• Invite Friends
• Sign in
• Sign up

FarmNazi, when cancer = $$$ by Miguel Balbás

44 x 44 cm (Approx).
Tempera and marker.
Description:
A very decorative work structured in concentric circles. Executives from FarmNazi (represented as pigs) and the FDA (with a questionable appearance of being champions of good) celebrate, hand in hand, the results of the latest drug approved by the FDA (whether they be financial or therapeutic results is unknown). In contrast, also depicted are scenes of the suffering that the use of this medicine generates in sick people. In the middle of the work is the generic patient as an objective (target) of the multinational company and the government. Note that the FarmNazi and FDA executives are of the same skin color, signifying that they are one and the same; observe also how, in a clear allusion to the quality of the product, flies swarm around the bags of substance administered to the generic patients, who border the work.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

(It is not that I want to be an artist; it is that I want to do something)

STATEMENT OF INTENTIONS

The generic patient is victim of the excesses and exploitations of FarmNazi, a multinational pharmaceutical company whose ineffective solutions yield fat profits at the expense of the indescribable suffering of the patients that endure them. FarmNazi is a fictitious company, but its workings do not differ much from those of real multinational pharmaceutical companies, whose cancer-fighting products, in this case, are absolutely ineffective and cost exorbitant amounts. Patients are thus the guinea pigs of these abuses. Schemes, threats, pressure, blackmail, etc., are the order of the day, and the multinational companies are the ones to do and undo them as they please, depending on if their pharmaceutical remedies will bring them more or less profit. There are uncountable stories of drugs that have been recalled from the market because they are actually effective and, therefore, no longer of interest, because if they cure patients quickly, there’s no more business; or drugs that are recalled because they are cheaper than another company’s, for example, a foreign company’s. The executives of the national company pressure the government employees of the Spanish FDA to recall the medicine from the other country and introduce the Spanish drug, which is more expensive, less effective, more difficult to administer to patients (for example, parenterally instead of orally) and has far more devastating secondary effects. Personally, I believe that the cure for cancer is well known, but the widespread use of effective drugs would bring about the bankruptcy of the social security systems of developed countries (the only countries that can afford the high prices of these “drugs”). People would live so much longer, receiving their government pensions, using social services, etc., that soon the government would find itself in serious trouble. It seems logical that countries would ban a drug that does away with this disease in order to avoid breaking the state’s cash supply and causing greater problems, but we cannot allow the pharmaceutical mafia to make a fortune at our expense, knowing full well that what they offer is, quite honestly, bad in every sense of the word. The suffering that these so-called drugs provoke is indescribable when compared to the good that they do. Normally, the patient gets a few more months of life –if this existence can be called ‘life’– suffering terrible secondary effects, which, from a rational point of view, makes no sense. When the death factor forms part of the game, all considerations change. The patients’ deteriorated brains become machines of pleas in favor of the benefits of such products, and they are capable of saying “yes” to anything with the hopes of living one more day in these miserable conditions.

The cancer industry is one of the most important industries in the world. Many jobs depend on it. Mechanisms, instruments, hospitals, doctors, nurses, drugs... all of these things and people make up a fictitious industry whose results would not be considered acceptable in any other business. Suffice it to say that only 10% of the patients who receive chemotherapy treatment survive more than five years. The results are there. The drug’s benefits have not improved at all. What has improved is the method for diagnosing cancer, which, I imagine, is one more means for pharmaceutical companies to make a profit. The sooner the disease is detected, the sooner chemotherapy begins. The question that plagues me, among many others, is: how many animals are tortured, ravaged and destroyed each year to achieve such poor results? If companies produce a drug that fights cancer, goodbye profits. The days of the goose that lays the golden eggs are gone. In my opinion, it is a perfect scam between the government and companies; the former for social security reasons, the latter for their own profits. Furthermore, apart from these cancer-fighting inventions, the FDA is unbelievable in its recommendations regarding other non-patentable products that could avoid a great amount of suffering and illness. None of the things found in nature are patentable by pharmaceutical companies and, therefore, they do not bring in profits. If they could patent vitamin C and charge a fortune for it, they would be bombarding us with its benefits. But since this is not the case, they recommend a very small intake of this vitamin, even though the good it does is well known. Lies, interests and suffering.

