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March
2000
The
Bitter Pill
©
2001
Night Hawke
I
stood gaping at the auditorium sprawling out like a parking lot at a
mall. Seats went on forever and ever. Up at the front there was a stage
I think… but my glasses weren't powerful enough to tell for sure. This
wasn't a civic center, public theater, or even a university auditorium.
Nope. This was a hall built at the manufacturing facility for braces.
Yep. Those shiny metal things you hate to pay for and your kids hate to
wear but Hillary Clinton says your kids should get to sue you for not
buying if they need them.
Now
I had just toured the manufacturing facility -- where these things get
produced for a cost under twenty bucks. Since I signed a confidentiality
agreement I can't tell you what they cost. But I can tell you they get
sold to your local Orthodontist for about three hundred bucks. Who then
turns around and sells them to you for about ten times that much. Now
since the company was making these for under twenty bucks and needed to
maximize it's profits (apparently 280 bucks a shot wasn't enough) I was
there to help them automate their process and send some of those lazy
workers they had home.
We
came to this auditorium and I asked what it was for -- employee meetings
wouldn't require a room this large. I was told a couple of three or four
times a year they bring in Orthodontic students from all over the
country and give training seminars. They cycle goes like this. If you
get these young professionals while they're in school and teach them how
to use your product then when they get out of school they'll be apt to
use your stuff because it's what they know. And the schools are in
cahoots with this scheme because after all, what products are available
is what they have to train people to use out in the field.
Now
this doesn't only apply to the dental industry. It happens in medicine
too. I've been called in to automate such tasks as taking syringes and
filling them with medicine and placing them in a sterile package. Here,
the automation goal is quality. Yes. Quality. To make sure the exact
amount gets placed in the syringe and that it gets placed into the
package in a sterile state without any human contamination. Now, I can
buy that. I really can. But, when you stop to
consider again that the whole
process costs these pharmaceutical companies around twenty bucks -- and
they sell those shots to my dad for about three thousand dollars a pop
(yes one hormone shot to suppress his testosterone production and thus
prevent the spread of his cancer costs three thousand bucks a pop) it
gets a little bit infuriating.
And,
the pharmaceutical companies pull the same stunts as I described in
orthodontia. They basically train the doctors how to use their products
-- and that's what doctors do. They retail prescription drugs.
Now
I don't have any qualms with private enterprise. I'm all for it. But
these folks need some serious competition. Especially when they are not
providing the cures people need.
I'm
not even going to get into insurance yet. But I'm going to point out
that our premiums are so high because the cost of care is so high
because the fat cats are getting so much profit. Why? Because they know
we want to live and keep our loved ones alive and we'll pay any price --
sometimes everything to try to do it.
When
dad first started his treatment I already knew that there was a 100%
cure for cancer. My neice helped develop it. She sells baby monitors now
though. There just isn't any money in research -- for the researchers.
But this cure -- gene therapy -- chops of the telomerase in the cancer
DNA so it can't reproduce. Not going to explain it all here. Run a web
search on it.
Yet
in three cases of people close to me in the last three years -- it
hasn't been used. Why? Because we don't know if it's safe. For spock's
sake people -- these people are dying anyway… fuck the FDA. They are
just as co-opted as the rest of the industry. The fact of the matter is
gene therapy does take longer than other treatments and with aggressive
cancer's it can take too long. But, if you know the other therapies like
radiation aren't 100% effective then why not start treatment down both
tracks. If the radiation doesn't work -- the gene thing is going on…
and so am I…
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Never
give a sucker an even break -- WC Fields
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site is subject to update any damn time I feel like it
© 2001
Night Hawke all rights reserved If you steal anything from here I will hunt you down and eat you!
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Every great scientific truth goes through three stages: First, people
say it conflicts with the bible. Next they say it had been discovered
before. Lastly, they say they always believed it. -- Jean Louis Aggasiz
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