After narrowly dodging a corruption conviction, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez faces a re-election dogfight against former Celgene CEO Bob Hugin. The Senator is now lying to voters about his opponent’s business record the way he dissembled about his political corruption.
Democrats always treat a Republican candidate from business as if commerce is by definition criminal, and Mr. Hugin is no exception. The GOP Senate candidate joined the New Jersey-based biotech firm Celgene in 1999 in its infancy and rose to CEO in 2010. He helped grow Celgene into one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
Celgene’s biggest blockbusters have been Thalomid and Revlimid, which treat the rare blood cancer multiple myeloma and are based on the compound thalidomide. While thalidomide was found to cause birth defects in the 1950s, research in the 1990s suggested it could treat conditions including AIDS.
In 1998 FDA approved Celgene’s application of thalidomide to treat leprosy, which affects about 100 Americans each year. The following year the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found thalidomide “had substantial antitumor activity in patients with advanced myeloma,” which is incurable with conventional chemotherapy.
The Senator also intervened for the doctor with the Department of Health and Human Services in a Medicare billing dispute that involved reused vials of a macular degeneration drug that put patients at risk of infection.
Mr. Menendez escaped conviction thanks to the Supreme Court’s McDonnell ruling that made it harder for prosecutors to prove quid-pro-quo corruption.
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