In addition to the generic patient, I also represent the pain that we all suffer, animals included. Vivisections, clinical trials, overcrowded farms, tortures, fur farms, etc. Anything goes as long as some benefit can be derived from these poor beings. If the use of human beings in clinical trials were not prohibited, people with psychological problems would be next in line for these tests. Scientists stop at nothing; they are capable of doing the most horrible things in the world with the excuse that it is for the good of humanity. They are true Frankensteins who delight in their monstrous laboratory creations, inflicting unimaginable pain on poor vivisected creatures or testing substances that are no better than turpentine on poor unsuspecting animals.
To this list of horrors must be added the terrible clinical trials that cosmetic multinational companies perform, testing their miracle remedies on rabbits, cats, dogs, etc. It is disgraceful that this happens in advanced societies. What is really a shame is that if these tests were not performed in developed countries, they would be done in other countries with even fewer animal protection laws. It is just terrible. There does not seem to be any way of stopping this barbarity, but somebody has to raise their voice in their defense. Not everything goes; humans do not have the right to make and destroy things as they please. The pain that a cat suffers is the same as the pain of a child, a mentally handicapped person or an elderly individual.

Other main motifs in my works are those that imply pain, suffering, or both: child abuse, executions, Siamese twins, amputations, mutilations, tortures, the death of a loved one, slavery, child labor, the selling of organs, domestic violence, wars, children soldiers, thirst, hunger, displacements, stoning. What kind of a world do we want? This is unbearable. We are the metastases of the planet. Without us, everything would be better. Ever since we appeared we have done nothing but destroy whatever has come in our way and, on top of it, we have done this convinced of our superiority. Everything that happens always only brings about pain and suffering, for someone or another. It is a shame that pain, threats, and coercion be accepted means of action. In the first world we enjoy some kind of guarantee of freedom, but we only have to turn on the TV to realize that this is an island of prosperity and freedom compared to the rest of the less-developed planet. The bad thing is that this freedom and prosperity are achieved in detriment to the freedom and prosperity of less-advanced countries. Cynicism and hypocrisy. But are we willing to give an inch, to reduce our standard of living to improve that of those who have less? I do not try to offer solutions, because they are impossible to achieve, but with my work I do attempt to show that the world is a horror; life is no more than an obstacle course that ends in death. Yes, we live moments of pleasure and enjoyment, but these are thwarted by bad things and pain, our own as well as others’. What I never expected was that such a destiny awaited my wife, who died of ovarian cancer at age 33 and who is the founding idea of the generic patient. As a result of our hospital stays, my Internet searches and conversations with others who suffer from this disease, especially from the United States, I slowly gathered information about the cancer industry and its many evils. I added these ideas to others that I had already formed about the world and its effects on health.

This is a brief presentation of my concerns and motivations. Through the graphic representation of my ideas I have discovered a means of revealing the outrages, abuses, pain and suffering of mortals. Let’s say that my artistic career is a reaction to the horrors that I have lived first hand, which have been added to my already confirmed sad ideas about the planet. I suppose that suffering has been the catalyst of my compromise, which takes form in graphic representations. A contribution to reflection, I guess. Something that motivates and stimulates a debate, a change, a rejection of all that is evil.

I have tried to represent my works in the most beautiful way possible. Like the world seen from the moon, so pretty. But just by coming a little bit closer you discover all the horror inside. Formally, that is how my works are: pretty and decorative, thus making their impact and diffusion more effective. But their content is from the real world: sordid.

Portfolio Entries