Martin Shkreli patents the sun

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I can see people’s postures improve when I start to tell them why my book is free. I tell the story anytime I’m asked to give one of my presentations.

It’s right there on the first page of every book under the headline: “This Book is Free.”

The paragraphs invite anyone who is struggling to e-mail me and I’ll send them a copy of the book for free. 

“Rodell doesn’t believe a book that, at its heart, aims to help people be happy should be withheld from anyone over a few dollars. ‘It’s said the best things in life—love, friendship, laughter—are free,’ Rodell says. ‘I don’t presume this book is among the best things in life but, by God, there’s nothing to say it can’t keep good company.’”

I’ve responded to more than 500 requests so far. I don’t even charge postage. I’m very proud of that.

The altruistic inspiration is Dr. Jonas Salk and the cure for polio.

It is one of the greatest stories ever told.

During the 1950s height of the Cold War, the fear of polio outbreaks were second only to the fear of a Soviet nuclear attack.

When one case of polio was reported in town, every resident self-quarantined. Neighbors would slam doors in the faces of friends. Pools would close. Churches were empty. No one would leave the house until the outbreak ran its deadly course.

Remember the Ebola panics of 2014? Those involved three people and zero fatalities.

In 1952, a polio outbreak killed 3,153 and left 21,573 with either mild or disabling paralysis. Nearly all the victims were children.

The whole terror passed almost overnight when Salk (Pittsburgher!) found a cure and gave it away for free.

A nationally-televised Edward R. Murrow news show featuring Salk was treated like a national holiday. In it Murrow asked Salk about the vaccine’s patent.

Who, Murrow asked, owns the cure?

“The people, I would say,” Salk said. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

What he was saying is no man should stand in the way of extending something beneficial to greater mankind over crass profit.

I audaciously co-opt his mantle by lumping my crayon book in with Salk’s cure for polio.

“I know people with polio,” I say, “and they are perfectly cheerful men and women. And I also know perfectly physically fit men and women who are just miserable bastards.

“For whom do you think I feel the greater pity?”

Obviously, the soul sick are far worse off.

Yesterday’s news makes me think I should send a crayon-signed book to Martin Shkreli.

He’s the 32-year-old former hedge fund manager, today worth more than $100 million, who raised the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat a parasitic disease that can kill pregnant women, 5,000 percent.

What had cost $13.50 overnight cost $750. That’s per pill.

After widespread vitriol, Shkreli backtracked and said he’d find a new price.

What he has planned for today, I do not know.

Perhaps he’ll try and patent the sun.

How are we in America today producing business men and women who think that kind of gouging over something that can save lives of pregnant women is conscionable?

Was Shkreli raised by wolves?

Trump?

Worse, he doesn’t seem to sense he’s done anything wrong.

He tweeted the what the considered justifying lyrics to an Eminem song: “And it seems like the media immediately points a finger at me. So I point one back at ‘em, but not the index or pinkie.”

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan declared May 6 “Jonas Salk Day.” His proclamation to Salk in part read: “Today, polio is not a familiar disease to younger Americans, and many have difficulty appreciating the magnitude of the disorder the Salk vaccine virtually overnight wiped from the face of the Earth.”

When Salk died 10 years later at the age of 80, he was eulogized as one of the most beloved men on Earth, a man who saved the lives of millions. Who knows? Maybe mine and yours, too.

I wish no ill on Shkreli (well, nothing too lethal), but if he were to die today he’d be one of the most despised.

Rich, yes, in many ways, but soulfully destitute in so many others.

I apologize if today you checked in here hoping for humor.

I’m just not up to it.

Plus, I’m fearful if laughter is truly the best medicine, men like Shkreli may have filed for a patent.

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Steve Jobs: American iCon

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Steve Jobs: American iCon

The still-glowing reaction to the retirement of Steve Jobs highlights what’s wrong with American entrepreneurship these days. Everyone said he’s a genius, our most creative thinker, a brilliant tactical leader.

What went unmentioned is Jobs should go down as one of America’s most colossal disappointments.

And that’s by even his own standard.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak: “He was always thinking about those great people that drove humanity to a higher level. People like Shakespeare, you know, like Isaac Newton.”

Sorry. His contributions are more in line with the recently deceased Elliot Handler who died July 21 in Los Angeles. He was 95.

Never heard of him? He was the founder of Mattel who invented Barbie, Ken and Hot Wheels.

He was a toymaker.

That’s all Jobs is.

He devoted much of the last 15 years figuring out nifty ways we could increase the number of songs we carry around in our pockets.

Just about every word I’ve written since 1998 has been on a Mac computer. I love Apple. I love my iPod. I’ve had an iPhone for less than a year and whenever I have any problem my first thought is, “How can what’s in my pocket solve this?”

Much of the world shares my mania for this. That’s why Apple now has more money in the bank ($75 billion) than the U.S. federal government, ($73 billion).

That’s why for the last 10 years I kept thinking, “Okay, now’s the time to take some of that money and some of that genius, put away the toys, and go to work on solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.”

A man like Jobs and his team -- and they all call themselves “geniuses” and have the t-shirts to back the boast -- shouldn’t be devoting their lives to improving the interface for games like Angry Birds.

If he truly aspired to greatness, he could have walked into a board meeting and said, “Okay, the technology behind the internal combustion engine is 160 years old, it consumes dirty fossil fuels that cost nearly $4 a gallon. We’re taking the next six months to invent a green iEngine that converts leaves and weeds into ozone that’ll float up into the atmosphere where it belongs. I want 10 ideas on my desk by noon tomorrow.”

He’d make a tidy profit on that, for sure. Or he could act like a truly great man and give it away for free.

Sound farfetched? Too socialistic?

Jonas Salk (1914-1995) devoted years of his life to creating a vaccine to wipe out polio, the most terrifying disease known to man. It could have made him a spectacular fortune. Instead, he gave it away.

For free.

“There is no patent,” he said in response to a question at a nationally televised press conference. “Could you patent the sun?”

Now, that’s a truly great man. A Pittsburgher, too. Like me.

Jobs’s health is a mysterious but clearly difficult situation for him. Certainly, he’s already faced thoughts of his own mortality.

Great men at the end think they haven’t done nearly enough.

It happens to famous artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, architects, inventors and to the magnificent Renaissance man who was all those things rolled into one.

“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

Those were the last words of Leonard da Vinci.

To me the most compelling example of this poignancy was detailed in Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 film, “Schindler’s List.” It’s almost too heartbreaking for me to watch again.

Oskar Schindler risked his life to deceive the Nazis that Jews at his factory were essential to the war effort. He saved over 1,100 innocents from certain doom.

Yet, at the end the film shows him wallowing in despair over what he did not do. His wristwatch, he said, could have spared two more; his car perhaps a dozen.

These were great men with humanity’s best interests in their hearts.

Do not dare include Jobs among that list.

He was smart guy who made a lot of money giving us the moronic diversions we crave.

The world’s going to hell.

Thanks to Steve Jobs, at least we’ll all be groovin’ when we get there.