Interestingly enough a lot of it was also to protect rights that people DID have in the UK but not the colonies at the time (trial by jury) or that they DID have in the UK at the time but have since lost (right to keep and bear arms, for example).
I use the portable optical drive for: 1) Reading documentation manuals that come with hardware (like printers) on CD format 2) Listening to CD's 3) Watching some DVD's 4) Occasionally rescue CD's come in handy when a root password is forgotten.
No I don't think they are going away. My guess is that Apple doesn't think their users care about #1, and they don't like the fact that #2 competes with iTunes.....
Insurance company profits are not a problem compared to drug company and medical equipment manufacturer costs, the need of doctors to recover their cost of training (i.e. medical school revenues, medical textbook profits, etc). Socialized medicine is one way for the people to get together and collectively bargain over drug costs, etc. But it isn't the only way.
Our problem here is this not a fair comparison between socialized and free market medicine. It's a comparison between government negotiated medical expense payments and between government-granted monopolies on manufacturing. Neither is remotely a free market. If we wanted a free market we'd have compulsatory licensing at affordable rates for patents used in medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc. If we wanted a free market we wouldn't tolerate one group of doctors being given permission to set the standards for all medical training throughout the country. We'd have competition in all of this. Instead all we do is charter monopolies and then complain about pricing. Well, duh......
So socialized medicine is far cheaper than private-monopoly-controlled medicine. One doesn't need a PhD in economics to see why. But that doesn't say that socialized medicine would be cheaper than free market medicine. There are other ways the government could take on the monopolies and even dismantle them so that we wouldn't have the costs we have in our system today.
Consider this: The US government pays roughly 46% of the payments into the US healthcare system through a variety of government programs. If the US medical expenses were the same per capita as what they are in the UK, that would pay ALL medical care for all US persons for life. Canada is only slightly more expensive.
Yes, I am aware of the fact that biotin deficiency is connected to raw egg consumption. However, as I understand it, it is commonly found only in those who regularly eat raw eggs in sufficient doses. Having a dessert once a year that's basically raw egg yolks and powdered sugar spooned onto cookies is pretty harmless nutritionally. Same with mousse containing small amounts of raw eggs, or occasional homemade egg not. Unless you eat them all the time, that is.
That's partly the point. You can get trace quantities of penicillin's eating just about everything. Those are not nearly high enough to have meaningful antibiotic effects and so there is no natural selection at work in the bacteria. (Interestingly I am allergic to *some* medical penicillins but have no trouble with others-- penicillin G gives me hives, amoxycillin does not, and I can eat blue cheeses without problems.)
The issue is that *consumption* of trace quantities of antibiotics is not the issue. The problem is the simple fact that we are feeding them to the animals in these doses.
Interestingly in ancient Egypt, moldy bread was used as a topical antibiotic, which strikes me as quite interesting. Similarly it looks like the Chinese used various common molds to treat skin infections as well.
The reason, however, that penicillin antibiotics even work at all today, as you point out is that sufficient quantities to provide antibiotic effects does not commonly occur in nature.
My understanding from studying ancient medicine is that the antibiotic properties of moldy bread were known in ancient Egypt, where it was used as a topical antibiotic. Most penicillium molds appear to produce at least some penicillin and penicillin-like chemicals.
Tolerance to alcohol is shown in some species of yeasts. The tolerance just likely has an upper limit well short of the concentrations we use to be antisceptic. Tolerance to say, an abv of 12% isn't hard to achieve, and 18-20% isn't unheard of. 50% would be a stretch though.
This being said the yeast tolerance to alcohol varies considerably with the strain. Some are very sensitive to alcohol, and some can survive up to 18% abv or so. There is a tolerance that can develop, but that doesn't go up to the dosages typically found in antisceptic solutions.
It's sort of like saying that because heat can kill, the temperature range that organisms can survive cannot change based on adapting to environment, which is false.
We do need to stand up to the AMA here while at the same time protecting both doctors and patients.
