See, that's exactly what I am saying. I believe in market forces, but saving lives is _always_ an extreme case, not just in Brazil with regards to AIDS medication.
I respectfully disagree:P The works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and all the middle eastern scholars were not conducted with any eye on the bottom line. Go ask Stephen Hawking if he'd want to receive money for the products his reasearch give rise to.
Bringing a new drug to the market takes 10 years and $1Bn.
This figure is an exaggerated figure that big pharma uses to justify the need to squeeze money out of the sick, poor and dying. They themselves will tell you that the vast majority of this is spent on advertising, an unnecessary expense, as the sick and dying do not need to be told about the benefits of health. It is only to ensure that the expensive name brand is chosen over cheaper generics.
I would like to re-iterate that I have nothing against profits. Nor do I have specific answers to the problems with the current system. But where one man can be saved from death but is not because another man in a suit earning $1m per year plus bonuses says that he is too poor to pay, then it should be clear to all but the most callous that there is something rotten at the core of the whole western system. Nobody who can be saved should die. Period. If we as a society are unable to find a way to place an intrinsic value on the lives of our fellows, then we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.
We look down on all other social orders such as communism, non-secular religous systems and fascism, pointing fingers at all of their faults and injustices. What is unnecessary death in an advanced society, if not an injustice? What is it if not a flaw in the order of things? We're always going on about the supremacy of individual freedom and how the individual is paramount in our society. If that is the case, how can it be that monetary incentive is needed before that sanctity will be preserved? You can't even begin to compare research into car design with research into life saving drugs.
Lobbying: I do. But I don't command the billions that pharma does, so no matter how many people protest, the gov't will listen to the campaign donators, not John Q Public. Witness the actions of the Australian Gov't when the entore population protested changes to labor law that favoured big business.
Charity: Not possible for a charity to collect the funds required to conduct operations on a nationwide scale. It has to be a governmental initiative, or the philanthropic actions of a super-rich individual such as Bill Gates.
Becoming a biochemist: The whole problem is that even if I came up with something, I'd not be able to ascertain if I am not infringing an existing patent. Not only that, big pharma has a sordid history of industrial subterfuge. Look at Pfizer's actions in Nigeria. Finally, how hard do you think it would be getting a drug past the FDA if you're a small company and Pfizer decided it wasn't in their interests for you to be aproved?
Responsing to your points:
Agreed. I'm saying pharma has a special position in society, and should have special rules ensuring higher degrees of moral conduct.
Now, if that happened in spite of our prayers, who should I blame? The lab, the govt, myself, God?
Try the entire broken system. I have no problem with people profiting from their inventions, but when that invention is really a patent on a flower that they discovered in the Amazon and their desired profit for it are considered to be worth more then the life of my parent, brother, friend or
collegue, then I definitely have a problem. Your *moral* right to stop me from using your idea stops where my need to use your idea is the result of a life or death situation. However, I do not claim that legal rights have anything to do with morality at this stage in human history.
And since we're talking about grim scenarii, pray you never have to watch a loved one die while the drugs that could save them have not been developped yet. Who would you blame then?
I will skip the silly question and go straight to your implication: Humanity has been inventing things long before patents, corporations or indeed the very concept of profit was around.
Pray you never have to watch a loved one die while the drugs that could save them sit on a shelf in a clinic you will never be able to afford to check into.
He's assuming that because it can't. There are two aspects to depth perception, one is the angle of the image with regards to the eye's direction, the other is the optical focus of the eye itself.
The focus of the image is the result of the latter. To demonstrate this, get a magic marker and draw a picture onto a pair of swimming goggles. Then try to wear the goggles, and focus on the image you have drawn on them at the same time as an object in the distance.
I know I'm late on this one and the joke has already been made. But there is no way in HELL that I'm not making a post about friggin' lasers. So here it is.
It's known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It states that with regards to any particle, you can know either its location or its state of motion but not both. This is due to the fact that in order to observe something, you need to "see" it, which requires that at least one photon touch it. If a photon touches a particle, it will impart energy to it, changing its state. Thus, you will know its location, but you cannot know how the photon has changed the particle's state unless you bounce another photon off it, causing another change.
The way I understand so-called "quantum cryptography", is that it sends a known number of photons with known states down the fiber. Any attempt to intercept them will change their state and/or their number. A repeater will not be able to reproduce exactly the photonic pattern that the sender sent. This, combined with a kind of hashing or packet digest, will tell the receiver if the data packets were tampered with along the way. The message is not sent as a series of light pulses, but as individual photons which are polarised in one direction or another, representing 0s and 1s, with carrier photons that indicate the representational state at any given point in time. Because photons are discrete, there can be no leakage, hence any attempt to "tap" into or read the data en route will be detected.
