Big Pharma Take a Hit

The recent problems of the big pharmaceutical companies have been expertly detailed and dissected in Derek Lowe's blog (LINK). So this cartoon is a bit like kicking a guy when he is down. In addition Big Pharma provides a lot of high salaried jobs to over-educated chemists that are dis-inclined to academe. One should only poke fun at the hand that feeds you so much.

On the other hand the commercials on TV that have more time devoted to the potential side effects than the purported benefits, the sweeping disclaimers on the sides of the boxes and the way that current medicine believes that any problem can be medicated sets this cartoon up really well. I mean, how many of us have a friend or a relative on a drug regime that eventually made them sick because of missed incompatibilities or the masking of true symptoms? They end up in hospital where some genius takes them off all medication ("to establish a baseline") and they get better?

LINK TO CARTOON

PS By the way, how does Forrest Gump know that penguins do or do not have nipples anyway?