The FDA banned aspertame, then Reagan stacked the deck and they lifted the ban. So the FDA is not some miracle organization immunite to politics and purchases. The nefarious piece I was refering to was the Merck lobbyist relationship with Gov Rick Perry and his push (and subsequent back down) to make it a mandatory vaccination. Even one of the researchers that was responsible says the mandatory says its a bad idea that could increase the problem rather than decrease. You might also notice that this researcher is a university employee, not a direct employee of Merck. However, at $360 for the vaccination, you have a lot of room to grease some palms and still make a killer profit.
If you read up on the history, most of research on the best stuff is coming out of universities and non-profit driven organizations to include the MMR vaccination. I fail to see how questioning the big pharma companies that sell the stuff is a denial of its usefulness or effectiveness. The key piece that was under fire was the mercury content. Now, you can tell me all day long that it has been tested and tested at X% and it is safe, but I can point out more cases across a wide variety of industries where cost cutting and lack of QA led an otherwise safe product to become dangerous. Antibiotics is a whole other ball of wax and if you really want to talk about overprescription of antibiotics and the joys it has brought like drug resistant strains then that is fine. Antibiotics are great until you overuse them and build super strains. Now, aside from the culture of "right here right now" who would push increased use of antibiotics in cases where it really isn't needed?
I can't tell if people are really this dumb, or are deliberately misreading my comments on things like Cancer/AIDS. Cancer/AIDS is a damned difficult beast, and you can also join the ranks of the Capt. Obvious folks that keep pointing it out to me. If things like that weren't so damned hard to beat then companies would be doing the research because the cost of R&D would be more likely to be recouped. The fact is that truckloads of money have been spent on it and we still don't have a cure, big corp drug companies aren't going to waste dollars on that, they are going to use those dollars on something that is likely to have a return. This isn't evil corporate bosses, this is simple economics. The scientists that are lining up to tackle the monster problems are doing it in places without a profit motivation for operating. UCLA has some pretty promising stem cell tricks to fight AIDS.
Well, to be honest, the fear has never been enough to convince me even beyond having had bad reactions to both Small Pox and MMR. My kids all get stuck and I have probably been stuck with twice as many vaccines as the average person. I am forced to question the thatsfuckingstupid.com link because between the rather inflamatory nature of the source and its lack of citation of where it got the numbers it doesn't exactly look unbiased and objective. I am not anti-vaccine by any stretch, I am anti-pharma company if anything. But, if you look up the history on almost all of those vaccines they came from publicly funded sources such as military medical research, universities, or other public organizations.
If the risk of resurgence is really so bad I think there is actually a much deeper root cause beyond the anti-vaccination crowd. It is the crowd that villifies the science community as elitists or otherwise uses warped science for political agendas. If there is some large crisis number of people not accepting vaccinations it is because either their doctors are not pushing it, or because they have been taught to not trust the doctors (by all means, don't trust one, get second opinions, I did that with some ankle issue and "hey your fine don't worry unless it causes constant pain" turned into "you won't walk in 10 years if we don't correct this surgically" and the second opinion was able to provide me tons of information about what was going wrong and why it was going to get worse). More and more people get trapped between Science always has the right answer at any given time and Science is a bunch of elitists that don't know what they are doing.
And for my last bit of devil's advocate. The herd immunity is all well and good until it is your kid that is negatively affected. That and I don't think we are a herd, that would seem to indicate some type of bovine and I am pretty sure cows are more peaceful than we are. We are some kind of monkey colony.
I certainly don't think there is any "proof", just a reason for caution and detailed research. Between the behavior of the companies in question, the uncertaintly of the issue, the political forces at hand, and so on. Correlation certainly does not equal causation else we would be suing icecream makers becaues increased icecream sales coincide with increased rape cases. However, there are plausible reasons for the increase in rape during increased icecream sales (its warmer out). Since there is no plausible explanation for autism other than "well, that is when it is usually diagnosed" vaccines are hardly off the hook because they haven't been proven, or even because they have been disproven in certain circumstance. There is a reason for the increase in autism and noone is totally off the hook until there is a real answer.
Now...a note on Public Safety. Measels and Rubella have been declared eradicated in this part of the world. So this isn't some massive public safety crisis that the detractors like to make it out to be. Which is one more reason that the whole thing is suspect. Fear of autism being used by one side, fear of some epidemic on the other. A whole lot of FUD is being used on both sides of this argument.