I like John Medialle's proposals (over at the Distributist Review):
1) Extending the term of medical patents in exchange for a compulsatory licensing scheme, thus turning the patent system into an entitlement for revenue for the fruits of research rather than a government-chartered monopoly to produce a good.
2) Chartering medical guilds (presumably the AMA would be one among many). The guilds would set training and other membership standards, and would replace our current system of medical malpractice insurance, essentially meaning each guild would be one risk pool. You'd sue the guild instead of the doctor, and the guild would pay for the defense and damages if any, but the guild itself would be able to then decide as an internal matter what, if any, disciplenary measures should be taken against the doctor.
Add to that the fact that antibiotic use is a known risk factor in some ailments like candidiasis, and that we don't really have enough research on (or the money to research) how antibiotic use affects the chance of getting the same or other bacterial infections, and I agree, it's not rational. the rational course is to see antibiotic use as a last line of defense.
With an ear infection, the best thing to do is talk to a doctor about when to get concerned enough to try antibiotics. Most of the time, waiting is sufficient.
Another thing that I do to help is switch to drinking hot water (i.e. from a tea kettle) instead of cold water. This tends to cause the secretions of my sinuses to thin, and often that can help unclog things too. Ear infections are usually cascading issues from sinus-related problems, and usually minor ones clear up so fast that by the time the antibiotic would be kicking in, the ear infection itself is done.
There are a lot of cases where antibiotics are used for solely expedience purposes rather than long-term health benefits. One clear example of this is cholera. Antibiotics shorten the course of the disease but they don't increase survival rate-- survival rate is solely dependent on tonicity and hydration, so take care of these and antibiotics are not, strictly speaking, necessary.
I have recently been studying permaculture and one thing I have learned is how interconnected everything is in nature. Even (and especially) if antibiotics work perfectly they still make us more open to infection because of biodiversity concerns. The same occurs with insecticide use in fields, for example-- insecticides are the surest way to ensure that pests don't get predators.
There are a number of pathogens which most of us carry (Candida albans for example, which is a yeast responsible not only for feminine yeast infections but also for more serious digestive yeast infections which can affect either sex) which cause many more problems in people who have had antibiotics within the previous year than those who have not, and the reason is the pathogen is a yeast which has to compete with bacteria..... you kill the bacteria and guess what happens?
Antibiotics have no doubt saved many lives, but we are all better off (individually and collectively) if they are saved for where they are really life-saving and as a last resort.
It's not just the numerical advantage. It's the biodiversity issues as well, and how we end up killing the very things that protect us in the same process.
I am not saying the UK system is what we need to emulate in the US. What I am saying is that a quick comparison shows us how broken the US system is.
One big factor for the cost is the fact that there are rigid price controls for pharmaceuticals. This means, in essence, that the government says "ok, so you are a monopoly, but if you are going to sell your medicine here, you are going to supply it at an affordable rate." That works fine for the UK. I don't think it would work for the US. We'd get more mileage here with a compulsatory licensing scheme for medical-related patents to turn the patents into something other than a government-chartered monopoly.
Every piece of bread you eat, and every piece of cheese you eat, and very likely every fresh vegetable you eat has traces of penicillin in it. It's produced by the most common genus of molds on this planet.
Virtually *everything* we eat has traces of penicillin in it. The point is that if consuming trace amounts of antibiotics would cause antibiotic resistance generally, penicillin should never have worked in modern times but it did quite well (also despite sporadic uses in the ancient world I might add too).
For resistance to be developed, bacteria have to be exposed to enough of a background level to start killing the bacteria. Otherwise there is no natural selection.
"Worse bacteria under stress have a horrible habit of taking up random bits of DNA from the environment" which include those bacteria that are not human pathogens, and this is why the antibiotic pollution issues around CAFO's is such an issue, and why bacterial, whether pathogenic or not, which pick up antibiotic resistance inside animals in these areas can spread it to other bacteria which may be pathogens.
