Making a fortune on 'kidney suds'

By G. George Ostrom

Will it ever go away?

Talking here about the accusations, innuendos and lawsuits over athletes and others using “illegal” drugs. Hearings this week are supposed to determine if the winner of last year’s Tour de France used something. Barry Bonds is still hitting homers from under a black cloud of past alleged discretions. There are arrests and investigations every day here in Flathead County involving ordinary people and “dangerous drugs.”

Still have quite a few “strange” things going on out there to keep a wary eye on. Somedays it seems like the “strange ones” are rapidly increasing in numbers. On the local scene, we certainly don’t take a backseat to any other rural area of America when it comes to our quota of oddballs, but from my finely tuned diagnosis, most of the really big stuff is going on outside the Flathead.

With all the emotional arguments and lawsuits over mandatory drug testing, we are reminded that those same things have been going on for decades; however, 10 years ago there was a new twist. Remember?

It had to happen. A lady in Detroit, Michigan, says there is a simple remedy for those who have cause to fear taking their basic peepee test. Meryl Podden is now selling “certified” drug-free urine in two-ounce bottles at $49.95 apiece.

She told the Associated Press that sales are booming. Meryl’s new company is called Insurine Labs and she says they put out up-front cash to drug and “disease-free donors” for maintaining a reliable product flow.

She also revealed that the pay for each marketable sample is only five piddling dollars.

Following the media-leaking reports of over 100 satisfied Insurine customers in the Detroit area alone, we know that there will now be many other entrepreneurs going into this business. Maybe there will even be franchises.

One of my beer-drinking acquaintances is so despondent over this new area of business ventures, he may have to take to his bed. Says he has unknowingly wasted away a fortune.

My friend is not the only person who may develop a lingering case of sorrow for not getting in early on this urine-testing business. The big push by the feds is for checking out people like train engineers and airline pilots. That idea developed a good amount of logic after an Amtrak engineer back East allegedly got spaced out and killed several passengers by running through a danger light.

Less acceptable to some is the testing of athletes, but that, too, seems more reasonable following the problems with million-dollar professional ballplayers turning into users, not to mention college athletes right here in Montana.

I can imagine a scenario wherein some hairy 280-pound, All-Pro Detroit Lion defensive tackle buys a bottle of Meryl Podden’s certified pure filtered kidney suds, then the laboratory analysis reports back that his is pregnant. Would make a heck of a headline in Sports Illustrated, get big play on ESPN and… probably a move to boot.