To be honest, I suspect if there is any relation it probably is in the mercury link, which is moot point because the mercury containing stuff has all but vanished from modern vaccinations. Even if they can prove the "normal" levels don't cause it, that doesn't mean that there weren't batches with abnormally high levels that did do damage. I have personally had a bad reaction to an MMR shot, and my daughter had to get blood tests to check her liver as an infant because they misprinted the dosage on some medication for her. There have been tons of cases of infants dying in hospitals because of wrong dosing. There are no shortages of human error that could have played a large role. I think it is horribly wrong to laugh these people off just because they can't prove it. I suspect these people know their kid better than any of the pundits commenting. I have known people with autistic kids, and they didn't just magically become autistic overnight. To be perfectly honest we could just be looking at mercury poisoning of these kids and getting away with the technicality of it didn't cause autism because these kids have been diagnosed with autism, even though the symptoms are strikingly similar to mercury poisoning. Aspberger's Syndrome is frequently misdiagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
Disregard, Sorry. I read back what I had typed again after reading this and realized I missed a step. %1 adverse reaction (I fell in here), 1% of the adverse reaction was serious complications including death.
I spent a 3 day weekend with the glands under my arms and in my neck so swollen I could barely turn my head. I spent most of the time sitting on the couch sipping water. Now, the alternative of getting small pox would be WAY worse, but the likelyhood was equally miniscule (maybe even smaller) and ultimately I have not been exposed to small pox at all so the bad reaction was the only thing I got out of it.
Ultimately my point is how rare does the disease have to be before the vaccination is declared obsolete. I got mine about 5 years ago. Measels has been declared eradicated in North, Central, and South America. Rubella is claimed as eliminated as of 2004. So where is the massive and irresponsible danger of the parents that aren't vaccinating their children against diseases declared eradicated? I'm not saying prevention isn't a good idea, but lashing out at these parents for the "danger" they are creating seems a bit extreme when 2 of the 3 diseases in the vaccination in question are declared eradicated where they live.
The chickenpox one is hilarious to me. It can go really bad, but it isn't like a horrible epidemic type disease. I remember how all the parents would conspire to get us kids together whenever one of us caught it as a sort of home vaccination thing. The only kids safe were the ones "too young". These days it seems that letting a kid's immune system develop the old fashion way is horrible. It is way better to put them in antibiotic bubbles and then inject them with stuff to prevent disease...
If this was about one woman in one isolated case this would all be nonissue. The fact is we don't understand autism very well at all and to say we can prove/disprove causes without understanding it is a little goofy. I have read the weird rantings of the crazed parents about the autism/vaccination thing, I don't take them very seriously. I have also read a lot of it coming from pediatricians or other medically knowledgable people, that don't take such a zealotry approach, suggest there may be a link, and even offer alternate explanations.
The claim and the person making the claim must be separated. In your example, there were a great number of bad attempts at flight, many operated on fundamentally wrong assumptions about how flight worked, but disproving 1, 10, or 100 of those bad ideas did not disprove that manned flight was capable, only that those specific explanations of how to do it were wrong. The guys jumping off of towers with home made wings had the right idea that man could fly, just a really bad approach. The Wright Brothers are only famous because they got it correct. The specific claims of HOW it is linked can be disproven, but that doesn't disprove the potential link itself.
Exactly my point! The R&D cost of fighting one of the tough bastard diseases is nowhere near the return value even without the insane patent problems. I have said nothing against the effectiveness or importance of vaccines (and even in a few posts say they are effective and worth the risk), but because I dare to say that a lack of proof is not the same thing as disproven and that the companies involved are highly suspect and have little interest in your health, only your dollar, I am ranted against as being anti-vaccine.
You are missing the point. Even the FDA says the mercury additive is toxic and has caused documented reactions. I am not even saying these people are correct in this case. However, there have been people that had evidence that stood up and were mocked/ostracized/executed/etc. There is no shortage of things that were once scientifically proven that were later dismised as nonsense either, especially in the medical realm. Here is a fun one.
