The HSI e-Alert and Boston Legal connection
The HSI e-Alert and Boston Legal connection
At first I had no idea what they were talking about. It started more than a year ago with a couple of friends joking about it and before you knew it even a few HSI members wrote in asking: Are you moonlighting as a writer for Boston Legal?
After watching a recent episode, I began to wonder about it myself. Maybe without knowing it, I had joined the staff of writers of ABC’s popular legal dramedy.
The episode featured a case in which a rancher is fighting to force the FDA to label cloned meats, arguing the process isn’t safe – for people or for the cattle. The FDA’s attorney declared that was unnecessary because the FDA had deemed cloned meats safe for human consumption.
To which the Boston Legal attorney responded along the lines of: “Yes, and we should trust that even though this is the very same FDA that gave us Vioxx and Bextra.” Of course, I’m paraphrasing.
Perhaps just as they did with the e-Alert
The big difference, of course, is in their world, the case is won and wrapped up nicely in about 46 minutes. In our much more real world, however, the FDA has won and, if my suspicions are correct, the Supreme Court is probably about 46 minutes away from letting us sue them over it.


