better living through chemi

Jason Brancazio (jbrancazio@mail.hamquist.com)
26 Sep 1997 01:27:42 -0700


ok, everyone this is off topic, beware. I try to limit _my_ senseless
ramblings to about once a month, and this topic has engaged me for the past
twenty minutes:

Does anyone know of the origin of the phrase "Better Living Through
Chemistry"?

(For those of you who don't see why I think at least it's relevant enough
for a little fun on the list, it's the title of a recently-domesticated
(U.S.) quite popular album by Norman Cook.)

I think the phrase must have been invented in the early days of
pharmaceutical research, whenever they were, probably as a marketing
slogan. In any event, it couldn't have been invented before the
discipline of chemistry!


You also may (not) be interested to know that it was the title of Episode
52 of Miami Vice which aired in the 1986-1987 season. David Byrne may
have released something with the same title in 1995. It's a title of a web
page used by some group of people on the net called BLTC Research who are
prophesizing and deliberating about a bioengineered utopia
(www.bltc.co.uk). Finally, it has been used as a subtitle in an Economist
article written on April 6, 1996 which makes a very good case for ecstacy
legalization in medical use; the first line is "Society's moral confusion
over drugs is neatly illustrated by its differing reactions to Prozac and
ecstasy".

It is my theory that the subtitle may have provided the inspiration for
Fatboy Slim's title and in fact that Fatboy Slim _reads_ the Economist but
I have absolutely no way of verifying this whatsoever.

Anyways, if anyone else knows about its origin I'd be curious to hear about
it.

Jay B