Either way the problem is entirely independent of whether or not we consume trace amounts of the antibiotics.
Recurrence makes sense. After all, antibiotics are relatively indiscriminate. It's like spraying roundup on an acre off fields to kill a small noxious weed colony. If you do this, you kill everything else, and pioneer species (often including noxious weeds) come back faster than anything else.
It's a problem of cascading intervention, and modern medicine is full of it. Of course when one really needs medicine, one needs it. But we are all better off taking it as seldom as possible..
Nicholas Culpepper listed a good many plants as curealls. Of course! He gave them to people who were sick and they got better! It didn't mater what they had, they got better! it must have been the plant!
Most earaches clear up by themselves before the antibiotics really can take effect......
The US government spends as much *per American* on health care as the UK government does per UK citizen, and government spending in the US accounts for a bit under half of our medical expenses. So we pay about double.
The reason of course is monopoly powers. The UK government isn't as beholden to Pfeizer as the US government is, and so we charter monopolies to control the market and in an effort to correct those problems require people to buy into those monopolies. Idiocy on top of stupidity. If we wanted to tackle the problem of health care costs, we'd focus on increasing supply. John Medaille has made some proposals I would get entirely behind:
1) Compulsatory licensing for medical-related patents, in order to break up patent-based manufacturing monopolies for medication, medical devices, and the like.
2) Chartering medical guilds which would replace the AMA. The guilds would be bound into malpractice insurance pools, would be in charge of licensing their members, setting licensing requirements, etc. This would create downward pressure on costs of medical training, while creating upward pressures on professionalism.
But no, we think that disempowering consumers will rein in costs. I think Aristotle would have a few things to say about it, which might not account for much except that the last 2500 years of human experience has largely proven him right on this matter.
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Like casing perls before swine, right?
Indeed, a c shell might be more available in this case.
Couldn't you generate a key somehow off the biometrics info?
Of course this has some really nasty sides. Suppose your friend is killed in a tragic accident?
In a real police state, a right against self-incrimination can be claimed through the use of cyanide capsules.
Interestingly enough a lot of it was also to protect rights that people DID have in the UK but not the colonies at the time (trial by jury) or that they DID have in the UK at the time but have since lost (right to keep and bear arms, for example).
I use the portable optical drive for:
1) Reading documentation manuals that come with hardware (like printers) on CD format
2) Listening to CD's
3) Watching some DVD's
4) Occasionally rescue CD's come in handy when a root password is forgotten.
No I don't think they are going away. My guess is that Apple doesn't think their users care about #1, and they don't like the fact that #2 competes with iTunes.....
Insurance company profits are not a problem compared to drug company and medical equipment manufacturer costs, the need of doctors to recover their cost of training (i.e. medical school revenues, medical textbook profits, etc). Socialized medicine is one way for the people to get together and collectively bargain over drug costs, etc. But it isn't the only way.
Our problem here is this not a fair comparison between socialized and free market medicine. It's a comparison between government negotiated medical expense payments and between government-granted monopolies on manufacturing. Neither is remotely a free market. If we wanted a free market we'd have compulsatory licensing at affordable rates for patents used in medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc. If we wanted a free market we wouldn't tolerate one group of doctors being given permission to set the standards for all medical training throughout the country. We'd have competition in all of this. Instead all we do is charter monopolies and then complain about pricing. Well, duh......
So socialized medicine is far cheaper than private-monopoly-controlled medicine. One doesn't need a PhD in economics to see why. But that doesn't say that socialized medicine would be cheaper than free market medicine. There are other ways the government could take on the monopolies and even dismantle them so that we wouldn't have the costs we have in our system today.
Consider this: The US government pays roughly 46% of the payments into the US healthcare system through a variety of government programs. If the US medical expenses were the same per capita as what they are in the UK, that would pay ALL medical care for all US persons for life. Canada is only slightly more expensive.