That is the theory. I am very, very skeptical that the real units actually work that way, as the precision required, it would seem to me, is not currently feasible in commercial products. Counting and measuring photons and whatnot are the preserve of facilities like CERN.
I read this in bits and pieces, I know very little about quantum cryptography, so my understanding may be flawed. In fact, it may be that I have just pulled all this straight out of my arse. It wouldn't be the first time.
Hey man, what does it smell like, with your head up your own ass like that?
I haven't heard a less well informed or more idiotic point of view in a very long time. Please excuse yourself from the gene pool, the rest of us don't want to breed in your pee.
Can someone please naturally select this guy for culling? I can't bear the thought that the fruit of my loins may one day interbreed with the fruit of his loins.
Did you know that under the Ottomans, the Jews were forced to follow Muslim laws and submit to Muslim authorities? Did you know that they also had to pay a special tax just for not being Muslim?.
Yes, under Ottoman rule Muslims were citizens by default, as the Ottoman Empire was non-secular. Non-citizens, as is the case in all modern states too, had to pay tax if they wanted to benefit by living in that country. Today, even visiting, many countries require that the visitor put up a bond while they are there, and pay a fee for the right to visit. As an Australian for example, I have to pay $90AUD for the right to just travel to Brazil. Under Ottoman rule, with the dhimmi tax, there was no problem with being there illegally. There was no INS carting off familes upon discovery. Anyone who was there and could pay the tax, was taxed. Muslims paid a similar but different "tax" called "zakat". Between the dhimmi tax and zakat, no foreigner was ever turned away, or allowed to starve. I find it odd that people think the dhimmi tax is so strange, given the brutal treatment foreigners are treated in modern states. Spend a day with the INS to see what I mean. For even worse, have a look at the way the Australian govt has been treating refugees recently. There is talk of a giant floating prison made out of a decommissioned oil tanker to detain them. Personally, I'll take the dhimmi tax for not being Musim over being locked up in the hold of an oil tanker, or dumped in the desert just south of the Mexican border, thankyou very much.
That is only complete when you mention "...and Muslims" at the end.
So what you're saying is that Jews have been rejected everywhere, by just about everyone. Does that mean there is a problem with everyone else, or a problem with Jews?
In any case, most of the Jewish people I know seem to be of the opinion that the Ottoman age was one of the best and most prosperous times in Jewish history. This coming from them, not me. They also do not support Israel's policy of shoot first ask questions later.
I am not against Israel or Jews, I am against Zionism, which is essentially the Jewish KKK. Seehere for an example. (Wait! Before you jump on your high horse, I am aware that there are websites for all sides of any argument, which is why I said "for an example". I am not citing this as proof of my stance, merely as an indication that there is merit to it.)
...and it would satisfy the demands of those who want to get rid of Middle Eastern Jews once and for all.
So? If it solves everyone's issues then whats the problem? If the US loves Israel so much, why not give them Ohio or Virginia to live in? They'd be happier there, the US wouldn't have such a long distance to ship tanks and bombs so they'd save on transport costs and the Arabs would be free to do as they pleased. Also, the Palestinians have been there far longer unless you dig into biblical stories.
Actually, I don't think they deserve special treatment. They deserve equal treatment. If we can have a Palestine for the Palestinians, a Syria for the Syrians, a Jordan for the Hashemites, an Egypt for the Egyptians, then why not have an Israel for the Israelis?
Israel gets more "special treatment" in terms of military support and financial support than the entire developing world, and yet still cries poor. The word "equal" rings hollow coming from a supporter of Israel.
Also, Israel is out of place in that sentence in that a) the majority of its people didn't live there even a generation ago and b) until the 1940s it did not even exist as a country. One cannot simply say that Foo has an inherent right to be, when Foo was taken out of Bar belonging to someone else. No law on earth would give property rights to a trespasser simply because he managed to be there by
No, it's just that in my experience if a person has the combination of adamant belief in inaccurate information as well as acrimonious self-righeousness, there is no point in engaging them in discussion.