There has been a huge rise in autism cases as of late. This could be increased diagnosis. This could be other causes. But honestly, until the root cause of the problem is found, everything is still suspect. Maybe the vaccinations do pose no risk...unless coupled with some other enviromental variable. I am sure you are aware that certain chemicals interact, maybe there is a higher risk in these vaccinations when there are other chemicals present in the child's environment. There have been numerous studies that have shown that because of all the chemicals we use in kids junk these days that kids have far higher levels of toxins in their system than their parents did. What about allergies? I can eat peanuts, it kills other people. Are peanuts safe for most people, sure, can they kill some people, absolutely. Since you seem to demand a black and white answer are peanuts dangerous or not? There can't possibly be enough studies to disprove every possible combination in which the contents of these vaccines could have been a player.
Now, I am reasonably certain the reward is greater than the risk by a pretty large margin, but that does not mean that these things may not be linked.
Stay with me. Economics. I didn't say they are holding back the cures. I said they aren't very apt to be investing in them. How much do you think has been spent looking for a cure for Cancer or AIDS in just non profit alone? The amount is huge. Do you honestly expect any company to lay out that kind of money on such a high risk venture knowing full well that as soon as they make a breakthrough that the other companies will follow quickly. Now with other companies following they couldn't even hope to charge enough per cured patient to cover their R&D costs. This isn't some evil villian conspiracy (though much of their other behavior probably qualifies) This is simple economics at work. The fact that it would hurt another companies bottom line on selling treatment for disease X would be irrelevant.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I have said specifically that most of the groundbreaking research is coming out of non-profits like government institutions and universities. While UCLA is performing amazing things with stem cells to fight AIDS, there are big pharma companies sueing third world countries for daring to violate their intellectual property to make cheap AIDS drugs. I also never said Cancer/AIDS was easy...in fact if it was easy big pharma companies probably would invest because the cost of research would be low enough that they could still turn a profit on a cure. The fact that these things are tough sons o bitches to get rid of makes them horrible economic choices to deal with.
Dr. Harry Martin Meyer Jr...as far as I can tell one of the main key players in the whole MMR vaccination. He spent most of his time (and most notably the vaccination development time) at government/military run institutions not working for Big Pharma.
I never said that the vaccine wasn't a good thing. I said that trusting Big Pharma is risky, and mocking people for questioning them is even worse. So even in this case Big Pharma is making sales on research they didn't pioneer.
Me saying that there is more money mandatory vaccinations than cures does not mean that the vaccinations are inherently bad. It means that there is a profit motivation that is suspect and there should be a very high degree of scrutiny of both their scientific/medical claims, the studies that claim everything is ok, as well as their political dealings. Not being able to prove something doesn't make it false. Does the fact they couldn't pin any murders on Al Capone mean he wasn't involved in the murders?
I didn't make accusations of mass manipulation and cover ups. My problem is with all of the people mocking the parents for saying something isn't right. Did you know there were studies that "scientifically proved" that black's couldn't be fighter pilots. Seems that the Tuskegee Airmen being all black and one of the best fighter units should have been "scientifically impossible" based on the research that had been done, and the studies that were run, and the link that was found that said black's were incapable of being fighter pilots.
I'm not even saying that the vaccines are a bad idea. I am saying that people cling to science as often as they cling to religion and resorting to mocking the people who dare question the "authority". Science is about skepticism, not belief. Smoking used to be good for your health...
It wouldn't be any kind of conspiracy. A business exists for profit, investing a tremendous amount of time/money/resources into something that will not generate profit is not something a business is apt to do (and would likely greatly anger the shareholders if they did do it). This is why so much of the groundbreaking research on these things happens at places like UCLA or other universities and such. This isn't even an ethics issue, this is an economics issue. Businesses will go where the percieved profits are. No profit = dead business. I honestly have a hard time believing that big pharm would do much to actually keep cures out of our hands, they just don't do much to put cures into our hands. The ease and profitability of developing treatments trumps the difficulty and loss of developing cures. I suspect these guys make too much money on penis pills to really worry about a cure cutting off a line of profit. There will ALWAYS be some other thing that people will turn to big pharma to fix with chemicals.
Vaccines are preventative treatment and a HUGE profit line when made mandatory.
A cure would be applied to those who are infected to cure.
A vaccine would be applied to everyone.
Tell me...do you think they would make more money giving everyone the MMR vaccine or just curing those that catch it. I realize that there are benefits like preventing the spread by vaccination, but the dollar value is MUCH higher in vaccinations. Arguably you can tell how important it is to get a given vaccination by its cost. Flu vaccinations are handed out like free candy in most places, which would indicate that the threat of infection spreading is much higher than just a strict profit motivation.