Yes, I am aware of the fact that biotin deficiency is connected to raw egg consumption. However, as I understand it, it is commonly found only in those who regularly eat raw eggs in sufficient doses. Having a dessert once a year that's basically raw egg yolks and powdered sugar spooned onto cookies is pretty harmless nutritionally. Same with mousse containing small amounts of raw eggs, or occasional homemade egg not. Unless you eat them all the time, that is.
That's partly the point. You can get trace quantities of penicillin's eating just about everything. Those are not nearly high enough to have meaningful antibiotic effects and so there is no natural selection at work in the bacteria. (Interestingly I am allergic to *some* medical penicillins but have no trouble with others-- penicillin G gives me hives, amoxycillin does not, and I can eat blue cheeses without problems.)
The issue is that *consumption* of trace quantities of antibiotics is not the issue. The problem is the simple fact that we are feeding them to the animals in these doses.
Interestingly in ancient Egypt, moldy bread was used as a topical antibiotic, which strikes me as quite interesting. Similarly it looks like the Chinese used various common molds to treat skin infections as well.
The reason, however, that penicillin antibiotics even work at all today, as you point out is that sufficient quantities to provide antibiotic effects does not commonly occur in nature.
My understanding from studying ancient medicine is that the antibiotic properties of moldy bread were known in ancient Egypt, where it was used as a topical antibiotic. Most penicillium molds appear to produce at least some penicillin and penicillin-like chemicals.
Tolerance to alcohol is shown in some species of yeasts. The tolerance just likely has an upper limit well short of the concentrations we use to be antisceptic. Tolerance to say, an abv of 12% isn't hard to achieve, and 18-20% isn't unheard of. 50% would be a stretch though.
This being said the yeast tolerance to alcohol varies considerably with the strain. Some are very sensitive to alcohol, and some can survive up to 18% abv or so. There is a tolerance that can develop, but that doesn't go up to the dosages typically found in antisceptic solutions.
It's sort of like saying that because heat can kill, the temperature range that organisms can survive cannot change based on adapting to environment, which is false.
We do need to stand up to the AMA here while at the same time protecting both doctors and patients.
I like John Medialle's proposals (over at the Distributist Review):
1) Extending the term of medical patents in exchange for a compulsatory licensing scheme, thus turning the patent system into an entitlement for revenue for the fruits of research rather than a government-chartered monopoly to produce a good.
2) Chartering medical guilds (presumably the AMA would be one among many). The guilds would set training and other membership standards, and would replace our current system of medical malpractice insurance, essentially meaning each guild would be one risk pool. You'd sue the guild instead of the doctor, and the guild would pay for the defense and damages if any, but the guild itself would be able to then decide as an internal matter what, if any, disciplenary measures should be taken against the doctor.
Add to that the fact that antibiotic use is a known risk factor in some ailments like candidiasis, and that we don't really have enough research on (or the money to research) how antibiotic use affects the chance of getting the same or other bacterial infections, and I agree, it's not rational. the rational course is to see antibiotic use as a last line of defense.
With an ear infection, the best thing to do is talk to a doctor about when to get concerned enough to try antibiotics. Most of the time, waiting is sufficient.
Another thing that I do to help is switch to drinking hot water (i.e. from a tea kettle) instead of cold water. This tends to cause the secretions of my sinuses to thin, and often that can help unclog things too. Ear infections are usually cascading issues from sinus-related problems, and usually minor ones clear up so fast that by the time the antibiotic would be kicking in, the ear infection itself is done.
There are a lot of cases where antibiotics are used for solely expedience purposes rather than long-term health benefits. One clear example of this is cholera. Antibiotics shorten the course of the disease but they don't increase survival rate-- survival rate is solely dependent on tonicity and hydration, so take care of these and antibiotics are not, strictly speaking, necessary.
I have recently been studying permaculture and one thing I have learned is how interconnected everything is in nature. Even (and especially) if antibiotics work perfectly they still make us more open to infection because of biodiversity concerns. The same occurs with insecticide use in fields, for example-- insecticides are the surest way to ensure that pests don't get predators.
