#MeToo + a Plea + Bad Pharma by Pam Lazos and Abraham Johns, MD

Today’s post cuts closer to the bone than my usual ones. This is the most scared and hopeless I’ve felt in — ever? (Forget about feeling like digging into my novels, though click here if you’re curious about them.) Los Angeles is still being incinerated here-there-and-everywhere, still on alert with each warm, breezy day that is precisely why people flock here. If we get the bit of rain predicted this weekend, the charred earth is in danger of mudslides. Thankfully, those dear to me are physically okay so far, though one lost their dream home and is fending off looters.

What worries me most is the current rise, locally and nationally, in sheer meanness. It’s easy to give during the height of drama. But let someone be stuck on the streets for more than a few days, and people refer to them as vermin. Keep in mind, according to Google, the Los Angeles monthly average for a studio apartment is $1,700, a 1-bedroom $2,160, a 2-bedroom $3,000, and a 3-bedroom $4,250. That’s 39% higher than the rest of the country. Obviously, most don’t earn the hefty income it takes to save for rainy-days.

Is bigotry that much of a comfort? Does objectifying the unhomed as “them, not me” and “they brought it upon themselves” truly erase fears that our own fates are unpredictable?

Or is our cultural imagination paralyzed to the extent that we forget luck and good fortune determine our fates as much as anything else? Our safety nets are knotted in life’s twists and turns, our fleeting and long-term connections with good people.

Like any candy, Hollywood-type rags-to-riches depictions addict us with their empty calories of pat answers and fantasy generalizations. Our genuine stories heal us back to the sanity that together, we flourish.

In that interest, here’s my story (for the resulting family backlash, click here and to know a bit more about the #MeToo movement, click here) as brief and straightforward as I can make it…

I’m the youngest of three kids, the child of parents who immigrated from two different countries. Neither ran from oppression or poverty. At the time, on all three continents, work was plentiful and expenses reasonable. Young and adventurous, the glamour depicted in U.S. media lured them.

Their vague affection for bohemian philosophy peppered everything. My father was a strict ruler who chased women more than he worked. My mother prided herself on working outside of the home, while inside the home she kept true to her idea of a traditional wife. 

What they taught me included a love of public TV, art museums, and reading. Studying, homework, and higher education were discouraged. Planning beyond the immediate future was futile. Geniuses, rich people, and certain religions had the locks on success. As a girl, I was instructed to be good, which meant keeping silent and never dreaming beyond serving my father and inevitable husband.

I was abused by my father and middle brother, both of them child molesters. For my family of birth, I’m collateral damage. Gradually and with the help of people who genuinely care for me, I’m getting better at not letting them blindside me.

When I was 15 and my brother 18, he attempted to fondle my genitals as I slept. My father got glassy-eyed as he sat little girls on his lap….

Telling you this isn’t easy. So why do I publish it here for anyone to read? For one thing, it’s time I stop keeping secrets for undeserving people. Authenticity and accountability go hand in hand.

More importantly, I’m telling you this today to underscore that as lucky as I am for my rich adult life, my grim beginnings could as easily swerved into disaster.

Last week I had two disturbing conversations with educated, outwardly nice people. They piggy back on a series of smaller discussions, wherein individuals were unabashed about their bigotry. One person blah-blah-blahed despite my protests that all fires are doubtlessly set by people without homes. For her, the unhomed are plain “bad.” The other had the audacity to single out my husband’s hard-won success as a one-size-fits-all example of how all people on the streets get what they deserve.

My plea to all of us: call out bigotry when we hear it. Our silence allows people to believe hatefulness is acceptable and contributes to its spread.

Now for something totally off topic. Since many here are writers who hope to extend our reach, maybe you’ll find this as interesting as I did? Click this link for one podcaster’s zigzag experience with media success.