By way of example, you seem to hold some grudge against the Muslim people, which is rather strange given that a) the only time the Jewish people have enjoyed protection and prosperity under a non-Jewish, non-secular government was under the Ottoman government and b) persecution of Jewish people has long been at the hands of Europeans and Christians. The Arab world reacted to a huge influx of Jewish migrants in the 30s and 40s, as well as the creation of a Jewish state in the middle of Arabia, where it had no logical reason to be. The Arabs owed nothing to the Jewish people for the holocaust, why make them pay? Given the support the US gives to Israel, why not just make Israel in the US? That'd put an end to the Middle East dilema pretty quickly. Incidentally, you did not "blow my argument out of the water", you simply played the all-too-familiar "Jews are victims therefore need special treatment" card, which doesn't fly with me. Anyone who suffers should be helped. When I see help going to famine in Africa or disease in Asia then I'll review my stance, but until then there are people more in need. Israel is doing just fine. You can say what you want about this, but no amount of arguing or twisting or wheeling will change the fact that millions suffer and die while the rest of the world dresses up their own agendas as the most important. I have written about this before, but somehow, I don't think you'll care about the plight of anyone who is not Israeli.
I have many Jewish friends, and even they will admit that current belligerence aside, their people have historically been most well-received by Muslims than any other group. Furthermore, the only real time Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together peacefully was under Ottoman governance.
Finally, don't give me this "lowly Israeli" BS. Israelis are not lowly or in need of sympathy. With the 4th largest military in the world and the recipient of more military support and US "Aid" than Africa, Asia and indeed the rest of the world cobined, the Israelis are neither "lowly" nor are they in need of anyone's sympathy or aid. Hell, Israel gets more out of the US taxpayer than any single US state.
Just out of interest, why is it that everyone seems to think that by default Israel should exist? I'm not arguing that it shouldn't, I was just wondering why a country that did not exist more than about 60 years ago and who's population has no real connection with the land before the 40s has a de facto right to exist there to the exclusion of the people there before. I mean if Jews had a right to claim land from anyone, surely the Germans or the Italians should have been forced to give up land instead?
Lets say Japan occupied California in the 40s, and did not surrender it. I'm pretty sure that by today, Washington would still not say something like "Meh, it's been long enough, lets just forget the whole thing."
Hey look, it's a straw man. I think he's trying to argue a point...
Oh, and how is King Abdullah's essay a "justification for crushing Jews" when a) it was pointing out the influx of Jewish settlers to Palestine when they (the Jews) were a minority there at the time and b) it was written in a time when the Arab world was the only place Jews could go to shelter from the onslaught of European antipathy towards them? I see no "crushing" there, other than a statement saying something like "please don't invade our country, how would you react?"
My friend, you need to learn some debating skills. You can't argue a point with a counter point that is irrelevant. It's like trying to fight fire with nunchucks. Oh, and if you call me an anti-semite in replying to this I will consider that to be a concession on your part that you have no real point other than the stock standard brow beatings pro-Zionists are so good at.
Evidently irony is lost on you. Not surprising though, you're obviously one of those idiots who equates criticism of Israeli foreign policy with anti-semitism, hence devoid of any sense of perspective which is required to parse irony.
Accusations flying back and forth accusing the other of being misinformed. Here is an essay, written at the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, may shed some light on the subject. It also offers a nice window on the history and origins of the conflict, as well as providing a nice outline on the state of play of geopolitics at the time Israel was created.
Were you abandoned in the jungle as a child only to be raised by a panther, a bear and a crowd of crazy monkeys? Please say yes, the idea that you were educated by humans pains me greatly.
Slashdot Mirror
See, that's exactly what I am saying. I believe in market forces, but saving lives is _always_ an extreme case, not just in Brazil with regards to AIDS medication.
I respectfully disagree :P The works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and all the middle eastern scholars were not conducted with any eye on the bottom line. Go ask Stephen Hawking if he'd want to receive money for the products his reasearch give rise to.
This figure is an exaggerated figure that big pharma uses to justify the need to squeeze money out of the sick, poor and dying. They themselves will tell you that the vast majority of this is spent on advertising, an unnecessary expense, as the sick and dying do not need to be told about the benefits of health. It is only to ensure that the expensive name brand is chosen over cheaper generics.
I would like to re-iterate that I have nothing against profits. Nor do I have specific answers to the problems with the current system. But where one man can be saved from death but is not because another man in a suit earning $1m per year plus bonuses says that he is too poor to pay, then it should be clear to all but the most callous that there is something rotten at the core of the whole western system. Nobody who can be saved should die. Period. If we as a society are unable to find a way to place an intrinsic value on the lives of our fellows, then we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.
We look down on all other social orders such as communism, non-secular religous systems and fascism, pointing fingers at all of their faults and injustices. What is unnecessary death in an advanced society, if not an injustice? What is it if not a flaw in the order of things? We're always going on about the supremacy of individual freedom and how the individual is paramount in our society. If that is the case, how can it be that monetary incentive is needed before that sanctity will be preserved? You can't even begin to compare research into car design with research into life saving drugs.