Which do you think is worth more money, AIDS treatment or a cure for AIDS? Then go look at who is really dumping money and research into AIDS treatment vs AIDS cures. Look who is making leaps and bounds in research involving things like stem cells to combat AIDS vs those who are suing third world countries for violating their intellectual property rights by making generic AIDS treatment so that the poor can afford it.
Small pox killed tons of people too, yet that one isn't getting passed out these days. Now, maybe I am biased, but I get to see thos Big Bad Pharma reps on a regular basis and the way they peddle their shit makes me sick to my stomach. I won't eat/drink any of the bribery garbage they bring in for the Docs because of it. My point with HPV is that it was declared safe by pharma and made mandatory in many places with little oversight and many people made the same insane claims about how the parents refusing were just ignorant and exposing children to danger. It is the perfect drug selling rhetoric. Now, I'm not even saying that these vaccines are dangerous, but I am saying there is a HUGE vested interest in covering that information up. Look how much Tazer international spends chasing down anyone who dares says their weapons are dangerous...
So...1% risk of death from taking the Small Pox vaccine . What are the odds that you are going to catch Small Pox AND die from it living in suburbia these days? It is all fine to talk about how the people that may die or be disabled by vaccinations as collateral damage of wiping out some disease, but I bet you wouldn't feel that way if it was your child being counted as collateral damage.
Oh hush you! We all know the toxicity of mercury is inversely proportional to how much profit is being made by using it. So the more money is made by using it, the less dangerous it becomes. Since the drug companies are raking in so much cash then clearly the mercury they use has virtually no risk. I mean we could inject this stuff and not suffer from it...
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least. Congress critters get mailed anthrax letters, then the military gets mandatory anthrax shots while congress critters refuse the treatment... A few mishaps later then some lawsuits and the mandatory anthrax shots are a bit less mandatory... and battle has raged for a while, but this whole time the number of military members exposed to anthrax is LESS than the number of Congress critters exposed, yet military members got it mandatory and Congress critters refused...
I don't doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines at doing their intended job of protecting from whatever disease. I question how risky they may be as the drug companies involved are certainly less than honest (would hurt their bottom line) and the government critters are more than happy to make it mandatory for others (making for a great test bed before they take it).
Really? What would you call the parents that fought against the HPV vaccination that had barely been tested yet has been made mandatory in places where the drug lords making it have the local officials in their back pocket? I do agree that vaccines in general are a good thing, but leaping into accusing parents of fighting against them as being a danger to society is exactly the kind of rhetoric and propoganda the drug companies want to push their stuff.
Remember, these are the same companies that will probably never find a cure for anything because there is no money in a cure. If they can research how to cure your cancer for a one time charge, or keep you alive for an extra 10-20 years on expensive treatments which do you think they will pick? Blindly trusting the word of companies that have a vested interest in making sure everyone pays to have these things injected into every child is more irresponsible.
I have personally had a rather bad interaction with the MMR vaccine. It was the 3rd shot in the series, about 5 minutes after the shot I wandered back from the waiting room and said I didn't feel good. I woke up with 2 ER folks checking my blood pressure and checking for damage from collapsing. So...while I generally believe vaccines are a good thing blindly trusting those who profit on you getting them when they say there is no risk is stupid and dangerous to say the least.
Have you been to the south?! Good lord, on top of that idiot destroying states rights and otherwise making a complete mockery of our government he did it to keep the south!. We should have forced them to leave at gunpoint and then built a big wall to keep them out. Personally I think we should get all of the illegals we have now to build this wall, and in return we give them citizenship and let them stay on the northern side. Then, just to be fair we can cut off California too, just to balance the number of far left/right wing voters getting kicked out.
Are you insane?! You can't connect Monkey to the net! Are you TRYING to destroy us all?! I have Monkey 2.5 and she spends most of her time in Gcompris. She liked the little hit both shift keys to roll the ball to tux game. Then she started playing the colored ducky game where it says a color and you click on the duck... Now, a month or two of really playing with it and she knows where more of the games are than I do. Just the other day we caught here playing the letter train game and getting about 80% correct and even then half of the incorrect is done on purpose just to get a reaction out of us watching. Good lord...if I hooked that PC to the net she would be hacking SCADA systems by the end of the week just because she could make the lights flash!
