...Except by not actually introducing any new species, it is nothing like Autralia's toad problem. When the oxygen stops being pumped, the bacteria return to normal population levels. Having said that, I somehow very much doubt that even if you shoveled tons of bateria down there and made oxygen readily available, they'd be able to metabolize the millions and millions of gallons of oil that are being released each day. A nice way to speed up ecological recovery once the well has been plugged? Sure. A real solution that will take care of the spill at the required speed when there are monstruous amounts of crude escaping that place every single second? No way. Not by a long shot.
I had being toying with the idea of oxygen bubbles, incidentally (hadn't thought about how to power the air pumps, thanks for that). But in a much more different scenario. Surround the leak with air pumps that inject enormous amounts of oxygen (as much as needed) to create a sort of oil/air/water emulsion, and set the damn thing on fire. After all, that's the way they deal with excess oil/gas in drilling sites on land, right? By just burning it? I have NO idea how feasible this would be, but what is clear is that that hole needs to be plugged NOW. Why haven't we heard on the news of any new genious plans to make this happen? Do BP and the goverment plan to do NOTHING? Will they start to take the russian approach more seriously at some point (you'd think they have another plan if they are so quick to disregard the only people who have had to deal with with problem multiple times before)? I'm sorry, but bringing a F$%"ing blimp is a JOKE. What are they doing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
Absurdity, hmmm? Both my grandmothers did exactly that. One had a college degree. The other had a HS diploma, which was quite fancy for a female who grew up in the Great Depression. My mother did nearly that, except for a bit of part-time work near the end. My wife is a full-time mother. AFAIK, all of her friends are full-time mothers.It's not counterproductive. It produces decently educated people who stay out of prison.
Yeah, I agree for the most part. You seemed to ignore where I said "in those last few years", where, I'm sure you'll also agree it would be counterproductive to have an overvigilant, overbearing mother wathing over you from, say 15-18. Not that your case (and that of your matriarchs) was what we were discussing exactly. If you have the means to permit the woman not to work, that's perfect and all the better for the kids. But we were discussing the case of the majority of the population where the woman DOES need to work, and what would be the best period (from a cost/benefit PoV for society) would be to give women as paid leave. So don't make points where there are none. Altho, judging from the pieces of my posts you decide to reply to, I see (and therefore understand) that you don't have many counterpoints to make.
Your "job description" sounds like a union concept. It's static. The employer gets in trouble if I tighten a screw on my desk because I'm not in the union with the contract to tighten screws on desks.
In the sane world, a job description is an approximate description used for hiring. The employee is generally expected to do whatever is asked. He can of course refuse because he is not a slave, but then of course he may lose his job.
No, I'm not saying a job description should be neither static nor inflexible. But if "being nice" is so paramount to her job as you make it out to be, you'd think it'd be included there, right? I just think you're trying to justify to yourself (legally, ethically, and perhaps even morally) your wanting to fire her, when, in reality, as you yourself admitted, she is doing her job adequately. Maybe not the way you'd like her to (specially since the new hot one has been introduced to you), but she IS doing it, which is the point. There is no reason to fire a person who gets the job done. Hence my "fixation" with job descriptions (which you've yet again hyperboled into absurdity).
Allow me a little divagation before carrying on. Being the (mostly) good person that I am, I'm going to help you out to discern between what is ethical and what is not because (as you'll see) I have experience in the matter. In the hospital where I worked for a while, we had an ethics commitee (I know, right? Who knew doctors don't actually make really important decisions according to what comes out of our asses?), and I got to participate in it a couple of times. When deciding if some solution to a problem is ethic or not, we have a few key points to reflect on to use as criteria (you can look this up). One of those points is "public scrutiny" which means you have to imagine trying to explain your proposed solution to everyone and anyone (including your family) and see how that makes you feel. If you feel unconfortable with that idea, it generally means that that particular solution is a poor ethical choice. Maybe you'd like to do the same and imagine yourself trying to explain all of this to your stay-at-home wife? (I'm not joking or making fun of you, this is really how decisions {more important ones, granted} are made. Sorry beforehand if you feel I crossed some line there).
Now let's continue.
It's people like you who support the parasitic army of lawyers that is choking our economy. It's people like you who would have me sit idle for weeks while waiting for somebody with the proper job description to get around to unpacking my computer.
Those are some harsh (and very missinformed) assumptions. I'll have you know, I dislike unions probably every bit as mu
What about the second most important stage, the third most important stage, and so on? Why short change the child? Doesn't the child deserve a full-time mother?
It's a simple matter of cost/benefit. It wouldn't be reasonable (nor healthy) to have a woman doing absolutely nothing but "looking after" her children for 18+ years. Specially in those last few years, it would be counterproductive. Now, before I go on, I want you to know I didn't answer because I mistook your question as being serious. I did just so you can visualise the level of absurdity that you are reaching with what you no doubt consider your "brilliant wits and unstoppable rethoric". Hyperboling into absurdity is not clever insight, it's what kids use to ridicule each other in the playground.
Not seriously, but I would compare those things in terms of fairness to other employees.
Again with the fairness. I thought I had already tackled that so I won't repeat the same argument here, but don't worry, I'll touch on it on my next point.
That too, but more importantly NOT LAZY and NOT RUDE. For a random office helper (book travel, keep the snacks in stock, run out to buy office supplies, etc.) it is important to be polite and have a can-do attitude. Yes, that means likeable; she's not paid for manual labor or engineering talent. When highly-paid engineers would rather do her work themselves because the she is too painful to deal with, there is a problem. (and the rest of your post)
Agreed, there is a problem there. And if her job description included "being nice and all that", then she could be effortlessly canned for breach of contract without any legal (or ethical, for that matter) repercussions. But I'm guessing her job description didn't include any of that. So I repeat, the HR guy (who wrote up the contract)should be canned instead. It's not that I feel a job is owed to me or that once I got it it should be mine forever; but I do expect that if a company has been using my "services" for a certain amount of time (time which could be potentially spent on another company doing greater and better things), they sure as hell will need to justify their actions whenever they feel like firing me. And it's not just my crazy ideas, it's the law (yes, even in the most capitalist country in the world). That is ALL i'm saying, not that they should keep this woman forever until she dies of old age. The "entitlement" you speak of, is nothing more than what an indefinite services contract makes me (or you, or whomever) entitled to. If you say you'd just accept being fired because you weren't liked there (regardless of whether or not you'd like working in such an enviroment, please realise this is not the point before answering), then you're just being dumb. And not just "noble dumb" but dumb in the sense that thanks to people like you companies allow themselves to treat people like shit. As for the situation with this woman and the temp, please just stop deluding yourself. You do want the new, perky, flirty chick. If the woman currently employed does the job she was hired to do, then there's no reason to fire her. She might be doing a crappy job, but alas. As I said, you should be angry at the HR guy, not at her. See, what gets me is precisely this contradiction: you say a job is nothing more than a job, that job hours belong to the company, that companies should be allowed to fire people at will and all that... And yet you complain because this woman doesn't say "please" and "thankyou"? What makes you think the company owes you a perfectly idylic work enviroment (or in a more humanistic approach, why is your confort at the job more important than this woman's livelyhood?)? Should I assume then, that you are very much for a happy work enviroment (despite the obvious inconsistencies that I just pointed out)? So how would that work out? You are all great friends at the office, until one of the gals decided to get pregnant... Then it all goes sour b
From what I gather from the Appleseed site, they are different things (with some overlap), so I don't know why they'd need to "compete" with eachother. In an ideal world, social networking would be what the diaspora guys are trying to do. In the real world (where not everyones cares or even wants to care about running some piece of software), I think Appleseed has a concept that would be much easier to take over facebook et-al. They're both great concepts, and in the end I believe there's a place for both. Specially if diaspora is planning on making it "interoperable" (whatever that means, but I take it to mean to act as a client for other sites), maybe the utopic social networking scene will end up being some sort of combination of the 2 (like, people who are more tinfoil-hatty will run their own (diaspora) seed, and the rest who just don't give a $%% will create an account in their "local" (city, school, geeky friend's) server (running Appleseed), and everything will Just Work
Michael, maybe you could try and get in contact with the diaspora guys (since they're just starting to code and all) so that you can make sure this future is possible (making much more likely for this idea of "open social network" to happen), instead of what happens to most FOSS projects that try to do similar things (fragment the market and make all of them unpopular as a result)?
