Did you know that the discovery of Pfizer’s erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra was an accident? While testing a drug that expanded blood cells in the chest to relieve chest pain back in 1991, some patients reported getting erections as a side effect — enough of them that clinical researcher Ian Osterloh decided that this intriguing result merited more study, despite opposition from Pfizer’s staunchly conservative upper management, legislators, the medical establishment, and even the Catholic Church.
As David Kushner reports at Esquire, after getting approval from the FDA, the team wooed urologists to get the little blue pill into the hands of men the world over, making Pfizer a potent profit along the way.
In fact, it’s a miracle that it ever came to be at all. In addition to the people within Pfizer who were in an uproar over the “dick pill,” four major groups began rallying against…
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USA: A Fate Worse Than Slavery, Unearthed in Sugar Land – By Brent Staples – New York Times
Bodies of sugar cane workers recently discovered in Texas reveal gruesome details about the convict leasing system.
Brent Staples
By Brent Staples –Mr. Staples is a member of the editorial board. – New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/sugar-land-texas-graves-slavery.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The blood-drenched history that gave the city of Sugar Land, Texas., its name showed its face earlier this year, when a school construction crew discovered the remains of 95 African-Americans whose unmarked graves date back more than a century. The dead — some of whom may have been born in slavery — are victims of the infamous convict leasing system that arose after Emancipation. Southerners sought to replace slave labor by jailing African-Americans on trumped-up charges and turning them over to, among others, sugar cane plantations in the region once known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas. Continue reading →
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