Mourning in America

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Thu, 4 Nov 2004 19:55:06 -0600

Mourning in America

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20413/

 

 

 

Mourning in America

 

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted November 4, 2004.

 

 

 

Stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better?

Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country.

 

Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you

cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is

otherwise.

 

Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of

killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could.

He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has

killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And

leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog

or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the

dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the

last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill

chickens again.

 

The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the

American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to

sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

 

And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is

real clear to everyone who made the mess.

 

In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've

been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns

long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out. I'm sure

millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression

that he stands for moral values – family, patriotism, faith in God.

I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed

to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a

rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.

 

In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx

off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug,

but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from

the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the

risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.

 

From there, the story bifurcates – it takes two directions. Sen.

Charles Grassley of Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence

the author of the study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of

science in the Office of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat

on Graham's study and that then he was " ostracized " and " subjected to

veiled threats and intimidation. "

 

The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal

memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of

the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently

instructing its sales reps to " dodge " the question when doctors asked

about the cardiac record of Vioxx.

 

In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the

industry it is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide

contempt for science and plain facts. And the allegation against the

folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a

drug that killed people that when they knew or suspected it was

killing people, they kept right on selling it. When the information

that Merck had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks

became public, the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.

 

That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can

knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out,

everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even

lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.

 

We sure don't want any of that terrible, burdensome government

regulation to control that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want

an FDA that listens to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We

sure don't want anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet

if it were possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed

by a negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior

versus an American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we

need to be a lot more scared of rank greed and its enablers than we do

of terrorists. And that's not counting what the corps. (pronounced

corpse) steal and mess up.

 

So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad.

Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately,

now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country –

join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and

offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and

start helping him or her to move up.

 

Think about how you can lend a hand to the amazing myriad efforts that

will promptly break out to help the country recover from what it has

done to itself. Now is the time. Don't mourn, organize.

 

Molly Ivins is a best-selling author and columnist who writes about

politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.