The service of installing OSX on non-apple hardware is a violation of the OSX license. They are selling an illegal service. I agree they are a hardware company, which pretty much shows clearly why they do not mean to sell OS X as a stand alone product, but as an upgrade to their hardware products. The whole idea is that you cannot have a legal copy of OS X without also owning a Mac. I think it is pretty no brainer that Apple is pissed that it will eat their hardware sales. I imagine they are even more pissed that they tried to offer their consumers a simple way to upgrade and these asshats are using it to try and kill their own product. I suspect what will happen is that no future versions will be available with such ease, and that Apple is going to require some kind of verification/registration of your Mac to recieve updates. Bravo...talk about a win for the consumer... The very idea that Apple intended their OS X upgrades to be sold as full OSs is unbelievably stupid and this will do nothing but force Apple to make it harder. Now...ask yourself...what kind of company would want Apple to make it more difficult to get their software upgrades...I know it couldn't be any of those giants that are suddenly losing market share... What really kills me here is the crowd is cheering when tech illiterate judges go in their favor, and then scream bloody murder when tech illiterate judges go against them. The best solution is to keep the judges from making these tech decisions and just enforcing the damned license as is until people quit buying it.
TRULY innovate? I think that whole iPod/iTunes becomming the dominante music platform didn't happen because of leveraging their monopoly... Though I suspect them killing DRM had a bit to do with them leveraging the near monopoly they got on that iPod/iTunes thing. Apple took BSD and put a shiney interface on it, that isn't exactly innovation. All of their innovation has been in the hardware/usage realm. To say they haven't innovated in that area is just blind. You don't have to like their stuff to admit that they have well designed hardware.
Right up until they take the CD out of the box to reinforce the fact that you are purchasing a license to use OS X and not a copy of OS X. I can sell my license of OS X LionCatThing to you so you can run it on your Mac so first sale is fine. The problem is people are convinced that they are buying an OS and not a license. Then take all manner of insane steps to show how they bought OS X and not a license from Apple to use it according to the terms Apple provided. Now, I think software licensing as it exists now is a pretty screwed up system, but it is perfectly legal, and should be enforced by contract law. I have NO sympathy for uneducated consumers, I have nothing but disgust for consumers that agree to foul terms and then run to lawyers to fix things. If you don't like the terms, don't f'ing buy it. It is that simple. If the terms are THAT foul, then noone will buy it and life goes on. The problem is, companies are using really foul terms because consumers can't be bothered to educate themselves and would rather stuff wads of cash into the pockets of lawyers to solve the problem. This is actually a huge economic drag and we would be doing MUCH better if consumers would just quit buying bad products rather than finding every excuse under the sun why they should be allowed to dictate terms after the sale.
To be fair, I find companies that try to change the terms after the sale to be equally disgusting, but Apple makes NO secret that OS X is meant for use on Apple hardware only, so it isn't like the consumer shouldn't know that it is meant for Apple branded hardware only.
I am glad that you took the time to read the second paragraph where I explicitly talk about dealing with terms of contracts that run afoul of existing laws. I even specifically covered the slavery example as well as the AutoCAD first sale lawsuit. So you can add AutoCAD to your "Examples abound".
Which is the problem here. It should be enforcable if both parties entered into that contract willingly. Otherwise it is nothing more than accepting the contract in bad faith with the intent to use lawyers to modify the contract in your favor AFTER it has been agreed upon. This undermines all business contracts and makes the market a very dangerous and unpredictable place. If this kind of shit continues to follow through so often it only serves to grow the coffers of bottom feeding lawyers and there is really no purpose to having contracts and agreements in the first place. If someone decides to enter into a contract with you, and you both agree to the terms, how would you feel if you knew that it was all worthless posturing since they could just have a judge change the terms in their favor because they hired a fast talking lawyer? It quits making sense to even go into business at all because it would be such a dangerous market to do business in.
The only time a EULA shouldn't be enforcable is when it runs foul of existing laws such as the AutoCAD thing where they try to overwrite the doctrine of first sale. Now in your slavery example, ownership of humans is illegal, however "You will work for me for X years for room and board" is not slavery even if it is pretty close in practice and should be enforcable. The ONLY way to get the market to fix itself is with educated consumers. Relying on an already overtaxed and rather broken and unpredictable legal system to "fix" things is a bad bad plan. Unless of course you think the judgement of $220,000 for "making available" copyrighted works is reasonable...
