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Mono y Mono.
Warning: Peta, and all people who won't wear leather or eat tasty animals should stop reading this article now. You're going to disagree with me and more importantly, your patuli oil rat nest of a hairdo offends my nose and I don't want you dirtying up my column.
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As many of you have noticed, I've been on the skinny lately. Quite literally. I've taken an unannounced leave of absence due to recent illness. It was nothing serious, just a bad case of "Mono" that caused a lot of sleepiness and weight loss. But no worries, I've freshly discovered the miracles of codeine and all the wonderful inspirations associated with it. For years I've heard about this marvelous drug but have never had the joys of taking it every 4 to 6 hours. Let me tell ya folks, it IS what it is cracked up to be. I even crushed a few and sprinkled it on my morning Sugar Corn Pops. Hmmmm…. Sugar Corn Pops.
Now, how did we come up with this beautiful drug? How did we find the plant, or the right combinations of chemicals and realize that X, Y, and Z deaden these nerves and yet still allow us to function? (How did we find out that drinking more than 3 beers with codeine can cause hallucinations?) Images of scientists fumbling around with test tubes and mixing strange concoctions by candle light come to mind, and while I'm sure this is how it all began, things are very different today. Today they have halogen lamps and lasers. And, unlike in the early days, they probably don't ingest the strange mixtures and risk Jeckle and Hydeism - instead they subject some rat or monkey to it. We've all seen the old Sylvester and Tweety when Tweety becomes a giant Neanderthal Tweety with brow beating beak and knuckle dragging wings and sadistically beats Sylvester about the head and shoulders.. (It was a cartoon, birds had hands after morphing into monsters! Besides, giant birds with hands skinning cats is much funnier than birds without hands.)
Now, this makes a lot of sense to me. This animal testing procedure. Test the strange and bizarre mood and physical altering drugs on animals and small things that we can control, observe and keep in a cage. Sometimes these tests go awry and bad things happen to the test subjects. It's much better to happen to a little critter cooped up in a cage than say… your lab partner who's roaming around the lab with you. "Say, sorry about shooting you with all those gamma rays Dr. Banner. Hey, what are you getting so upset about?" "Hulk SMASH!!"
But seriously, animal experimentation and research is a valuable component of medical testing and is responsible for the development of countless drugs and is accountable for saving the lives of millions of people each year. Period. If we didn't test the drugs on animals, how would we find out what it does? Sure, we can see in a petri dish that Drug X kills bacteria Y - but how do we know what that's going to do to your central nervous system. Especially if Drug X is brand new and we have no other data to go on? Huh, Mr. Animal Lover - what then? And don't give me this "It's unfair to the animals! It's cruel and it's torture!" Well, I got one thing to say about that. Humans are Omnivorous. For you tree huggers who are too stoned to remember that 2nd grade lesson, that means we eat both plants and animals. Always have and always will. So, since I'm gonna hunt and kill every animal out there anyway, just cause they taste good or look good on my hub caps, I may as well inject them with Chemical X. Hell, that baby seal may just help me find the cure for cancer and keep my veal eating species alive another day to argue the benefits of hemp rope vs. nylon composite. Besides, it was animal testing that allowed for the development of the drug that enabled your mother of endure the pain of passing that big, self inflated head of yours!
But testing on animals isn't the end of the line for medical research. As I can only guess at, animal physiology, psychology and lord knows what else, differs from our own. Their internal systems, although similar in nature and function, can only be so close. This is why we have vets and why we have physicians. In the end, we are different from the dog and the monkey. We are. I know it's hard for the Cat Lady to accept, but we are. So, in order to make Excedrin my top shelf item, we need to test it on human subjects first. Horrifying but true. There are brave people in the world who allow themselves to be "Guinea Pigs" and subject themselves to tests, injections and studies. Sometimes these people don't think of themselves as brave. Sometimes they are just clinging to the last hope for life. As they lay in their death bed they sign a waver for experimental treatment hoping to spend one more day with their family. Or, sometimes, they answer an ad in the paper for a local college study, in hopes to make a little extra cash for groceries, text books, and beer money. Sometimes, this research doesn't go as planned and people die.
This recently happened with the death of 24 year old Ellen Roche, when she volunteered for an asthma study at Johns Hopkins University. As Time.com notes, "Roche volunteered for a trial in which she took hexamethonium, a compound not currently approved by the FDA for use in humans." However, "Hopkins officials note that hexamethonium was approved in the 1950s for treating high blood pressure, and was pulled only when other drugs proved more effective." Now, while the death of Ellen Roche is tragic and the suffering of her family is truly heartbreaking, it doesn't change the fact that what she was doing was a noble and just cause. While I'm certain she or the scientists involved didn't believe that death was a warranted fear, there are risks involved with anything, especially when medical related.
As I'm sure you can guess, this has brought much scrutiny to Johns Hopkins University. Not just from the public at large, but from the Office for Human Research Protection, who has ordered the shut down of all human testing projects. Johns Hopkins has been doing clinical trials for over 100 years and has only had one death in all of those years. Hopkins also received $301 million in federal grants for 2,000 human studies, which made it the largest recipient of government research money last year. As Newsweek points out, "Hopkins calls the shutdown of its experiments "unwarranted, unnecessary, paralyzing and precipitous." OHRP is letting trials continue "where it is in the best interests" of subjects. The rest of the studies can resume once Hopkins submits a plan to restructure its system for protecting research subjects. How quickly that happens, says a government spokesman, depends on Hopkins."
Johns Hopkins has demonstrated over 100 years of excellence in the medical field. And now, due to a tragic and unfortunate death, they've been placed under the microscope of the OHRP. An organization who removed Duke Universities human research rights, citing for, among other infractions "the improper recording of minutes of a meeting." Now, I understand the importance of procedures and safety nets, but it appears to me that the OHRP is using this as a moment to grab the spotlight and flex their flabby muscles, thereby impeding medicine and keeping progress from it's due course. And I'll be damned if the next time I get maliciously sick that I have to wait for the new miracle drug because some herbal rain guru or some businessman with his own selfish political priorities tells me I can't have it because it may be bad for me. I'm accepting the risk and I'll take a hit on the chops if it means mankind might suffer less in the future. And I'm gonna eat baby whale pancakes in my mink skivvies while I do it!
*Look for Mr. Sweeney's article "Turn your head and cough" later this week.
**The opinions expressed in Weekly Commentary are those of Mr. Sweeney and his alone. Any attempt at finding sanity or logic in his rantings are feeble, at best.
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