I'm pretty sure that interactions with drugs created or repurposed in the recent past don't have a history going back millennia.
The drug ritonavir, which is used to treat AIDs, for example, was only approved in 1996 and it apparently has an interaction with colchicine. The shamans aren't going to be a help with learning that.
That still doesn't get you where you want to go since corporations don't "control" the government. Politicians are still voted into office by voters, not corporations.
A big part of the blame should go to the failed market and its greedy occupants that cause $1 worth of chemicals to cost more than many people make in a year.
A big part of the problem discussing this is clueless people that assign no cost or value to the development and maintenance of scientific and industrial facilities to support investigation of new drugs, and the many person-years of scientific research to identify new drugs, develop the means to economically manufacture them, test them to ensure that they are safe and effective, deal with the growing government bureaucracy, get them to market, and deal with the court cases from the outliers and mistakes.
How about this - we have two drug markets that you can sign up for. One drug market is pretty much as things are today, but maybe with a bit less regulation. The other drug market is one in which anyone that can scrape $1 of chemicals into a pouch and get it to drug stores can sell it for whatever they think it is good for. Maybe they could honor that second market name with a name: patent medicine.
Except that the site was NOT required. Most states did NOT implement their own site, and either default to the federal site or formed a regional partnership.
In order to qualify legally for the subsidies under the law each state had to set up its own exchange. If the state is going to have an exchange then people need to have a way to access it. How are you going to do that without a web site? Snail mail? Telephone? Currier?
There are many states where people are not legally eligible for subsidies. They have been illegally receiving them, but they shouldn't count on that to last..
How about colchicine? It cost about $8/month. Then, one company did a million dollar study, generally considered to have contributed nothing to medical knowledge, and so got temporary exclusivity from the FDA and suddenly it costs $450 for the same thing.
I guess you consider dosage and drug interaction information to be overrated? You know that neglecting that sort of thing kills people?
Do you want your medicine based on modern science, or the "wisdom" of the ancient Greeks and various hill people?
Oral colchicine had been used for many years as an unapproved drug with no prescribing information, dosage recommendations, or drug interaction warnings approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).[8] On July 30, 2009 the FDA approved colchicine as a monotherapy for the treatment of three different indications (familial Mediterranean fever, acute gout flares, and for the prophylaxis of gout flares[8]), and gave URL Pharma a three-year marketing exclusivity agreement[9] in exchange for URL Pharma doing 17 new studies and investing $100 million into the product, of which $45 million went to the FDA for the application fee. URL Pharma raised the price from $0.09 per tablet to $4.85, and the FDA removed the older unapproved colchicine from the market in October 2010 both in oral and IV form, but gave pharmacies the opportunity to buy up the older unapproved colchicine.[10] Colchicine in combination with probenecid has been FDA approved prior to 1982.[9
Based on the immensity of the pharmaceutical companies, they aren't exactly losing money.
And some people think thriving businesses can lose money on every sale but make it up "in volume."
"... a recent General Accounting Office report on U.S. military equipment procurement concluded that only 1% of major military purchases involving high technology were delivered on time and on budget."
That book says the problem is due to a sociological mistake. My understanding is that it is entirely intended, a way of making money from the largely hidden military purchases of the U.S. government. For the U.S. government, killing people is an enormous, extremely profitable business.
The book is wrong, it isn't a "sociological mistake." The problems tend to come from changing requirements (from the gov and events), under bidding (by the company), stop and start funding and various directives (from the Congress), legal challenges from the losing competitors, and the nature of the procurement system.
And no, killing people is not "an enormous, extremely profitable business" for the government. It is quite the opposite.
I'll give you a freebie - the North Hollywood shoot out. It certainly isn't the only one. "Overwhelming mass" by itself didn't really work out well there. Far fewer people would have been injured if the police had been armed then as they are now.
Cem Özdemir, the head of the Green party and a leading German politician of Turkish descent, told Spiegel Online it would be 'irresponsible' for German spies not to target Turkey given its location as a transit country for Islamic State militants from Europe."
