karrada in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011. A series of blasts Thursday morning in Baghdad killing and wounding scores of people in a coordinated attack designed to wreak havoc across the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

(AP) ? Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader on Friday demanded the country's politicians work to restore security, saying their conflicts were to blame for attacks like the devastating bombings that tore through mostly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and killed at least 69 people.

The calls by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, made by his representative in a Friday prayer sermon, implicitly hit on the political showdown between the Shiite prime minister and the top Sunni political leader in the country, against whom the government put out an arrest warrant, accusing him of running hit squads.

Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has denied the charges, which have fueled Sunni fears that the minority community is being pushed out of influence by the Shiite-dominated government.

Al-Sistani's aide Ahmed al-Safi did not specifically mention the conflict or any of the players in it, but his comments seemed to be a call for Sunni politicians to back down.

If someone is "dealing with terrorism, what should we do? What is the punishment that he must face after knowing that he is a killer?" al-Safi said in his sermon in the holy city of Karbala.

"The prestige of the government must be preserved ... part of its prestige is punishing abusers," he said. "The security file is not a luxury! People can be patient with lack of electricity, or lack of services, but not blood. They cannot be patient over their blood. Wyy don't you exert your efforts to preserve the blood of these people?"

Al-Sistani, who is in his mid 80s, is the most respected cleric among Iraq's Shiite majority. But he rarely appears in public and stopped meeting with politicians since around the middle of this year. He usually makes his positions known through his representative at the prayer sermon.

Sixteen blasts across Baghdad on Thursday also wounded nearly 200 people, evoking fears Iraq could dissolve into a new round of sectarian violence now that American troops have left.

Al-Safi condemned the bombing, saying, "The people are looking forward for a new life after the departure of the foreign forces, instead they face massacres."

"Politicians, be merciful with this country. You are dragging the country with your crises and you are held responsible."

These calls were echoed by other Shiite and Sunni clerics. Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical cleric, whose militiamen were blamed for sectarian killings during the worst of Iraq's violence, issued a statement, calling the conflict among Iraqi politicians as "the conflict of the mighty" which "led to the deterioration of the fragile security."

The preacher of Abu Hanifa, the main Sunni mosque in Baghdad, also criticized the Iraqi leaders who "preoccupy themselves with side issues and conflicts and ignore essential issues. You (politicians) have to pay heed to reunite Iraqis. You have to give up hatred, killing and intimidation," Sheik Ahmed al-Taha told worshippers in his sermon.

"Do not let our defeated enemy (the Americans) say that we are unable to continue with them," he added.

___

Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-23-ML-Iraq/id-615e82c4552b4a939246ff9461c09d2a

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Friday, December 23, 2011

Mexico Mayan region launches apocalypse countdown (AP)

MEXICO CITY ? Seize the day.

Only 52 weeks and a day are left before Dec. 21, 2012, when some believe the Maya predicted the end of the world.

Unlike enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who suggest putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration.

Mexico's tourism agency expects to draw 52 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 22 million foreigners in a year.

It's selling the date, the Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.

"The world will not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a message of hope."

Cities and towns in the Mayan region on Wednesday will start the yearlong countdown. In Chiapas the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border will start a countdown on an 8-foot digital clock in the main park exactly a year before the mysterious date.

In the nearby archaeological site of Izapa, Maya priests will burn incense, chant and offer prayers.

In the tropical jungle of Quintana Roo, between the resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, people are putting messages and photos in a time capsule that will be buried for 50 years. Maya priests and Indian dancers will perform a ritual at the time capsule ceremony.

Yucatan state has announced plans to complete the Maya Museum of Merida by next summer.

"People who still live in Mayan villages will host rites and burn incense for us to go back in time and try to understand the Mayan wisdom," Zaldo said.

The Maya reputation for wisdom has people taking the alleged prediction seriously.

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and they wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on Dec. 21, 2012.

The doomsday theories stem from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th period.

Believers have taken the end-of-the world fears to the Internet with hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs.

"The Maya are viewed by many westerners as exotic folks that were supposed to have had some special, secret knowledge," said Mayan scholar Sven Gronemeyer. "What happens is that our expectations and fears get projected on the Maya calendar."

Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia compares the supposed Mayan prophecies to the "Y2K" hype, when people feared all computer systems would crash when the new millennium began on Jan. 1, 2000.

For some reason, Gronemeyer says, people have ignored evidence that dates beyond 2012 were recorded.

The blogosphere exploded with more speculation when Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged on Nov. 24 a second reference to Dec. 21, 2012, on a brick found at other ruins.

"Human beings seem to be attracted by apocalyptic ideas and always assume the worst," Gronemeyer said.

It's all a bit frustrating for serious Mayan researchers whose field has made huge strides in recent years.

"This new historical and archaeological knowledge is so much more interesting and mind-blowing than the fantastical claims about Maya prophecies one sees on TV, books or on the Internet," David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in an email to The Associated Press. "We're dealing with thousands of newly deciphered texts and trying to weave together a coherent picture of Maya history and culture, which to me is as exciting as it gets."

While the 2012 hype might increase interest in the Maya, "that will probably be offset by the long and difficult effort ahead to correct the ubiquitous lies and misconceptions, even after 2012 has come and gone," he wrote.

Jonnie Channell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that 2012 "is going to be one of those things where people are definitely going to have to plan," not because of impending apocalypse, but because hotel rooms in the Maya region are probably going to be full.

