PAST TENSE, PRESENT TENSE

For the treatment of white scours in calves and pneumonia, footrot, joint – ill and navel–ill in calves, lambs, kids, foals and piglets.

• 2 Tablets per 5 kg body mass followed by halve initial dose daily for a maximum of four days.  
• Do not use in Ruminants older than 3 months..   
• Animals under treatment should have free access to ample drinking water during treatment and for at least two days after last treatment.
• Do not slaughter animals for human consumption within 7 days of last treatment.   
• Keep out of reach of children.
• Although this remedy has been extensively tested under a large variety of conditions, failure of this remedy may ensue as a result of a wide rage of reasons. If this is suspected, seek veterinary advice and notify the registration holder.

Available Size:  50 tablets / 250 tablets

CONTAINS:  Sulphapyridine B.P.       82,5% m/m

During the days when Singapore was battling the communist both in the jungle and the schools, M&B 693 was used to treat diseases relating to bacterial infection.  Except for its unreliable solubility that could crystallize in the bladder or urethra, it was known to be exceptionally effective.

Even till the early sixties, it was like every home would have some 693 tablets on standby for emergency.  Its use was later terminated and replaced with Penicillin.  There are others like Yunnan White Oitment (云南白药) good for bulging sores (疮) and open wounds were also terminated subsequently as Singapore better linked to the global information network.

Singaporeans were also quite happy buying raw meat and fish at housefly infested markets, and squatting by the drain side enjoying a bowl of hot noodles.  As they say, those were the days.

Today, Singaporeans gets a little retro and a little nostalgic and they want to recreate the "kampong spirit" and they reminiscent the hawker scenes of old in China Town.  They want heritage sites preserved so that history could be better remembered.

Does Singapore really want a kampong recreated, or should I say can Singapore ever recreate the kampong spirit anew?  The old kampongs thrived on a need for mutual dependency, of borrowing by those who have not and lending by those who have.  We are living in a very different world with a very different spirit.  Without the free running scavenging rats and roach buddies, as well as the wind carried smell of clogged drains, it can never be the roadside hawkers of old.

Bacterial infection was a common thing and commonly treated with 693, the drug used only on animals now.  We were quite close to being animals in those days if you may.

Can anyone who has never lived through that part of history understands why they had to use animal drugs on human, and for that matter why and how Singaporeans suffered under the tyranny of the British, and then the Japanese, and then back to British again and at the same time having to confront clannish and gang rivalry?

So if someone were to come out and sue the government for allowing M&B 693 to be used to treat him for an infection some fifty, sixty years ago and now his bladder and urethra are both clogged, what do make of that?

Along this same line I am asking, how is it that the "exiles" are asking to be heard today?  How is it that some young people chose to believe the exiles and not the official version?  Don't they each have a 50/50 chance to be accurate?  For the government the decision and the course of action that follows were consistent with the imminent threat to national security of the time, and any subsequent references to that needs to be consistent as well.

Can you allow someone to blatantly insert a disclaimer, an escape clause into a signed contract right before your opened eyes?  Obviously not, hence I support MDA's ban on Tan Pin Pin's film.  Those who are indeed interest to listen to what the exiles have to say will not have their passport forfeited, but as a matter of principle, I do not think Singapore should screen a version that voids the government's previous decision.