Update: Dead Squirrels and Live Rhinos

In July 2008 I wrote an article suggesting that one of the unintended consequences of quiet, battery-powered cars would likely be a lot of dead squirrels littering our roads.  After all, if the poor, befuddled creatures can’t get out of the way of our noisy, smelly internal combustion engines, what chance do they have when we sneak up on them with a couple of tons of motorized silence? 

This falls into the general category of “unintended consequences of technology,” which also includes the impact of horses on the urban landscape (A Plague of Dead Squirrels), the consequences of light pollution on insects and migrating birds (Don’t Go Toward the Light), and the rise of the automobile in America (see #13 in 14 Takeaways: John Steele Gordon’s An Empire of Wealth).

Other examples abound.  Just today I was reading about the sewing machine, which saved tens of thousands of hours of stitching drudgery but led to the unintended consequence of the sweat shop.  The most recent issue of Time informed us that the interstate highway system, the largest public-works project in history, looks like a “vast monument to the law of unintended consequences”: fossil-fuel consumption and suburban sprawl.

Now, I’ve got another unintended consequence to add to the list, and this one might actually turn out to be a good one. 

I had coffee the other day with a friend who had worked on the team that took Viagra through its clinical trials. 

A clinical trial, as you may know, is part of an FDA process by which a drug company tests the efficacy of a drug on a small, tightly controlled population of patients.  Success in clinical trials is what leads to FDA approval for general release of a drug or medication.  Most clinical trials involve samples of the genuine drug, sometimes samples of the same drug at a reduced dose, and almost always placebos, or inert pills (“sugar pills”).  These various concoctions are dispensed “double-blind”--in other words, the doctors don’t know which is which, and the patients don’t know which is which.

It’s the only way to get a true reading on whether a drug works or not. 

Clinical trials are very difficult to administer for lots of reasons, but chief among them is that neither doctors nor patients can be counted on to behave well.  In particular, everyone wants the active drug—patients to get better, and doctors to get their patients better.  So, everyone is trying to “break the code” the drug manufacturer places on the various drug lots to figure out which is real and which is a placebo.

At the end of a clinical trial it’s important that all active drugs be accounted for, so any in the field that have not been taken are returned, and the final total—those used plus those remaining—must be within a certain percentage of the starting total or lots of extra detective work needs to go on.

Viagra, you may recall, was first tested in clinical trials for cardiac arrhythmia (an abnormal rate of muscle contractions in the heart). 

So, what happened at the end of the Viagra clinical trial?  When Pfizer asked for all active samples to be returned, they received, well, none.  Zero.  Nada.  Nil.  Zilch.  Never in the known history of clinical trials had there been zero active drugs returned.

Obviously, sick patients had figured something out.  Not to mention well doctors, too.  At that point, Pfizer had figured something out as well.

So, one of the unintended consequences of an arrhythmia treatment was a cure for erectile dysfunction.  But--and this is the cool part--one of the possible (still unproven, but logical) unintended consequences of an erectile dysfunction drug is to take pressure off a couple of endangered species—in particular, the black rhino and the tiger. 

Only about 3,000 black rhinos survive today, in large part because their (ground-up) horn has long been thought useful in reviving comatose patients, curing fevers and aiding male sexual stamina and fertility.  (None of this has been scientifically documented, mind you.)  The rhino horn is also carved into ceremonial daggers, which Viagra will not help, but antelope horn as an alternative will. 

The tiger is the other endangered species, killed for the alleged benefits of its various body parts, some of which are made into soup and used also to promote sexual stamina and fertility.

(See here for more on this topic.)

So, here’s your choice: You can hunt, capture and kill a black rhino, cut off its horn, grind it up and hope it helps.  Or you can walk into a drug store and buy a pill for a buck that you can be pretty darn sure will help.  Easy decision, right?  One small step for man, one giant leap for black rhinos.

You might also note, for what it’s worth, that if you decide to invest $300-$400 in a bowl of tiger soup, that tigers have sex for only about 15 seconds.

Seriously.

That might be relevant to your decision making.

In any case, it’s nice to know that, if we’ll soon be killing squirrels with the unintended consequences of our technology, maybe we’ll also be saving a few tigers and black rhinos.