To further your point, I'd like to see ANYWHERE a report of any single clinic that has achieved any percentage (small as it may be) of cures/remissions/prolongued survival than with current MEDICAL treatments. If anyone arguing that these clinics are worthwhile can provide this, I'll shut up. But the fact of the matter is that NONE exist. As you previously said, these are as bad as homeopathy et-al in the charlatanry side of things, but these guys are playing with real stuff, and the consequences are potentially much, much worse. Homeopathy at least is just water and won't kill you any faster...
He didn't say HE PERSONALLY had that kind of problem. In any case you're making a lot of assumptions.
But with the rest of it I do agree. I've often thought about this situation and about what has really changed since, say, the 50's, when a man's salary was more than enough to support a family. I have not come up with concrete or definite answers, but one of the factors involved seems to be indeed mindless and ruthless corporativism. Back then there weren't any huge-ass megacorps, maybe a couple or airlines and banks (both of which payed suffiently well to their employees). The problem is, I don't know how we could ever go back. This isn't even a US only problem, the same thing happens on this side of the pond. Do you have a clearer view on the reasons for the current state of the matter?
In the same way, at what point did he say "I got FREE education, suckers"? At none. He explained that his government takes education seriously enough to provide it "for free" (and from that comment one doesn't have to be really smart to realise he is fully aware of where the money comes from). Let's not get into this game, because whether you meant it or not, the subtext of your previous post was his way isn't any better.
Another way to look is that while your taxes go into funding a couple of wars for reasons you don't even know (no, it's not about terrorism, but I don't want to end up discussing this), his country used that same money to put him through college. I'm not even going to get into the whole healthcare bit, but if you think paying somewhat higher taxes (and to a goverment who has it's priorities right on where to put that money) is NOT WORTH not ever having to worry about saving up money for your kids' college education (and even after that, watching them struggle to pay off the debt), then I don't really understand your way of thinking. It all boils down to you (and people who think like you) apparently thinking that having higher taxes lowers europeans' acquisitive power, when that couldn't be further from the truth (could someone back me up with some links?). Now, having a huge-ass student-loan debt to pay... I think that would diminish your acquisitive power for quite a number of years.
Nope. You seem wedded to the idea that everybody has to have all the latest toys and entertainment, or perhaps you think that fathers are not valuable. A proper family has one wage earner and one homemaker. In so many ways (education, violence, drug abuse, girls getting pregnant in high school, etc) the traditional family has proven superior for kids. Sell the McMansion, sell the second (third???) giant luxury SUV, ditch the cable TV and costly cell phone plans, and forget about travelling around the world. You don't need to keep up with the neighbors; they are drowning in debt and have no time for day-to-day family life.
Where does he say everyone should have the latest and greatest toys, travel around the world (this one is funny, since I don't know how in your view of the world you'd be able to travel AT ALL with 10 days of vacation), have an SUV and a bazillion dollar cellphone plan? He hasn't said otherwise, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was precisely against american-style consumerism. I agree that a "traditional style" family where one stays at home is better for everybody (and psychology agrees too), but in the real world, much of the time this just ISN'T POSSIBLE. Spin it how you like, but in the end this sad situation we're in is partly (at least) due to this "CAPITALISM, FUCK YEAH" mentality you ironically have. Exploiting workers and paying them the bare minimun you can get away with is the reason shit is the way it is. At least in the middle class this is the case. It used to be that mom and pop shops would have been able to be run by the single person, while his wife was at home (or helpig around sporadically, but the main idea is the family-owned business) in comes walmart, puts them out of business, and now BOTH of them have to go work there to earn a fraction of what they did originally. While all the benefits are siphoned off to the shareholders or whatever. But you get the point.
OK, I agree, but that leads to a different conclusion. The mother should not go back to work. Her child needs her. No day-care worker will love the child like the mother, nor provide the discipline and emotional security that the child needs.
No, it does not lead to a different conclusion, if you pay attention to what developmental psycologists and science in general tells you. The MOST important stage in development is the first year. If you REALLY want to reduce that, it'd be the first 6-8 months. That's why scandinavian countries have it right. Don't introduce such ridiculous points into an otherwise serious discussion. It only makes you look either stupid, douchebaggy or desperate.
And neither is going off to Africa for half a year for missionary work? And neither is spending half a year at home playing Everquest? And neither is taking a job with the competition for half a year?
Same deal. You're making me start to wonder why I'm even bothering. Do you want to discuss the matter or not? Would you really compare spending half a year playing everquest to raising a child, in the terms of the benefits to society?
Why does everybody else get hurt
Financial harm to the company hurts all employees. Maybe it's the last straw leading to layoffs or even bankrupcy.
Look, if you're going to strip my rethorical question, we're back at the beginning. I already gave the answer to that. Financial harm to the company does NOT hurt the employees (unless they are also shareholders). If the company is in such a situation where giving maternity leave to an employee (small shop) or to a certain percentage of them a year (huge megacorp) will bankrupt them, then it's a sad situation, but definitely not the woman's fault. At that point any other infinitesimal change in the market or whatever would have made it bankrupt and really, if the situation is like that everyone should have been on notice that this could happen and they should be all jumping ship. I gotta say, this mentality of yours of "putting the wellbeing of the company before the individual" really worries me. A company should not be an end in and on itself, but rather a mean to be a possitive thing to society, by providing jobs, whatever service they provide (and yeah, even making its owner filthy rich).
Look, I've seen this. We all wanted to give the substitute the job because she was way better. Because of the law, we had to let a crummy employee have her job back. Of course, that just means we'll get rid of her in some other way.
You've seen it, huh? Are you sure you didn't mean the substitute was way "nicer" instead of "better"? Or hotter? Or flirtier? I'm having a really hard time believing employees at a company would "want to give the substitute the job" because the other one way creating economic inefficiencies for the company. Oh, there's my confirmation. You used the word "crummy" to describe her. I'm sorry, but how much you like a person doesn't (or shouldn't because it DOES happen, as you said: "you'll get rid of her in some other way") play a part on whether she should have the job or not. But before you respond that she indeed was a worse worker, realise this: Then the fact that she has the job in the first place should be investigated. The HR guy who hired should get canned, and you could give his job to the hot, sassy, flirty temp! Really now. If everytime a better candidate showed up for a job companies were to can the old employee, this would be a FUCKED UP WORLD (well, I know it does happen, because of people who think like you, but thankfully we have LAWS that at least make this a little bit harder). How would you feel if you got fired for some guy who does whatever you do way better? I very much doubt you're THE BEST in your field (out of statistical improbability, it's not an insult), so it could happen. And I very much doubt you'd just go "hey, such is life! time to find a new job!", and leave the old company alone (legally speaking)
Quite simply, because in our role in a society, being productive is important, but producing offspring is much more important (in a long term kind of way). And a society who has foresight would be wise to protect this matter, because companies (who think short-term and in any case don't care about society in general) sure as hell won't. The matter of companies over here being hessitant to hire is indeed a problem but IMO it's leaps and bounds better than the alternative (ie: to let them can women just because they want to have children, and all of the consequences that that would bring). The "hiring difficulties" eventually get counteracted by the NEED to have employees, and quite honestly I don't think the number of jobs that would be created by easier firing procedures would be so great so as to even consider it. We are all (or were, we're really coming out of it) in an economic crisis, and to blame the unemployment on these laws is being myopic at best. In any case, to have an atmosphere of job insecurity and "trash contracts" is not precisely ideal.
