In a tale worthy of a zany Washington satire — except for the lamentable fact that it’s true — the rich and powerful pharmaceutical lobby secretly commissioned a thriller novel whose aim was to scare the living daylights out of folks who might want to buy cheap drugs from Canada.<\/p>\n
When the project fell through in July, I’m told the drug lobby offered $100,000 to the co-authors and publisher in a vain effort to sweep it under the rug. […]<\/p>\n
“This is the most outrageous example of deception and duplicity on the part of a Washington lobby in the history of the country,” said Capitol Hill denizen Jeff Weaver, chief of staff to Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a diehard foe of the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A multibillion industry, who already gets subsidies from the government, is so worried about reimportation that it would secretly commission pop fiction<\/i>? Sad. Very sad.<\/p>\n
Lloyd Grove explained that a DC divorce lawyer came up with the idea and approach Phoenix Books about the project. The publisher struck a six-figure deal and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which is trying to distance itself from the whole thing, made at least one payment to Phoenix Books.<\/p>\n
Think that’s bad? Wait until you hear the plot — and PhRMA’s role in shaping it.
\n<\/p>\n
Work began in April, after Viner hired veteran ghostwriter Julie Chrystyn. Her story concerned a Croatian terrorist cell that uses Canadian Web sites to murder millions of unwitting Americans looking for cut-rate pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n
PhRMA has vigorously fought all efforts to legalize the purchase of cheap drugs from Canada. Even though the lobby has found some success, the underground business still takes an estimated $1 billion in annual profits from American drug behemoths.<\/p>\n
Chrystyn titled her thriller-in-progress “The Spivak Conspiracy,” an homage to her friend Kenin Spivak, an L.A. telecomm entrepreneur and onetime Hollywood exec.<\/p>\n
Spivak said he became Chrystyn’s co-writer after she delivered the first 50 pages, and PhRMA made several editorial suggestions.<\/p>\n
“They said they wanted it somewhat dumbed down for women, with a lot more fluff in it, and more about the wife of the head Croatian terrorist, who is a former Miss Mexico,” Spivak told me.<\/p>\n
Apparently, women are among the most loyal buyers of Canadian drugs.<\/p>\n
“They also wanted to change the motivating factor of the terrorists to greed, because they didn’t want it to be politics,” Spivak said. “They wanted lots of people to die.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I had no idea the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America was so desperate that it would stoop this low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I realize this is an era for more creative forms of political propaganda. The president can’t even talk to troops during a war without turning the event into an infomercial. But when the pharmaceutical industry gets involved in commissioning a novel to scare Americans, you know things have gotten out of hand. In a tale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}