Purity Squad

Just watched this Crime Does Not Pay short on the DVD of the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film Without Love. It tells of how a couple of crooked men-with reluctant help from the doctor who works for them-sell this doc's medicine called diabulin which is supposed to cure diabetes but this doc says it's not ready and shouldn't be sold yet but, well, of course his superiors think differently...Quite dramatically compelling for a 19-mimute short with enough time for the tense climatic end. So that's a recommendation for Purity Squad.

... which had only been on the market for about 20 years. Prior to that, diabetes was a death sentence. But even today it tethers the diabetic to a regimen of shots and blood testing, and they must always have some form of quick sugar on hand because injected insulin is never as good as one's own insulin at self adjustment for stress, exercise, etc. Now there are continuous glucose monitors that also dose the patient with insulin, but 75 years later there is no freedom for the diabetic to be completely spontaneous. But I digress.

This episode in the series is about a discredited doctor, hiding from the law, who comes up with a pill he calls "diabulin" that he thinks can substitute for insulin. The two crooks he is saddled with want to put the pill on the market immediately and not do any further testing, and the doc, a wanted man, is at their mercy. They decide to distribute the drug inside their state only, so in case there are problems they are not dealing with a federal rap. The state's public health lab does tests on the drug too. The doc's guinea pigs die after a few weeks from the side effects of the diabulin. So the crooks decide to pay off somebody who works in the state lab to replace the test rabbits with fresh rabbits to buy time to make more money off the drug.

What they didn't count on is the FDA testing their drug anyways. The FDA lab, being in Washington, is inaccessible to the crooks, plus they don't know about the FDA's involvement in the first place. When the FDA guinea pigs die of the drug, and people begin to die of the drug, yet the state lab's test rabbits are healthy, the FDA and the state public health lab get together and suspect tampering in the state lab. Complications ensue.

It is shown that the doctors of the diabetics warned them against trying such a new and untested drug, but the diabetics' desires to live a life free from insulin injections made them want to believe the claims of the crooks.

There are no small "rackets" selling drugs today. Just giant pharma corporations with teams of lawyers. And there is no marketing a drug in a single state either, so the FDA's extensive testing is involved in the marketing of all drugs. But this is an interesting look back. At this point the Crime Does Not Pay series is trying to come out of the gangster era and into the post War era with crimes and rackets that were relevant to the time. But even with all of this talk of scientific testing, there is gun play in this episode.

One of MGM's short films made during the 30s and 40s was presented by TCM recently. These one reel movies were done, in part, to present new talent, or like in this one, to inform the public about a new drug. The emphasis of this short film is to show how the Food and Drug Administration, the government agency that deals with the approval of medicine prescribed in the United States, works in dealing with careless individuals that try to do their own version of a drug being tasted to combat diabetes.

Diabulin, was being tested in the form of a pill to replace insulin shots. When people begin dying after taking the drug, brings the FDA into action. The problem is there are some unscrupulous individuals doing illegal things at the laboratory where the experimental drug is being tested on rabbits.

The film, which is done documentary style, was informative in warning audiences of the time how vigilant the agency was in getting bad medicine from ever reaching patients. As directed by Harold Kress, and based on the screen treatment by Charles Royal, the film served its purpose by alerting the American public of the dangers of taking the tainted product.

Purity Squad (1945)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

45th film in MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series looks at the FDA and their attempts to break a drug company from selling a pill to diabetics, which is suppose to be better than insulin but no tests have been done on it. This episode here really packs a nice little punch due to some very good performances and a couple great villains. This was one of the last from the series and the production values have fallen quite a bit from when the series started but the film still packs a nice little punch.

Frank Fenton and Dick Elliott plan to push their new drug, despite the warnings of Doctor Byron Foulger. Their plans might result in the deaths of the users, but the FDA is on watch to make sure that CRIME DOES NOT PAY.

THis entry in the long-running MGM crime series tries to bring it into the post-war world. In the 1930s, it was all about criminals and how their nefarious dealings brought them misery and death. During the War, episodes concerned the Feds fighting spies and saboteurs. Now it was concentrating on rapacious businessmen and their quest for profits, no matter the cost in human lives. It's a rather dry episode, with men showing each other papers.