The OS X license explicitly says that it must be installed on Apple hardware. They are violating the license to profit in a way that undermines Apple's brand recognition, their reputation, and their ability to sell their computers because OS X is part of the vehicle used to sell Macs, it is not a stand alone product (hence the license that says it must be installed on Apple hardware). You may not like the terms associated with OS X so don't buy it, that simple. People get this notion that they somehow have some entitlement to use OS X on their own terms because that is what they want. It is incedibly short sighted and selfish, putting forward the notion that you should be able to violate whatever agreements you don't like is assinine and will undermine the entire economy even outside of software sales. There is absolutely no comparison to the RIAA/iPod stuff because Apple does not sell OS X as data, they sell OS X licenses.
The BSD license explicitly allows Apple to do that. Psystar is violating Apples license, see the difference? As far as iPod accessories, there is nothing that says you can't make those accessories and sell them, license, law, or otherwise. However, there is license AND law that says Psystar can't install OS X on non Mac hardware. Pretty significant difference.
Please don't ever go into law or business because it is clear that your understanding of either is unbelievably flawed.
Monopolies aren't illegal. A monopoly is perfectly legal so long as it came to be through legal competition. The only real question here is whether or not a company can enforce a EULA. There is no monopoly nonsense here. The Psystar assholes are trying to profit off of someone elses work, that is all there is to it. I hope they get their asses handed ot them for it. I have yet to hear any stories about Apple giving a rats ass about people installing on x86 themselves, only about them getting pissed that these assholes are taking what is an upgrade and installing it as a full OS. The pricing of the OS X isntalls are based on the fact that you are required to install it on a Mac that you purchased...a Mac that has part of the OS costs rolled into it.
At the end of the day if the judge rules that Psystar can do this because Apple sells OS X in stores and voids their ability to say that it can only be installed on Apple hardware I suspect Apple will pull OS X off the shelves pretty fast and modify the way their users can get access to the upgraded software. Or worse, they will put in some godforsaken activation shit like Windows. I frequently get to experience the joy of trying to recover an OEM system using non OEM hardware and Windows demands reactivation and then fails, and then MS says "fuck off, that is an OEM product key." Selling OEM licenses on PCs you built if you don't have an OEM deal has been repeatedly held up as illegal.
End of day, this is a bunch of greedy little assholes trying to take someone else's work and profit from it and a bunch of people expressing a disgusting sense of entitlement in defending their nonsense. Look, if you don't like Apple's terms, DON'T FUCKING BUY IT! That is how this is supposed to work, this is how the market is supposed to regulate itself. Instead, a bunch of moron consumers buy shit they KNOW has bad terms and then pays lawyers piles of cash to try and get their way. But hey, for all the bitching that goes on around here about how evil lawyers are, the prevailing mentality is to support the lawyers rather than not buying products with shitty terms and letting the market sort itself out.
You are Joe Sixpack. You buy one of those fancy Best Buy machines. It comes with Windows 7 Home Basic. You find out later that you need Home Premium or Ultimate to use XYZ. You go back to Best Buy and purchase Windows Ultimate. You just bought 2 copies. Where if they only sold 1 version people would only pay for the version that came with their PC.
In terms of cost of support...have you ever called MS support for their desktop products? You "speak" with someone who barely speaks english, who barely understands english, MIGHT read the script they are provided, or they might just transfer you in circles through departments for 45 minutes. I don't think the "support" cost difference is significant between 1 and 100 versions.
If you notice, when CDs were still relatively expensive to produce they weren't doing this mass version garbage. Now it costs diddly to make 18 different CDs so it doesn't exactly make a significant difference in overhead.
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The FDA banned aspertame, then Reagan stacked the deck and they lifted the ban. So the FDA is not some miracle organization immunite to politics and purchases. The nefarious piece I was refering to was the Merck lobbyist relationship with Gov Rick Perry and his push (and subsequent back down) to make it a mandatory vaccination. Even one of the researchers that was responsible says the mandatory says its a bad idea that could increase the problem rather than decrease. You might also notice that this researcher is a university employee, not a direct employee of Merck. However, at $360 for the vaccination, you have a lot of room to grease some palms and still make a killer profit.
