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Established A.D. 2000, March 19.  Now in our third calendar year!    Number 108 (Vol. 3, No. 16). This edition is for the week of April 15--21, 2002.

My Position...

Charles Bishop
The family of suicide teen Charles Bishop is suing the manufacturer of the acne prescription drug "Accutane" for $70 million. The charge? That by using Accutane for acne treatment, the medication brought on a severe depression and suicidal thoughts where allegedly none would have been present otherwise, and determined the course of that fateful day when 15-year-old Charles Bishop, out of nowhere, decided he was an Al Queda operative/sympathizer and flew a small plane into the side of a bank building in Tampa, killing himself.

The parents of this kid and their lawyer say that the manufacturer of Accutane knew there were side-effects like this, but only in unusual cases. The defendants say teens are screwy anyway, their hormones are raging, don't blame us.

MY POSITION: Do we learn nothing from history? Every one of the teens in other states who shot up their classmates were on some kind of prescription dope. Why are so many kids on this crap? Is it any better that they're on prescription drugs rather than crack or something?
   Sure, I'm familiar with the Ritalin story. Some rare cases need that for real (in my younger days Attention Deficit Disorder was normal behavior in school---exceptional cases got sent to the dean's office for "therapy"), but I think it's grossly overprescribed. I don't remember any time in my life that so many kids "required" prescription medication for every single tiny emotional ailment. (Yes, it's tough growing up in today's society. But, to me, if you feel you need super-strength acne dope, you've got psychological issues already. What ever became of Clearasil? Not atomic enough?)
   Hey, everyone's responsible for his/her own actions. The manufacturer's are right about the raging hormones in teens, but teens don't normally slam airplanes into the sides of buildings. That's why you can't screw around with giving them drugs, prescription or not, except in EXTREME cases of illness, and the medical profession is not blameless here. Note: Lest anyone think I'm too insensitive towards acne sufferers, I do sympathize, I really do, but look, what I'm asking is: at present, is the only defense against a face ravaged by acne a suicide drug? Rather than blame Accutane per se, I want to know who thought it was an emergency to prescribe this stuff to Charles Bishop.

Crisis in the Catholic Church
No putting this off any longer. I wanted to comment on this two issues ago, but felt it too much of a downer in contrast to whatever else was in the headline section. The Pope has called all American cardinals to Rome to discuss the recent nationwide scandal involving priests who for decades practiced pedophilia with boys, and were apparently protected from legal ramifications by the Church.
   MY POSITION: This hits close to home, but for different reasons than the victims of these priests. For anyone who doesn't know already, I was baptized and raised Catholic. I attended Catholic schools until the 10th grade, when I decided I'd had enough of a religion with protocols I was having problems supporting and left to enroll in a local public high school. I never looked back. However, I do not hold the Church in any kind of contempt. I got a good education there and the facilities were outstanding. In the end it just wasn't for me.
   Funny tho, even as kids we all sensed there was something different about priests and nuns--kind of like you had to be different to embrace the celibate lifestyle like that. Even in grade school we figured many of the priests and nuns were gay. My personal theory was that they joined the Church as a way of "cleansing" their "evil" inclinations--like religious service would distract them enough to make the gayness go away. Not entirely successful, tho--even back then, a few were busted outside the school for sex-related offenses.
   I'm really saddened now to learn that as time went on, priests were giving in more and more (gawd only knows how many and for how long all this was going on) to their base sexual desires. I wish the victims best of luck on recovering from these bad memories. And, yes, I hope the Catholic Church establishes new doctrine to help avoid a situation like this ever happening again.
   Matt Drinnenberg has additional commentary about this situation in this week's "Rail".

Ronda Storms/Public Access/Freedom of Speech
I started talking about this in PCR #106, please review it for details. But to recap: Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms wishes to stop funding for Tampa's public access TV because she is occasionally offended by the programming. None of her county commissioner buddies are supporting her, but she is shrilly determined to make a federal case out of it. Most humorously, last week, the shoe was on the other foot---somebody sent Ronda a pornographc picture, which she then forwarded to other government officials in an attempt to gain attention and sympathy. Well, she got some attention: they considered prosecuting her for distribution of obscene materials over the internet! Too much.
   MY POSITION: Ronda will lose the battle for suppression of free speech, but she may make enough noise to damage public access's funding. If we make it out of this, I think it's likely we'll see harsher new rules--or even draconian measures--that will encourage self-censorship. I hope I'm wrong.