WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurer reported last week that its Q4 profits fell 61% to $331 million, or 65 cents per share.

The news provided a fitting denouement to a brutal year for the company which covers more than 35 million Americans. It came as no surprise since in mid-January the company announced that Q4 investment losses were going to approach $350 million.

Still there was some truly disquieting news: WellPoint saw enrollment declines versus Q3 in almost every kind of health plan it offers, including plans for individuals, employers and Medicare recipients.

Chief Executive Angela Braly rationalized that nearly half the 288,000 covered lives lost by WellPoint in Q4 were caused by rising unemployment and the associated loss of employee benefits.

That’s better than losing customers to other plans, but it doesn’t bode well for WellPoint and its competitors for the next several quarters.

With the Economic Crisis now in full bloom, WellPoint chose to provide vague guidance for 2009, saying it expects “low-single digit” percent increases in earnings per share. It promised to offer sharper targets at an investor conference later this month, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Economic conditions will continue to deteriorate and unemployment will continue to increase,” Braly sighed to analysts on a phone conference. “This will impact commercial membership in 2009.”

WellPoint does business in 14 states under the familiar Blue Cross Blue Shield brand. In several of these states, unemployment is predicted to rise above 10%. California is WellPoint’s largest market. Already, its unemployment rate stands at 9.3%.

Man-made atmospheric brown clouds have dimmed the skies over hundreds of Asian cities 25% in 30 years. A particularly nasty, 2-mile thick layer of soot, sulfates, toxic aerosols and carcinogens blankets South Asia these days, especially in winter.

We know quite a lot about the South Asian brown cloud. For example, we know it costs China, Japan and Korea $5 billion per year in crop damage and we know it causes 340,000 excess deaths per year from cardiovascular and respiratory disease.

But one thing we didn’t know until now was what caused it.

And for what it’s worth, most people who had ventured an opinion on the matter guessed incorrectly.

If Stockholm University’s Orjan Gustafsson and colleagues are to be believed, that is.

Scientists had debated for decades whether the South Asian brown cloud arose primarily from burning fossil fuels in cars and power plants or from burning wood, dung and related biomass for agriculture, deforestation and cooking.

The smart money had been on the former.

Then, in 2006, Gustafsson’s team secured some high-grade atmospheric soot from the South Asian cloud and tested it for carbon-14, a clever thing to do since the radioactive substance has a half-life of 5,700 years and therefore would not be present in fossil fuels created several million years ago.

What they found was a ton of C-14 in the samples, indicating that a good 2/3 of the brown cloud came from biomass combustion.
 
The paper is in Science. The conclusion is that regulating agricultural burning and using better cooking technology might do more to brighten the day for 2 the billion people living under the South Asian brown cloud than restricting cars or building clean coal power plants.

Last summer Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding couldn’t get Genentech to bite on its bid of $89 per share for the 44% of the South San Francisco biotech company it doesn’t already own, so last week it offered $86.

Genentech’s directors called that a “unilateral and opportunistic step” that takes “advantage of current market conditions,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

To which Roche responded it will present its offer directly to Genentech shareholders in “approximately two weeks,” and by the way it’s exercising its right to hold a majority of seats on Genentech’s board.

Roche thinks it can get Genentech on the cheap because some of its hedge fund shareholders have developed quite a hankering for cash these days.

Or as Roche Chairman Franz Humer said, “I think we all agree that the world has changed since (July).”

Right on cue, at its Q4 earnings announcement, Genentech lowered expectations for 2009 citing what else, market uncertainties and the economic mess.

But the trophy on the mantlepiece wouldn’t look quite so nice if Roche’s move hacks off Genentech scientists to the point where they bolt, which some have threatened to do.

Then again, where are they going? Biotech isn’t exactly teeming with job opportunities these days.

Larry Feinberg, president of Oracle Investment Management, didn’t seem inclined to post his million or so Genentech shares at $86. “It seems…Roche is trying to instill fear into the hearts of Genentech shareholders,” he told the Journal.

Besides, it’s far from clear in these economic times that Roche can secure adequate financing to close the deal anyway.

Anybody got a spare $30-35 billion lying around?