I see from the comments here that the governmental mission of character assassination of this fellow is largely complete and successful. Do you know Assange personally?
Maybe you should spend some time going through the old news articles about Assange before you make wild charges. If you do you'll see that even Assanges friends refer to him as difficult, and he does himself few favors by the way he treats people. Some of his harsh critics are former friends or associates that he has jerked around. Not every jerk has a government conspiracy out to get them, and Assange needs little help there.
Yes, people suspected of being terrorists, associates of al Qaida, right? Assange doesn't make that cut as a "journalist." Or are you claiming that Assange is a terrorist?
What sex crimes? I'm unaware of any government anywhere that has charged him with any sex crimes.
And despite the fact that it has been repeatedly discussed you are also unaware that the Swedish legal system requires that he be interviewed again before they can charge him. Many people here exploit that difference in the legal system (one shared by a number of European countries) to try to depict Assange as innocent, or that there are no serious allegations against him, or that he doesn't face the prospect of charges. That is false.
I haven't heard Sweden state that they will categorically not extradite him to the US, though.
The Swedish government has also not denied that they plan make him crown prince with a 1.000.000.000.000 SEK stipend, or that they will stick a rocket in his butt and shoot him into space to suffocate. The probability of all three isn't terribly different.
It's mostly been stopped now but I'm sure they would make an exception for someone like Assange.
One thing - how is it exactly that you think the US would get hold of Assage while he is either under the protection of Ecuador and Britain and Sweden are waiting to take him into custody? Why do you think those major European nations would agree to it for such a high profile person when ordinary legal means are available? Rendition was used for people believed to be involved in terrorism, are you claiming that Assange is a terrorist instead of a "journalist"?
As is your custom you are "sure" about highly unlikely things.... just as long as American is smeared.
An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it.
The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually -- yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual."...
Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot "love" another man -- but that doesn't mean they can't use men for "sexual gratification."
Most likely just the typical bullshit you get in a 3rd world country. Low education, coupled by poverty, corrupt government and when you get a health epidemic, people panic and do stupid shit
Terrorism is pretty common "bullshit" in some 3rd world countries. The culture of some groups that engage in terrorism celebrates self-sacrifice when engaging in terrorism. Indeed, there is essentially a death cult there when they state "we love death more than you love life." Terrible diseases like Ebola induce terror while killing many people. Modern air travel has reduced the what had been the travel of months to a few hours. Hmmm. Hmmm.
Maybe you haven't heard, but most Iraqis say they want peace and democracy. The Al Qaida inspired Islamist extremists are a small percentage of society, but they are willing to bomb and kill to get their way. They formed their own terrorist army to try to overthrow the peaceful democracy in Iraq. Why are you opposed to bombing the terrorist army trying to overthrow that peaceful democracy?
You might have a point though, that whole "democracy" thing does seem to have failed badly in Japan, Germany, and Italy.
We do indeed. They were created because Republicans (and in particular, Nixon) needed a new thing to harp on for the election, and they went for "tough on crime".
Not even close. You could just as well have answered "khrushchev" with no loss of accuracy.
Beginning in the 1960’s, local police were confronted by increasingly well-armed individuals and groups who were willing to engage in armed confrontations with the police. The traditional method of response by uniformed patrol officers placed both officers and innocent bystanders at increased risk.
In many nations of the world, such situations would likely be handled by national police forces. However, the American people have historically been very wary of deployment of federal forces within local boundaries.
It became clear that a new method of response to such complex, high-risk and often high-energy situations was needed. Such a response required expertise and weaponry beyond the normal capability of local law enforcement agencies. Thus, the concept of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) was developed by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Originally, the SWAT concept was for counter-sniper and other high-risk situations that in the past would have provoked an inordinate number of shots being fired, often with injuries to innocent persons. Over the years, SWAT has evolved into the management of barricaded suspect situations, the service of high-risk warrants, dignitary protection, and the actual rescue of hostages.
