It’s common knowledge that young children are nothing more than freeloading ner-do-wells, but could they also be making you sick? That’s the question researchers from the University of Alberta wanted to find out.
“We were all sitting around the lunchroom one day when out of nowhere John starts coughing,” said Todd Maste, a doctor of homeopathic medicine. “And I said to him: ‘Hey didn’t you say your kid was coughing last week?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah he was.’ All the sudden it hit him. His kid was making him sick.”
But mere anecdotal evidence was not enough for this modern day Sherlocke and Homes. They sought a degree of certainty only attainable via a double-blind, randomized study.
“We took, uh, 20 kids who were sick, uh, and within two weeks 12 of [their] parents got sick too. Clear cut kid to parent transmission of disease.”
Armed with this knowledge, Maste and his colleagues sought out the manufacturing giant Pharmista, makers of Hydroxyfatburnercooker™ and Schlonger™ to see if there were any marketing possibilities for a new over-the-counter drug. Matt Barnes a marketing executive explains:
“The information that Dr. Maste had come up with was so groundbreakingly earthshattering, that I thought ‘We’ve got to take this and run with it.’” Barnes later added, “All the way to the bank.”
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