Taking the Pope’s Drugs Away

The new Pope has just gone to Germany, and I am living in fear of getting sick. I really shouldn’t worry so much about my health, but a goodly number of the population don’t believe that drug companies have actually done immense good in this world, so they eschew helpful drugs and prefer to sue drugmakers, destroying not only domestic companies that employ fellow citizens and help doctors to minister compassionately to suffering patients, but also denying me a choice of drugs for my ailments. Thus, I worry. (Interestingly, there was a decided panic last winter among many of these same people when flu vaccine was in short supply.) Hmmmm…I wonder, “Would these same people deny a drug to the Pope if he chose to take it?” The Pope is not immune from the marching hordes of microbes swarming the earth or the breakdown of the physical body. In fact, he seems a bit frail, but should he keel over, medical help is just a breath away. Every second, physicians would hover over and around him. Any medicine available on the planet would be at his doctor’s disposal, assuming that the awarding of obscene damages against pharmaceutical companies had not erased the Pope’s much-needed drug from production. Hopefully, wise caregivers will have hoarded a stash of the unfairly maligned drug to ease his symptoms, so that he could get on with the business of praying for all of mankind. Unlike the Pope, should hideous germs or discomfort choose me as their next victim, I will lie alone in my bed, and chances are high that I will have to find the strength to rise so that I can go shopping at a pharmacy that now has limited drug choices. While the litigants will have millions to ease their pain, I will have only my pain, and limited products with which to treat it. I can see myself collapsing in the pharmacy, which wouldn’t be so bad. The public is generally very helpful to strangers in emergencies, whereas at home, I would lie unconscious until dinnertime before anyone noticed. Not even my neighbor, who went to court and wept as millions were poured into her lap by a jury that had no training in the medical or pharmaceutical fields, would believe that I actually might want to take the drug that her actions have now denied me. So I worry and wish I were the Pope.