WTF is with people thinking they should get paid for nothing and/or have a right to get back a job they abandoned for half a year? Everybody else at that company gets hurt, especially the substitute worker who'd really like to keep the job.
Aside from what I just said: a) Having a kid is not "abandoning" your job b) Why does everybody else get hurt, except (and very marginally) the company's profit, when having to pay for the substitute's salary? c) Even if the rest of the staff were made to pick up the slack, it'd be "for a bigger cause" and sure as hell they'll be able to enjoy the same "support" when they decide to have a kid. But since you seem to be such a diehard capitalism purist, I'll put it in terms you'll like: As long as they're in work hours, the company OWNS their time, and as such they should just think of it as work as usual... and if any extra hours are derived from it (totally optional, as per the law) they'll be rightly compensated for it. d) The substitute does not deserve the job. That's why she's a substitute. If she did, she'd HAVE said job. Usual capitalism and job market rules apply. And besides, she TOO would be able to benefit from maternity leave when she needed it. It's not beneficial for anybody (except the company) for the workplace to become a jungle where it's either eat or be eaten.
This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it. Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on/.
Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?
Or at the very least state to your husband/wife your current emotional status in the sense that you no longer consider them your life parter, and that you reserve from that point onward, the right to sleep with other people if you like. Seriously, to legally end a marriage is a bit of a drag, but that's no reason not to end the "relationship" and let the other person still think they're in one. That's outright unethical. As for Parent, well, if that person is completely unsuitable for you, then I guess you shouldn't have married them in the first place, no? No, people don't really change over time, and yes, the signs are there from the very beginning. There are exceptions to this, and the few people who DO change over time, don't do so on their own, they do so in the process and context of their marriage (ie, it's partly your fault). There still might be some extreme cases, but nothing that can justify the almost 50% divorce rate in western countries. And definitely not something you want to base your life philosophy on.
Seconded. Granted, a bunch of anectdotes won't make any useful data, but it has happened to me once, and to a friend I know twice. It has been suggested to me that women with histrionic personality traits behave exactly in this way, and I can indeed confirm that at least said ex has these sort of traits, so in the end it seems to boil down to it all being our fault for being attracted to such women in the first place. Upon realising this, I've made a conscious effort not to fall for these kinds of girls... So naturally I've been single for 2 years now./coolstorybro
Oh, you are mistaking advancement in medical research with pseudo-medicine. The first might be slow and painful, but it does get things done. And when they come out, you are pretty sure of what they'll do and what you can expect. In fact, you can be pretty sure that the balance between potential to cure/potential side effects (including death) is positive, because otherwise the drug would not have been accepted. Now about pseudo-medicine... It's just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to describe it. It's the new snake-oil, only prepared to deal with marginally more informed patients. They take these new and promising concepts (buzzwords, really, like stem cells) and make it seem like they're offering you the cures from tomorrow that your big bad government won't allow today. When in reality, it's as much charlatanry as homeopathy. Allow me to elaborate: In this particular case, I cannot even begin to understand what was the logic behind injecting stem cells into the kidney of a person with lupus-caused kidney disease. There is no mechanism of action to think of. They took genuine science that did something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (the trials in europe involving "stem cells" for the treatment of lupus-related kidney disease were basically a bone marrow auto-transplant) but sounded alike, and offered it as a convenient health treatment you couldn't get anywhere else. Sure you might say the patient still should have the right to choose, and in that point I'm right there with you; but the thing is, if the patient is not a doctor, he won't be able to undertand that what they're offering is total and utter bullshit. You need to realise that the mental state a person enters when faced with their own mortality is a dangerous one in the sense that suddenly all their decision-making algorithms are thrown to the trash and replaced with "let's jump at anything that claims to be able to cure me". Just the other day a friend of mine asked me about a mexican doctor who claimed he had a treatment for many mental conditions, from epilepsy to mental retardation, schizophrenia, autism, etc... By injecting the patients (who are all kids, of course) with bovine fibroblast growth factor; all based on a "study" HE made in 1991 where he "showed" (I quote it because I had to read said study and his methodology leaves much to be desired) doing so in rats affected by cerebral ischemia allowed some of the neurons in the ischemic penumbra to regain some function. With this pseudo-medicine in hand he travels around the country promising parents their kids will be "cured" from autism or mental retardation. I don't know wether he operates ilegally, but if I lived there i'd definitely report him to the authorities. Oh, did I mention his prices were desorbitant due to the fact that "the extraction and purification of these peptides is very expensive"? This price thing seems to be the norm with these sort of treatments, BTW. But hey, why not take out a second morgage (and leave your family with the consequences of that once you die) when you could BE CURED?!?!
The woman from TFA, BTW, had she not gone to this clinic, in all probability would have lost her kidney function, and would have had to live with dialisis for a while, and after that a kidney transplant, but she'd still be alive, and her family would be a lot less poor.
Personally I'll call it "synthetic life" when they design the genes from scratch. Otherwise, they're infringing on nature's patents. And that's just not cool, specially considering how they're likely to make the lawsuits rain on anyone who even thinks about using one of their "patented" "artificial" life forms. This whole "patenting living organisms" (natural, modified or completely synthetic) is a wonderful debate to be had, but I won't touch it today. I'll conform to defining "creating synthetic life". As I said, we already know a shitton about biology, and I do think we have the knowledge to be able to create an organism that is able to feed and reproduce, completely from scratch. The thing is, it would be a COLLOSAL effort, trying to model and simulate how completely new proteins are supposed to arrange themselves intro primary, secondary, terciary and even cuaternary structures, and how they are supposed to interact with their medium and other proteins... etc. AFAIK (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there aren't really any truly NEW molecules us humans have DESIGNED from scratch to be used as medicines. They are all based, derived, and sometimes even still being extracted from natural sources like plants, animals, hormones, bacteria... This is the new frontier we as humans need to conquer technology-wise in order to keep advancing us into the space age, IMHO. So those are MY requirements... heck, I'll give them extra kudos if they use another molecule completely unrelated to DNA/RNA, or at the very least change the genetic code. About the first host "shell" I don't really care, since it's just a technicallity that can be easily overcome, at that. I think.
I know, sorry, I really tried (in different browsers even), but there seemed to be a problem with/. at the time I posted it.
It's not like I love a disorganised lump of text splattered on the screen or anything... Oh, look, I had my comments settings screwed up (weird since this hadn't happened before...). So ok, I'll just paste it here.
Wow. Parent surely will be able to respond to you better, but I'll give it my best shot. First I'll try to condensate your grips with modern medicine to be able to address them in an orderly fashion sometime before the end of the world (2012). Feel free to add any that I've missed.
1) Barrier to obtaining knowledge 2) Inability to get your hands on drugs/doing things yourself 3) The fact that doctors have access to more information than patients do 4) Doctors don't know everything.