Responsing to your points:
Pray you never have to watch a loved one die while the drugs that could save them sit on a shelf in a clinic you will never be able to afford to check into.
He's assuming that because it can't. There are two aspects to depth perception, one is the angle of the image with regards to the eye's direction, the other is the optical focus of the eye itself.
The focus of the image is the result of the latter. To demonstrate this, get a magic marker and draw a picture onto a pair of swimming goggles. Then try to wear the goggles, and focus on the image you have drawn on them at the same time as an object in the distance.
Spoiler: you will not be able to.
Newton Crosby? Is that you? (Please, someone get the reference so I don't feel like an old fart)
I know I'm late on this one and the joke has already been made. But there is no way in HELL that I'm not making a post about friggin' lasers. So here it is.
It's known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It states that with regards to any particle, you can know either its location or its state of motion but not both. This is due to the fact that in order to observe something, you need to "see" it, which requires that at least one photon touch it. If a photon touches a particle, it will impart energy to it, changing its state. Thus, you will know its location, but you cannot know how the photon has changed the particle's state unless you bounce another photon off it, causing another change.
The way I understand so-called "quantum cryptography", is that it sends a known number of photons with known states down the fiber. Any attempt to intercept them will change their state and/or their number. A repeater will not be able to reproduce exactly the photonic pattern that the sender sent. This, combined with a kind of hashing or packet digest, will tell the receiver if the data packets were tampered with along the way. The message is not sent as a series of light pulses, but as individual photons which are polarised in one direction or another, representing 0s and 1s, with carrier photons that indicate the representational state at any given point in time. Because photons are discrete, there can be no leakage, hence any attempt to "tap" into or read the data en route will be detected.
That is the theory. I am very, very skeptical that the real units actually work that way, as the precision required, it would seem to me, is not currently feasible in commercial products. Counting and measuring photons and whatnot are the preserve of facilities like CERN.
I read this in bits and pieces, I know very little about quantum cryptography, so my understanding may be flawed. In fact, it may be that I have just pulled all this straight out of my arse. It wouldn't be the first time.
Hey man, what does it smell like, with your head up your own ass like that?
I haven't heard a less well informed or more idiotic point of view in a very long time. Please excuse yourself from the gene pool, the rest of us don't want to breed in your pee.
Can someone please naturally select this guy for culling? I can't bear the thought that the fruit of my loins may one day interbreed with the fruit of his loins.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
We must be stupid. Please tell us how this is the case.
Yes, under Ottoman rule Muslims were citizens by default, as the Ottoman Empire was non-secular. Non-citizens, as is the case in all modern states too, had to pay tax if they wanted to benefit by living in that country. Today, even visiting, many countries require that the visitor put up a bond while they are there, and pay a fee for the right to visit. As an Australian for example, I have to pay $90AUD for the right to just travel to Brazil. Under Ottoman rule, with the dhimmi tax, there was no problem with being there illegally. There was no INS carting off familes upon discovery. Anyone who was there and could pay the tax, was taxed. Muslims paid a similar but different "tax" called "zakat". Between the dhimmi tax and zakat, no foreigner was ever turned away, or allowed to starve. I find it odd that people think the dhimmi tax is so strange, given the brutal treatment foreigners are treated in modern states. Spend a day with the INS to see what I mean. For even worse, have a look at the way the Australian govt has been treating refugees recently. There is talk of a giant floating prison made out of a decommissioned oil tanker to detain them. Personally, I'll take the dhimmi tax for not being Musim over being locked up in the hold of an oil tanker, or dumped in the desert just south of the Mexican border, thankyou very much.
So what you're saying is that Jews have been rejected everywhere, by just about everyone. Does that mean there is a problem with everyone else, or a problem with Jews?
In any case, most of the Jewish people I know seem to be of the opinion that the Ottoman age was one of the best and most prosperous times in Jewish history. This coming from them, not me. They also do not support Israel's policy of shoot first ask questions later.
I am not against Israel or Jews, I am against Zionism, which is essentially the Jewish KKK. Seehere for an example. (Wait! Before you jump on your high horse, I am aware that there are websites for all sides of any argument, which is why I said "for an example". I am not citing this as proof of my stance, merely as an indication that there is merit to it.)
So? If it solves everyone's issues then whats the problem? If the US loves Israel so much, why not give them Ohio or Virginia to live in? They'd be happier there, the US wouldn't have such a long distance to ship tanks and bombs so they'd save on transport costs and the Arabs would be free to do as they pleased. Also, the Palestinians have been there far longer unless you dig into biblical stories.
