IBM, pills and lies.

IBM claims in its advertisement that spurious medicines, which are about 10% of the medicines being sold out there, affect a billion people.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVEPdV_warU  Their tracking technology (which really is a bunch of bar codes and software not that different from what courier companies use) is supposed to solve this problem.

I'm really not that sure this is truthful communication.  First of all, if 10% of the medicines sold worldwide are spurious, and that affects 1 billion people out of the total of the earth's human population of 6.2 billion people, then who is eating the other 90%?  There simply aren't 10 billion people on this planet!

If this is a simplistic reasoning of an advanced, more complex truth, then please let's wager on some complications ourselves!  Let's assume for a moment that this one billion people eat all the medicines in the world.  So, they're the people who are getting the spurious 10% as well.  Sure enough they'd be affected.

IBM's claim of building "a smarter planet" should not be this dumb really - if there are 1 billion sick people, that in itself is a cause for worry, but for a technology company, this is "opportunity".  In other words, they do not want a smarter planet where we would know how to stay healthy and stop eating medicines.  Because if the pharma industry shuts down, IBM would lose business - exactly because of this "smarter planet" they set out to build!

North America consumes nearly half of the world's medicines. That is 330 million people in the USA+111 million folks in Mexico and 30 million in Canada = a sum total of 471 million people or roughly 13% of the world's population.  13% of the world's population is consuming about 46% of the world's medicines?  Clearly the problem is huge!  IBM is a North American company, trying to build "a smarter planet" which is suddenly beginning to look a whole lot dumber now, doesn't it?

Now, let's look at this claim of the one billion people affected by spurious medicines.  If 10% of all medicine sold worldwide is spurious, then 47 million in North America would be affected.  So, where are the other 953 million affected consumers?  Come on!  We all want to be part of this "smarter planet" IBM wants to build, so let's buckle up and do something very risky - thinking.

While we're at it, let's consider the pharma industry - the most corrupt, untruthful, unethical and crooked industry in the world, competing only with the arms industry in many ways.  If most medicines have profit margins between 40%-100% and some go upto 300%, we know this is not an industry here to do any "service" to humanity.  So, why would spurious drugs not invade this space?  If any product is overpriced, cheaper alternatives will come!  It is the way of the free market!

Since the advertisement claims to affect people in India - let's take a look at how easy it is to buy medicines of any sort in India.  Just ask and you will get it, no problem.  If it is spurious, the spurious manufacturer is not only in cahoots with the doctors that prescribe what they sell, they are also in cahoots with the pharmaceutical distributors and shops all over the place.  Think they give a shit about some barcode in the ass of the bottle?  I think not.  Before you start thinking this cannot happen in other parts of the world...

The Food And Drug Administration of the USA is one of the shadiest organizations in the world.  So shady and so adamant, that it refuses to acknowledge that substances other than drugs can also cure people from diseases.  The FDA does not allow anything other than a drug to be sold as a potential cure for any illness.  Homeopathy is not even considered a science in the USA.  Forget about Ayurveda and Naturopathy and a host of other healing methods.  The FDA approves all drugs for sale, and today it takes US$200 million for all clinical trials and formalities for a new drug to be approved.  The company producing it must produce this money as well.

In other words, no company has any incentive to produce any cure that it cannot recover a minimum of US$200 million from.  It is a convenient relationship, and you can bet your bottom dollar, FDA officials are being nicely oiled by pharma companies.  There is just no way corruption cannot exist in such a sweetly inviting environment.  In fact, who can afford to do research costing millions and not having a drug approved?

If the North Americans weren't such big consumers of drugs, it wouldn't have any sense to have such a big drug industry either!  The Europeans are not much behind, but that is their choice.  It wouldn't cost Obama so much effort to keep healthcare in priority, and it would sure as hell keep the USA a lot more productive if people didn't buy into this crap idea that eating medicines can keep them healthy.  It simply cannot!

And IBM wants to tell us proudly that they are part of this dumb thought process?

Think about the wastage caused by unhealthy habits that lead to illness and sickness and the fattening of the legendary pharma industry.  Making medicines, packing medicines, tracking medicines, storing medicines, shipping medicines, selling medicines - none of this shit needs to happen if we know how to stay healthy.  THAT would be the smarter planet.  Not this dumb IBM slavery shit.

For those of you who still doubt IBM's ugliness in its very existence - consider this - IBM was responsible for the speed and efficiency of Hitler's holocaust.  IBM managed to collect and make efficient the flow of data that the third Reich needed to single out and persecute jews with great speed.  IBM did that as a service to Hitler - for profit.  You would like to read more?  http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com

- BSK.