There are a number of pathogens which most of us carry (Candida albans for example, which is a yeast responsible not only for feminine yeast infections but also for more serious digestive yeast infections which can affect either sex) which cause many more problems in people who have had antibiotics within the previous year than those who have not, and the reason is the pathogen is a yeast which has to compete with bacteria..... you kill the bacteria and guess what happens?
Antibiotics have no doubt saved many lives, but we are all better off (individually and collectively) if they are saved for where they are really life-saving and as a last resort.
It's not just the numerical advantage. It's the biodiversity issues as well, and how we end up killing the very things that protect us in the same process.
I am not saying the UK system is what we need to emulate in the US. What I am saying is that a quick comparison shows us how broken the US system is.
One big factor for the cost is the fact that there are rigid price controls for pharmaceuticals. This means, in essence, that the government says "ok, so you are a monopoly, but if you are going to sell your medicine here, you are going to supply it at an affordable rate." That works fine for the UK. I don't think it would work for the US. We'd get more mileage here with a compulsatory licensing scheme for medical-related patents to turn the patents into something other than a government-chartered monopoly.
Exactly my point, hence the concerns I outlined.
More or less spot on.
Every piece of bread you eat, and every piece of cheese you eat, and very likely every fresh vegetable you eat has traces of penicillin in it. It's produced by the most common genus of molds on this planet.
Virtually *everything* we eat has traces of penicillin in it. The point is that if consuming trace amounts of antibiotics would cause antibiotic resistance generally, penicillin should never have worked in modern times but it did quite well (also despite sporadic uses in the ancient world I might add too).
For resistance to be developed, bacteria have to be exposed to enough of a background level to start killing the bacteria. Otherwise there is no natural selection.
"Worse bacteria under stress have a horrible habit of taking up random bits of DNA from the environment" which include those bacteria that are not human pathogens, and this is why the antibiotic pollution issues around CAFO's is such an issue, and why bacterial, whether pathogenic or not, which pick up antibiotic resistance inside animals in these areas can spread it to other bacteria which may be pathogens.
Either way the problem is entirely independent of whether or not we consume trace amounts of the antibiotics.
Recurrence makes sense. After all, antibiotics are relatively indiscriminate. It's like spraying roundup on an acre off fields to kill a small noxious weed colony. If you do this, you kill everything else, and pioneer species (often including noxious weeds) come back faster than anything else.
It's a problem of cascading intervention, and modern medicine is full of it. Of course when one really needs medicine, one needs it. But we are all better off taking it as seldom as possible..
(Earaches and ear infections both usually clear up quickly even without antibiotics.)
I am amazed at how often that idea is missed.
Nicholas Culpepper listed a good many plants as curealls. Of course! He gave them to people who were sick and they got better! It didn't mater what they had, they got better! it must have been the plant!
Most earaches clear up by themselves before the antibiotics really can take effect......
Compared to the US, they pay relatively little.
The US government spends as much *per American* on health care as the UK government does per UK citizen, and government spending in the US accounts for a bit under half of our medical expenses. So we pay about double.
The reason of course is monopoly powers. The UK government isn't as beholden to Pfeizer as the US government is, and so we charter monopolies to control the market and in an effort to correct those problems require people to buy into those monopolies. Idiocy on top of stupidity. If we wanted to tackle the problem of health care costs, we'd focus on increasing supply. John Medaille has made some proposals I would get entirely behind:
1) Compulsatory licensing for medical-related patents, in order to break up patent-based manufacturing monopolies for medication, medical devices, and the like.
2) Chartering medical guilds which would replace the AMA. The guilds would be bound into malpractice insurance pools, would be in charge of licensing their members, setting licensing requirements, etc. This would create downward pressure on costs of medical training, while creating upward pressures on professionalism.
But no, we think that disempowering consumers will rein in costs. I think Aristotle would have a few things to say about it, which might not account for much except that the last 2500 years of human experience has largely proven him right on this matter.