After this week’s mega-merger of Merck and Schering-Plough the pharma stories are coming thick and fast.

A number of bloggers are suggesting that Johnson & Johnson might have something to say about the merger. Derek Lowe and Shearlings Got Plowed have noted that S-P and J&J have a deal over the drug Remicade. Lowe says:

J&J is no doubt weighing their options today, because Merck and Schering-Plough structured their deal, by all appearances, specifically to avoid triggering some provisions that would make these rights revert to J&J.

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We’re surely going to see some response from J&J, and very soon. They won’t walk away from this one.

In the Times, columnist Ian King takes issue with the whole issue of mergers, saying:

The majority of mergers and takeovers destroy value and, in the case of the drugs industry, M&A activity has conspicuously failed to deliver the promised returns. This is because, more than most, pharmaceuticals is a “people” business, with scientists at its heart. Cost-cutting after a big merger or takeover, although giving earnings a short-term boost, is not compatible with research and development programmes stretching out over decades.

Forbes takes a similar tack:

Merck’s decision to purchase smaller rival Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion risks losing much of what made Merck so wonderful in the first place.

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The Schering deal marks the end of a set of ideas Merck once represented: the primacy of science in the pharmaceutical business, a faith that ingenuity trumps cost-cutting and marketing, and a pride in its own work that was so intense that the suggestion of buying a rival was a tactic of last resort.

The Financial Times sees things differently though, saying:

Facing an estimated drop of more than $100bn in sales in the next five years as blockbuster patents expire and drug pipelines come under threat from generic rivals means big pharma has little choice but to consolidate.

Meanwhile, the Times reports on speculation that GSK could be the next victim/beneficiary of a merger with AstraZeneca, which the company denies.