Historical Postcards

I’ve always been intrigued with what I’ll call national memory—the stuff a country chooses (consciously or not) to remember over time.  I posted an article last August (Historical Postcards and the Battle for New Orleans) suggesting that my generation of Baby Boomers had five “historical postcards,” or events that were so momentous that they are emblazoned in our collective memory: 9/11, the Challenger Disaster, the moon landing, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

I also suggested that historical postcards fade quickly when the generation that holds them dies away.  So, while Pearl Harbor was a monumental postcard for my father’s generation, December 7 is now more apt to be remembered—in Boston, anyway, and parts of Indiana--as Larry Bird’s birthday. 

Memories fade that fast.

I wondered aloud in the article what the historical postcards might be for prior American generations.

Then, by luck, I came upon Joyce Appleby’s Inheriting the Revolution, which is her look at America’s first generation (those born right after the Revolution who were never British subjects).  Appleby read some 200 personal journals from this first generation—a really good primary study--and drew the following conclusions about their historical postcards:

This cohort of Americans demonstrated a heightened awareness of “firstness”—of being the first to have rugs on their floors, to have steamboats and canals, national elections, public land sales, cheap newspapers, pianos wholly produced in the United States, and a president who wore shoe laces instead of buckles. . .Had they met one another in old age, they could have reminisced about the same things: the fervor aroused by the French Revolution that split their leaders into antagonistic Federalist and Republican camps; General Anthony Wayne’s victory over the confederated Indian tribes at Fallen Timbers that opened up the upper Ohio River valley for American settlers; the outpouring of grief at the death of George Washington; the Haitian revolt that created the first black republic; the Richmond theater fire of 1811 with its seventy-one fatalities; and Lafayette’s triumphal tour through the states in 1825-1826.  They could recollect the Hudson River voyage of the Clermont, the first successful steamboat; the Cane Ridge revival meeting that drew upwards of twenty thousand persons; or the solar eclipse in 1806 when the total darkness of a June morning sent birds flying back to their roots.

Pretty cool, eh, like prying into the minds of a long lost generation of Americans.

As a side note, you may know that General Wayne was nicknamed “Mad Anthony” Wayne; I can think of about a thousand nicknames I would rather my general have in time of war than “Mad.”  Like “Brilliant Anthony” Wayne.  Or maybe “Prudent Anthony” Wayne.  Something like that.

I continue to be on the lookout for other generational “postcards”—those events really burned into the national memory and then lost as that generation disappears.  (My longer post on this “first generation,” Real Perspective on the Greatest Generation, is here.)

Exports

In an article I wrote last September, The Great American Export: English, I was slightly miffed at the Citizen’s Watch website that had me select the American flag and then asked me if I wanted to view the site in English or Spanish.  Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for multiculturalism and melting pot stuff.  But--my theory was (and is)--the English language is one of the underlying strengths of the United States and the underpinning of our common culture.  It is also the greatest single export we had ever offered the rest of the world.

Since then, I’ve found another “western” export, not limited exclusively to the U.S., but driven in large part by the U.S. fashion and advertising industries.  In some ways it’s more powerful then language, and in all ways more destructive.

Susie Orbach is a British psychotherapist interviewed recently in the New York Times Magazine about her book, “Bodies.”  In it she argues that the world suffers from a warped sense of beauty.  “What I am seeing is franticness about having to get a body.  I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on.”

Orbach believes that “body hatred” has become a leading Western export, with (for example) young women in South Korea undergoing surgery to Westernize the appearance of their eyelids.  “It’s supported by their parents. . .They see it as a chance at modernity.”

“In general,” she adds, “girls are trying to remake their bodies in the shape of skinny Western bodies. . .the Western body has become a global brand.”  

Yikes.  That’s an export we really want to leave locked-up in a container on-shore.  Whenever I read something like this, I go back to that great Dove video, Evolution, which shows how advertising beauty really gets manufactured.  (And, for news directly from the battlefront, see the latest on the lengthening legs of Dora the Explorer here.)

The Economy, Stupid

Finally, I know we’re in a recession.  I know it’s hard.  I know it stinks.  But, in the same way old folks sit around and talk about their ailments and their last doctor’s appointment, we’re starting to take on the same attributes—the same conversation--as a country.  “Man, does my portfolio hurt.”  “I just had a procedure done on my fixed income investments and I could barely get out of bed this morning.”  "You should see the lump on my 401K.  Really--wanna see it?  I'm way too old to be shy." 

Even old people talk about the weather and their grandkids once in a while. 

But worse than that, if I have to read the John Kenneth Galbraith quote, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable,” one more time, in one more article or on one more website, I’m gonna scream.  It’s really clever, but can’t we find some new, clever financial quote?

Things have been worse.  Things will get better.   For us.  For the world economy.

And, if we’re lucky, for the black rhino as well.

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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