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24.01.2007 - 3:26 p.m. Dis�claim�er [dis-kley-mer] �noun 1. the act of disclaiming, the renouncing, repudiating, or denying of a claim; disavowel the biomedical industry is a beautiful place, full of well meaning scientists with large foreheads, slaving away day and night to fix our woes. Unfortunately scientists can�t be trusted to run large companies because very few of them have the practical skills to do so ( despite their large foreheads ) and so it falls to a layer of management situated above them ( on the org chart anyway ). The downside of this is that layers of management beget more layers of management and so on, until you have a thin layer of people actually discovering stuff and then many layers of management : �defining corporate identity within the marketplace� Another downside is that it costs money to fund research, lots of money, so you only want to research stuff that is likely to generate money for you, like working out why western people are fat and making a pill to stop them getting fat despite their intake of chocolate fudge cake and pizzas, or if possible identify something intangible ( like twitchy legs syndrome ), defining it medically ( as best they can or have ) and then convincing the public they need this drug to stop their legs twitching. These are a new class of drugs called � �middle-class-cashinducing-possiblysteroidal-angst-inhibitors� or MCCPAI�s The other way to stop money leaving the company is to stop people suing you every-time one of your partially researched, but probably alright in the right people drugs, causes death in the wrong patient ( vioxx anyone ? ) Through the clever use of a disclaimer, the legal managers can list side effects which may (or may not) happen, then if they do happen the company can say �ah, well we told you that might happen but you took the drugs anyway, so you�ve only yourself to blame� Here are some reported side effects or possible adverse effects with this family of drugs, which happen to be tricyclic antidepressants, and if you were only a little depressed before you started taking them, you'll be a basket case once you get to the end of the info sheet. dry mouth I liked the bit about �occasional jaundice�, it brought to mind an Edwardian setting, with : "myself and my good wife were perambulating around the parkland one cool autumn afternoon when i was suddenly struck with occasional jaundice" If they just put �severe disability� �organ failure� and �death� on the end, that would cover every eventuality. Sounds like a winner to me. previous - next
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