Pharmaceutical Industry Gets Stupid

[Tuckerfan]

To help stem the tide of folks ordering their meds from Canada they hired a pair of novelists to write a novel about terrorists tampering with shipments to the US.

In a tale worthy of a zany Washington satire - except for the lamentable fact that it’s true - the rich and powerful pharmaceutical lobby secretly commissioned a thriller novel whose aim was to scare the living daylights out of folks who might want to buy cheap drugs from Canada.

It gets even more surreal.

“They said they wanted it somewhat dumbed down for women, with a lot more fluff in it, and more about the wife of the head Croatian terrorist, who is a former Miss Mexico,” Spivak told me.

Apparently, women are among the most loyal buyers of Canadian drugs.

“They also wanted to change the motivating factor of the terrorists to greed, because they didn’t want it to be politics,” Spivak said. “They wanted lots of people to die.”

That article doesn’t really do justice to the issue, at least compared to the account given by the NPR program On the Media.

The novel, as you can well imagine, was pure crap. It was so bad, that even the pharmaceutical industry realized that it was crap, and tried to have it killed. This, according to the authors, would have been fine, but then the pharma folks decided to require the authors to never say anything bad about the industry (either in public or private). That didn’t sit well with them, and they reworked the book to include the pharmaceutical companies as villians (though they apparently haven’t managed to improve it any).

Does anyone buy the story that terrorists are plotting to tamper with drugs coming in from Canada? That is so not they’re style. Hell, NPR did a piece not too long ago about the center the government has set up to study terrorism in the wake of 9/11 (Gee, you’d think that they’d have had one of those years ago.) and one of the preliminary findings of the center has been that roughly 90% of terrorist incidents are domestic and not international! (This, of course, is the same government that had tons of info on the hijackers before 9/11, but wasn’t able to figure out what to do with it until it was too late and thought that there were WMDs in Iraq, so perhaps the center’s got it wrong.)

[chaoticbear]

If that book is as bad as I picture it being, I’d really love to read it.

[Larry_Mudd]

The Globe and Mail has a slightly more detailed article.

One of my favourite bits:

Author and ghostwriter Julie Chrystyn was hired to write the book. Mr. Spivak, a telecommunications executive, signed on later and Jayson Blair, the reporter fired by The New York Times for fabricating news articles, was hired by Phoenix Books as an editor.

“He seemed conscientious,” Ms. Chrystyn told the New York Post. “I was impressed. Besides, this was fiction, which is something for which he clearly has talent.”

Heh heh heh.

[treis]

The funny thing about this Canadian drug stuff is that Canada has a better health care system than the US.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@treis

The funny thing about this Canadian drug stuff is that Canada has a better health care system than the US.

Depends on how you define “better”. Available to more folks, with a high degree of technology? Yes. Better than if you have lots of money to pay for US health care? Different story. I’ve got canadian physician friends who envy my ability to order up an MRI and get results in a few days, at need.

But that varies for location to location in both the US and Canada too, I suspect.

I have great respect for the abilities of Canadian docs, and I’ve no doubts about the Canadian Pharmaceutical companies ability to put out high quality drugs.

Maybe KarlGauss and Dr. Paprika will stop in and give their perspective on the OP.

[Muffin]

When compared to Americans, Canadians live longer, live healthily longer, pay less individually for health care, pay less through our taxes for health care, and overall devote less of our GDP for health care: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5456070&postcount=10

So as to protect out own suppply, our government will prohibit the exporting of significant quantities of drugs to the USA: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6696233&postcount=31

As far as the American public being swayed by false allegations of terrorism, we have seen that work in other venues.

[Sunspace]

@Tuckerfan

The novel, as you can well imagine, was pure crap. It was so bad, that even the pharmaceutical industry realized that it was crap, and tried to have it killed.

“Atlanta Nights” bad?

This, according to the authors, would have been fine, but then the pharma folks decided to require the authors to never say anything bad about the industry (either in public or private). That didn’t sit well with them, and they reworked the book to include the pharmaceutical companies as villians (though they apparently haven’t managed to improve it any).

Why is it that companies again and again try to game the system rather than competing on product, even when competing on product is easier and cheaper and ultimately less embarassing?

[SleepyDuck]

Side effects of reading this novel may include but are not limited to: nausea, sexual disfunction, loss of motor skills, insomnia, hair loss, dizziness, anal leakage, headache, dry mouth, psychotic behavior, pain in the arms or legs, nose bleed, constipation, lethargy, severe bone and/or joint pain, diarrhea, colitis, loss of bone mass, severe depression, and/or Geriatric Profanity Disorder (GPD).
This novel should not be read while operating a vehicle or heavy machinery.