Saturday, June 13, 2009

An Unhappy Sign

I'm not going to extrapolate a rant on what this says about the worrisome demographics of newspaper readers, or the self-indulgence of Americans, or the looming crisis in the costs of entitlement programs somewhere down the road, or the strange priorities of our supposedly great health care system, but I have to admit all of those things flashed through my mind when I saw that the top slot of the NYT Most Emailed list was held by …

… an article about gout.

I haven't read it, and was further disinclined when this line jumped out while skimming:

Ardea [a pharmaceutical company] discovered accidentally that an AIDS drug it was developing might work against gout. Now the company has shifted its focus to gout, envisioning annual sales of $1 billion if its drug is successful.

If you must …



I realize some of my prejudices (and probably ignorance) are on display here, and if you or someone you know is a nice person suffering from gout, I apologize if I've offended you.

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