Kruti:  You and I have both written about the opioid crisis in our novels. Being a US-based pharmacist and having seen the catastrophe up-close, why do you think the government of such a tightly regulated country was so blind-sided in detecting an oncoming drug disaster?    Peter:  In my opinion the government really did not think there was an epidemic until it was too late. These drug companies (Purdue for example) were all abiding by government regulations and laws, so there was no pursuit by the DEA [1] or FBI in the early stages of the problem. They marketed their products to doctors who in turn began writing prescriptions for these opioids.    Once some unscrupulous doctors began noticing a niche market for these drugs and an abundant demand for them, they opened up what became known as "pill mills." In these "pain clinics" doctors would charge their clients $200 cash co-pays and then referred them to pharmacies that would fill their pre...

If you’ve been shown  job search ads on your work computer after doing an employment hunt from your tablet at home, you probably know what  ‘the Grid’  is. If you’ve received walk-in angiography messages on your mobile while passing a heart-specialty hospital, or foreign education loan messages on your daughter’s 18 th  birthday, you don’t need an introduction to the Grid.  Wherever you go, you are constantly ‘in the Grid’ – tracked through your landline, mobile, traffic cameras, computer desktop, credit card,  biometric devices at clubs and offices,  store scanners, cookies, and what not.    Electronic tracking and lack of privacy are an accepted fact of today’s times. Modern data marketers can build a dossier on us through the thousands of databases we are not even aware we are in. They  can trace us even when we change IDs, names, cities. Because they now analyse the signs and behaviours that remain the same – the writing style, the c...