Hitting The Links: 10/15/23
High potency, the promised land, & the world's loudest innovation
High Potency
I was Dearborn, MI on Thursday & Friday for a client meeting about patient-centricity in drug development & manufacturing. It was a good event, and I wound up putting on The Gil Show during my Friday session: standing at the podium and riffing about a variety of legislative & regulatory issues for 25-30 minutes, sans slides. The attendees had all sorts of neat questions that I wasn’t always prepared for, so I came away with more topics to research and learn about.
On Thursday afternoon, our hosts were holding an optional tour of their nearby facility, after which we’d all gather for dinner and a tour/talk at Ford’s Rouge plant, where they make F-150 pickup trucks.
I opted out of the afternoon pharma-tour; the site makes active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and I’m more of a finished dosage form guy myself. On top of that, it’s a high potency API (HPAPI) facility, and the containment procedures for HPAPIs usually mean you don’t get to see much of actual operations.
Instead, after spending some time making notes for Friday’s session, I met up with past guest & pal Kathe Koja (2015, 2020, 2022), and spent 2 hours gabbing with her over coffee in the lobby of my hotel. We had a great time talking about everydamnthing, and she gave me a copy of her new book, DARK PARK, along with some other goodies.
As it turned out, I missed something big by not going on the tour. At the Ford plant dinner that night (which included a tour and OMG this presentation), I talked with the guy next to me (a customer of our hosts) about his company. I asked about the therapeutic area they cover with their drug R&D, and he said, “Oncology. Well, solid tumor cancers. We don’t do anything in blood cancers.”
“As someone with a blood cancer, I’m kinda bummed about that, but I know you gotta prioritize,” I said. I gave my standard quick version of “dormant, non-aggressive CLL, nothing to worry about,” and he told me that he has multiple myeloma, and the past 2 weeks have been the first time in 10 years that he hasn’t been on medication for it. He didn’t want to say he was cured, but as close to that as any of us say.
We had a good conversation from there about his experience, finding the right drug that would combat his cancer, the pain-drugs that kept him from giving in, the fact that he’d lost 4” of height during this experience (!), our differing degrees of anxiety about bloodwork (my tests are on-site and immediate, while his require several days for processing because of the markers they’re looking for), and more.
He told me, “When I got the diagnosis, they told me there was zero chance of survival, but I decided I wasn’t a statistic, or if I was, I was n-of-1.” It was a good talk, and I was glad to learn about what he went through, coming out on the other side of it.
I found out the next morning that I’d missed something more important that day. He had gone on the HPAPI tour with some of the others that afternoon, and once our hosts talked about the products they made at the site, he chimed in to talk about his multiple myeloma, and how it took a while for the oncologists to find a drug that would help him. Then he said, “This is the facility where they made the API for that drug. Without this place and the work you guys do for [REDACTED], I wouldn’t be alive today.”
Which, yes, holy crap I am bummed that I missed (talk about high potency). I’m still glad I got to spend some time with Kathe.
And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Daniel Clowes • Rachel Shteir • Patrick McDonnell • Keith Knight • Brett Martin • Peter Rostovsky • Bill Griffith
RIP Keith Giffen (who went out with the greatest FB joke ever) . . . RIP Louise Glück (tribute from Dan Chiasson, and another from Mark Wunderlich) . . . RIP Piper Laurie . . . RIP Rudolph Isley . . . RIP Charles Feeley . . . RIP Hughes Van Ellis . . . RIP Michael Chiarello . . .
Kyle Chayka on why the internet isn’t fun anymore. Which I guess feels true, although of course YMMV. There’s less random discovery, for sure, as social media platforms try to keep you from leaving and Google tries to maximize ad revenue by changing your searches into things that will lead to ads. It ties into that Warren Ellis thing I linked to last week, about just launching a blog and not bothering to promote it on any social media. It’s why I like having this email platform, although of course it’s fraught with compromises, in terms of the tech funding & agenda of the owners. But, of course, we all pretend we don’t know about the horrendous human and environmental costs of mining the components of the batteries that power the devices on which we’re writing & reading & watching all this on, so welcome to hell.
Speaking of batteries & my Ford factory tour, there were a pair of interesting articles in the WSJ last week about electric cars (EVs). The first was about how Rivian appears to be losing $33,000 on each pickup/SUV they sell. The other is about BYD, a Chinese company that’s poised to pass Tesla as the top EV seller in the world, after starting out 30 years ago as a cell-phone battery maker. Rivian went so overboard engineering the “perfect” EV SUV that it’s extremely difficult to make any changes to production that could improve costs. BYD, on the other hand, has always been built on the principle of stripping down competitors’ products and figuring out how to assemble them cheaper. I’m sure there’s a broader principle that can be applied to life, but my overarching theoretical framework for how the universe works won’t allow me to consider it. (But seriously, they’re both worth reading.)
The Alexander’s mural is BACK, baby!
After the meeting in Dearborn wrapped, I had a few hours before I had to get to the airport for my flight to Newark, so I took a Lyft to John K. King Used & Rare Books, a.k.a. The Promised Land. I was in heaven, and if I had brought a wheeled carryon bag for the trip, I’d have probably loaded up on a TON of books. Seriously, if you’re ever out in the Detroit area, make the pilgrimage. The selection is amazing, with tons of deep cuts and obscurities, and a huge section of mass market SF/F, adventure & other genre paperbacks, to send you back in time. I was so thankful I got a chance to get out there.
Current/Recent Reading
Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon
John Le Carré: The Biography - Adam Sisman
The Secret Life of John Le Carré - Adam Sisman
Sound Body, Fractured Mind
I missed Friday’s weights because of that meeting in Michigan. I thought about doubling up on Saturday, but I was awfully tired/beat, plus I had reading/ writing to do, and Amy had a work-pal over, so my clanking away with weights or doing yoga while they were coming in and out of the room would’ve been weird. For them. (I managed a yoga workout in the late afternoon.) I got in 4 out of 5 workouts last week (Sat.-Tue., plus a 5.4-mi. run on Sun., which semi sorta gives me 5 workouts in 5 days). Next week will just be walkies, as I’m heading out to trade show in Barcelona and don’t plan carrying dumbbells or a yoga mat in my luggage. I just finished a nice 4.5-mi. walk with one of my pals, and will get to weights this afternoon, after I record a podcast with Adam Sisman, which I need to finalize my questions for, if you’ll excuse me. . . .
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back Wednesday with a new podcast, some art, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something, and Sunday with more great links (I hope; I’ll be on the road), current reading, and this broken down ol’ body of mine.
Are you my desitiny? Is this how you'll appear? / Wrapped in a coat with tears in your eyes?,
—Gil Roth
Virtual Memories
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