Under the SWAT model, verbal techniques and physical tactics would combine for seamless management of volatile situations confronting local police. The primary purpose behind this concept was to reduce risk to the police forces involved, to the suspects, and to the community at large. Most of these situations are resolved with verbal tactics utilized by trained hostage negotiators who are frequently an integral component of SWAT teams. Seldom are physical tactics necessary, and even then the actual firing of shots rarely occurs.
------
And what are those "originally intended functions"?
I think that is answered above.
... there's no justification for having every police department, even those on university campuses...
Whoever heard of shootings at schools or college campuses?
I'll leave it up to you to track down statistics on the practices of European gendarmes.
Fundamentalism is a part of it, yes, but would never amount to anything like what we've seen were it not for widespread anti-US sentiments stemming from more pragmatic reasons
Islamist insurrections have been on-going since at least the 1950s (ignoring the earlier ones) and have been aimed at taking control of the local nation. They have nothing to do with the US. You don't know what you are talking about.
Coming from someone who apparently still believes the Iraq war had anything to do with 911...
Please provide some evidence for this. You are simply engaging in cheap, misleading rhetoric.
somehow still manages to delude himself that anti-American sentiment somehow thrives in complete isolation of its international posturing
On Wednesday, German interior minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) warned of an imminent threat of terrorist attacks by Islamist “religious warriors” in Germany and throughout Europe.
“An abstract danger has become a concrete, lethal threat in Europe, with an impact on Germany,” the interior minister said at the presentation of the domestic intelligence agency’s 2013 report in Berlin. The attack at the Jewish museum in Brussels, where four people were killed by a jihadi at the end of May, had “made clear that the possibility of an attack by such forces returning from Syria has become a deadly reality,” de Maizière explained.
Domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen added, “Islamist terrorism represents the greatest threat to society. Germany is not far from terrorism. We continue to be a target for the planning of attacks.”
I think the point is that when the police are shooting people in great numbers -- I don't think the US has a peer in that dept -- then it might not be a great idea to give them even more destructive weaponry.
That is nonsense. Police in the US aren't routinely engaging in massacres, nor do they just shoot at random people as a standard practice. The question isn't do they have weapons, but are those weapons being used inappropriately?
Remember those billions (!) of rounds of ammo that DHS bought?
That didn't actually happen. But even if it did, the actual question is still whether they are using that supply appropriately.
In combination with the, shall we say, questionable record of accountability of police actions, tooling up to this extent seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Maybe by routinely providing US police machine pistols (submachine guns ) as is common in Europe would help bring greater peace to society? What do you say, an MP-5 for every patrol officer?
Where do you come up with this "shall we say, questionable record of accountability of police actions" nonsense? There have been particular police departments or teams with a problem, but are you trying to claim this is a universal condition? That is nonsense.
Your comment is the one that is flawed. The number of bullets fired doesn't really say much about how the circumstances under which they were trained to open fire in that case specifically, let alone a more general condemnation of the police. I assume you aren't even considering the possibility that they weren't doing what they were trained to do, or may have overreacted?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure that interactions with drugs created or repurposed in the recent past don't have a history going back millennia.
The drug ritonavir, which is used to treat AIDs, for example, was only approved in 1996 and it apparently has an interaction with colchicine. The shamans aren't going to be a help with learning that.
That still doesn't get you where you want to go since corporations don't "control" the government. Politicians are still voted into office by voters, not corporations.
A big part of the blame should go to the failed market and its greedy occupants that cause $1 worth of chemicals to cost more than many people make in a year.
A big part of the problem discussing this is clueless people that assign no cost or value to the development and maintenance of scientific and industrial facilities to support investigation of new drugs, and the many person-years of scientific research to identify new drugs, develop the means to economically manufacture them, test them to ensure that they are safe and effective, deal with the growing government bureaucracy, get them to market, and deal with the court cases from the outliers and mistakes.
