The Ethicator Interview: Matt Lamkin

Today's interview is with Matt Lamkin, of Stanford Law School.  If you are important and would also like to be interviewed by the Ethicator, send me an email.

E: Welcome to the Ethicator's interview series.  Please introduce yourself to my readers by stating your name, your occupation, and the first time you were ever wronged by Carl.

ML: I know your time is precious, but I have to tell you what an honor this is for me.  If anyone claimed to be a bigger fan of the Ethicator, I would gut him with a rusted spoon.

My name is Matt Lamkin and I'm a Fellow at Stanford Law School.  A few years ago I was a successful attorney, blissfully nursing corporate America's ample teat.  One day I read some of Carl's work -- well, I thought it was Carl's work -- and I was totally blown away.  I dropped everything to go study with him in Minnesota.  I got to the classroom and I couldn't believe I was finally going to meet the man behind this amazing prose. Then in stumbles Carl.  He spent the next three hours mumbling unintelligibly.  My classmates and I were too terrified to move until he finally fell asleep.  We couldn't make out anything he'd said, but we all agreed it was something racist.

I had no idea what was going on, but one thing was clear: I'd gotten mixed up in something evil.

E: Evil in what way?  I know, of course, but for the benefit of our readers, you should feel free to vent.  Be as damning and as explicit as you like.

ML: Evil in a couple ways.  For one thing we lived in constant terror, never knowing when we would be the object of one of Carl's tirades.  He seemed to imagine he was crusading against some vast conspiracy involving drug companies, doctors, universities and the government, and that they were all out to silence his drunken ramblings.  Everyone was suspect, including us students.  Any time we attempted to ask a question – no matter how innocuous – he would shout us down and accuse us of having a conflict of interest.

E: That sounds like hell on earth.  How did you make it through it all?  Were there any inspiring figures that helped you make it through the trauma?

ML: Those were dark times.  After months of psychological abuse eventually I succumbed to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.  I actually started believing that drug companies – the very companies selflessly working to cure restless leg syndrome and overactive bladder, expecting nothing in return but money – were bad guys.  He had me convinced there was something unethical about boosting drug sales by giving gifts and money to doctors, as though "kickback" was some kind of dirty word.  Wrapped up in Carl's paranoid fantasies, I started wondering if I had a conflict of interest in making love to my own wife.

Then the Ethicator burst onto the scene.  Suddenly everyone was talking about you.  I rushed online to see what all the buzz was about, and it was like the clouds departed and the sun shone through.  Everything suddenly made sense.  Carl was in fact the evil buffoon he appeared to be.  He'd been raking in huge piles of money from Big Academia by stealing the Ethicator's beautiful ideas and perverting them into something grotesque.  And he wouldn't even pay for his own website.

You may not have saved my life that day, but you certainly saved my soul.

E: You are too kind.  Your comments are very humbling, but you're welcome.

ML: I do my best, you know. And the funny thing is,  I would never have reached these heights, had it not been for Carl's crappy writing and petty jealousy.  His horseshit is the wind beneath my wings.  And that's the key to succeeding in this business.  You've got to keep all the bitterness at bay, and channel that into something valuable and productive.  And who knows, you may even change a life along the way.



E: So what's next, in your opinion?  How do we channel all this productive energy into a fundamental reform of Big Ethics?

ML: I feel really fortunate to have had you to inspire me.  You showed me how to take my Carl-inflicted trauma and use it for the betterment of all humankind, excluding Carl.  The people I really feel sorry for are his family.  Where's the upside for them?  His wife was clearly conned like so many others, and obviously his kids didn't get to choose their dad.  You see them and their eyes just say it all.  Specifically, they say, "please help me" and "there is no God."

In terms of where we go from here, where you lead I will follow.  I think we need to keep fighting the slander that anyone should try to get through life without lots of pharmaceuticals -- what I refer to as the hard bigotry of high expectations.  When people experience symptoms of real mental illness -- like sadness, anger, anxiety, fatigue, concern, aggravation, frustration, annoyance, stubbornness, and so on -- we need to treat these cancers of the soul as aggressively as cancers of the pancreas.

Also, the market needs champions.  We know the market assigns value democratically, as our spending choices reveal our collective wisdom.  It follows that those who would question the judgments of the market are the enemies of freedom.  The Carls of the world can't stand that their crappy books cost less than a half hour of perfunctory verbal abuse by a B-grade hooker, so they try to install themselves as our moral overlords.  I view us as the freedom fighters, defending the rights of consumers and the heroes who sell to them.  And putting the smackdown on tenured, plagiarizing blowhard cheapskates.



E:  Yes, but thanks to heroes like you, we are winning.  The Carl Elliotts of the world don't even know that the earth has shifted beneath them, that profound and fundamental changes are taking place on the medical and moral landscape, and that these big, fat pharma-bashing screeds just don't cut it anymore.  I feel sorry for him, you know?  It must be tough being him.  But you inspire me.  It's great to know there are people like you in the world.  It's been an honor speaking with you.

ML: The honor was mine.  Thanks so much.