MAY: Brent elected not to join us in this discussion and I foresee him avoiding talking at any recent topics here involving Gregory Stock.
DENNY: How can that be? He started this crap, why's he not here to see it through?
MAY: Perhaps he thinks the ideas will grow best if it's just us.
DENNY: Moron. If he really thinks there's gonna be thinking around here...
JUNE: Now you two actually look cuter together than with Brent.
DENNY: I-uh-what?
MAY: Sweetie, he's married.
JUNE: Oh! I'm so sorry!
DENNY: S'all right. You didn't know.
JUNE: Oh I knew that you were married. But from what May told me about your in-laws, I thought you were getting a divorce by now.
DENNY: Huh?
MAY: No thinking around here, you hit that one on the nose. To Dr. Stock's question: we just found a cure to an extreme medical condition (you can pick which one). The cure works but one percent of the users are suffering an equally extreme side effect. Is it still okay to release--
DENNY: Absolutely.
JUNE: That's so mean!
DENNY: What? That you just saved 99 people from cancer? Or AIDS? Or whatever it is that's causing excruciating pain and death?
JUNE: No, that you're still going to let that one person possibly die from the medicine.
DENNY: That person was going to die anyway from whatever was killing them. Wouldn't you rather take a chance with a majority probability of making it than not at all?
JUNE: It's still mean. You should be looking for something for something that cures everybody.
DENNY: Not gonna happen. Doesn't happen with ordinary medicine. Heck, it doesn't with everyday food. Take peanuts, for example. Plenty of people love to eat peanuts but there are some folks out there with peanut allergies. They get a snack with peanut oil in their system and BAM they're at the ER. Does that mean we should stop selling peanuts at the grocery store?
MAY: I honestly don't see the comparison between natural-grown food and invented medicine.
DENNY: It's about knowing how your body works. Before you take any new medication, go check with your doctor and see what they have to say about the medicine and whether it's right for you. Surely, there'll be indicators to tip them to what causes the bad reaction.
MAY: You're assuming that everybody does their research.
JUNE: It's still awful. I mean, they make it. Can't they make it work for everybody?
DENNY: Do you watch TV?
JUNE: My soap operas.
MAY: Not at all.
DENNY: Really? In this country?
MAY: It's a waste of time and is only propagating the moral decadence of today's society. Why watch it when you could be doing something productive?
JUNE: You told me you didn't watch TV because it made you so mad to see stupid people make more money than you doing much less.
DENNY: Point is, you've seen those medicine commercials, correct?
JUNE: Sure.
DENNY: Thirty seconds long, fifteen seconds devoted to all the possible side effects that can get you. These are for over-the-counter drugs! What's wrong with a pill or procedure that you would have to go through a doctor to get? Just take the warning, consider it, and move forward. It'd be nice to have more options for living.
JUNE: There's still that one person in a hundred that's going to be even worse off than before.
MAY: She has a point there. One percent doesn't seem that small the larger the population that takes it. If ten thousand patients take this cure, one hundred of them are going to get killed by it. That's not pretty math. I'd be happier if out of the ten thousand, only one of them was getting knocked off.
JUNE: May!
DENNY: So you agree in the principle, just not the numbers.
MAY: I'm a realist but I like to have high standards.
DENNY: High standards from a fortune teller?
MAY: Told your fortune with great accuracy.
JUNE: You're both awful. Why wouldn't you try for the perfect solution?
MAY: Honey, welcome to Earth. This is just how the sucky place goes.
JUNE: With that attitude, it's going to stay that way.
DENNY: Well, this has been fun, but I'm gonna get some lunch.
MAY: Make sure to avoid the poultry. Wouldn't want that allergy to strike, would we?
DENNY: How did you kn-
MAY: Psychic.
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