Please read the information below and answer the questions that follow with as much candor as possible.
Figure 1: As part of my job, I wrote an article for a medical journal describing the results of an experiment. It was a survey of people with rheumatoid arthritis about the trade-offs they’d be willing to make, asking them to weigh the different side effects of two hypothetical treatments against their potential benefits. A very serious game of Would You Rather.
1. Did the people who answered the survey think this project was:
a.) A way for their voice to be heard
b.) Advancing the practice of medicine
c.) An intelligence-gathering mission by a pharmaceutical company with a new
rheumatoid arthritis drug in order to better position themselves in the marketplace
d.) All of the above
2. Which of the following positions that I’ve held causes me the most emotional distress late at night:
a.) Children’s librarian
b.) Admin assistant in hospital accounting
c.) Researcher in a biomedical lab that experiments on animals
d.) Medical writer for huge pharmaceutical companies
3. Which of the following would it be preferable not to have? Please keep in mind that lowering the possibility of one also results in the increased risk of another:
a.) A potentially fatal blood clot
b.) A potentially fatal infection
c.) Debilitating pain
d.) The inability to bear children
4. The pharmaceutical company’s patent attorney reviewed my draft and left a comment saying I was putting forth the wrong message; with so many drugs available now, have we reached a point where the patients are spoiled :)? Which is the best way to interpret his query:
a.) Isn’t revision more fun with emoticons?
b.) Isn’t this search for a single answer inherently futile? Won’t we simply end up with
more questions?
c.) Isn’t it obvious that while I appear to be here, diligently reading this document, I’m
actually far away, working as the proprietor of a small roadside diner where I serve
coffee and gossip with my regulars and where the only IP I’m protecting is the amount
of butter in the pie crust?
d.) Isn’t having fewer options a relief? Isn’t it more relaxing to have someone else make a
decision for you, like slipping into a scalding bath, uncomfortable at first but
eventually, bit by bit, you adjust?
5. The pharmaceutical company that hired me is named for the archipelago where Darwin found his finches, where scientists learned to make inferences about animals based on their behaviors of:
a.) Foraging
b.) Mating
c.) Locomoting
d.) Buying low and selling high
6. My partner’s parents know I work in the pharmaceutical industry and sometimes ask me if a certain drug is a scam, if their doctor has only prescribed it, not because it really does much, but because it makes everyone (the doctor, the insurance company, the manufacturer) more money. His parents also decry universal health care as socialism. Please fill in the blanks to create an appropriate expression to use in response:
- Sounds like the ________ are coming home to roost
- You want to have your _______ and _____ it too
7. Is my frustration at their attitude:
d.) Pretense
d.) Hypocrisy
d.) Another thing keeping me up at night
d.) A failure of empathy
8. When I lay awake in bed, I’m telling myself not to think about:
a.) The mice
b.) The mice
c.) The millions of mice
d.) The rats
9. Please rank the following reasons why I don’t want to think about the rats, from most to least upsetting:
a.) Their comparative intelligence among rodents and other small mammals
b.) Their distinct personalities
c.) The way they enjoy sitting on a girl’s shoulder, safe under a curtain of hair
d.) The faint clicking noise they emit when they’re content
10. I would lose points on a BIO550 exam, Animal Behavior, for using the word ‘enjoy’ in the question above because:
a.) It is too vague
b.) It cannot be quantified
c.) It is yet another case of anthropomorphizing
d.) Who can claim to know the mind of another living thing?
Figure 2: Researchers in Japan recently published an article in which they calculated the contentment of capybaras who bathe in mineral-rich hot springs by scoring their eye shape and ear position: Zoo-kept Capybaras are gentle and they become very fond of humans. At zoo-attractions, Capybaras have a relaxed expression on their face in the hot spring.
11. Would one say that the capybaras in the hot spring are spoiled?
a.) Yes
b.) No
c.) Maybe
d.) You’re anthropomorphizing again
12. Do you imagine a human with rheumatoid arthritis as having a relaxed expression on their face when weighing the potential side effects of their prescribed treatment along with their symptoms, which Dr. John Kent Spender, the first person to use the term ‘rheumatoid arthritis’ in 1886, described as nearly every form of degradation which can beset animal tissues?
a.) Yes, calm at baseline
b.) Yes, moderate comfortable
c.) Yes, obvious comfortable
d.) No
13. Aside from eye shape and ear position, which of the following do you find is the most accurate means of getting inside the head of another living thing?
a.) Numbers
b.) Words
c.) Cave paintings
d.) Mutual gaze
14. What is the real purpose of this capybara research?
a.) To utilize the scientific method to its full extent
b.) To learn more about a rodent we find cute and non-threatening
c.) To make that PhD really seem worth it
d.) To discern information about others that can be translated into some kind of benefit
for ourselves
15. When was the last time you cared about someone without that care being connected to how you benefit from them?
a.)
b.)
c.)
d.) Don’t answer, just think about it
16. What if we say screw it, and we let the mice get in their car, roll the windows down, merge onto the freeway, all-the-way-lefthand lane. They crank the music and sing along; their friend the rat is in the backseat and he’s brought snacks. At this speed the air from the open window keeps cupping in their ears and it feels strange, a bit uncomfortable at first, but if they swivel their ears back along their head, the whole thing is sort of pleasant, both the novelty of the sensation and the sensation itself. No endpoint in mind, they take turns playing Would You Rather.
17. Do you think these questions are a story for me to tell, to present a conciliatory fantasy while simultaneously backing away from my part in it, like a mouse into a corner of her cage? In your answer, please include a list of all the times in which you’ve done the same thing.
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18. Please draw an ‘X’ on the line to mark the point at which I should aim my consciousness going forward:
Works Cited
Alten R, Nieto-Gonzalez JC, Jacques P, et al. What benefit-risk trade-offs are acceptable to rheumatoid arthritis patients during treatment selection? Evidence from a multicountry choice experiment. RMD Open. 2024;10(1):e003311. Licensed under CC BY 4.0, image cropped from original.
Inaka K, Kimura T. Comfortable and dermatological effects of hot spring bathing provide demonstrative insight into improvement in the rough skin of capybaras. Sci Reports. 2021;11:23675. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Spender, JK. On some hitherto undescribed symptoms in the early history of osteoarthritis: the so-called rheumatoid arthritis. Br Med J. 1888;1(1424):781–83.
