Other than that, it’s been a beautiful autumn in northern New England. Days are warm and clear, nights have yet to bring a hard frost to the Champlain Valley. The tomato plants are still producing in abundance, still flowering even. We’ve been eating tomatoes from our garden for over three months. National Guard fighter jets occasionally roar low over town, as they did on September 11th. In truth, fighter jets have roared low over town since we moved here, it just didn’t mean anything until September 11th.
Still, the troublesome world reaches out to touch us. There was an anthrax scare at Burlington International Airport last week. A powder of unknown origin was found in the baggage compartment of an incoming airplane. All luggage was impounded, all passengers were given Cipro tablets as a precaution, police and hazardous materials experts were called in. After a few days of tests, the all clear was given, passengers were called to collect their bags and told to stop with the Cipro.
Here’s an ethical question for a new era: what does one do with extra Cipro? Do you stash it in the medicine cabinet, afraid that the next opportunity to use it will come all too soon? Do you donate it to the relief effort, hoping it will find its way to someone who needs it? (On the other side of that question, how would you feel about ingesting Cipro sent in by someone unknown to you?) Do you put it on the black market and keep the cash, against the day when… well, who knows what’s going to happen next?
Profiteering in times such as these may be unseemly, but that’s not stopping the Bayer Corporation, which holds the patent to Cipro. While a planeload of restive passengers fretted away the hours in Burlington last week, a few hundred miles to the west and north the Canadian federal government voided Bayer’s patent and enlisted a generic drug maker to begin production of a million Cipro tablets.
In Washington, where offices in both the Senate and the House have been invaded by anthrax spores, the federal government is standing by Bayer’s right to make a profit from an international crisis. It’s worth noting that those same Washington politicians overdosed on Bayer campaign contributions in the 2000 election cycle. Bayer gave five and half million dollars to the Democrats and over ten million dollars to the Republicans.
Cipro-price gouging is not a problem if you live in Vermont; senior citizens here have been organizing bus trips to Canada to buy cheap prescription drugs for years. Same goes for Americans living along the Mexican border, but if you live in anthrax-ravaged New York, New Jersey, DC or Florida, get out your credit card and get in line – especially if you’re, say, a non-politically-connected postal worker.
Congress has already written large checks to the security-lite airline industry, now the feds are digging in on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, but it’s not just the new era dictating priorities, there are echoes of the old era as well. For years, Africa has been in the throes of an AIDS crisis. African nations have long wanted to do with AIDS drugs what Canada did with Cipro last week: void patents and produce generic equivalents. They haven’t done it, in large part because of vocal opposition, first by the Clinton administration and now by the Bush administration. In the U.S., a few dozen people have been exposed to anthrax and many more scared by false alarms like the one at Burlington airport. If our government voids a patent for those reasons, but opposes saving the lives of millions of Africans, our leaders will look like a bunch of phonies. Our leaders will look like a bunch of phonies when they don’t scream about Canada’s patent-voiding, which they won’t. Funny thing about war, it has a way of bringing all our contradictions back to haunt us.
In northern New England, we have anthrax scares, false alarms, but not much more. We’re insulated. Further down the east coast, Americans are feeling their insulation getting peeled away for the first time in generations. Without insulation, we feel more keenly every shift of the wind. Our long, warm autumn is giving way to winter.
Cipro and Con
Other than that, it’s been a beautiful autumn in northern New England. Days are warm and clear, nights have yet to bring a hard frost to the Champlain Valley. The tomato plants are still producing in abundance, still flowering even. We’ve been eating tomatoes from our garden for over three months. National Guard fighter jets occasionally roar low over town, as they did on September 11th. In truth, fighter jets have roared low over town since we moved here, it just didn’t mean anything until September 11th.
Still, the troublesome world reaches out to touch us. There was an anthrax scare at Burlington International Airport last week. A powder of unknown origin was found in the baggage compartment of an incoming airplane. All luggage was impounded, all passengers were given Cipro tablets as a precaution, police and hazardous materials experts were called in. After a few days of tests, the all clear was given, passengers were called to collect their bags and told to stop with the Cipro.
Here’s an ethical question for a new era: what does one do with extra Cipro? Do you stash it in the medicine cabinet, afraid that the next opportunity to use it will come all too soon? Do you donate it to the relief effort, hoping it will find its way to someone who needs it? (On the other side of that question, how would you feel about ingesting Cipro sent in by someone unknown to you?) Do you put it on the black market and keep the cash, against the day when… well, who knows what’s going to happen next?
Profiteering in times such as these may be unseemly, but that’s not stopping the Bayer Corporation, which holds the patent to Cipro. While a planeload of restive passengers fretted away the hours in Burlington last week, a few hundred miles to the west and north the Canadian federal government voided Bayer’s patent and enlisted a generic drug maker to begin production of a million Cipro tablets.
In Washington, where offices in both the Senate and the House have been invaded by anthrax spores, the federal government is standing by Bayer’s right to make a profit from an international crisis. It’s worth noting that those same Washington politicians overdosed on Bayer campaign contributions in the 2000 election cycle. Bayer gave five and half million dollars to the Democrats and over ten million dollars to the Republicans.
Cipro-price gouging is not a problem if you live in Vermont; senior citizens here have been organizing bus trips to Canada to buy cheap prescription drugs for years. Same goes for Americans living along the Mexican border, but if you live in anthrax-ravaged New York, New Jersey, DC or Florida, get out your credit card and get in line – especially if you’re, say, a non-politically-connected postal worker.
Congress has already written large checks to the security-lite airline industry, now the feds are digging in on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, but it’s not just the new era dictating priorities, there are echoes of the old era as well. For years, Africa has been in the throes of an AIDS crisis. African nations have long wanted to do with AIDS drugs what Canada did with Cipro last week: void patents and produce generic equivalents. They haven’t done it, in large part because of vocal opposition, first by the Clinton administration and now by the Bush administration. In the U.S., a few dozen people have been exposed to anthrax and many more scared by false alarms like the one at Burlington airport. If our government voids a patent for those reasons, but opposes saving the lives of millions of Africans, our leaders will look like a bunch of phonies. Our leaders will look like a bunch of phonies when they don’t scream about Canada’s patent-voiding, which they won’t. Funny thing about war, it has a way of bringing all our contradictions back to haunt us.
In northern New England, we have anthrax scares, false alarms, but not much more. We’re insulated. Further down the east coast, Americans are feeling their insulation getting peeled away for the first time in generations. Without insulation, we feel more keenly every shift of the wind. Our long, warm autumn is giving way to winter.