Photo by: Hannah Rosenblatt
Earlier this year, a federal advisory committee approved a bold new treatment plan by drug company Cheshire Rx. that may permanently cure depression. The advisory committee voted unanimously that the drug, a powder that is injected intravenously, was safe for human use and effective at fighting depression, while also being, according to one member of the committee, “unquestionably vile, but admittedly pretty metal.”
The drug, Kibblecure, was discovered accidentally nearly seven years ago and has been used in clinical trials for the last five, according to lead researcher Carl Schneider. “Well, you know, we knew that animals usually make people happier, but we couldn’t figure out how to make that happen. At first we simply exposed patients to kittens and noted that they were happy until the kittens were taken away, or until kittens weren’t enough to distract them from the realization that life is ultimately meaningless.
“We needed to figure out a way to make that ‘warm, fuzzy feeling’ permanent. We tried blindfolding the patients and handing them kittens, we tried handing them kittens in their sleep, we tried telling them their family came to visit but when they were escorted to the visitation room it was only full of kittens. Nothing worked. After several months of little progress, luck saved the day, as it so often does.
One day in early 2009, due to an incident I cannot legally elaborate on, we discovered a simple way to turn kittens into a fine powder using a delicate process involving the largest mallet we could find and a liberal application of the scientific method. We determined that injecting this kitten powder directly into a patient’s bloodstream led to their wellbeing rising across the board, and after a few weeks patients seemed to entirely recover from depression.”
Despite the drug’s effectiveness, clinical trials have not gone without criticism, even from the patients themselves. “Sure, we had some people complain about the fact that we were shooting kitten dust into them,” said Thomas O’Malley, CEO of Cheshire Rx. “But they’re all depressed. You can’t trust depressed people when they say they’re unhappy, because they’re always unhappy. And quite frankly I don’t even know what they have to be depressed about; they’re constantly immersed in kittens, technically speaking.
“As a matter of fact, one of the ways we realized the drug was so efficient was that patients began to elucidate their feelings on the trials themselves. At first, after being told what exactly they were being injected with, most patients just curled up into a ball under the covers, which is great because that’s what they were already doing and they’re much more cooperative when they don’t have the motivation to fight back. However, we knew that they had fully recovered and were free of depression when they became more aware of their situation, and began yelling something like “GOD IS DEAD” and “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING.”
“We understand that people could have reservations about using Kibblecure, but believe me, we’ve crunched the numbers AND the kittens, and we’re sure this is the best thing on the market.”
