life imitates Cronenberg

Life:

Investigators yesterday launched an inquiry into the clinical trial that left six healthy young men in intensive care, as scientists voiced fears the incident could prove disastrous for attempts to develop cures for major diseases.

Raste Khan, one of two men taking a placebo who was unharmed, said his co-subjects "went down like dominoes". He told The Sun: " First they began tearing their shirts off complaining of fever, then some screamed out that their heads felt like they were about to explode. After that they started fainting, vomiting and writhing."

Cronenberg:

I don't think natural selection, as Darwin understood it, is really at work any more as far as human evolution is concerned. I think something more along the lines of nuclear disaster is perhaps a natural part of our evolution. It may be a strange philosophy, I'm not sure. But my instincts seem to suggest that we were meant to tamper with everything – and have done – and that this will reflect back on us and change us.

The company that conducted the trial is called Parexel. That’s OK, but not as good as The Keloid Clinic or Spectacular Opticals. I remember when I was younger, I was very keen on the idea of doing medical trials. That was partly because of the money, but also because the thought that there was a vague risk of something like this happening and that seemed to me to be incredibly cool. I was very pro-science in those days, in a romantic sort of way. From Shivers: “disease is the love of two alien creatures for each other.”

Comments

[CKR]

I think something more along the lines of nuclear disaster is perhaps a natural part of our evolution.

Stephen Jay Gould is famous for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which says that every so often, an asteroid hits the earth or something equally dreadful happens, and the survivors are not necessarily the fittest, but just those who found a convenient hiding-place until things got better.

More complicated explanations here and here.

Cronenburg is just extending that to human activities.

[Alex]

If you changed that to Kronenbourg is just extending that to human activities, it would be at least as true and probably more so, not to mention funnier.

[Backword Dave]

The front page of the says "We saw human guinea pigs explode", which I doubt is actually true.

[Alex]

But you have to say, just like "Drug Victim 'Like Elephant Man'" in yesterday's Evening Strangler, it's a gooood headline.

[jamie]

Well, I say that "we saw human guinea pigs explode" is more Cronenburg than Kronenbourg, though absinthe might explain it too.