Every year, naïve drug companies spend billions of dollars and millions of man-hours inventing new treatments for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and infectious diseases. The amount of effort poured into drug discovery is astonishing. And without these drugs, millions would die or become disabled. Which is why drug companies are so hated.

No one cares about the effort, or the cost, or the risk to investors. Nobody notes gratefully that they will have years more to live, love, travel, work, relax, and see children and grandchildren grow up. Nor does anyone marvel at how much of the extension in human lifespan over the last hundred years is attributable to drug discovery. All they know is they have got to have the drug to live, it’s expensive, and the big drug companies are all a bunch of evil bastards for not giving it away and going out of business. That’s the reward for being truly needed.

Compare this to the public’s response to Viagra, a drug which is very much wanted, but hardly needed (at least as far as mere existence is concerned). Nobody complains about the cost of Viagra; they’re just happy to be able to buy it at all! If insurance does not cover it, then grandpa just digs deep and smiles, because he wants it. No one demands that the federal government commandeer Pfizer to get them their Viagra (as opposed to their @&$# heart medications); they just love that little blue pill. That’s the reward for being merely wanted.

Viagra has led to a whole new category of pharmaceutical research: lifestyle drugs, such as treatments for discolored toenails, dry eyes, heartburn, baldness, restless legs and many other extremely serious medical conditions.

These drugs are aimed at pathologies destructive enough to be annoying, but not so destructive that they could be fatal. That way, people are glad to buy the drugs, and no old geezer shows up at the State of the Union Address claiming she has to collect aluminum cans to get enough money so that she can choose between food and medication. Clearly, some Big Drug companies are learning that it is better to be chosen than to be needed.

Unlike the Big Oil companies, who insist on being patently necessary. Instead of exploring new sexual lubricants, tooth whiteners, and scented fuel additives, they are all still wasting time finding, extracting, and distributing a diabolically needed product. You can’t live without heat or lights or gasoline, so you can’t be happy about paying for oil. You have no choice.

But thankfully, a ray of hope is on the horizon: flex-fuel cars. Designed to run off of more than one fuel (e.g., either gasoline or ethanol), flex-fuel cars are heralded in the press as a way to become less dependent on Big Oil. And that’s exactly why they could prove to be a huge boon to Big Oil. Once oil is an individual rather than a market choice, everyone will be happier. When people can compare directly at the pump and find that oil is the cheapest, most reliable alternative, Big Ethanol will finally get its due. “My other fuel is even more expensive” bumper stickers will become all the rage for flex-fuel cars lined up gleefully at the pump.

In fact, I think the oil industry should invent the ultimate flex-fuel car: the plug-in hybrid – a vehicle capable of running off gasoline, ethanol, vegetable oil, electricity, hydrogen, whole milk, or dryer lint – just to give people lots of choices and get them off the industry’s back for good.

I can see the “man at the pump” news stories of the future: “There’s no way I’m paying through the nose for milk when gasoline gets me down the road for just twelve cents a mile! Even vegetable oil and dryer lint would cost me thirty cents a mile. And ethanol is just ridiculous. Hydrogen? I don’t know what I would do if I had to depend on Big Hydrogen, those greedy gas-bags! All I can say is, thank God for three-dollar gasoline and the fine folks at ExxonMobil!

“I’m just glad I live in a country where I have the freedom to choose… oil.”