Thinking aloud

Unlike many members of Red Sox Nation, I don’t wear it on my sleeve.

But my infatuation with the Olde Town Team goes back to my days as a BU student living in Kenmore Square, watching the ‘75 World Series on TV with the sound turned down and the windows open in Myles Standish where we could hear the crowd a second or two before we saw the play on TV. With my eyes open, I can still see the ‘86 series running away through Bill Buckner’s legs.

After college, I put up with the detritus of the Nation when I lived on Park Drive in the days before Fenway Park prohibited beer sales after the 7th inning. Lemme tell ya, if you can still love the Red Sox after what I put up with from the Nation — from vomit on my door step and on my car to guys from Southie terrorizing my girlfriend — you’ve got a lifetime, paid-up membership in the Nation.

So, there’s no need to explain how I felt in 2004.

But I couldn’t understand it…I just couldn’t grok it. C’mon, we all know the curse couldn’t just disappear like that. And what about 2007? As I write this, the Red Sox are 11 and a half ahead of the Orioles and are playing .700 baseball. The Yankees are in a last place tie in the AL East. Something had to have happend to the curse. It had to be lying in wait for what I feared would be a reappearance that would damn the team for all eternity.

But I couldn’t explain why the curse was dormant until today, when I read in the Wall Street Journal that John Henry’s investment business is on the rocks. Some of his investment funds are down as much as 38%. Merrill Lynch just pulled $600M from his firm.

I’ve always liked John Henry for what he’s done for the team. But I had no idea how selfless he really was: he’s absorbed the curse for all of us. He’s going to be penniless soon…well, not completely broke…courtesy of the curse, which has apparently left the team and infected the owner.

Hey, John! Thanks 600 million times over! BTW, if I were you, I’d get outta the investment biz right away. That curse is the real thing. 87 years is a long, long time to under perform the market. Still, the quicker you go broke, the faster Red Sox Nation will be celebrating the Red Sox replacing the Yankees as the new dynasty in the AL East.

If the title doesn’t make it clear that I’m upset, let me start by saying that an article I’ve just read on nytimes.com (registration required) has me neck-vein-throbbing apoplectic. (It’s my blog, and I’ll use 50¢ words if I want to, 50¢ words if I want to.)

In short, I don’t understand how the marketing people responsible for shaping the heads of psychiatrists to prescribe off-label uses of dangerous, highly-toxic drugs like Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon for adolescents can freakin’ sleep at night.

Hey, I am a marketing guy, and I try everyday to get people to try to use the products I market in novel ways.

But nothing I market turns adolescents’ muscles into grotesque knots. What I market has been tested, in contrast to these drugs, none of which have
been tested on adolescents. And nothing I market is based on pure voodoo, camouflaged by 400 years of Western intellectual thought that has made psychiatry a “science” because we’re just too damn civilized to admit that the guy in the white coat is just the local shaman.

On the face of it, a doctor who prescribes an off-label use for a dangerous drug to kids is simply guessing. Hedge it anyway you want, but that’s what it is…a freakin’ guess. Sure, they can veneer it with plenty of pseudo-scientific talk, but the bottom line is they’re playing “20 questions” with your kids’ lives.

Why do they do it? It’s because the village diviners have no value unless they medicate (since they haven’t got a clue of what else to do). They do it because parents demand it (it makes them feel like they’re accomplishing something in the treatment of their children). They do it because the FDA lets them do it. (Consumer Reports says in its June 2007 issue that something like 21% of all drugs are prescribed for off-label uses.)

But mostly, they do it because the marketers at the pharmas tell them to.

Check out this quote from the article. This guy thinks it’s his “science” that convinces him to give kids prescription stimulants related to amphetamines. But we know it’s J&J’s marketing dollars, sent to him by marketing managers whose marketing logic is Mengele-esque:

Ten years ago, Dr. Realmuto [a University of Minnesota psychiatrist] helped conduct a study of Concerta, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drug marketed by Johnson & Johnson, which also makes Risperdal. When Concerta was approved, the company hired him to lecture about it.

He said he gives marketing lectures for several reasons.

“To the extent that a drug is useful, I want to be seen as a leader in my specialty and that I was involved in a scientific study,” he said.

The money is nice, too, he said. Dr. Realmuto’s university salary is $196,310.

“Academics don’t get paid very much,” he said. “If I was an entertainer, I think I would certainly do a lot better.”

Folks, save your kids from these very dangerous marketing people. Remember that your doctor has been bought and paid for. Snake-oil kills.