#407 Crunch

There was an interesting story in the news last week. And it had to do with Tylenol. Actually, that was an interesting sidebar story. The main story had to do with contaminated generic acetaminophen, but Associated Press editors, for whatever reason, chose to run a photo of the generic acetaminophen in question with a very clear image of Tylenol in the background of the photo. Tylenol made a big flap of course, as they should, and newspapers that had run the AP photo across the country printed retraction and apology notices. Again, as they should. In this day of digital editing and pixilated smudging, there is no way Tylenol’s name should appear anywhere. If they can smudge out the brand name of a beer on a rapper’s sideways baseball cap in constant motion, they can manage to black out the brand name of Tylenol if, in fact, Tylenol had none of the issues of the generic brand in question. But it does kind of make you wonder. What was AP thinking? Is this another example of the liberal media? Are they trying to get back at Tylenol for supporting the last regime? Lord knows it caused a lot of headaches. Were they a major campaign contributor as a result? Or was AP simply assuming Americans need a little relational help? Did they think that saying acetaminophen just wouldn’t quite get the point across without a “you know, like Tylenol” visual reminder in the background? We’ll never know. The actual entity at fault was a company called Perrigo. And they market generic acetaminophen tablets under various brand names to Wal-Mart, CVS, Safeway and more than 120 major retailers, according to the FDA. I wonder if one of them is Western Family. The problem? Apparently, metal fragments were discovered in numerous pills. That’s right, metal fragments. They ranged in size from microdots to portions of wire one-third of an inch long. Youch! “I had this headache doc, and I took some acetaminophen and then all of a sudden while they were in my throat, I started hearing a radio station in my mouth.” “I’m not saying there was lots of metal in my acetaminophen but after my last dose for muscle aches I started singing ‘I wish I had a heart’.” “Yes Mr. Coast Guard officer sir. I tried to cure my headache, my compass went wacky, and we crashed into this reef.” “No sir, I am not a terrorist sir. No sir, search all the orifices you like, sir. I don’t know why I’m setting off the metal detector. But my headaches gone.” Actually, not that far fetched. The company found the metal fragments by, according to them, running over 70 million tablets through a metal detector and turning up 200 contaminated pills. Far less than your average proportion of rat hair. Personally, I think Perrigo missed an opportunity. They shouldn’t have recalled, they should have just re-signed. “Today only, for the same low price, new for women, acetaminophen with iron.”
America, ya gotta love it.