Channell, who owns Maya Sites Travel Services, is surprised that she already has 24 reservations for three tour packages she is offering to major Mayan ruin sites in the week leading up to the solstice.

She named one "Beginning the New Calendar Era Under the Yucatan Stars."

"We put together these tours, and we've got lots of signups, and people are excited about it," she said. "If anybody think it's going to be the end of the world, then they better stay home."

___

Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/fossils/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111221/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_apocalypse2012

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djchuckie: RT @HousePlanet: http://t.co/A4XeHMFr @DJChuckie releases his @Noisepad #iPad app #noisepad

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Thursday, December 22, 2011

With new generic rivals, Lipitor's sales halved (AP)

TRENTON, N.J. ? Sales of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor plunged by half barely a week after the world's top-selling drug got its first U.S. generic competition, new data show.

That's despite a very aggressive effort by Lipitor maker Pfizer Inc. to keep patients on its pill, which generated peak sales of $13 billion a year, through patient subsidies and big rebates to insurers.

Lipitor lost patent protection on Nov. 30 in the U.S., where the drug was still generating about $7.9 billion in annual sales. Two generic versions costing about a third less hit the market right away, one made by India's Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and the other an authorized generic, made by Pfizer and sold by its partner, Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Lipitor's patent loss has been closely watched across the pharmaceutical industry, where most companies face generic competition, and a big revenue hit, for at least some of their top drugs over the next few years.

Figures from data firm IMS Health on prescriptions for Lipitor and competing drugs that lower LDL or bad cholesterol, the class called statins, show the number of Lipitor prescriptions filled in the seven days ended Dec. 9, the first full week when generic rivals were available, plunged to 359,235. That's down from the 724,799 Lipitor prescriptions filled a month earlier, in the week ended Nov. 11.

Lipitor's share of statin prescriptions dropped to 9.7 percent from 20.9 percent over that period. Its biggest rival among brand-name cholesterol drugs is a newer one, Crestor from Britain's AstraZeneca PLC, which saw market share hold steady at 12.3 percent amid a new Crestor ad campaign.

The IMS data, released Monday, show nearly 476,000 new prescriptions for generic Lipitor, called atorvastatin, were filled the week ended Dec. 9. Just under 80 percent were for Watson's generic version.

The figures cover retail prescriptions, those filled at independent pharmacies, chain drug stores and pharmacies in supermarkets and discounters such as Target. Not included are prescriptions filled by mail order, where any shifts are likely to take longer to appear.

Miller Tabak analyst Les Funtleyder said Monday the drop in Lipitor prescriptions is less than he expected.

"It's already done better than we thought it would, (but) it's a little early in the game to declare this a successful strategy," Funtleyder, portfolio manager for the Miller Tabak Health Care Transformation Fund, said of Pfizer's rebates and discounts.

For months, New York-based Pfizer has been heavily advertising its "Lipitor For You" program, which offers insured patients a card to get Lipitor for a monthly $4 copayment. Pfizer will pay the difference between that and an insurance plan's normal brand-name co-pay, up to $50.

Uninsured patients could get the same savings using the card but would have to pay the rest of the cost, which ranges from about $115 a month for the lowest Lipitor dose to $160 a month for three higher doses. The new generics cost roughly $80 and $100 a month, respectively.

Spokesman MacKay Jimeson said Pfizer estimates about 5 percent of current Lipitor patients in the U.S. and Puerto Rico will enroll in the program.

Many of the roughly 3 million Americans who were taking Lipitor have not gotten a refill since generic Lipitor arrived. For some, their insurance plan may not give them a choice ? either automatically switching them to generic Lipitor or keeping them on the brand name and taking Pfizer's rebates for the next six months.

After that, multiple generic versions will hit the market. Their prices should dip as low as about 20 percent of brand-name Lipitor, and the Pfizer discounts will end.

Any market share retained until then is worth a lot to Pfizer, Funtleyder said, noting the low cost of making the pills ? about a dime each.

"It wouldn't surprise me to see similar things from other companies," he said, if Pfizer's program continues to retain some patients.

While Lipitor and Crestor generate most of the money from cholesterol medicines, much-cheaper generic versions of three older statins ? Zocor, Pravachol and Mevacor ? account for almost two-thirds of statin prescriptions. Those three generics saw a slight increase in the number of prescriptions filled from Nov. 11 to Dec. 9.

According to IMS, about 167,000 of the prescriptions filled for atorvastatin were from patients who had been on Lipitor, another 118,000 were from people on simvastatin (generic Zocor) and about 20,000 were from patients on Crestor. The rest were from the other existing generic statins and seven other brand-name statins that have very low sales, most because they have a generic rival.

Overall, the number of people taking a statin drug increased slightly right after generic Lipitor arrived. The number of prescriptions filled for statins jumped from about 3.48 million in the week ended Nov. 11, to 3.7 million in the week ended Dec. 9.

Jason Mazzarella, a product manager at IMS Health, thinks that's partly because patients with tight budgets are more likely to go without cholesterol pills than drugs for conditions with obvious symptoms, and generic Lipitor would be more affordable for them.

Also, some of the new atorvastatin prescriptions are for patients adding it to another statin or one of the eight other types of drugs for cholesterol problems.

Besides Pfizer, AstraZeneca stands to lose most from generic Lipitor. It started a new Crestor advertising campaign in November, with broadcast, print, Internet and other ads. It will continue into 2012, AstraZeneca spokeswoman Elizabeth Renz said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111220/ap_on_bi_ge/us_lipitor_sales

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