Danny McBride, 970 words
By Danny McBride
IPS Features
Bully Pill Pot
Two seemingly unrelated news stories were reported recently, one by the Associated Press and printed in the New York Times and the other by staff writer Susan Okie of the Washington Post. The first was in the Business Section of the Times and reported the last quarter’s earnings of three of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies. The second story was a few pages inside the main news section of the Post titled “Survey: 30% of U S Schoolchildren Involved in Bullying”.
In case you didn’t happen to see these items let me just say that the AP reported that the drug companies had posted “double-digit increases in profits” and cited “strong growth in prescription medicine sales” over the same quarter last year, and that the Post story reported that 30% of students in sixth through tenth grade have been involved in “moderate or frequent bullying—as bullies, as victims, or both”.
Don’t get the connection? Here it is: It seems obvious to me that drug company executives were once victims of schoolyard bullying and now is their chance at payback- -to overcharge us all for the prescription medicines many of us need to live a normal life.
“Tubby, tubby, two by four- -Couldn’t fit through the kitchen door.”
“Oh yeah- -sob- -you wait- -you wait til you develope noninsulin dependent diabetes from too much junk food and booze and need Glucophage, or you’re going bald some day and I bleed you dry with what I’m going to charge you for Rogaine- -just you wait.”
“Nya nya nya nya. I ought to blow cigarette smoke in your face, you little weasel.”
“Yeah, so- -wait til you see what Nicorette products are going to cost when you’re forty and desperate to quit.”
“I oughta kick you in the shins, you measly little dufus wimp crybaby.”
“Oh yeah- -wait til you have to have a hip or knee joint replacement. You won’t even be
able to swing your leg to kick anything, except maybe the bucket.”
Years ago we had only a few products that really did anything, such as aspirin, and that’s only been around for about a hundred years (1899). There was morphine for pain, quinine for malaria, smallpox vaccine, and digitalis for heart failure. Basically, if you got sick before 1900 you laid there until your body defeated the infection, or it defeated you. Before that, of course, we had leeches to bleed you until the evil humours had escaped your body. Hard to believe, but some people actually died from this cure. Other than that, most people boiled water and got a bunch of wash cloths to put on your head until the fever broke, or whatevever, regardless of what was wrong with you. “I think I’ve hurt my knee.” “Somebody boil water and bring some towels.” “Yes, but I may need a new knee joint replacement.” “Right. That’ll happen. Now lie down and put these soggy towels on your head.”
In 1909, German chemist-physician Paul Ehrlich developed a chemical treatment for syphilis called salvarsan (meaning that “which saves by arsenic”). This was administered by the new and difficult technique of intravenous injection. A young Scottish doctor in London was one of the few in England who successfully performed this procedure: Alexander Fleming. He developed a very busy practice. (For this? In late Victorian England? Why I’m shocked.)
In 1928 Alexander Fleming made one of the greatest leaps forward in medical history- -penicillin- -although it took until World War II in the 1940s for anyone to take Sir Alec’s discovery seriously. As a result he was knighted in 1944 and won the Nobel prize in 1945. Imagine coming up with so revolutionary a discovery as “a mold that cures” and getting no one to take you seriously for years. Where were the sales reps pounding down doctors’ doors, or the expensive TV commercials for drugs available only by prescription? “There may be some side effects such as bleeding, vomiting, oozing skin lesions or dipsomania. Ask your doctor. He should know.” He should also know that nobody watched much TV in those days.
Young Alec was a sharpshooter, an expert rifleman, from his days as the seventh of eight children growing up on a remote 800-acre farm in Scotland. When a rich uncle died and left enough money for each of the kids to go to college, Alec followed his older brother Tom’s advice and went to medical school. Tom, by the way, had already set up a medical practice in London, and Alec and several of his siblings decided to move in with him. “Hey, man, you don’t mind if we crash here for, oh, several years, do you?”
Because the captain of the St Mary’s College rifle club wanted Alec on his team, he convinced Alec to switch from surgery to bacteriology, so he could stay on the team, and therefore at the college, where he remained his whole career. He never was lured away to R & D at Bristol-Myers Squibb or any other such conglomerate. Also, because of his well-known sharpshooting skills, one would assume he was never the victim of schoolyard bullying.
And that’s the difference today. I can’t explain bullying. “I’m bigger and stronger than you are and to prove it to myself because I’m too dumb to figure it out, I’m going to pick on you just to prove I’m bigger, stronger, and dumber than you are.” Boil some water and bring me a towel. I want to whack your parents who probably picked on you.
Fleming, Ehrlich and other pioneers performed their work for the benefit of mankind, or for science. These days medicine is back to where it was over a hundred years ago, except now the leeches are attached to your wallet.
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