How about this - we have two drug markets that you can sign up for. One drug market is pretty much as things are today, but maybe with a bit less regulation. The other drug market is one in which anyone that can scrape $1 of chemicals into a pouch and get it to drug stores can sell it for whatever they think it is good for. Maybe they could honor that second market name with a name: patent medicine.
Which will you be signing up for?
Except that the site was NOT required. Most states did NOT implement their own site, and either default to the federal site or formed a regional partnership.
In order to qualify legally for the subsidies under the law each state had to set up its own exchange. If the state is going to have an exchange then people need to have a way to access it. How are you going to do that without a web site? Snail mail? Telephone? Currier?
Obamacare’s Architect Agreed That Only State Exchanges Could Offer Subsidies
There are many states where people are not legally eligible for subsidies. They have been illegally receiving them, but they shouldn't count on that to last..
How about colchicine? It cost about $8/month. Then, one company did a million dollar study, generally considered to have contributed nothing to medical knowledge, and so got temporary exclusivity from the FDA and suddenly it costs $450 for the same thing.
I guess you consider dosage and drug interaction information to be overrated? You know that neglecting that sort of thing kills people?
Do you want your medicine based on modern science, or the "wisdom" of the ancient Greeks and various hill people?
FDA approval
Oral colchicine had been used for many years as an unapproved drug with no prescribing information, dosage recommendations, or drug interaction warnings approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).[8] On July 30, 2009 the FDA approved colchicine as a monotherapy for the treatment of three different indications (familial Mediterranean fever, acute gout flares, and for the prophylaxis of gout flares[8]), and gave URL Pharma a three-year marketing exclusivity agreement[9] in exchange for URL Pharma doing 17 new studies and investing $100 million into the product, of which $45 million went to the FDA for the application fee. URL Pharma raised the price from $0.09 per tablet to $4.85, and the FDA removed the older unapproved colchicine from the market in October 2010 both in oral and IV form, but gave pharmacies the opportunity to buy up the older unapproved colchicine.[10] Colchicine in combination with probenecid has been FDA approved prior to 1982.[9
Based on the immensity of the pharmaceutical companies, they aren't exactly losing money.
And some people think thriving businesses can lose money on every sale but make it up "in volume."
That is "Really Big-O" notation, to which you can add, "Oh no!"
"... a recent General Accounting Office report on U.S. military equipment procurement concluded that only 1% of major military purchases involving high technology were delivered on time and on budget."
That book says the problem is due to a sociological mistake. My understanding is that it is entirely intended, a way of making money from the largely hidden military purchases of the U.S. government. For the U.S. government, killing people is an enormous, extremely profitable business.
The book is wrong, it isn't a "sociological mistake." The problems tend to come from changing requirements (from the gov and events), under bidding (by the company), stop and start funding and various directives (from the Congress), legal challenges from the losing competitors, and the nature of the procurement system.
And no, killing people is not "an enormous, extremely profitable business" for the government. It is quite the opposite.
A big part of the blame should go to the Democrats in Congress that passed the law requiring the site to begin with.
Oracle should explain that their software accurately depicts the state of the law. It may be an adequate defense.
I'll give you a freebie - the North Hollywood shoot out. It certainly isn't the only one. "Overwhelming mass" by itself didn't really work out well there. Far fewer people would have been injured if the police had been armed then as they are now.
Cem Özdemir, the head of the Green party and a leading German politician of Turkish descent, told Spiegel Online it would be 'irresponsible' for German spies not to target Turkey given its location as a transit country for Islamic State militants from Europe."
My, my, that is interesting on so many levels.
I see from the comments here that the governmental mission of character assassination of this fellow is largely complete and successful. Do you know Assange personally?
Maybe you should spend some time going through the old news articles about Assange before you make wild charges. If you do you'll see that even Assanges friends refer to him as difficult, and he does himself few favors by the way he treats people. Some of his harsh critics are former friends or associates that he has jerked around. Not every jerk has a government conspiracy out to get them, and Assange needs little help there.
