[Dialogue] Molly Ivins

Mon Nov 8 14:58:41 EST 2004

Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004

You can already smell the chicken rotting

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
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. Leave it there
until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even
go near that poor beast.
The thing'll smell so bad that 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.
At least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is real clear
to everyone just 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 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 painkilling, anti-arthritis drug, but Merck said
it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from the Federal Drug
Administration showed that high doses of Vioxx triple the risk of heart
attack and sudden cardiac death.
>From there, the story bifurcates. 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.
We have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the industry that it
is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide contempt for science
and plain facts.
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 that 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 that Bush stands for -- one in which a corporation can
knowingly kill people for profit, and when it finally comes out, everyone
knows the penalties will be so light that the company doesn't even lose a
tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.
We don't want any of that terrible, burdensome government regulation to
control that kind of behavior, do we? We don't want an FDA that listens to
its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We don't want anyone to sue
these monster corporations, do we?
If it were possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a
negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior vs. an American
getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out that we need to be a lot
more scared of rank greed and its enablers than we do of terrorists. That's
not counting what the corps -- that's short for corporations; say it like
corpse -- steal and mess up.
So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want
to feel better? Eat a sour grape and 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
move up.
Don't mourn -- organize.
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Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700,
Los Angeles, CA 90045

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Peace,
Harry