1) I don't know what your barriers might be. I, myself, when going to the bookstore to get a book about a subject am not asked for any kind of credentials to acquire them. Please specify where the big difficulty lies. And sure going to medschool is the best way to learn. Why? the same reason going to a university to study ANYTHING is better than just reading up. Methodology, pedagogy, what have you. And as with other professions, you need a licence to practice. This is because you will be issued responsibilities and society has to have some way or distinguishing a doctor from a fortune teller.
2) This is tricky one, but more political than anything. In Europe, for instance your don't need a presciption for nearly as many drugs as you do in the US. But you ARE able to buy drugs for the most common ailments, aren't you? aspirins for headaches and mild anticongestants for the flu. As for the rest of the drugs, well it's a mixed bag. Firstly, most medications can and will hurt a person when used innaproprietly. You might say "it's my body so let me do whatever I want", but if people were (and believe me, they would) dropping by the bunch (and while trying to get better), there would be a general cryout for the goverment to do something. And no, don't even compare it to other substances that are also potentially lethal, because while it's obvious you shouldn't drink bleach, it's not very obvious you shouldn't use heparin to try to fix your hemorroids if you have an active ulcer. And no, all the warnings and instruction manuals in the world will not do it. It's a matter of public safety, like making sure a bridge is well built (or do you suggest they could put up a sign in the bridge that read "this brigde was not built by any engineers, proceed at your own risk" and leave it open to the public? Come on, if people are suieing eachother because they slip on their portion of the boardwalk... what pharmaceutical company would be brave enough to confront THAT? Also, there's the matter of psycotropic drugs, which like it or not is very much related to the drug legality. So that is a legal issue, not a medical one. Oh, and also, there are truly dangerous (as in massively and ecologically) drugs out there, mainly citostatics. You might like to treat that belly pain you woke up with (stomach cancer, according to google) with some cool chemo (or god forbid, radioactive isotopes for your throat pain [thyroid cancer]), but using those drugs would present a great risk to public (and ecological) health. By the same note, if I want to experiment with alternative energy sources, why can't I just go to the hardware store to buy some enriched uranium?
3) This is just bullshit. All the info we have available are the books we buy, the classes we took, the magazines we subscribe to, and a couple of websites with condensed and peer-reviewed data (payed for o), and pubmed; ALL of which you can get your hands without any sort of problem. I dare you, go to pubmed, type some disease you're interested in, and read up on the current research being done on them. Or buy an issue of the NEJM. It's the exact same info your doctor has available. But I'm gue
Wow. Parent surely will be able to respond to you better, but I'll give it my best shot.
First I'll try to condensate your grips with modern medicine to be able to address them in an orderly fashion sometime before the end of the world (2012). Feel free to add any that I've missed.
1) Barrier to obtaining knowledge
2) Inability to get your hands on drugs/doing things yourself
3) The fact that doctors have access to more information than patients do.
4) Doctors don't know everything
1) I don't know what your barriers might be. I, myself, when going to the bookstore to get a book about a subject am not asked for any kind of credentials to acquire them. Please specify where the big difficulty lies. And sure going to medschool is the best way to learn. Why? the same reason going to a university to study ANYTHING is better than just reading up. Methodology, pedagogy, what have you. And as with other professions, you need a licence to practice. This is because you will be issued responsibilities and society has to have some way or distinguishing a doctor from a fortune teller.
2) This is tricky one, but more political than anything. In Europe, for instance your don't need a presciption for nearly as many drugs as you do in the US. But you ARE able to buy drugs for the most common ailments, aren't you? aspirins for headaches and mild anticongestants for the flu. As for the rest of the drugs, well it's a mixed bag. Firstly, most medications can and will hurt a person when used innaproprietly. You might say "it's my body so let me do whatever I want", but if people were (and believe me, they would) dropping by the bunch (and while trying to get better), there would be a general cryout for the goverment to do something. And no, don't even compare it to other substances that are also potentially lethal, because while it's obvious you shouldn't drink bleach, it's not very obvious you shouldn't use heparin to try to fix your hemorroids if you have an active ulcer. And no, all the warnings and instruction manuals in the world will not do it. It's a matter of public safety, like making sure a bridge is well built (or do you suggest they could put up a sign in the bridge that read "this brigde was not built by any engineers, proceed at your own risk" and leave it open to the public? Come on, if people are suieing eachother because they slip on their portion of the boardwalk... what pharmaceutical company would be brave enough to confront THAT? Also, there's the matter of psycotropic drugs, which like it or not is very much related to the drug legality. So that is a legal issue, not a medical one. Oh, and also, there are truly dangerous (as in massively and ecologically) drugs out there, mainly citostatics. You might like to treat that belly pain you woke up with (stomach cancer, according to google) with some cool chemo (or god forbid, radioactive isotopes for your throat pain [thyroid cancer]), but using those drugs would present a great risk to public (and ecological) health. By the same note, if I want to experiment with alternative energy sources, why can't I just go to the hardware store to buy some enriched uranium?
3) This is just bullshit. All the info we have available are the books we buy, the classes we took, the magazines we subscribe to, and a couple of websites with condensed and peer-reviewed data (payed for o), and pubmed; ALL of which you can get your hands without any sort of problem. I dare you, go to pubmed, type some disease you're interested in, and read up on the current research being done on them. Or buy an issue of the NEJM. It's the exact same info your doctor has available. But I'm guessing your doctor will probably be able to exact a bit more of useful information from it. The same way if I bought a book of hardcore python examples and practical uses I probably wouldn't know what to do with it.
In that sense, please don't compare practicing medicine to painting your house. the same way I don't compare programming to keeping an up-to-date script for installing my favorite apps for when I do a full rei
Agreed. And to think some relatives won't even watch TDK because it's a "superhero flick", oh well...
I've always thought of it as one of the greatest movies... with a superhero trown in. Or rather as "Joker Begins"
Really? Can you please tell me exactly how many "orthodox" islamic subcults do NOT force their women to wear at the very least veils? Where they are allowed to drive?
I could go on...
You might kid, but the control group is ESSENTIAL in a cohorts study in order to being able to stablish causality. Otherwise, what are they going to compare the cases against? The few old people who don't use cellphones?
I'm sorry, but true islam is NOT extremely peaceful. The Coran explicitly states you are well within your right to strike your wife if she won't subjugate to your will, just to cite an example.
And before you come back citing some other horrible passage in the Bible (and there are quite a few, altho arguagly not as much as in the Coran) bear in mind that unlike Islamism, most forms of Christianity (and certainly Catholicism) are NOT based on a literal interpretation on the Bible.
Just because orthodox Islam does not openly endorse terrorism does not make it a peaceful religion. It is very far from it.
You might be joking but I have been pondering about this seriously. Just last monday (ie: JUST BEFORE this cloud appeared, I wouldn't have been able to get back home) I got back from a cruise trough the caribbean and just had such a great time that wouldn't mind AT ALL to make all my future trans-continental travels aboard a ship. BTW the ship we travelled in was going to head to england afterwards, and it was to take about five days (they must have arrived the day before yesterday). So, IDK... considering even the price is sometimes even cheaper than a trans-continental flight, I wouldn't be surprised if this picked up, were the volcano to continue releasing ash in the months to come.
As someone who doesn't enjoy flying AT ALL, I can definitely get behind this!
Slashdot Mirror
We pretty much agree, then :)
...Except by not actually introducing any new species, it is nothing like Autralia's toad problem. When the oxygen stops being pumped, the bacteria return to normal population levels.
