11 [JUST BEFORE]

Another student, another question snapping me back to the here-and-now. This skinny male could hide behind the microphone stand.

“Dr Thomas, your assessment implies that technology has not improved our species. Tekk must hold some benefits to mankind, such as medical applications and increased global life expectancy? Our recent science and tekk discoveries during that COVID pandemic were altruistic, no?”

The student ducked back to his seat. Coward.

Easy answer. “Medical practice is now very high-tech, and so is Big Pharma, and part of the same-said government-military-industrial and political complex. The question becomes that, by extending life expectancy, are people merely being cultivated to need Big Pharma medicines and medical devices for a few more years and increase that industrial profit-margin? There is a distinct difference between life expectancy and quality of life. Globally, length of life has increased, yes, but quality of life has consistently dropped over the last 25 years. There were good people working hard to find treatments and vaccines against a novel virus, but so many high-mortality health issues around the globe, like malaria, have been completely ignored for decades because of the lack of Big Pharma high-margin profits. Then the politics got involved in SARS-CoV2 vaccine readiness, and there were significant problems of safety. There was lots of money to be made, and power to be exerted in the pandemic wave.”

I was starting to feel a rush of honesty. “Clearly, tekk is being developed with some dark and dangerous applications that make futuristic sci-fi look like nursery rhymes. Easterbrook recently quipped, ‘too bad wisdom hasn’t kept up with technology’, but I wonder if tekk ever was wisdom-guided at all, in the reality of a for-profit world…”

My comments trailing off, I now felt sick to my stomach. This University in bed with Blouer Industries… such WMD horrors in the Sudan, the Indian experiments on teen-age girls, turning them into life-long babbling toddlers… when did this all become so twisted, and… so O-K?

For the first time, I didn’t care if this was the last lecture I’ll ever give. I can’t be a part of this murderous, secret, demonic society…

I was startled out of my thoughts by Dean Broadman leaving the room. He should have found my letter of resignation ‘for personal reasons’ on his desk when he came in this morning.

Better to resign than get fired.

crisbaj

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