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And to add to my previous post. Let's just enumerate a list of some of the vitamin brands sold by a couple of the big name pharma companies.

Bayer:

One A Day
Supradyn
Flintstones Vitamins
Pluravit
Elevit
Redoxin

Pfizer:

Centrum
Emergen-CStresstabs
Clusivol
Trihemic

Oh and to throw in, Pfizer even has a web page extolling the virtues of taking vitamins. Funny since you would have us believe they are against them, no?

GlaxoSmithKline:

Cetebe
Rutinoscorbin
Scott's Emulsion

For people who hate vitamin supplements it's amazing how many brands just those 3 companies alone sell, no? And that's not including all the other nutritional supplements they sell which would add at least another 10 or 12 items. So this notion that big pharma hates vitamins, etc. is pure bunk.

And to add to my previous post. Let's just enumerate a list of some of the vitamin brands sold by a couple of the big name pharma companies.

Bayer:

One A Day
Supradyn
Flintstones Vitamins
Pluravit
Elevit
Redoxin

Pfizer:

Centrum
Emergen-CStresstabs
Clusivol
Trihemic

Oh and to throw in, Pfizer even has a web page extolling the virtues of taking vitamins. Funny since you would have us believe they are against them, no?

GlaxoSmithKline:

Cetebe
Rutinoscorbin
Scott's Emulsion

For people who hate vitamin supplements it's amazing how many brands just those 3 companies alone sell, no? And that's not including all the other nutritional supplements they sell which would add at least another 10 or 12 items. So this notion that big pharma hates vitamins, etc. is pure bunk.

And to add to my previous post. Let's just enumerate a list of some of the vitamin brands sold by a couple of the big name pharma companies.

Bayer:

One A Day
Supradyn
Flintstones Vitamins
Pluravit
Elevit
Redoxin

Pfizer:

Centrum
Emergen-CStresstabs
Clusivol
Trihemic

Oh and to throw in, Pfizer even has a web page extolling the virtues of taking vitamins. Funny since you would have us believe they are against them, no?

GlaxoSmithKline:

Cetebe
Rutinoscorbin
Scott's Emulsion

For people who hate vitamin supplements it's amazing how many brands just those 3 companies alone sell, no? And that's not including all the other nutritional supplements they sell which would add at least another 10 or 12 items. So this notion that big pharma hates vitamins, etc. is pure bunk.

Although I agree with you in general, I think people tend to go too much to extremes on both sides of this issue. Yes, we know a lot about the human body, how it works, and we know how to do a lot of stuff to it, but there is still tons of stuff we don't know.

Even some of the stuff/treatments that we do "know" we don't really know what we are doing. As a real life example, I take generic Flonase for allergies. It is basically a steroid that you shoot in your nose. It works great and I am glad that someone figured out that it helps allergies.

One day, I decided to read the long, wordy leaflet that comes with the prescription (don't ask me why). Here is a direct qoute from the leaflet:

The precise mechanism through which fluticasone propionate affects allergic rhinitis symptoms is not known.

Here is the complete leaflet in PDF form if you are interested: http://us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_flonase.pdf

If you go on to read it all, basically, in fancy doctor terms, it says that through trials they found out that this stuff works for a majority of people at the recommendend dose, but they really don't know why. They also don't know if it will work long term. And this is just a steroid for allergies.

Again, I think the advances in medicine are great, but we shouldn't overrate them. I knew a guy a few years back who basically "knew" that in his lifetime (he was around 35 at the time, probably about 40 now) that we would have the medical techonolgy to live for ever. We would be able to either "reverse the aging process" and stop cells from dying, or at minimum, implant our consciousness in a robot of some sort. Anyway, it is good to keep in mind that a lot of medicine is still, in many cases, a lot of trial and error.

In a similar vein, Cimetidine (one of the first ulcer drugs) has become much less effective over time. It suffered a dramatic drop in success rate when the new ulcer drug Ranitidine came on to the market. It seems that as doctors stopped thinking of it as the best drug, it became less effective.

I also find it funny how both drugs, competitors for many years, finally ended up being made by the same company.

In a similar vein, Cimetidine (one of the first ulcer drugs) has become much less effective over time. It suffered a dramatic drop in success rate when the new ulcer drug Ranitidine came on to the market. It seems that as doctors stopped thinking of it as the best drug, it became less effective.

I also find it funny how both drugs, competitors for many years, finally ended up being made by the same company.

. This might be worth looking into.

Actually you do.

Yeah, because of the fifty busiest ports in the world, Canada has one on the list (Vancouver) and the United States has six and five of them move more cargo than Vancouver.