Having said that, I somehow very much doubt that even if you shoveled tons of bateria down there and made oxygen readily available, they'd be able to metabolize the millions and millions of gallons of oil that are being released each day. A nice way to speed up ecological recovery once the well has been plugged? Sure. A real solution that will take care of the spill at the required speed when there are monstruous amounts of crude escaping that place every single second? No way. Not by a long shot.
I had being toying with the idea of oxygen bubbles, incidentally (hadn't thought about how to power the air pumps, thanks for that). But in a much more different scenario. Surround the leak with air pumps that inject enormous amounts of oxygen (as much as needed) to create a sort of oil/air/water emulsion, and set the damn thing on fire. After all, that's the way they deal with excess oil/gas in drilling sites on land, right? By just burning it?
I have NO idea how feasible this would be, but what is clear is that that hole needs to be plugged NOW. Why haven't we heard on the news of any new genious plans to make this happen? Do BP and the goverment plan to do NOTHING? Will they start to take the russian approach more seriously at some point (you'd think they have another plan if they are so quick to disregard the only people who have had to deal with with problem multiple times before)?
I'm sorry, but bringing a F$%"ing blimp is a JOKE. What are they doing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
Absurdity, hmmm? Both my grandmothers did exactly that. One had a college degree. The other had a HS diploma, which was quite fancy for a female who grew up in the Great Depression. My mother did nearly that, except for a bit of part-time work near the end. My wife is a full-time mother. AFAIK, all of her friends are full-time mothers.It's not counterproductive. It produces decently educated people who stay out of prison.
Yeah, I agree for the most part. You seemed to ignore where I said "in those last few years", where, I'm sure you'll also agree it would be counterproductive to have an overvigilant, overbearing mother wathing over you from, say 15-18. Not that your case (and that of your matriarchs) was what we were discussing exactly. If you have the means to permit the woman not to work, that's perfect and all the better for the kids. But we were discussing the case of the majority of the population where the woman DOES need to work, and what would be the best period (from a cost/benefit PoV for society) would be to give women as paid leave. So don't make points where there are none. Altho, judging from the pieces of my posts you decide to reply to, I see (and therefore understand) that you don't have many counterpoints to make.
Your "job description" sounds like a union concept. It's static. The employer gets in trouble if I tighten a screw on my desk because I'm not in the union with the contract to tighten screws on desks.
In the sane world, a job description is an approximate description used for hiring. The employee is generally expected to do whatever is asked. He can of course refuse because he is not a slave, but then of course he may lose his job.
No, I'm not saying a job description should be neither static nor inflexible. But if "being nice" is so paramount to her job as you make it out to be, you'd think it'd be included there, right? I just think you're trying to justify to yourself (legally, ethically, and perhaps even morally) your wanting to fire her, when, in reality, as you yourself admitted, she is doing her job adequately. Maybe not the way you'd like her to (specially since the new hot one has been introduced to you), but she IS doing it, which is the point. There is no reason to fire a person who gets the job done. Hence my "fixation" with job descriptions (which you've yet again hyperboled into absurdity).
Allow me a little divagation before carrying on. Being the (mostly) good person that I am, I'm going to help you out to discern between what is ethical and what is not because (as you'll see) I have experience in the matter. In the hospital where I worked for a while, we had an ethics commitee (I know, right? Who knew doctors don't actually make really important decisions according to what comes out of our asses?), and I got to participate in it a couple of times. When deciding if some solution to a problem is ethic or not, we have a few key points to reflect on to use as criteria (you can look this up). One of those points is "public scrutiny" which means you have to imagine trying to explain your proposed solution to everyone and anyone (including your family) and see how that makes you feel. If you feel unconfortable with that idea, it generally means that that particular solution is a poor ethical choice. Maybe you'd like to do the same and imagine yourself trying to explain all of this to your stay-at-home wife? (I'm not joking or making fun of you, this is really how decisions {more important ones, granted} are made. Sorry beforehand if you feel I crossed some line there).
Now let's continue.
It's people like you who support the parasitic army of lawyers that is choking our economy. It's people like you who would have me sit idle for weeks while waiting for somebody with the proper job description to get around to unpacking my computer.
Those are some harsh (and very missinformed) assumptions. I'll have you know, I dislike unions probably every bit as mu
What about the second most important stage, the third most important stage, and so on? Why short change the child? Doesn't the child deserve a full-time mother?
It's a simple matter of cost/benefit. It wouldn't be reasonable (nor healthy) to have a woman doing absolutely nothing but "looking after" her children for 18+ years. Specially in those last few years, it would be counterproductive. Now, before I go on, I want you to know I didn't answer because I mistook your question as being serious. I did just so you can visualise the level of absurdity that you are reaching with what you no doubt consider your "brilliant wits and unstoppable rethoric". Hyperboling into absurdity is not clever insight, it's what kids use to ridicule each other in the playground.
Not seriously, but I would compare those things in terms of fairness to other employees.
Again with the fairness. I thought I had already tackled that so I won't repeat the same argument here, but don't worry, I'll touch on it on my next point.
That too, but more importantly NOT LAZY and NOT RUDE. For a random office helper (book travel, keep the snacks in stock, run out to buy office supplies, etc.) it is important to be polite and have a can-do attitude. Yes, that means likeable; she's not paid for manual labor or engineering talent. When highly-paid engineers would rather do her work themselves because the she is too painful to deal with, there is a problem.
(and the rest of your post)
Agreed, there is a problem there. And if her job description included "being nice and all that", then she could be effortlessly canned for breach of contract without any legal (or ethical, for that matter) repercussions. But I'm guessing her job description didn't include any of that. So I repeat, the HR guy (who wrote up the contract)should be canned instead. It's not that I feel a job is owed to me or that once I got it it should be mine forever; but I do expect that if a company has been using my "services" for a certain amount of time (time which could be potentially spent on another company doing greater and better things), they sure as hell will need to justify their actions whenever they feel like firing me. And it's not just my crazy ideas, it's the law (yes, even in the most capitalist country in the world). That is ALL i'm saying, not that they should keep this woman forever until she dies of old age. The "entitlement" you speak of, is nothing more than what an indefinite services contract makes me (or you, or whomever) entitled to. If you say you'd just accept being fired because you weren't liked there (regardless of whether or not you'd like working in such an enviroment, please realise this is not the point before answering), then you're just being dumb. And not just "noble dumb" but dumb in the sense that thanks to people like you companies allow themselves to treat people like shit.
As for the situation with this woman and the temp, please just stop deluding yourself. You do want the new, perky, flirty chick. If the woman currently employed does the job she was hired to do, then there's no reason to fire her. She might be doing a crappy job, but alas. As I said, you should be angry at the HR guy, not at her.
See, what gets me is precisely this contradiction: you say a job is nothing more than a job, that job hours belong to the company, that companies should be allowed to fire people at will and all that... And yet you complain because this woman doesn't say "please" and "thankyou"? What makes you think the company owes you a perfectly idylic work enviroment (or in a more humanistic approach, why is your confort at the job more important than this woman's livelyhood?)?
Should I assume then, that you are very much for a happy work enviroment (despite the obvious inconsistencies that I just pointed out)? So how would that work out? You are all great friends at the office, until one of the gals decided to get pregnant... Then it all goes sour b
Oh. Great, then :)
Oh, and naturally, by also making the file formats interoperable so as to make migrating from one system to the other painless.
From what I gather from the Appleseed site, they are different things (with some overlap), so I don't know why they'd need to "compete" with eachother.
In an ideal world, social networking would be what the diaspora guys are trying to do. In the real world (where not everyones cares or even wants to care about running some piece of software), I think Appleseed has a concept that would be much easier to take over facebook et-al.