You seem a little ignorant of recent history.
It's a common vice.
Have you heard of America's rendition program?
Yes, people suspected of being terrorists, associates of al Qaida, right? Assange doesn't make that cut as a "journalist." Or are you claiming that Assange is a terrorist?
What sex crimes? I'm unaware of any government anywhere that has charged him with any sex crimes.
And despite the fact that it has been repeatedly discussed you are also unaware that the Swedish legal system requires that he be interviewed again before they can charge him. Many people here exploit that difference in the legal system (one shared by a number of European countries) to try to depict Assange as innocent, or that there are no serious allegations against him, or that he doesn't face the prospect of charges. That is false.
I assume we can agree that US politicians aren't going to try to catch Ebola to kill their constitutents?
I haven't heard Sweden state that they will categorically not extradite him to the US, though.
The Swedish government has also not denied that they plan make him crown prince with a 1.000.000.000.000 SEK stipend, or that they will stick a rocket in his butt and shoot him into space to suffocate. The probability of all three isn't terribly different.
It's mostly been stopped now but I'm sure they would make an exception for someone like Assange.
One thing - how is it exactly that you think the US would get hold of Assage while he is either under the protection of Ecuador and Britain and Sweden are waiting to take him into custody? Why do you think those major European nations would agree to it for such a high profile person when ordinary legal means are available? Rendition was used for people believed to be involved in terrorism, are you claiming that Assange is a terrorist instead of a "journalist"?
As is your custom you are "sure" about highly unlikely things .... just as long as American is smeared.
It isn't an isolated problem.
Afghan Men Struggle With Sexual Identity, Study Finds
An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it.
The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually -- yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual." ...
Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot "love" another man -- but that doesn't mean they can't use men for "sexual gratification."
Most likely just the typical bullshit you get in a 3rd world country. Low education, coupled by poverty, corrupt government and when you get a health epidemic, people panic and do stupid shit
Terrorism is pretty common "bullshit" in some 3rd world countries. The culture of some groups that engage in terrorism celebrates self-sacrifice when engaging in terrorism. Indeed, there is essentially a death cult there when they state "we love death more than you love life." Terrible diseases like Ebola induce terror while killing many people. Modern air travel has reduced the what had been the travel of months to a few hours. Hmmm. Hmmm.
Maybe you haven't heard, but most Iraqis say they want peace and democracy. The Al Qaida inspired Islamist extremists are a small percentage of society, but they are willing to bomb and kill to get their way. They formed their own terrorist army to try to overthrow the peaceful democracy in Iraq. Why are you opposed to bombing the terrorist army trying to overthrow that peaceful democracy?
You might have a point though, that whole "democracy" thing does seem to have failed badly in Japan, Germany, and Italy.
Weapons aren't part of the M113, and many different types of weapons can be mounted on an M113 besides the M2 .50 machinegun.
We do indeed. They were created because Republicans (and in particular, Nixon) needed a new thing to harp on for the election, and they went for "tough on crime".
Not even close. You could just as well have answered "khrushchev" with no loss of accuracy.
Attorney General’s Commission on Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.)
Beginning in the 1960’s, local police were confronted by increasingly well-armed individuals and groups who were willing to engage in armed confrontations with the police. The traditional method of response by uniformed patrol officers placed both officers and innocent bystanders at increased risk.
In many nations of the world, such situations would likely be handled by national police forces. However, the American people have historically been very wary of deployment of federal forces within local boundaries.
It became clear that a new method of response to such complex, high-risk and often high-energy situations was needed. Such a response required expertise and weaponry beyond the normal capability of local law enforcement agencies. Thus, the concept of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) was developed by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Originally, the SWAT concept was for counter-sniper and other high-risk situations that in the past would have provoked an inordinate number of shots being fired, often with injuries to innocent persons. Over the years, SWAT has evolved into the management of barricaded suspect situations, the service of high-risk warrants, dignitary protection, and the actual rescue of hostages.