Israel gets more "special treatment" in terms of military support and financial support than the entire developing world, and yet still cries poor. The word "equal" rings hollow coming from a supporter of Israel.
Also, Israel is out of place in that sentence in that a) the majority of its people didn't live there even a generation ago and b) until the 1940s it did not even exist as a country. One cannot simply say that Foo has an inherent right to be, when Foo was taken out of Bar belonging to someone else. No law on earth would give property rights to a trespasser simply because he managed to be there by
No, it's just that in my experience if a person has the combination of adamant belief in inaccurate information as well as acrimonious self-righeousness, there is no point in engaging them in discussion.
By way of example, you seem to hold some grudge against the Muslim people, which is rather strange given that a) the only time the Jewish people have enjoyed protection and prosperity under a non-Jewish, non-secular government was under the Ottoman government and b) persecution of Jewish people has long been at the hands of Europeans and Christians. The Arab world reacted to a huge influx of Jewish migrants in the 30s and 40s, as well as the creation of a Jewish state in the middle of Arabia, where it had no logical reason to be. The Arabs owed nothing to the Jewish people for the holocaust, why make them pay? Given the support the US gives to Israel, why not just make Israel in the US? That'd put an end to the Middle East dilema pretty quickly. Incidentally, you did not "blow my argument out of the water", you simply played the all-too-familiar "Jews are victims therefore need special treatment" card, which doesn't fly with me. Anyone who suffers should be helped. When I see help going to famine in Africa or disease in Asia then I'll review my stance, but until then there are people more in need. Israel is doing just fine. You can say what you want about this, but no amount of arguing or twisting or wheeling will change the fact that millions suffer and die while the rest of the world dresses up their own agendas as the most important. I have written about this before, but somehow, I don't think you'll care about the plight of anyone who is not Israeli.
I have many Jewish friends, and even they will admit that current belligerence aside, their people have historically been most well-received by Muslims than any other group. Furthermore, the only real time Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together peacefully was under Ottoman governance.
Finally, don't give me this "lowly Israeli" BS. Israelis are not lowly or in need of sympathy. With the 4th largest military in the world and the recipient of more military support and US "Aid" than Africa, Asia and indeed the rest of the world cobined, the Israelis are neither "lowly" nor are they in need of anyone's sympathy or aid. Hell, Israel gets more out of the US taxpayer than any single US state.
Dude, you are so full of misinformation its not even worth discussing this with you.
Just out of interest, why is it that everyone seems to think that by default Israel should exist? I'm not arguing that it shouldn't, I was just wondering why a country that did not exist more than about 60 years ago and who's population has no real connection with the land before the 40s has a de facto right to exist there to the exclusion of the people there before. I mean if Jews had a right to claim land from anyone, surely the Germans or the Italians should have been forced to give up land instead?
Lets say Japan occupied California in the 40s, and did not surrender it. I'm pretty sure that by today, Washington would still not say something like "Meh, it's been long enough, lets just forget the whole thing."
Just askin'.
Hey look, it's a straw man. I think he's trying to argue a point...
Oh, and how is King Abdullah's essay a "justification for crushing Jews" when a) it was pointing out the influx of Jewish settlers to Palestine when they (the Jews) were a minority there at the time and b) it was written in a time when the Arab world was the only place Jews could go to shelter from the onslaught of European antipathy towards them? I see no "crushing" there, other than a statement saying something like "please don't invade our country, how would you react?"
My friend, you need to learn some debating skills. You can't argue a point with a counter point that is irrelevant. It's like trying to fight fire with nunchucks. Oh, and if you call me an anti-semite in replying to this I will consider that to be a concession on your part that you have no real point other than the stock standard brow beatings pro-Zionists are so good at.
Evidently irony is lost on you. Not surprising though, you're obviously one of those idiots who equates criticism of Israeli foreign policy with anti-semitism, hence devoid of any sense of perspective which is required to parse irony.
Indeed. Sieg heil!
Accusations flying back and forth accusing the other of being misinformed. Here is an essay, written at the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, may shed some light on the subject. It also offers a nice window on the history and origins of the conflict, as well as providing a nice outline on the state of play of geopolitics at the time Israel was created.
http://www.doublestandards.org/abdullah1.html
Are you allowed to use utensils without supervision?
Holy shit dude...
"extream" ?
"financhaly" ?
"Garenteed" ?
"desprate" ?
Were you abandoned in the jungle as a child only to be raised by a panther, a bear and a crowd of crazy monkeys? Please say yes, the idea that you were educated by humans pains me greatly.
I, for one, would hate to live in your fear riddled housebound hellhole. Stay in bed where it's safe.