They're both great concepts, and in the end I believe there's a place for both. Specially if diaspora is planning on making it "interoperable" (whatever that means, but I take it to mean to act as a client for other sites), maybe the utopic social networking scene will end up being some sort of combination of the 2 (like, people who are more tinfoil-hatty will run their own (diaspora) seed, and the rest who just don't give a $%% will create an account in their "local" (city, school, geeky friend's) server (running Appleseed), and everything will Just Work
Michael, maybe you could try and get in contact with the diaspora guys (since they're just starting to code and all) so that you can make sure this future is possible (making much more likely for this idea of "open social network" to happen), instead of what happens to most FOSS projects that try to do similar things (fragment the market and make all of them unpopular as a result)?
To further your point, I'd like to see ANYWHERE a report of any single clinic that has achieved any percentage (small as it may be) of cures/remissions/prolongued survival than with current MEDICAL treatments.
If anyone arguing that these clinics are worthwhile can provide this, I'll shut up.
But the fact of the matter is that NONE exist. As you previously said, these are as bad as homeopathy et-al in the charlatanry side of things, but these guys are playing with real stuff, and the consequences are potentially much, much worse. Homeopathy at least is just water and won't kill you any faster...
He didn't say HE PERSONALLY had that kind of problem. In any case you're making a lot of assumptions.
But with the rest of it I do agree. I've often thought about this situation and about what has really changed since, say, the 50's, when a man's salary was more than enough to support a family. I have not come up with concrete or definite answers, but one of the factors involved seems to be indeed mindless and ruthless corporativism. Back then there weren't any huge-ass megacorps, maybe a couple or airlines and banks (both of which payed suffiently well to their employees).
The problem is, I don't know how we could ever go back. This isn't even a US only problem, the same thing happens on this side of the pond.
Do you have a clearer view on the reasons for the current state of the matter?
In the same way, at what point did he say "I got FREE education, suckers"? At none. He explained that his government takes education seriously enough to provide it "for free" (and from that comment one doesn't have to be really smart to realise he is fully aware of where the money comes from).
Let's not get into this game, because whether you meant it or not, the subtext of your previous post was his way isn't any better.
Another way to look is that while your taxes go into funding a couple of wars for reasons you don't even know (no, it's not about terrorism, but I don't want to end up discussing this), his country used that same money to put him through college.
I'm not even going to get into the whole healthcare bit, but if you think paying somewhat higher taxes (and to a goverment who has it's priorities right on where to put that money) is NOT WORTH not ever having to worry about saving up money for your kids' college education (and even after that, watching them struggle to pay off the debt), then I don't really understand your way of thinking.
It all boils down to you (and people who think like you) apparently thinking that having higher taxes lowers europeans' acquisitive power, when that couldn't be further from the truth (could someone back me up with some links?). Now, having a huge-ass student-loan debt to pay... I think that would diminish your acquisitive power for quite a number of years.
Nope. You seem wedded to the idea that everybody has to have all the latest toys and entertainment, or perhaps you think that fathers are not valuable. A proper family has one wage earner and one homemaker. In so many ways (education, violence, drug abuse, girls getting pregnant in high school, etc) the traditional family has proven superior for kids. Sell the McMansion, sell the second (third???) giant luxury SUV, ditch the cable TV and costly cell phone plans, and forget about travelling around the world. You don't need to keep up with the neighbors; they are drowning in debt and have no time for day-to-day family life.
Where does he say everyone should have the latest and greatest toys, travel around the world (this one is funny, since I don't know how in your view of the world you'd be able to travel AT ALL with 10 days of vacation), have an SUV and a bazillion dollar cellphone plan? He hasn't said otherwise, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was precisely against american-style consumerism.
I agree that a "traditional style" family where one stays at home is better for everybody (and psychology agrees too), but in the real world, much of the time this just ISN'T POSSIBLE. Spin it how you like, but in the end this sad situation we're in is partly (at least) due to this "CAPITALISM, FUCK YEAH" mentality you ironically have. Exploiting workers and paying them the bare minimun you can get away with is the reason shit is the way it is. At least in the middle class this is the case. It used to be that mom and pop shops would have been able to be run by the single person, while his wife was at home (or helpig around sporadically, but the main idea is the family-owned business) in comes walmart, puts them out of business, and now BOTH of them have to go work there to earn a fraction of what they did originally. While all the benefits are siphoned off to the shareholders or whatever. But you get the point.
OK, I agree, but that leads to a different conclusion. The mother should not go back to work. Her child needs her. No day-care worker will love the child like the mother, nor provide the discipline and emotional security that the child needs.
No, it does not lead to a different conclusion, if you pay attention to what developmental psycologists and science in general tells you. The MOST important stage in development is the first year. If you REALLY want to reduce that, it'd be the first 6-8 months. That's why scandinavian countries have it right. Don't introduce such ridiculous points into an otherwise serious discussion. It only makes you look either stupid, douchebaggy or desperate.
And neither is going off to Africa for half a year for missionary work? And neither is spending half a year at home playing Everquest? And neither is taking a job with the competition for half a year?
Same deal. You're making me start to wonder why I'm even bothering. Do you want to discuss the matter or not? Would you really compare spending half a year playing everquest to raising a child, in the terms of the benefits to society?
Why does everybody else get hurt
Financial harm to the company hurts all employees. Maybe it's the last straw leading to layoffs or even bankrupcy.
Look, if you're going to strip my rethorical question, we're back at the beginning. I already gave the answer to that. Financial harm to the company does NOT hurt the employees (unless they are also shareholders). If the company is in such a situation where giving maternity leave to an employee (small shop) or to a certain percentage of them a year (huge megacorp) will bankrupt them, then it's a sad situation, but definitely not the woman's fault. At that point any other infinitesimal change in the market or whatever would have made it bankrupt and really, if the situation is like that everyone should have been on notice that this could happen and they should be all jumping ship. I gotta say, this mentality of yours of "putting the wellbeing of the company before the individual" really worries me. A company should not be an end in and on itself, but rather a mean to be a possitive thing to society, by providing jobs, whatever service they provide (and yeah, even making its owner filthy rich).
Look, I've seen this. We all wanted to give the substitute the job because she was way better. Because of the law, we had to let a crummy employee have her job back. Of course, that just means we'll get rid of her in some other way.
You've seen it, huh? Are you sure you didn't mean the substitute was way "nicer" instead of "better"? Or hotter? Or flirtier? I'm having a really hard time believing employees at a company would "want to give the substitute the job" because the other one way creating economic inefficiencies for the company. Oh, there's my confirmation. You used the word "crummy" to describe her. I'm sorry, but how much you like a person doesn't (or shouldn't because it DOES happen, as you said: "you'll get rid of her in some other way") play a part on whether she should have the job or not. But before you respond that she indeed was a worse worker, realise this: Then the fact that she has the job in the first place should be investigated. The HR guy who hired should get canned, and you could give his job to the hot, sassy, flirty temp!
Really now. If everytime a better candidate showed up for a job companies were to can the old employee, this would be a FUCKED UP WORLD (well, I know it does happen, because of people who think like you, but thankfully we have LAWS that at least make this a little bit harder). How would you feel if you got fired for some guy who does whatever you do way better? I very much doubt you're THE BEST in your field (out of statistical improbability, it's not an insult), so it could happen. And I very much doubt you'd just go "hey, such is life! time to find a new job!", and leave the old company alone (legally speaking)
Quite simply, because in our role in a society, being productive is important, but producing offspring is much more important (in a long term kind of way). And a society who has foresight would be wise to protect this matter, because companies (who think short-term and in any case don't care about society in general) sure as hell won't.
