Editorials

As I mentioned earlier, I edit a pharmaceutical trade magazine by day. Every issue (9, plus a supplement) I write “From the Editor,” a page that’s at least ostensibly supposed to be about the pharma & biopharma industry and the contract services and outsourcing arena that we cover.

Since the book launched in 1999, I’ve gone pretty far afield in subjects for that page. Sometimes, I used the page as an excuse to let my liberal arts brain out, which I don’t get to do enough of on a regular basis. Early columns at least tangentially had something to do with the magazine: compare & contrast Gilgamesh and the Human Genome Project; use A.S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale to discuss the impossibility of getting the Top Companies issue 100% right; explain my editorial guidelines (no use of the phrase “win-win relationship”) by citing George Orwell’s “Politics & the English Language” essay.

At times, I went too far from my mission. Like the time I discussed how the Talking Heads’ induction into the rock & roll hall of fame was just another sign that I was aging faster than the general populace. That one caught the attention of the owner of my company, unfortunately.

At other times, I managed to flat-out nail a pertinent subject, with humor and concision. The best example of that, “On the Couch with Dr. Schadenfreude,” will go up next week.

And then the was 9.11. The magazine was in production week (which means massive deadline crunch) for its biggest issue of the year (October, when we go to the AAPS Annual Conference). Below, I’ve enclosed my editorials from October 2001, composed a few days after the attacks, and October 2002, when I took the anniversary day (9.11.02) off from work and wandered NYC with Ari Scott, a friend of mine. Go here to read her account of the day.

9.11.01
Never Forget

I have struggled for days to write this page. There are no words that can sum up the horror that has overtaken our lives after the deadly attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. The most fitting comment I heard was on the day of the attack, when New York’s mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, was asked for an approximate body count. The mayor replied, “I don’t think we want to speculate about that–it will be more than any of us can bear.”

It is more than any of us can bear.

During the Civil War, dedicating a cemetery on the battlefield where one of the bloodiest events in American history took place, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. On the night of September 11th, I found myself reading”deeply reading”his words, as I tried to understand what it is to be an American. I enclose it here, because I hope some of you will do the same.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

God bless America,

Gil Roth

9.11.02
I Love New York

It’s been a year since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by radical Islamist terrorists. The days following were a blur, each of us trying as best we could to cope with the practical matters of our lives, while history unfolded around us. At the time, we were finishing up the October 2001 issue of this magazine, and how we managed to focus on that task, I don’t know.

The events of that day will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Contract Pharma’s offices are 25 miles away from the WTC site, close enough to watch a plume of smoke hovering above Manhattan that day, close enough to see that haunting “towers of light” memorial in the evenings, far enough, perhaps, to feel like an outsider. A new world was born on that day, in violence and heroism, hatred and charity. Still in its infancy, it touches every aspect of our lives, challenging us to keep up with a new geopolitical mythology; challenging us to debate the worthiness of the Constitution in dangerous times; challenging us to do more; challenging us, ultimately, to see ourselves the way others see us.

Our industry has faced its own set of challenges after 9.11.01, and the ensuing biowarfare scare. The public (through the voices of Congress) demanded access to Cipro, and the Health and Human Services secretary threatened to remove Bayer’s patent protection as leverage to get the antibiotic at low prices. Several pharmaceutical manufacturers have been working around the clock to build supplies of smallpox vaccine. Others are filling atropine injectors for the military, to protect against nerve gas attacks. Recently, the government announced plans to inoculate the entire U.S. population against smallpox, within five days of a sign of an outbreak. A new world.

As the anniversary approached, my friends and co-workers pondered how to spend that day. Some felt that going to work, doing “business as usual” was a way to show that terrorism hadn’t changed our lives. Others took the day off, kept their kids home from school, and spent the day mourning. Some watched the “circle of life” ceremony and the naming of the dead on television. Some friends in Brooklyn wanted to gather on the Brooklyn Bridge at 8:53 a.m. and make a toast to the city. I chose to spend the day walking in NYC with a friend of mine and a camera. The accompanying photos are from that day.

My friend Aimee told me she wants to come down from her home in Massachusetts to see the WTC site sometime, but is afraid of feeling “like a tourist.” I didn’t go to the site until nine months after the attack, with my own set of excuses to keep me away.

By the time I went, the rubble was removed, and the pit was all that remained. The pit: absence in our lives; urban Grand Canyon; the paradox of an empty grave containing thousands of souls. The immensity of it daunted me, as did the claustrophobic intimacy of the buildings stretching skyward, right beside this uncharnel house, in which the dead are dust before their time.

I reflected on that first visit, and told her, “Your preconceptions don’t mean anything there. You might feel like a tourist on your way in, but once you get there, you’ll see how much bigger it is than you. That’s when you become something else: a pilgrim.” This is our Mecca, where we make our American hajj.