I knew that as soon as I penned my paean to sleep, I wouldn’t get any. And so it was. Last night, in the middle of my dish duties, my tax person called for a scheduled briefing which I’d almost forgotten. I seem to have lost several vital pieces of paper, making me only slightly less incompetent than the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. So, after frantic and fruitless searching through the mounds of assorted papers on my desk, I didn’t get to bed till 1 or so. I then had to get up at 7 am to drop the beagle off at doggie day-care (yes, a three word argument for a recession) and hop on a plane to Boston. After a power-nap in a hastily acquired hotel room, I attended the annual conference of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Essentially, I tried to give them a lunch-time pep-talk. These fledgling investors, scientists, researchers and businessmen have saved my life and those of countless others, for which they are rewarded by being deemed worse than the Soviet Union by John Le Carre. No fair, in my opinion. But I didn’t expect to get completely choked up as I started my talk by saying, “Thank you.” I guess I suddenly remembered all the people I knew and loved who never made it till now, and saw in front of me some of the people who nearly saved them. Amazing how quickly and easily you can forget, and how swiftly the emotions and loss can return.
BIG TOBACCO II: In an afternoon panel, there was a lively chit-chat about the politics of pharmaceuticals. Governor Howard Dean of Vermont was there – a personal hero of mine for standing up for homosexual equality. Still, he’s dead wrong on prescription drugs. He kept complaining about the price differential between drugs in Vermont and drugs over the border in Canada. This, to him, was evidence of price-gouging. Huh? It’s only evidence that the drug companies can make a little more gravy from selling their products to Canada at rigged prices than by not selling them abroad at all. If we were to allow mass reimportation of those drugs, we’d simply cripple the market-pricing structure of pharmaceuticals in America, torpedo pharmaceutical profits and kill off research. Dean says he doesn’t want to do this and opposes price controls – but he all but threatened that, unless the drug companies paid for politicians’ pandering out of their own profits, they were going to be turned into Big Tobacco II. Most depressing. Chatting with attendees all day, I was dismayed to hear that investment in new HIV research is all but vanishing under these kinds of political pressures. Completely predictable, and only just beginning.
ONE MORE CLINTON LEGACY: Another nugget provided by a brilliant researcher, Frank Lichtenberg, at the conference looked at research and development expenditures over the last fifteen years. Growth rates were around 12 percent for most years, with minor fluctuations. But there was an exception: 1993 and 1994, when Hillary Clinton’s attempted healthcare takeover decimated investor confidence and sent R&D growth rates plummeting to half their previous level. There’s no question that this delayed research at a critical time and may well have cost lives – maybe some of the lives I suddenly found myself remembering.
PSYCHO UPDATE: I wish I had a buck for every shrink who has privately said to me in the past few weeks that they completely agree that Clinton was and is sociopathic. And another buck for every one who swore me to secrecy over it. But at least actor James Woods isn’t scared. According to the Daily News, Woods recently opined that, in Pardonscam, the Clintons “acted absolutely true to form. … They are the most sociopathic, destructive people who have ever set foot in the White House. We will look back on these eight years as the most corrupt and debilitating abuse of power in the history of the presidency.” Amen, brother. Proof that not all actors are as dimwitted as Barbra Streisand – just most of them.
AND NOW THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes, on Tuesday, they caved and admitted that Jesse Jackson has some ethical issues in his fundraising. Er, the Chicago papers have been running with this for months, guys! A certain New Republic columnist broadcast this well over a month ago. Even the Times beat the Post. Why have they all been so squeamish? Over to you, John Kass of the Chicago Tribune: “For years, Jackson has been treated kindly. Here’s my explanation. In the media, we’re white people, mostly, and mostly suburban born, mostly Democrats, terrified of being called racists, even if the charge comes from a hustler. Black reporters don’t want to become targets, either. So news organizations skip timidly around Jackson’s finances, though we’ve known his race baiting has carried a price tag. Perhaps it’s because we in the media, particularly TV news, have also used him for decades, installing Jackson as chief black translator of the black American experience. Through this condescending bargain, this queasy media pact laced with white liberal guilt and white liberal racism, the crafty Jackson has prospered. His profile increased, while other black voices, those with legitimate yet differing views, were diminished. We didn’t want true diversity. We wanted it easy. We used him. And he used us.” The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
THOSE EVIL MEN: A reader sends in a story from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about a rape self-defense course at Florida Atlantic University, a publicly funded college. I’m all for these courses, just as I’m in favor of more gay men learning how to use self-defense against possible attackers, including the right to bear a deadly weapon in self-defense. All well and good for FAU, except that men, apart from the instructors, are barred from the classroom. “We don’t want the potential rapist learning what [the women] learn to defend themselves,” Sgt. Trenton Taylor, one of the instructors, told the paper. Excuse me? Could a public university defend such discrimination based on such stereotypes against any other group except for men? Don’t kid yourself. What shall we call this phenomenon? I suggest ‘androphobia’ – the irrational fear and bigoted demeaning of males. Think it will catch on?
The Dish 