The matter of companies over here being hessitant to hire is indeed a problem but IMO it's leaps and bounds better than the alternative (ie: to let them can women just because they want to have children, and all of the consequences that that would bring). The "hiring difficulties" eventually get counteracted by the NEED to have employees, and quite honestly I don't think the number of jobs that would be created by easier firing procedures would be so great so as to even consider it. We are all (or were, we're really coming out of it) in an economic crisis, and to blame the unemployment on these laws is being myopic at best. In any case, to have an atmosphere of job insecurity and "trash contracts" is not precisely ideal.
WTF is with people thinking they should get paid for nothing and/or have a right to get back a job they abandoned for half a year? Everybody else at that company gets hurt, especially the substitute worker who'd really like to keep the job.
Aside from what I just said:
a) Having a kid is not "abandoning" your job
b) Why does everybody else get hurt, except (and very marginally) the company's profit, when having to pay for the substitute's salary?
c) Even if the rest of the staff were made to pick up the slack, it'd be "for a bigger cause" and sure as hell they'll be able to enjoy the same "support" when they decide to have a kid. But since you seem to be such a diehard capitalism purist, I'll put it in terms you'll like: As long as they're in work hours, the company OWNS their time, and as such they should just think of it as work as usual... and if any extra hours are derived from it (totally optional, as per the law) they'll be rightly compensated for it.
d) The substitute does not deserve the job. That's why she's a substitute. If she did, she'd HAVE said job. Usual capitalism and job market rules apply. And besides, she TOO would be able to benefit from maternity leave when she needed it. It's not beneficial for anybody (except the company) for the workplace to become a jungle where it's either eat or be eaten.
This may earn me some negaitve karma, but so be it. /.
Oh yes, because people who cheat are ALWAYS bad, and it has nothing to do with the fact that their partner might be completely unsuitable for them and/or positively damaging to them. I *love* black and white morality. I thought we had some people that appreciate shades of grey on
Why wouldn't they get a divorce first?
Or at the very least state to your husband/wife your current emotional status in the sense that you no longer consider them your life parter, and that you reserve from that point onward, the right to sleep with other people if you like.
Seriously, to legally end a marriage is a bit of a drag, but that's no reason not to end the "relationship" and let the other person still think they're in one. That's outright unethical.
As for Parent, well, if that person is completely unsuitable for you, then I guess you shouldn't have married them in the first place, no? No, people don't really change over time, and yes, the signs are there from the very beginning. There are exceptions to this, and the few people who DO change over time, don't do so on their own, they do so in the process and context of their marriage (ie, it's partly your fault). There still might be some extreme cases, but nothing that can justify the almost 50% divorce rate in western countries. And definitely not something you want to base your life philosophy on.
Seconded. Granted, a bunch of anectdotes won't make any useful data, but it has happened to me once, and to a friend I know twice. /coolstorybro
It has been suggested to me that women with histrionic personality traits behave exactly in this way, and I can indeed confirm that at least said ex has these sort of traits, so in the end it seems to boil down to it all being our fault for being attracted to such women in the first place. Upon realising this, I've made a conscious effort not to fall for these kinds of girls... So naturally I've been single for 2 years now.
Oh, you are mistaking advancement in medical research with pseudo-medicine.
The first might be slow and painful, but it does get things done. And when they come out, you are pretty sure of what they'll do and what you can expect. In fact, you can be pretty sure that the balance between potential to cure/potential side effects (including death) is positive, because otherwise the drug would not have been accepted.
Now about pseudo-medicine... It's just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to describe it. It's the new snake-oil, only prepared to deal with marginally more informed patients. They take these new and promising concepts (buzzwords, really, like stem cells) and make it seem like they're offering you the cures from tomorrow that your big bad government won't allow today. When in reality, it's as much charlatanry as homeopathy.
Allow me to elaborate:
In this particular case, I cannot even begin to understand what was the logic behind injecting stem cells into the kidney of a person with lupus-caused kidney disease. There is no mechanism of action to think of. They took genuine science that did something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (the trials in europe involving "stem cells" for the treatment of lupus-related kidney disease were basically a bone marrow auto-transplant) but sounded alike, and offered it as a convenient health treatment you couldn't get anywhere else.
Sure you might say the patient still should have the right to choose, and in that point I'm right there with you; but the thing is, if the patient is not a doctor, he won't be able to undertand that what they're offering is total and utter bullshit. You need to realise that the mental state a person enters when faced with their own mortality is a dangerous one in the sense that suddenly all their decision-making algorithms are thrown to the trash and replaced with "let's jump at anything that claims to be able to cure me".
Just the other day a friend of mine asked me about a mexican doctor who claimed he had a treatment for many mental conditions, from epilepsy to mental retardation, schizophrenia, autism, etc... By injecting the patients (who are all kids, of course) with bovine fibroblast growth factor; all based on a "study" HE made in 1991 where he "showed" (I quote it because I had to read said study and his methodology leaves much to be desired) doing so in rats affected by cerebral ischemia allowed some of the neurons in the ischemic penumbra to regain some function. With this pseudo-medicine in hand he travels around the country promising parents their kids will be "cured" from autism or mental retardation. I don't know wether he operates ilegally, but if I lived there i'd definitely report him to the authorities. Oh, did I mention his prices were desorbitant due to the fact that "the extraction and purification of these peptides is very expensive"? This price thing seems to be the norm with these sort of treatments, BTW. But hey, why not take out a second morgage (and leave your family with the consequences of that once you die) when you could BE CURED?!?!
The woman from TFA, BTW, had she not gone to this clinic, in all probability would have lost her kidney function, and would have had to live with dialisis for a while, and after that a kidney transplant, but she'd still be alive, and her family would be a lot less poor.
Personally I'll call it "synthetic life" when they design the genes from scratch. Otherwise, they're infringing on nature's patents. And that's just not cool, specially considering how they're likely to make the lawsuits rain on anyone who even thinks about using one of their "patented" "artificial" life forms. This whole "patenting living organisms" (natural, modified or completely synthetic) is a wonderful debate to be had, but I won't touch it today.
I'll conform to defining "creating synthetic life".
As I said, we already know a shitton about biology, and I do think we have the knowledge to be able to create an organism that is able to feed and reproduce, completely from scratch. The thing is, it would be a COLLOSAL effort, trying to model and simulate how completely new proteins are supposed to arrange themselves intro primary, secondary, terciary and even cuaternary structures, and how they are supposed to interact with their medium and other proteins... etc. AFAIK (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there aren't really any truly NEW molecules us humans have DESIGNED from scratch to be used as medicines. They are all based, derived, and sometimes even still being extracted from natural sources like plants, animals, hormones, bacteria...
This is the new frontier we as humans need to conquer technology-wise in order to keep advancing us into the space age, IMHO.
So those are MY requirements... heck, I'll give them extra kudos if they use another molecule completely unrelated to DNA/RNA, or at the very least change the genetic code. About the first host "shell" I don't really care, since it's just a technicallity that can be easily overcome, at that. I think.
I know, sorry, I really tried (in different browsers even), but there seemed to be a problem with /. at the time I posted it.
It's not like I love a disorganised lump of text splattered on the screen or anything...
Oh, look, I had my comments settings screwed up (weird since this hadn't happened before...). So ok, I'll just paste it here.
Wow. Parent surely will be able to respond to you better, but I'll give it my best shot. First I'll try to condensate your grips with modern medicine to be able to address them in an orderly fashion sometime before the end of the world (2012). Feel free to add any that I've missed.
