The dam­age re­port from the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing’s chief physi­cian José Basel­ga keeps mount­ing.

Late on Fri­day came word from Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb that Basel­ga had re­signed from the big biotech’s board of di­rec­tors.

“Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb $BMY is com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of ethics, com­pli­ance and in­tegri­ty,” not­ed the com­pa­ny in a brief state­ment. “These prin­ci­ples are cen­tral to the Com­pa­ny’s mis­sion and our abil­i­ty to de­liv­er in­no­v­a­tive med­i­cines to pa­tients with se­ri­ous dis­ease.”

Basel­ga had on­ly joined the board 5 months ago.

That res­ig­na­tion came sev­er­al days af­ter The New York Times and ProP­ub­li­ca re­port­ed that the renowned can­cer re­searcher had rou­tine­ly failed to fol­low the rules and cite his many fi­nan­cial ties with bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies in jour­nal ar­ti­cles and at con­fer­ences, forc­ing his ouster at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing.

Late Thurs­day word spread that the ar­ti­cle had set off a storm of con­tro­ver­sy, trig­ger­ing a chain re­ac­tion of alarm at MSK that prompt­ed the sci­en­tist to turn in his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion. In it, he wrote:

I fear my con­tin­ued role lead­ing clin­i­cal care and re­search will be­come too much of a dis­trac­tion to the hos­pi­tal and its re­mark­able team of physi­cians, re­searchers and staff.

Basel­ga, the once high­ly sought af­ter physi­cian-in-chief at MSK, al­so ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for his fail­ures to dis­close his many ties to phar­ma and biotech com­pa­nies, adding that those links were al­so well known and care­ful­ly re­port­ed to MSK it­self.

The news trig­gered a fren­zy of com­ments on Twit­ter, with a mix of views on the sud­den down­fall of a wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed re­searcher. If noth­ing else, it will put a spot­light on the grow­ing fi­nan­cial con­nec­tions be­tween re­searchers and the in­dus­try — and like­ly trig­ger a rush to fill in any gaps on dis­clo­sures in the com­ing weeks.

Quite a few peo­ple felt that forc­ing Basel­ga out at MSK was ex­ces­sive. But it’s al­so clear that prop­er­ly re­port­ing these ties is a se­ri­ous con­cern for the in­dus­try. We put up a poll for peo­ple at the be­gin­ning of the week, and drew more than a few harsh re­bukes for what he had failed to do.

Out of 447 re­spons­es, 330 — 74% — felt his fail­ure to re­port fi­nan­cial ties was a sig­nif­i­cant is­sue. On­ly 26% felt it was not. Sig­nif­i­cant, though, meant dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. 

Here’s a sam­pling of the com­ments we heard:

Im­age: José Basel­ga. AS­CO

There are two updates on the lawsuit against Purdue Pharma over its role in fueling the opioid epidemic, as the Sackler family threatens to walk away from their pledge to pay out $3 billion if a bankruptcy judge does not stop outstanding state lawsuits against them. At the same time, the company has asked permission to pay millions in bonuses to select employees.

Purdue filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week as part of its signed resolution to over 2,000 lawsuits. The deal would see the Sackler family that owns Purdue give $3 billion from their personal wealth and the company turned into a trust committed to curbing and reversing overdoses.

The sign is still there, a quaint reminder of whitewashed concrete not 5 miles from Genentech’s sprawling, chrome-and-glass campus: South Francisco The Industrial City. 

The city keeps the old sign, first erected in 1923, as a tourist site and a kind of civic memento to the days it packed meat, milled lumber and burned enough steel to earn the moniker “Smokestack of the Peninsula.” But the real indication of where you are and how much has changed both in San Francisco and in the global economy since a couple researchers and investors rented out an empty warehouse 40 years ago comes in a far smaller blue sign, resembling a Rotary Club post, off the highway: South San Francisco, The Birthplace of Biotech.

While Novartis painstakingly works to mop up the stench of the data manipulation scandal associated with its expensive gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) Zolgensma— rival Biogen is attempting to expand the use of its SMA therapy, Spinraza. 

The US drugmaker $BIIB secured US approval for Spinraza for use in the often fatal genetic disease in 2016. The approval covered a broad range of patients with infantile-onset (most likely to develop Type 1) SMA. 

After months of buzz from both sides of the aisle, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will today introduce her plan to allow the federal government to negotiate prices for 250 prescription drugs, setting up a showdown with a pharmaceutical industry working overtime to prevent it.

The need to limit drug prices is a rare point of agreement between President Trump and Democrats, although the president has yet to comment on the proposal and will likely face pressure to back a more conservative option or no bill at all. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is reportedly lobbying his fellow party members on a more modest proposal he negotiated with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in July.