The Miracle Cure

Thulaganyo Jankie | Monday February 10, 2020 14:31

Like they were renting space in your body so you could carry their burdens until the antidote sorted it out. You would wonder if there could be some sort of miracle cure that you could take to relieve your stresses and ailments. Miracle cures apparently have a Lazarus effect as they can seemingly raise one from ‘death’. Their service hotline must be flooded with satisfied customers.

One day I happened across one when visiting a friend and proceeded to read the label to appreciate its powers. By the time I got to the end I had forgotten the first claims of the miracle cure. You needed to take a highlighter and just isolate the diseases that you are afflicted with. All these claims are packed on the label and reading it is likely to worsen your medical condition.

Scientists have apparently been outdone by the miracle cure factory which has managed to find cures for cancer, obesity, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV/AIDS but because the claims are not backed by empirical proof miracle cures have failed to find enough traction in an increasingly skeptical world. For scientists it is never enough to have testimonials from a seemingly fictitious Joshua Jopp from Melbourne, Australia about how his cancer had been completely cured by a miracle cure. The contents are usually an interesting blend of strange, exotic animals and plants. The ingredients are almost always foreign to you and sound like very potent stuff. It would contain extracts from exotic animals whose names you couldn’t pronounce. There’d be a gerboa gland extract, some sundacolugo brain powder, perhaps urine from a forsa and even stranger plants. Mussel extract, desiccated liver pills, shark cartilage, honey and vinegar mixtures, sea weed, snake oil and even hen’s teeth- it’s like a world conference of animals and plants. This is meant to make it sound more potent than if they had used, say, goat milk and cow intestines which we subsist on on a daily basis. Otherwise we would not be convinced of the cure’s abilities and strengths.

Strangely all this is packed in one little 30ml bottle. That tiny bottle carries an assortment of animals. You’d be forgiven to think it’s some sort of mini zoo on your medicine shelf.

One thing they almost always forget is the disclaimer that should always be there. Radio stations do it so well that the miracle cure factories should actually copy. The disclaimer should read something like: we will not be held responsible for claims made herein. With so much text on the bottle label they could easily hide it like it happens with all disclaimers. Otherwise they must be having a hefty budget to thwart litigations.

As a youth struggling with finding a business niche I had once dabbled in the miracle cure sector. My idea was to get funding, procure a large stash of the miracle cure and sell it to hospitals and clinics. My thinking was the sickly would make a beeline for my product and the doctors would be happy to have a multi-pronged solution for their patients.

This was around the time when I was working on my third million. I had actually worked on my first million but failed, worked on my second million but failed and this would have been my third million trial and was guaranteed to succeed. Counting chickens I would make this million after my first consignment.

The first funder practically threw me out before I could get to the substantive part of my proposal. They were not interested in miracle cures, they did not believe in miracle cures and they had never been cured by any miracle cures. It was their loss. I had so much confidence on this project and set up a meeting with an alternative funder who promptly put an end to the conversation as soon as he heard the word miracle. By the time I got to the third potential funder I knew what the answer would be.

Stuck with a project that no one was interested in and debts I couldn’t repay my hypertension soared and I had to be rushed to the clinic. Strangely in my state I didn’t for once remember to take a dose from the miracle cure bottle. That is when the penny dropped. Not with a clink but a loud thud. I didn’t believe in miracle cures either!