1) Barrier to obtaining knowledge
2) Inability to get your hands on drugs/doing things yourself
3) The fact that doctors have access to more information than patients do
4) Doctors don't know everything.
1) I don't know what your barriers might be. I, myself, when going to the bookstore to get a book about a subject am not asked for any kind of credentials to acquire them. Please specify where the big difficulty lies. And sure going to medschool is the best way to learn. Why? the same reason going to a university to study ANYTHING is better than just reading up. Methodology, pedagogy, what have you. And as with other professions, you need a licence to practice. This is because you will be issued responsibilities and society has to have some way or distinguishing a doctor from a fortune teller.
2) This is tricky one, but more political than anything. In Europe, for instance your don't need a presciption for nearly as many drugs as you do in the US. But you ARE able to buy drugs for the most common ailments, aren't you? aspirins for headaches and mild anticongestants for the flu. As for the rest of the drugs, well it's a mixed bag. Firstly, most medications can and will hurt a person when used innaproprietly. You might say "it's my body so let me do whatever I want", but if people were (and believe me, they would) dropping by the bunch (and while trying to get better), there would be a general cryout for the goverment to do something. And no, don't even compare it to other substances that are also potentially lethal, because while it's obvious you shouldn't drink bleach, it's not very obvious you shouldn't use heparin to try to fix your hemorroids if you have an active ulcer. And no, all the warnings and instruction manuals in the world will not do it. It's a matter of public safety, like making sure a bridge is well built (or do you suggest they could put up a sign in the bridge that read "this brigde was not built by any engineers, proceed at your own risk" and leave it open to the public? Come on, if people are suieing eachother because they slip on their portion of the boardwalk... what pharmaceutical company would be brave enough to confront THAT? Also, there's the matter of psycotropic drugs, which like it or not is very much related to the drug legality. So that is a legal issue, not a medical one. Oh, and also, there are truly dangerous (as in massively and ecologically) drugs out there, mainly citostatics. You might like to treat that belly pain you woke up with (stomach cancer, according to google) with some cool chemo (or god forbid, radioactive isotopes for your throat pain [thyroid cancer]), but using those drugs would present a great risk to public (and ecological) health. By the same note, if I want to experiment with alternative energy sources, why can't I just go to the hardware store to buy some enriched uranium?
3) This is just bullshit. All the info we have available are the books we buy, the classes we took, the magazines we subscribe to, and a couple of websites with condensed and peer-reviewed data (payed for o), and pubmed; ALL of which you can get your hands without any sort of problem. I dare you, go to pubmed, type some disease you're interested in, and read up on the current research being done on them. Or buy an issue of the NEJM. It's the exact same info your doctor has available. But I'm gue
Wow. Parent surely will be able to respond to you better, but I'll give it my best shot. First I'll try to condensate your grips with modern medicine to be able to address them in an orderly fashion sometime before the end of the world (2012). Feel free to add any that I've missed. 1) Barrier to obtaining knowledge 2) Inability to get your hands on drugs/doing things yourself 3) The fact that doctors have access to more information than patients do. 4) Doctors don't know everything 1) I don't know what your barriers might be. I, myself, when going to the bookstore to get a book about a subject am not asked for any kind of credentials to acquire them. Please specify where the big difficulty lies. And sure going to medschool is the best way to learn. Why? the same reason going to a university to study ANYTHING is better than just reading up. Methodology, pedagogy, what have you. And as with other professions, you need a licence to practice. This is because you will be issued responsibilities and society has to have some way or distinguishing a doctor from a fortune teller. 2) This is tricky one, but more political than anything. In Europe, for instance your don't need a presciption for nearly as many drugs as you do in the US. But you ARE able to buy drugs for the most common ailments, aren't you? aspirins for headaches and mild anticongestants for the flu. As for the rest of the drugs, well it's a mixed bag. Firstly, most medications can and will hurt a person when used innaproprietly. You might say "it's my body so let me do whatever I want", but if people were (and believe me, they would) dropping by the bunch (and while trying to get better), there would be a general cryout for the goverment to do something. And no, don't even compare it to other substances that are also potentially lethal, because while it's obvious you shouldn't drink bleach, it's not very obvious you shouldn't use heparin to try to fix your hemorroids if you have an active ulcer. And no, all the warnings and instruction manuals in the world will not do it. It's a matter of public safety, like making sure a bridge is well built (or do you suggest they could put up a sign in the bridge that read "this brigde was not built by any engineers, proceed at your own risk" and leave it open to the public? Come on, if people are suieing eachother because they slip on their portion of the boardwalk... what pharmaceutical company would be brave enough to confront THAT? Also, there's the matter of psycotropic drugs, which like it or not is very much related to the drug legality. So that is a legal issue, not a medical one. Oh, and also, there are truly dangerous (as in massively and ecologically) drugs out there, mainly citostatics. You might like to treat that belly pain you woke up with (stomach cancer, according to google) with some cool chemo (or god forbid, radioactive isotopes for your throat pain [thyroid cancer]), but using those drugs would present a great risk to public (and ecological) health. By the same note, if I want to experiment with alternative energy sources, why can't I just go to the hardware store to buy some enriched uranium? 3) This is just bullshit. All the info we have available are the books we buy, the classes we took, the magazines we subscribe to, and a couple of websites with condensed and peer-reviewed data (payed for o), and pubmed; ALL of which you can get your hands without any sort of problem. I dare you, go to pubmed, type some disease you're interested in, and read up on the current research being done on them. Or buy an issue of the NEJM. It's the exact same info your doctor has available. But I'm guessing your doctor will probably be able to exact a bit more of useful information from it. The same way if I bought a book of hardcore python examples and practical uses I probably wouldn't know what to do with it. In that sense, please don't compare practicing medicine to painting your house. the same way I don't compare programming to keeping an up-to-date script for installing my favorite apps for when I do a full rei
Agreed. And to think some relatives won't even watch TDK because it's a "superhero flick", oh well... I've always thought of it as one of the greatest movies... with a superhero trown in. Or rather as "Joker Begins"
Really? Can you please tell me exactly how many "orthodox" islamic subcults do NOT force their women to wear at the very least veils? Where they are allowed to drive? I could go on...
You might kid, but the control group is ESSENTIAL in a cohorts study in order to being able to stablish causality. Otherwise, what are they going to compare the cases against? The few old people who don't use cellphones?
I'm sorry, but true islam is NOT extremely peaceful. The Coran explicitly states you are well within your right to strike your wife if she won't subjugate to your will, just to cite an example. And before you come back citing some other horrible passage in the Bible (and there are quite a few, altho arguagly not as much as in the Coran) bear in mind that unlike Islamism, most forms of Christianity (and certainly Catholicism) are NOT based on a literal interpretation on the Bible. Just because orthodox Islam does not openly endorse terrorism does not make it a peaceful religion. It is very far from it.
You might be joking but I have been pondering about this seriously. Just last monday (ie: JUST BEFORE this cloud appeared, I wouldn't have been able to get back home) I got back from a cruise trough the caribbean and just had such a great time that wouldn't mind AT ALL to make all my future trans-continental travels aboard a ship. BTW the ship we travelled in was going to head to england afterwards, and it was to take about five days (they must have arrived the day before yesterday). So, IDK... considering even the price is sometimes even cheaper than a trans-continental flight, I wouldn't be surprised if this picked up, were the volcano to continue releasing ash in the months to come. As someone who doesn't enjoy flying AT ALL, I can definitely get behind this!