Writers on Drugs

Wow, the pharmaceutical industry wants to terrorize you. In this bizarre story, Big Pharma commissions a novel to be written about how terrorists poison Americans by contaminating “Canadian” drugs.

Work began in April [by] veteran ghostwriter Julie Chrystyn. Her story concerned a Croatian terrorist cell that uses Canadian Web sites to murder millions of unwitting Americans looking for cut-rate pharmaceuticals.

PhRMA has vigorously fought all efforts to legalize the purchase of cheap drugs from Canada. Even though the lobby has found some success, the underground business still takes an estimated $1 billion in annual profits from American drug behemoths.

Chrystyn titled her thriller-in-progress "The Spivak Conspiracy," an homage to her friend Kenin Spivak, an L.A. telecomm entrepreneur and onetime Hollywood exec.

Spivak said he became Chrystyn's co-writer after she delivered the first 50 pages, and PhRMA made several editorial suggestions.

"They said they wanted it somewhat dumbed down for women, with a lot more fluff in it, and more about the wife of the head Croatian terrorist, who is a former Miss Mexico," Spivak told me.

Apparently, women are among the most loyal buyers of Canadian drugs.

"They also wanted to change the motivating factor of the terrorists to greed, because they didn't want it to be politics," Spivak said. "They wanted lots of people to die."

Spivak told me that since PhRMA pulled out - and he and his colleagues rejected the lobby's offer of $100,000 to kill the project - he and Chrystyn have finished a revised version, "The Karasik Conspiracy," due early next year.

Yes, and be sure to make it understandable to those dumb women! Corporate terrorists.

Hat tip to Ezra Klein.