And now for today’s guest blog post by Pam Lazos, an environmental lawyer, freelance editor, and ghostwriter. She authored the enviro-thriller Oil and Water, about oil spills and green technology, Six Sisters, a collection of novellas about family, dysfunction, and the ties that bind us, and the children’s book Into the Land of the Loud, created the literary and click here for her enviro blog, and is an issues editor for the International Journal of Water Equity and Justice (University of Pennsylvania). She practices laughter daily…

Here she tells us about her latest book, Bad Pharma, for which she’s got an excellent chance at winning this independent book award!…

Bad Pharma by Pam Lazos and Abraham Johns, MD

How does society balance conflicting interests? For much of humanity’s existence, individual needs have often been weighed against the needs of the society/family/tribe because the priest, president, or parent knew, or believed they knew, what you as an individual needed to live your life. They would take care of you, and all you had to do was listen to their advice and trust their judgment. 

Today, corporations have taken a leading role in proclaiming what we as individuals need, and they run massive advertising campaigns to ensure we agree with them. Big Pharma is no exception. Big Pharma promises drugs to cure our diseases, pains, and even our heartaches, promising healthier, happier lives if we get on board. More often than not, they deliver on these promises. 

Take, for example, vaccines. Imagine the world without them. Without vaccines, the population would be a fraction of what it is today, and people would have periodically died in Black Death proportions. As many as 50 million people died during the Black Plague (1347-1351). Talk about culling the herd! So thank you, Big Pharma, for taking the time to run the clinical trials and create vaccines. 

Ah, but if it were only that easy. What is chilling about Big Pharma is that it doesn’t like to ‘fess up when a clinical trial goes sideways. And that is the premise of Bad Pharma.  

OPL, the fictional pharma company described in the book — the real company shall remain nameless for legal reasons — didn’t want to tell the participants in their clinical study that the vaccine tested in the clinical trial was a bust. While Big Pharma lost out on what they thought would be the next blockbuster drug, actual children suffered because they didn’t get the protection they believed they were receiving. Did anyone die? In the book, yes, but in real life, no. Could they have died? Absolutely. Does that make Big Parma’s decision not to disclose any better?  Not one iota. A Google search through pharma misstep history demonstrates that there have been other clinical trials where the company knew there was a weakness yet proceeded to market its drug anyway. These companies made billions, all the while knowing that there was a greater than allowable risk. Only when people start dying with some frequency did they pull the drug off the market. This has happened more than once in pharma history due to an unwillingness to cut losses and put people before profits.

Hey, this drug-making thing is not easy. It’s expensive, takes years for a single product, and is a crap shoot at best — and since people are involved in all aspects, from production to sales, there will be missteps from time to time. My question to Big Pharma is: since people want to make fully informed decisions regarding their health, is a little transparency too much to ask? 

Synopsis for Bad Pharma:

Onward Pharmaceutical Labs (OPL), one of the world’s largest pharma companies, is completing the development of a new vaccine, RSVIX, to protect children from a respiratory virus — the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — that endangers the lives of infants and young children. OPL expects RSVIX to be their next blockbuster and hopes to quickly capture most of the $7B U.S. market. The final clinical study before licensure is a head-to-head comparison with RESPIRWELL, the currently licensed vaccine produced by OPL’s rival, Beamer Labs. To succeed in the trial, OPL must prove equal protection with the four common serotypes their vaccine shares with Beamer’s licensed vaccine while adding coverage for five additional strains of the virus that RESPIRWELL does not have.

When Siddhartha Kumar, OPL’s lead medical monitor assigned to the trial, discovers that RSVIX is not performing as planned, he notifies his superiors, recommending they stop the trial and offer a dose of RESPIRWELL to all the study participants to ensure their protection. When the company refuses to inoculate the trial population with the licensed vaccine, Sid questions the ethics behind this decision while continuing to advocate for the safety of the children. Sid’s insistence leads to his dismissal, leaving like-minded others in the company scrambling to fill the void.

Winner, 2024 Literary Titan Gold Book Award

• ” A deep dive into company greed….. their narrative asks salient questions about corporate accountability, profit and ethics in drug development”…….. KIRKUS REVIEWS, NOV 2024
• “Bad Pharma is a moral inquiry wrapped in an engaging narrative. I would highly recommend it to anyone intrigued by the intersection of science, ethics, and corporate drama. This book will make you question how much we’re willing to compromise in the name of “progress”. 5 stars! ” Thomas Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, LITERARY TITAN

Click here to read Bad Pharma.

Do you believe it’s worthwhile to challenge hate-speak?