Singing A New Song: But, but...now it's ME!

Listening to talking heads discuss the future of drug research and development in the USA brought to mind a sudden change in my narcissistic father. He worked in the R&D department in a major pharmaceutical company.

He described the years it took teams of scientists to do the necessary work to discover, test and develop a drug before it could even be considered for presentation to the USA's Food and Drug Administration. He described the problem of the US patent being granted years before the drug was even approved for use in the USA, making each year of additional research necessary to get the drug to market raise the cost of the drug just to recover the costs put into research. It was all so logical to him.

Until he got sick. Then, out came hatred for the horrible greedy pharmaceuticals who didn't put enough money into curing the terrible disease he had. Didn't they understand that he was dying? How dare they consider anything but that he needed.

This change in him was one of the most eye-opening. Before he became ill, he was adamant that pharmaceutical R&D was doing exactly what was best by concentrating on those things that could help the most amount of people and had the best probability of success. When the shoe was on the other foot....well, then the system was obviously a horrible one because it wasn't helping him.

The father who had always prided himself on his thinking and reasoning abilities, suddenly did a 180 degree turn because it benefited him. Cool logic went out the window when it was him dying, not some other slob.

This was long before the initials 'NPD' carried any meaning for me. Still, it was obvious listening to his vicious, and sometimes violent, rants there was some serious self-absorption going on. It was a turning point for me. And with that, it's time for me to go take my allergy medication.