Thursday, 01 May 2003

Australia's quack-medicine industry suffered a major setback this week, as a government agency issued a recall notice for several hundred products manufactured by a local Sydney pharmaceutical. Sold under brand names like "Nature's Own" and "Golden Glow," these High Potency Alfalfa and Super Papaya Enzyme tablets were made by a company that had been previously cited for making paracetamol tablets without any paracetamol in them. The company had apparently decided to cut costs by doing away with quality control altogether; instead of curing boils and enhancing sex lives, the recalled pills had excitingly random effects—the motion-sickness pills could send you on an entirely different kind of trip, and in general the pills may not have contained what the bottle said they would.

The recall notice involved so many products that the entire Australian vitamin supplement industry just about fell over: Every chemist in Australia has some of this stuff on the shelves, and they're still trying to sort the good pills from the bad. Because the pharmaceutical was a subcontractor to several companies, there's no easy way to isolate the problem drugs—you have to find the batch number printed on the bottle and see if it falls in a particular range, which varies for each company.

The real irony, though, is that none of the real drugs are affected by this recall: Just the bottles of Turbo Ginseng and Ultra Natural Herbal Formula, the stuff that looks like medicine but has no actual value. One reporter asked a doctor what the effects would be if patients had to stop taking these "medicines" all at once, and the doctor, after looking through the list, replied "nothing." If it weren't for the motion-sickness drug, which apparently contained an overdose of its active ingredient, the company could have kept right on making sugar pills and labeling them Super Celery Extract without anyone knowing the difference (except for the irate government inspectors who were sent to the manufacturing plant, of course).

A quick glossary: "Paracetamol" is the Australian name for acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and a "chemist" is what Americans would call a pharmacist. While I'm on the subject, "Panadol" is the Australian answer to Tylenol, "Nurofen" is their Advil, and after years of trying I still can't find the Aussie equivalent of Contac (my personal cold-and-flu wonder drug), so I buy a box when I'm in the States and bring it back with me.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 12:19 pm. comments.

Thursday, 01 May 2003

Back to work. Monday marked the end of my six-week sabbatical, so I'm back to the weekday office grind—which means less time for blogging and other recreational activities. (Memo to self: Add tip jar, see if blogging pays better than engineering.) It was the longest holiday of my career to date, and I needed it: I had a severe case of burnout, and spent the months before mid-March croaking out the word "sabbatical!" the way a man crawling across the desert talks about water.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:47 am. comments.

Thursday, 01 May 2003

Last Friday was ANZAC day here, the Australian equivalent of Memorial Day (or Veterans' Day, I suppose). Australia's military history (as I know it, which frankly is at the tourist-brochure level) began when the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps stormed the beaches at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, in an attempt to relieve pressure on Russia and open another front in World War I. Unfortunately for the ANZACs, the commander of Turkish defenses on the peninsula (Mustafa Kemal, the George Washington of modern Turkey) threw his entire regiment at the invaders, stopping them cold; the Aussies and Kiwis dug in and fought several months of trench warfare, but ultimately they were ordered to withdraw. Over eight thousand Aussies were killed in a campaign that achieved none of its military objectives; they fought well, but in a lost cause.

Foreign countries remember foreign battles, compared to the history you learned in school. Australians commemorate the World War II battle of Singapore, a Japanese victory that happened after Pearl Harbor but before the Americans were in theater. After that, though, comes the big one—the reason why all the later Australian battles sound familiar to American ears: The Battle of Coral Sea. For students of American history (like me) it was one naval battle among many, but for Australia it was a turning point in the war; together with the Australian land victories in Papua-New Guinea, it marked the end of Japan's march to invade and occupy the continent. The U.S. Navy played a major, major role in preventing a land war on Australian soil, and the Aussies have not forgotten. Since Coral Sea the Australians have backed us in every single war we've fought: They sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, were the first to pledge military support after 9/11, and their Special Forces and Navy are in the Gulf right now. They have literally been fighting alongside us for as long as they've had troops to fight with.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:43 am. comments.