Ilaine, Swan, those interested,
Perhaps I am the least naive of many here, perhaps maybe I'm a wee bit cynical. Please pardon my language in this post, it's not meant to be offensive. Well, maybe it is, but maybe it's because I'm feeling a bit offended. Oh well... If I piss you off, sorry.
I work as a senior scientist in process development research at a major pharma(which shall remain a nameless hellhole). I have been in the biotech/pharma biz in various capacity for almost 18 years, I have worked in academia, returned for higher education, gone back to pharma. In the chemistry R&D side of the biz, I have done damn near everything short of prostituting myself to the financial pimps of the world.
I have also been very sick. Sick to the point of needing the care of doctors, unable to work, walk, etc. I have been on operating tables as a patient more than a couple of times. I am under 40.
I grew up on a farm, I killed and ate my own chickens, ducks, etc. Took the cow and hogs to the slaughterhouse. Hunted and fished all my life. I have visited far away places and eaten in places, in China , that consisted of only 3 walls and a roof. Where there were chickens walking around the kitchen and no refrigeration. I have been to places like mexico, indonesia, china, thailand and eaten off food carts, and from street vendors in more countries than most. I've been lucky enough to drink glacier water in Alaska... Before the pharma biz, I paid for college with survival training. (Of one form or another.) I can tell you first hand, I'd rather eat pork that had a 1000 flies on it an hour ago, than pork that's been in a fridge in a Beijing Bistro at the wrong temperature for a week.
My mother was an ER nurse at one of the countries largest level one trauma centers(where you go if you're a police officer, fireman or criminal with a serious gunshot wound). She used to wear a button that said "don't worry, we handle $hit like this all the time."
I know where my food comes from, and I know where my medicine comes from. I know more about my own medical care than most of the doctors I've been to. Some care about their patients and some are a bunch of arrogant f$cks that couldn't find their a$$ with both hands. The same goes for the pharma biz.
Not to condescend, just to state my qualifications for telling you what you're about to read.
So on to the discussion:
1.) Most pigs farms I know of let the pigs run around in mud--no different than cows, chickens and all the other stuff you eat. Pork doesn't come from sterilized plastic wrapped stryofoam containers in well lit supermarkets. Nor does a large amount of the medicine you get. It comes from cute little piglets that live most of their day looking for a cool wet place that smells like their own $hit. It comes from a 55 gallon drum of the cheapest $hit we can buy to make it. Because my teeny part of every penny saved goes to putting braces on my kids teeth and shoes on his feet. The rest of it goes to keeping the CEO's grass mowed, the VP's mistresses in a nice flat, and me working hard so we can keep screwing you out of as much as we can the next time you feel depressed, got a hotflash or CHF because you've shoved your pie hole full of ho-ho's since you've been 20.
2.)If it passes the QC tests that everybody's agreed upon, done. We wear booties and hairnets when it's important, but that doesn't mean if $500,000 is on the line for a batch that's effed up, we start over. We fix it till we meet the FDA requirements and call it done. If you and your lawyer come back 5 years from now because a statistician has doubled your 1 in 1000 chance of a heart condition, oh well. Cost of doing business.
3.) If you want a biotech created heparin grown in a fermentor, get ready to pay up and put up with 10 years of FDA bull$hit and pay what it costs, because that's what's involved. Don't like it? Figure out how to keep the pigs from wallowing in $hit or send the pharma companies some more of your money because I like spending it. After this screw up, i'm sure someone will start fermenting it and we'll all pay double for ultrasafe heparin.
4.) The issue with the heparin is that it was not "contaminated" in the true sense of the word. Adulterated is more likely. Chondroitin(sulfate) comes from cartilage, heparin comes from intestines. Oversulfated chondroitin sulfate comes from a laboratory. The adulterated heparin has oversulfated chondroitin sulfate in it<according the to news I read>. Somebody put it there, just like the idiot who put the melamine in the dog food, so it would pass a certain test. It is criminal, done on purpose to wring a few nickels out of somebody. Or just as likely, done as a great big FU by someone who had put up with the fat fu$k executives screwing over the scientists who spend most of their adult lives getting educated to put up with $hit from a bunch of racist managers and coworkers when they came to this country for an education.
5.) There are so many steps beyond some poor guy sorting out pig innard trimmings in a moldy basement to getting heparin,,,that if I were making it,,, I wouldn't give a rip if he were standing up to his elbows in pig $hit. That picture was taken for my amusement. Comprende? If you've never read "The Jungle", read it.
6.) We are rapidly approaching a phase in this world not much different than the early part of the 20th century where there were so much goings on, that it was easy to get away with murder. So many people in the food chain, so many people supplying the food,, too easy for people to think they going to get away with stuff. China at this moment in time, has areas of lawlessness. If you think the US is any different think again. There is no point in turning this political--but Ilaine, if you're so naive to think that Enron so much different than heparin,,, You're right to be complaining about melamine in the dog food. Because at the rate we're going in this country, you'll probably be eating it in your retirement.--and that is as best I can distill the point.
Chugs,
V |