The only ports that freeze are in the great lakes, you know the ones that ship out the majority of the grain to the rest of the world.

This confuses me. Not the freezing ports part, but the grain shipping, because the US exports twelve times as much grain as Canada. With 22% going via California, and the next 16% going via Washington and New York.

It means that if you throw a hissy fit, we simply say 'our market is now europe' and they buy our goods, or japan, or anyone else.

Yeah, because Asia is going to totally want to import goods from a half way around the world where it's twice as expensive to produce the goods, than they will from multiple countries right next door where labor is cheaper. I mean why import goods from Malaysia into Japan when you can ship stuff from Canada.

And yeah, I agree, it's going to be totally trivial for Canada to find new markets for 80% of their total exports. Not.

While you're very good at consuming our goods, and tell me something do you even have the manufacturing base left to make anything?

I don't know. Maybe air planes, heavy equipment, trucks, microprocessors, DRAM & flash. Then of course we have things like tanks, airplanes & submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter planes & submarines. And there are vaccines and medicines.

But, hey, we import our socks, so yeah, I can totally see why you'd think the US isn't capable of producing anything.

The only reason the US imports manufactured goods is because it's cheaper. Barring protectionist policies, every industrialized country does the same.

>>> Erm, we don't license food products here. Nothing to withdraw.

GSK, don't just commit fraud they also have many other ways of making money (aka products): http://www.gsk.com/products/index.htm

<sarcasm> but I'm sure even though they'd lie to millions of people about vit. C supplements they'd never commit fraud wrt medical trials, oh no </sarcasm>

Including new drugs. Without the U.S. as a free market engine to drive the development of new drugs, the entire world would be worse off because of their absence.

Because, of course, there are no drug companies in Europe, Australia etc. They simply can't compete.

And what do you know of the subject?
A quick look at the Annual Report of GlaxoSmithKline (Cenerex is a division of) shows a total R&D budget for the entire organization of 2.8 billion. Current estimates are $1 billion per week in Iraq. So yeah I think my original estimation seems close (perhaps even an underestimate given that most of the research was done at BYU, not in the Cenerex labs)

There are only a couple of manufacturers who would be in a position to manufacture the drugs (such as Glaxo-Wellcome or Smith-Klein) - the same people who make the insulin.

Does GlaxoSmithKline make insulin? There's no mention of it on their prescription medicines page, although a search for "insulin" on their Web site found a press release about an alliance to develop an oral insulin.

The LookSmart page about major pharmaceutical companies lists 3 companies that I know produce insulin (Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Lilly), and don't list another one (Novo Nordisk). They also list several companies that, as far as I know, don't, although Pfizer has an inhalable insulin (Exubera) under development (with Aventis and Nektar Theraputics).

There are only a couple of manufacturers who would be in a position to manufacture the drugs (such as Glaxo-Wellcome or Smith-Klein) - the same people who make the insulin.

Does GlaxoSmithKline make insulin? There's no mention of it on their prescription medicines page, although a search for "insulin" on their Web site found a press release about an alliance to develop an oral insulin.

The LookSmart page about major pharmaceutical companies lists 3 companies that I know produce insulin (Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Lilly), and don't list another one (Novo Nordisk). They also list several companies that, as far as I know, don't, although Pfizer has an inhalable insulin (Exubera) under development (with Aventis and Nektar Theraputics).

Fortunaly, I finally figured out the connection between caffeine intake at work and what turned out to be simple withdrawal symptoms on weekends when I wouldn't usually have any tea.

After some experimenting, I've settled on two methods that I now use to keep things under control when I decide to not abstain entirely:

• Keep the dosage steady: If I keep the dosage steady, I never get headaches. This means regular intake of controlled doses at fixed times.
• Ibuprofen: A dose of Ibuprofen taken when symptoms first show keeps the headache under control. It is key to take painkiller early, I've found it very hard to eliminate the pain after full onset.

Several years ago, I was seeing a shrink who had me take the MMPI. Back then, the test asked multiple questions about hearing voices in your head, including the true/false statement: "I hear a voice in my head." I made the mistake of answering 'true' to this (I hear my own voice in my head all the time, don't you?) and spent months being asked questions like "Do you feel compelled to drive your car off a bridge because the voices in your head tell you to?"

Soon the shrinks can ask "Did you spend all your money/sacrifice your sister's pet gerbil/go postal because the voices in your head told you to?" and how the heck are the shrinks gonna know whether the voices are organic or mechanical? Time to buy stock in GlaxoSmithKline...