12/03/11 GETTING ACQUAINTED, AND THE MOST FEARED WORDS IN THE AMERICAN LEXICON

ASHLAND'S CHRISTMAS TREE (NICE)

I STILL DON'T GET THIS "SIT" BUSINESS

DON'T WORRY, ITS ONLY BOSCO

I LIKE MORGAN

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  31 degrees, wind WSW, light.  The sky is mostly covered with very high, thin white clouds and the barometer predicts precipitation; we have an approaching front, probably bringing some snow but it is a nice morning.
    Buddy got acquainted with some of the local dogs this morning and is getting used to the neighborhood, but is still skittish at everything strange or that moves suddenly.  He isn’t fearful, just hyper alert.
    The following tale is a mini-political statement. Nothing many readers are likely to appreciate, much less empathize with, unless unfortunately it happens to them.  Not as damning as congressional insider trading.  Not as stupid as giving up ten years of hard won success in Iraq and handing it over to the mullahs in Tehran.  Nope, just federal  business as usual and corruption on, probably, a smaller scale. 
    Thanks to our Food and Drug Administration and its collusion with Big Pharma and the wink-wink of Congress, a simple, thousands of years old medication that I have used without incident for forty years was taken off the market because “its efficacy has not been proven.” Nobody asked me.  I have suffered greatly without my colchicine gout medicine, and the replacement, Prednisone, a steroid, has come close to making me a Type 2 diabetic (nobody warned me).  My old, simple, time-proven remedy cost me $3.50 for a month’s supply.  I would gladly have paid double if necessary for it and never have said a word. 
    Now I am to be thankful, I guess, that the FDA has at last approved a new colchicine product, Cholchrys, which will do the same good job as the old.  The $140 wholesale price is a 40+% increase over the old .  Well, it must be a much better product I assumed.  Not so, says my pharmacist.  It is exactly the same medicine, same dosage, only the color (white to purple) and the shape (round to oblong) and the name have changed.  Oh, well, the old guys (gout is genetically mostly an affliction of males over 35) who should take better care of themselves anyway can just dig a little deeper, so Big Pharma can make more money and the politicians can stuff their pockets or their campaign chests with a little more cash from the lobbyists.
    Now I don’t think many of my fellow citizens will be very upset by this bit of Keystone Cops chicanery.  Until it happens to their cancer or diabetes or blood pressure medicine.  It is certainly going to happen t o a whole cadre of old reliable medications that are relatively cheap and effective but not overwhelmingly profitable. But not to worry, someone from the FDA is sure to pop up soon and say the most feared words in the American lexicon, “I’m from the federal government, and I’m here to help!”