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Revenge By: Arthur Porges (1915-2006) |
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By ARTHUR PORGES Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned,
but the fury of a biochemist scorned is just as great
and much more fiendish.
If the Syndicate is half as powerful as some people have claimed,
they'll murder me any day now. I object on principle to being killed by
evil men for a good deed, so maybe lynching by stupid ones is
preferable. I mean you, and you the suetheads who profited by my work,
but refused your help. You've been yammering about narcotics for years how drug addiction was
spreading, reaching down even to your unmannerly, spoiled brats, who
despise their parents and our venal society to the same degree. The
stuff comes in by the ton across the Mexican border; they grow it for
our benefit in Red China; and a few "friendly" Asian countries don't
mind exporting some now and then, either. In spite of heroic work by our
small group of poorly financed narcotics agents, the flow of drugs
cannot be halted. Oh, you and your elected representatives made a lot of panicky moves to
combat this threat. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was
given a new Bureau, set up like the F.B.I., and headed by Myron P.
Bishop, a man trained by that distinguished expert on narcotics,
Anslinger, himself. But as to sensible solutions, such as legalizing the sale of heroin to
break the world wide criminal control on the distribution of drugs that
your vapid Puritan morality wouldn't permit. Millions of dollars for
enforcement, and to punish the sick, but not one cent for prevention,
and almost nothing to find out why people become addicts in the first
place, and how to cure them. It wasn't entirely your fault. You listened to the experts, usually
career policemen who expect to cure any social evil with clubs and
prisons. I am reminded of the simpleton found measuring two horses with
a tape in order to be able to distinguish the black one from the white.
Until I came along, nobody had ever reached the core of the matter. You
don't kill a flourishing plant in this case an Upas Tree by lopping
off a handful of leaves. You strike at the roots. That's what I meant to
do and did for your benefit. Oh, I admit there were a few dollars in
it for me, but so what? The ox that treads the wheat is not muzzled.
When a man saves a manufacturer $50,000 a year by some improved process,
or even by using three bolts someplace instead of four, they gladly pay
him three per cent of the annual savings, or something like that, as a
reward. Most big outfits have such a policy, and it's a good one. Well,
if I cut millions off the government budget, is a lousy $100,000 too
much to ask? I just wanted to go on with my researches without battling
a horde of bill collectors every month. Fat chance I didn't get a
measly dime. You, your elected and appointed officials, and your kept
press just gave me the all time horse laugh. Well, he who laughs
last you'll remember the old saw; I'll see to that. I'm writing this so you'll know how they treated me. You mustn't think
I'm a crank, mad at the world for no reason. My case is better than
Dreyfus' and Sacco Vanzetti's combined. Here I was prepared to remove
the drug scourge forever, and at a piddling cost. Did I get courteous
handling, or at least a fair hearing? Not bloody likely! I was an idiot
to expect anything from the world's most inflated bureaucracy Dickens'
Circumlocution Office brought up to date. Let me start at the beginning; then you'll see who's right. I'm a
biochemist by profession. A damned good one, but too individualistic to
please the big research centers. They like docile teams scientific
Percherons to pull the big red wagon. So I taught at one jerkwater
college after another. Sooner or later my superiors, all dodderers who
stopped thinking with sighs of relief once they had their PhD union
cards, objected to my attitude. If I published, they were jealous; it
made the other faculty members look bad... Continue reading book >>
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