“when I gently advised against this, pointing out that the studies would not end until 2024, they became irate. This was my people, my tribe, my whole life, the progressive, right-on part of the ideological world — and it became more and more uncritical, less and less able to discuss or reason. Friends and colleagues who their whole adult lives had known the dangers of Big Pharma (and, reflexively wellness-oriented, would only think of using Burt’s Bees on their babies’ bottoms and sunscreen with no PABAs on themselves) rushed to take the experimental genetic-based therapy; then, like the stone throwers in Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery,” crowded around to lash out at, shun, punish anyone who raised the slightest question about Big Pharma. Their entire knowledge base about that industry seemed to have magically evaporated into the ether.”