Under the SWAT model, verbal techniques and physical tactics would combine for seamless management of volatile situations confronting local police. The primary purpose behind this concept was to reduce risk to the police forces involved, to the suspects, and to the community at large.
Most of these situations are resolved with verbal tactics utilized by trained hostage negotiators who are frequently an integral component of SWAT teams. Seldom are physical tactics necessary, and even then the actual firing of shots rarely occurs.
------
And what are those "originally intended functions"?
I think that is answered above.
... there's no justification for having every police department, even those on university campuses ...
Whoever heard of shootings at schools or college campuses?
I'll leave it up to you to track down statistics on the practices of European gendarmes.
US military spending remains outrageous, at about the level of the rest of the world put together.
That is irrelevant to the question regarding the US defense budget rising or falling.
I assume you mean the 2013 cuts -- those have been matched, basically dollar for dollar, by increasing the "temporary" budget for Afghanistan.
Sorry, but no. US defense spending has been falling since 2010. For 2015 it will probably end up being about $120 billion less than 2010.
Major personnel cuts are happening too.
Pentagon Set to Slash Military to Pre-World War II Levels
Fundamentalism is a part of it, yes, but would never amount to anything like what we've seen were it not for widespread anti-US sentiments stemming from more pragmatic reasons
Islamist insurrections have been on-going since at least the 1950s (ignoring the earlier ones) and have been aimed at taking control of the local nation. They have nothing to do with the US. You don't know what you are talking about.
Coming from someone who apparently still believes the Iraq war had anything to do with 911 ...
Please provide some evidence for this. You are simply engaging in cheap, misleading rhetoric.
somehow still manages to delude himself that anti-American sentiment somehow thrives in complete isolation of its international posturing
Enjoy your illusions while you still can.
Intelligence Report: Number of Islamists in Germany Grows
Germany: Islamists Infiltrating Schools in Hamburg
German interior minister warns of threat of lethal attacks by Islamists
On Wednesday, German interior minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) warned of an imminent threat of terrorist attacks by Islamist “religious warriors” in Germany and throughout Europe.
“An abstract danger has become a concrete, lethal threat in Europe, with an impact on Germany,” the interior minister said at the presentation of the domestic intelligence agency’s 2013 report in Berlin. The attack at the Jewish museum in Brussels, where four people were killed by a jihadi at the end of May, had “made clear that the possibility of an attack by such forces returning from Syria has become a deadly reality,” de Maizière explained.
Domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen added, “Islamist terrorism represents the greatest threat to society. Germany is not far from terrorism. We continue to be a target for the planning of attacks.”
Officials Say Islamic Terrorism Is Germany's Big Domestic Security Risk
I think the point is that when the police are shooting people in great numbers -- I don't think the US has a peer in that dept -- then it might not be a great idea to give them even more destructive weaponry.
That is nonsense. Police in the US aren't routinely engaging in massacres, nor do they just shoot at random people as a standard practice. The question isn't do they have weapons, but are those weapons being used inappropriately?
Remember those billions (!) of rounds of ammo that DHS bought?
That didn't actually happen. But even if it did, the actual question is still whether they are using that supply appropriately.
In combination with the, shall we say, questionable record of accountability of police actions, tooling up to this extent seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Maybe by routinely providing US police machine pistols (submachine guns ) as is common in Europe would help bring greater peace to society? What do you say, an MP-5 for every patrol officer?
Where do you come up with this "shall we say, questionable record of accountability of police actions" nonsense? There have been particular police departments or teams with a problem, but are you trying to claim this is a universal condition? That is nonsense.
Suppose we have an engineer of type Real on the scale of 1 ......A(wesome) ...
Your comment is the one that is flawed. The number of bullets fired doesn't really say much about how the circumstances under which they were trained to open fire in that case specifically, let alone a more general condemnation of the police. I assume you aren't even considering the possibility that they weren't doing what they were trained to do, or may have overreacted?