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Born with a Junk Food Deficiency 
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Heinlein Nexus
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Post Born with a Junk Food Deficiency
This 2012 book by Martha Rosenberg came to my attention on an airport bookstand. I can only hope that means it will get the attention it deserves. It's really about two different topics that intersect at the corner of Corporate Greed Avenue and Government Corruption Street. #1 is Big Pharma and its fetish for pushing drugs that make the conditions they're prescribed for worse. #2 is the meat and poultry industry and practices that turned my stomach as fast as I could turn the pages.

Noteworthy is the chapter on drugs in the military. It's no secret that suicides in the forces, especially among Afghanistan and Iraq vets, are way up. This book offers a compelling rationale why: They are routinely prescribed combinations of drugs for off-label uses (epilepsy medications for depression) and when reactions occur, the dosages increased. Suppression of dissent is so complete that the only possible explanation is that the military, like the rest of the government, has been bought by Big Pharma and become a docile customer.

Like many people, I've known for a long time that there were horror stories about the fast food chain - the old saw about horsemeat in McBurgers comes to mind - but they assumed the status of mythology in my mind, as likely to be real as the one about the guy waking up in a bathtub without kidneys. This book provides fact after fact supporting far more nauseating examples than mere horsemeat contamination. I believe it because if even one allegation in a stream of them about a big company was wrong, the author and publisher would be sued out of existence, and could recall every copy of this inconvenient truth. But if even one allegation about each target is true, the situation is far more alarming than my erstwhile complacency merited. A quarter of the book is given over to the supporting notes and references for the assertions.

A perfect example of the collusion I referred to was a contamination of meat with mad cow disease, sold to certain restaurants and a store in the Bay area. California state informed the restaurants and store, but refused to identify them to the public, saying that would violate trade secrets. (Whose trade?) The public could call their stores and restaurants to find out if they were on the list.

The only problem I have with this book is that it goes over the top unnecessarily. It is peppered with annoying cartoons that are (a) badly drawn, (b) unfunny, (c) regurgitating a point from the text with the subtlety of a biker. And there are gratuitous emotional appeals in the text that, while justified, contribute to the appearance of a hysterical fanatic. And that's a pity, because the facts alone are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, and there are so many of them here. Cut out the 5% of the book that's sarky finger-jabbing and the childish cartoons, and you've got an eye-opener worthy of any top-grade investigative journalist.


Tue Aug 14, 2012 8:50 pm
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Wed Aug 15, 2012 4:42 am
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Wed Aug 15, 2012 5:31 am
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And in turn, you're arguing two different ends of the spectrum. Commercial fiction publishing is dead as a doornail unless your name ends in Patterson, Clancy, King etc. - you have to be a megastar to even get a form letter rejection from a large house. It's become a closed shop of circular reasoning, much like the sf world where all that ever seems to get published any more is anthologies of pieces written by other anthology editors. (see: circle jerk.)

And most ballyhooed, mega-advance, wonderful-new-find writers are either one-shot wonders or crap artists a publisher is desperately trying to make into a new franchise. Or both.

This is largely true of most pop-sci and mass-info and exposay type books as well; if you're a Chopra or a Ray, you're in; newcomer: forget it.

But small-scale publishing, whether "self," small-house or POD, has never been more vibrant. It is also, unfortunately, almost hurdle-free, meaning that some absolute drek hits the shelves. (Not that the size of the publisher matters; I am still finding grievous errors and sloppy writing in Cronkite.)

I count among my acquaintances some very big names in sf/f; not a one is making a living at it. That's why I hung up that pen 20 years ago. I was absolutely shocked to find that Mr. PrettyBigName, with the biggest agent in the field and ten wildly popular books to his list, and advances in the gosh-wow range... was moonlighting as a tech writer to pay the mortgage. It's only gotten much worse and the situation will not stabilize for at least 20-25 years. Especially as the big houses have gone the way of Hollywood; if it's not a guaranteed blockbuster, they can't even see it. Remember that every $50M to a Crichton or Clancy means 500 midlist books that won't see print from that house. Maybe closer to 5,000.

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Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:22 am
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Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:25 am
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I was only addressing nonfiction, since that's where my experience lies and my proposal-writing friend resides. I don't know how different the fiction market is but I believe you are right.

Now I'm not sure whether this substantiates your point or not, but it may at least turn the readership here on to another author I find terrific (and if I find one of those a year it's a good year). I reviewed by Daniel Suarez earlier. He self-published the first book and it did so well it got picked up by the mainstream. That any publisher, let alone all of them, would turn down such an obviously brilliant piece of work is simply sad.

He's written another: "Kill Decision." This guy is a cross between Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, and his technology is excellent. In particular, every use of computer technology he has is dead-on 100% accurate, unlike any other author I could name (and that includes Mr. Clancy). Since his day job is as a systems consultant, not surprising. I imagine this starting with a conversation among friends: "Why can't any of these writers get computer tech right?" "I suppose you could do better?" "I bet I could." "Bet the story would suck." "You're on."


Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:06 pm
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