And now, some comic relief.
Louisiana Update
The official VM fiancee writes:
Thank you for all of your emails and calls this week! The west bank of St. Charles Parish escaped serious damage, so my parents are driving back today to hook up the generator and begin the process of cleaning up. Their neighbor rode out the storm and reported NO flooding or damage to houses in the immediate area. We’re relieved to hear that bit of good news, but sickened by the destruction just 15-20 miles
northeast. News coverage indicates it’ll be at least a month before Orleans and Jefferson parish residents are allowed back and who knows how long before businesses reopen and life takes on some semblance of normalcy. I wish I had some news for you about our wedding plans, but those are, understandably, up in the air for now.
I’m still hoping that we’ll be able to get hitched without a hitch down in NO,LA next March, but the short term looks pretty terrible down there.
Wah, Wah, Wah,
[Here’s the From the Editor page for the latest issue of my magazine]
By now, the story of the first Vioxx lawsuit is old news. Merck was found liable in the death of Robert Ernst and the Texas jury awarded more than $250 million to his widow. State laws will knock that down to $26 million, and it may get reduced further on appeal. The penalty is harsh and, if it turns out to be the average payout for each trial, Merck will obviously go under. The company says it still plans to fight each lawsuit individually and not enter a class-action settlement, but has admitted that it may settle some cases rather than go to trial. For more on their legal/financial strategy, check out this Slate article.
The size of the award was troubling, of course, but once a case goes to trial, no one really knows what to expect. What was more troubling was a comment from one of the jurors in the case. From The Wall Street Journal‘s story the Monday after the verdict, we learned the following:
Jurors who voted against Merck said much of the science sailed right over their heads. “Whenever Merck was up there, it was like wah, wah, wah,” said juror John Ostrom, imitating the sounds Charlie Brown’s teacher makes in the television cartoon. “We didn’t know what the heck they were talking about.”
Yup: In a trial about the impact of Vioxx on Mr. Ernst’s health, the jurors had no idea what the science was about, and essentially ignored that part of the trial. This left them with the folksy popularism of plaintiff’s lawyer Mark W. Lanier, whose post-trial comments showed how he painted the case: “I love when a widow from a small town can stand up against one of the largest companies in the entire world, actually get access to their documents and show a jury how they killed her husband.”
Yup: “How they killed her husband.” I’m not sure if this is a step up or down from John Le Carre’s recent novel (and now a Major Motion Picture!) The Constant Gardener, in which ‘Big Pharma’ leaves the protagonist’s wife dead (and raped) in Africa, because of trials for a lucrative tuberculosis drug. We�re facing a serious PR problem in this business, and it’s not solely about the average American’s aversion to science.* Maybe people have seen Erin Brockovich enough to decide that all big business is evil, but when that big business is developing pharmaceuticals, we’re in serious trouble.
According to the WSJ article, Mr. Lanier assembled a “shadow jury” to follow each day’s proceedings. Each night, the shadow jury met with a consultant (they weren’t told which side they were consulting for) at the local McDonald’s, where they provided their feedback on the case.
Yup: While they were discussing whether it was Vioxx or clogged arteries that caused Mr. Ernst’s fatal heart attack, they were eating McDonald’s on a nightly basis. And they came out 9-4 against Merck.
Thanks,
Gil Roth
Editor
* About that “average American”: I’ve always contended that, as Americans, we only have two civic duties (as opposed to our existential duties of death and taxes): voting, and jury duty. But plenty of people find their way out of jury duty, ethically or not. This means that Merck was fighting the opening round of the battle for its life with a jury filled with people who couldn’t get out of jury duty.
Flood Aid
No news yet from my fiancee’s family, most of whom live in a town about 35 miles southwest of New Orleans. They evacuated out of state on Saturday, and a bunch are supposed to be on their way home now to survey the damage. I’ll post more when I know what’s up.
If you’re inclinced to contribute to the relief funds, Instapundit has set up links for a lot of them right here.
I appreciate everyone’s e-mails and calls of concern. Thanks so much; you mean the world to us.
You are what you vomit up eat
The Minor Fall, the Major Lift offers a really sweet take on New Orleans. You should read that blog more often.
Mini-update
Fortunately, we weren’t planning to have our wedding in the Superdome.
Katrina and the Obvious Joke
The official VM fiancee and I have been watching the weather reports all day long, since her family lives in the New Orleans area (they evacuated on Satuday) and we’ll be having our wedding down there next spring.
Our two lighthearted moments occurred when
a) she said, “We’re not paying the second installment of our deposit to the wedding hall till we know if it’s still standing,” and
b) when the news reports said that 20,000 to 30,000 people will be holed up in the Superdome, I said, “But how will they know if it can hold that many people?”
Let’s hope the cholera outbreaks die down by the time we go visit her family in October.
Map it out
New Carnival of NJ Bloggers is posted!
Innovatively, this week’s host, PDC Ryan of Montclair, NJ, formatted this week’s entry out of a google map. So, if you go to the northernmost entry on the map, you’ll find my little entry about the nice Hasidic guy who helped me out last week.
Go check out some other NJ-based bloggers!
YesYesYESsica!
There’ll be a reality show about a woman looking for a sperm donor. It’ll be up against one about former prostitutes trying to open a cafe, according to the story. I don’t have any joke here.
Mazel Tov!
I’ve been known to goof pretty fiercely on my black-hatted brethren. Why, just today at lunch, I launched into a tirade about religious fundamentalists of all faiths, in response to my boss’s queries about the Gaza Strip. I even tossed out my standard line about how there seems to be some part of the Torah that says people are supposed to dress like it’s 1862 Poland.
That said, when I was stopping at gas station after gas station this evening looking for a can of gas for my dad’s stalled-out car, it was a young Hasidic man who walked up to me and said, “I have a can in my car that; why don’t you take that?”
He opened his trunk, handed me a nice, plastic two-gallon container, and told me, “I don’t need it; just take it.”
“That’s quite a mitzvah,” I said. “You have yourself a good shabbat tomorrow night, sir.”
Then he got into his car, which appeared to be from 1962 Detroit, and headed off to (in all likelihood) Spring Valley, NY.
So, when you hear/read me excoriating religious zealots in future, I guess you oughtta think to yourself, “What a goddamn ingrate this guy is…”
Like I have a point.