one of those which sells
you the disease in order
to sell you the cure
Adapted from the book review, The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis review – bright wrong things by Houman Barekat where Mr. Barekat writes:
The Genius Myth is one of those popular nonfiction books in which an author sells you the disease in order to sell you the cure. As is customary in this genre, it comes with its own bespoke jargon: Lewis has coined a term – “the deficit model of genius” – to denote the prevalence of certain handicaps or character flaws among extremely talented scientists and artists. A banal truism is thus passed off as sociological insight.
My wife and I still watch the network evening news.
We go back and forth between networks but at 6:30 p.m. our kids know we will have the TV on to learn about the day.
If you watch these programs, you must have noticed that almost everyday there is a new commercial for a new drug with some goofy name like Latuda, Xeljanz, Humira or Abilify.
These commercials have a lot in common.
One, the name is outrageous.
Tofacitinib?
I often say I would have enjoyed being in the board room where that name was picked out and that I would hate to see what names were that got rejected.
Two, most likely you have never heard of the disease these drugs treat.
Tofacitinib is for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, polyarticular course juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and ulcerative colitis.
Three, the side effects sound worse than the disease.
The side effects are so bad that they are read a quiet voice and double the speed of the normal speech.
When I read the phrase sells you the disease in order to sell you the cure I knew just what Mr. Barekat meant.
Until you heard about the possible symptoms, you didn’t have the symptoms.
Once you had the symptoms, the idea of the drug seemed to be a good idea, regardless of the side effects.
These thoughts stayed with me through my morning drive to work.
And it hit me.
It came to me that this explains the talking points of the current administration.
Did we need DOGE layoffs?
Did we need ICE raids?
Did we need to nuke Iran?
This current administration had to sell the disease.
Maybe a disease we didn’t even know about.
To sell us the cure.
And they found a lot of buyers.
Regardless of the side effects.
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