A La Jolla biotech mogul who bankrolled RU-486, the lucrative day-after abortion drug, looms large in a new expose by Mother Jones.

The messy business of abortion

A La Jolla biotech mogul who bankrolled RU-486, the lucrative day-after abortion drug, looms large in a new expose by Mother Jones. According to the piece, “In 1986, a North Carolina lawyer named Joseph Pike purchased one of the earliest manufacturers of intrauterine devices for $1.1 million.” Pike later sold the company for $65 million and headed off for La Jolla, intending to play golf and partake of other pleasurable pastimes of the super-rich. “But soon Pike heard from the Population Council about a business proposition: It wanted to develop and market medication abortion in the United States,” says the story.

“Pike was the Council’s go-to because they’d worked together on the copper IUD. The Council had developed it and then granted GynoPharma the license, and it collected royalties as Pike successfully built up the IUD business and sold it.” Described by Mother Jones as “a Manhattan-based reproductive health nonprofit,” the Council also held patent rights to French developed RU-486, otherwise known as mifepristone.

“In 1994, Pike got to work, traveling the country with Susan Allen, a doctor and abortion provider he’d brought on to be the face of the abortion pill effort. Pike recalls that they spent their time pitching wealthy liberals, including Susan Buffett, Gloria Vanderbilt, a George Soros representative, and a handful of other celebrities. His fundraising overlapped with the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and Pike says he even met with one of Simpson’s defense lawyers, Bob Shapiro.”

Susan Buffett, one of the wealthy liberals Pike pitched on RU-486.

Then in late 1996, the Council found out about Pike’s past. “Pike had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor forgery charge in North Carolina, tied to a 1985 real estate deal. He’d gotten a suspended two-year sentence, 18 months of probation, and a fine. He had also been stripped of his law license.” RU-486 investor KCC, “a unit of Beverly Hills-based Giant Group Ltd., a part owner of the Rallys Hamburger fast-food chain,” sued Pike in Los Angeles, according to a November 1, 1996, LA Times account of the dispute. Giant alleged Pike “had mishandled the $13 million he raised,” the New York Times reported in a November 1997 follow-up.

“The suit marks the first disclosure of the companies involved with the drug’s U.S. manufacture.” Pike counter-sued Giant, owned by Hollywood mogul Burt Sugarman, in San Diego Superior Court, accusing Giant “of defamation and of exposing him and his family to threats from anti-abortion groups,” the LA Times reported November 14, 1996.

Meanwhile, the Population Council lodged a complaint against Pike in New York State court, alleging the La Jolla money man had not been candid about his criminal history. The legal wrangling was ultimately settled out of court, with Pike said to have ended up a passive investor in the effort. Pike has created other biotech ventures, including GalleonBio, of which he is chairman of the board. “Based on multiple years of research and scientific innovation in rare earth metals, GalleonBio’s scientists have developed a unique therapeutic technology platform of products containing strontium,” says the firm’s website.

The board includes Kenneth D Herbst, an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. Meanwhile, per Mother Jones, “The end of Roe v. Wade, mixed with the FDA’s new approval of retail sales for mifepristone, could unlock immense profit. Their product’s mission may be a social good, but creating value for investors — themselves — seems to have become a driving motivation: one where women faced with impossible circumstances are reduced to the impersonal language of customer capture.”

Sheriff’s guy moves to the OC

The former top in-house attorney for both ex-San Diego sheriff Bill Gore and his predecessor Bill Kolender is currently employed across the line in Orange County as chief of the OC sheriff department’s oversight department, the Office of Independent Review, according to a January 24 post at VoiceofOC.com. “Until his appointment to the OC watchdog role this October, Robert Faigin was the top lawyer for San Diego County’s sheriff for 21 years,” per the piece.

“Two decades into his watch at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, state auditors raised alarms last year about ‘the high rate of deaths in San Diego County’s jails compared to other counties,’ citing failures to meet its constitutional duties to fix ‘systemic problems.’” According to the story, “The [Office of Independent Review] search that led to Faigin’s hiring was led by supervisors Andrew Do and Doug Chaffee, both of whom saw some of their biggest election campaign support from the sheriffs’ deputies’ union.”

Bill Kolender’s legacy lives on, perhaps to his old lawyer’s chagrin.

Adds the item, “Faigin is coming into the Office of Independent Review as the county Sheriff’s Department has faced numerous controversies over the past decade. They include the jailhouse snitch scandal that caused at least half a dozen murder and attempted murder cases to fall apart, and an evidence booking scandal that caused criminal cases to be dropped against 67 people.” Jennifer Rojas, described as a policy advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union, is among critics not pleased with Faigin’s appointment. “By hiring a former attorney for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the OC Board of Supervisors shows they are more concerned with shielding law enforcement from liability over the core tenants of civilian oversight: transparency and accountability,” Rojas is quoted as saying.

— Matt Potter

(@sdmattpotter)

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