Not the Mail & Guardian is Robert Kirby’s startling and savagely satirical parody of the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Any similarity between real people and characters portrayed here is anything but coincidental
The Department of Health has announced what it describes as thrilling new research undertaken by the original inventors of the controversial anti-Aids drug, Virodene.
When it was first introduced, in 1995, by the then health minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Virodene gave rise to outrage from scientists and the medical profession. It was found to contain industrial-strength solvents and battery acid and was highly dangerous, if not fatal.
It was later discovered that shares in the company, which would have benefited from the sale of the drug, were held by a senior member of Cabinet.
When its highly toxic properties were revealed in the press the drug was withdrawn by the Medicines Control Council and the senior Cabinet member refused to comment, saying the affair was about to be investigated by a parliamentary sub-committee and was, therefore, sub judice.
It is believed that if sufficient members can be released from urgent legislative work, the sub-committee will be formed sometime in April 2007.
The new research has produced a revised version called Virodene Turbo-Strength. It is currently being used in trials to prove its efficacy.
Use of the drug is easy and requires ingestion of the capsule once a day. The original solvents and battery acid have been retained, but in the new version constituents are ‘chemically symmetricised” by the addition of cylinder lubricant, concentrated sulphuric acid, subdued nuclear particles, extract of Burchell’s Zebra turds, arsenical concentrate and generous lashings of Toilet Duck.
Virodene Turbo-Strength is now packaged as large yellow 1 000mg capsules with a bright rainbow stripe. These will be marketed at a health department-approved exit price of R12,42 a tablet.
Some contra-indications are admitted by the researchers who say that in some cases using Virodene Turbo-Strength can cause minor side effects. Large areas of patients’ skin tend to erupt in boils or simply dissolve.
Extensive frontal and parietal brain damage can occur along with kidney failure, bowel rot, irreversible ventricular arhythmia, gross liver dystrophy, intercellular neuromae, involuntary diaphragmatic seizure, diarrhoea, muscular gangrene, pulmonary oedema, uterine convulvulus, deep-artery aneurism, cardiac infarction, lymphatic aglacticism, limb paralysis and, in some cases, loss of appetite.
‘The secret’s all in the stripe,” said Dr Jeanette Howell-Bothma, head of the Pretoria Technikon laboratory where Virodene Turbo-Strength was developed. She said that the adverse medical side effects were typical of the sort of insignificant drawbacks that occur in the testing of all new drugs.
‘We were particularly worried about the loss of appetite, but we must learn to take the rough with the smooth,” she said.
Asked by Not the Mail & Guardian whether there had been any deaths from the use of Virodene Turbo-Strength, Howell-Bothma said that as her laboratory was facing a few 100 lawsuits but that the matter was sub judice.
Asked whether any Cabinet ministers or deputy presidents had shares in the Virodene Turbo-Strength company, Howell-Bothma refused to comment. —