If you read up on the history, most of research on the best stuff is coming out of universities and non-profit driven organizations to include the MMR vaccination. I fail to see how questioning the big pharma companies that sell the stuff is a denial of its usefulness or effectiveness. The key piece that was under fire was the mercury content. Now, you can tell me all day long that it has been tested and tested at X% and it is safe, but I can point out more cases across a wide variety of industries where cost cutting and lack of QA led an otherwise safe product to become dangerous. Antibiotics is a whole other ball of wax and if you really want to talk about overprescription of antibiotics and the joys it has brought like drug resistant strains then that is fine. Antibiotics are great until you overuse them and build super strains. Now, aside from the culture of "right here right now" who would push increased use of antibiotics in cases where it really isn't needed?
I can't tell if people are really this dumb, or are deliberately misreading my comments on things like Cancer/AIDS. Cancer/AIDS is a damned difficult beast, and you can also join the ranks of the Capt. Obvious folks that keep pointing it out to me. If things like that weren't so damned hard to beat then companies would be doing the research because the cost of R&D would be more likely to be recouped. The fact is that truckloads of money have been spent on it and we still don't have a cure, big corp drug companies aren't going to waste dollars on that, they are going to use those dollars on something that is likely to have a return. This isn't evil corporate bosses, this is simple economics. The scientists that are lining up to tackle the monster problems are doing it in places without a profit motivation for operating. UCLA has some pretty promising stem cell tricks to fight AIDS.
Well, to be honest, the fear has never been enough to convince me even beyond having had bad reactions to both Small Pox and MMR. My kids all get stuck and I have probably been stuck with twice as many vaccines as the average person. I am forced to question the thatsfuckingstupid.com link because between the rather inflamatory nature of the source and its lack of citation of where it got the numbers it doesn't exactly look unbiased and objective. I am not anti-vaccine by any stretch, I am anti-pharma company if anything. But, if you look up the history on almost all of those vaccines they came from publicly funded sources such as military medical research, universities, or other public organizations.
If the risk of resurgence is really so bad I think there is actually a much deeper root cause beyond the anti-vaccination crowd. It is the crowd that villifies the science community as elitists or otherwise uses warped science for political agendas. If there is some large crisis number of people not accepting vaccinations it is because either their doctors are not pushing it, or because they have been taught to not trust the doctors (by all means, don't trust one, get second opinions, I did that with some ankle issue and "hey your fine don't worry unless it causes constant pain" turned into "you won't walk in 10 years if we don't correct this surgically" and the second opinion was able to provide me tons of information about what was going wrong and why it was going to get worse). More and more people get trapped between Science always has the right answer at any given time and Science is a bunch of elitists that don't know what they are doing.
And for my last bit of devil's advocate. The herd immunity is all well and good until it is your kid that is negatively affected. That and I don't think we are a herd, that would seem to indicate some type of bovine and I am pretty sure cows are more peaceful than we are. We are some kind of monkey colony.
I certainly don't think there is any "proof", just a reason for caution and detailed research. Between the behavior of the companies in question, the uncertaintly of the issue, the political forces at hand, and so on. Correlation certainly does not equal causation else we would be suing icecream makers becaues increased icecream sales coincide with increased rape cases. However, there are plausible reasons for the increase in rape during increased icecream sales (its warmer out). Since there is no plausible explanation for autism other than "well, that is when it is usually diagnosed" vaccines are hardly off the hook because they haven't been proven, or even because they have been disproven in certain circumstance. There is a reason for the increase in autism and noone is totally off the hook until there is a real answer.
Now...a note on Public Safety. Measels and Rubella have been declared eradicated in this part of the world. So this isn't some massive public safety crisis that the detractors like to make it out to be. Which is one more reason that the whole thing is suspect. Fear of autism being used by one side, fear of some epidemic on the other. A whole lot of FUD is being used on both sides of this argument.
To be honest, I suspect if there is any relation it probably is in the mercury link, which is moot point because the mercury containing stuff has all but vanished from modern vaccinations. Even if they can prove the "normal" levels don't cause it, that doesn't mean that there weren't batches with abnormally high levels that did do damage. I have personally had a bad reaction to an MMR shot, and my daughter had to get blood tests to check her liver as an infant because they misprinted the dosage on some medication for her. There have been tons of cases of infants dying in hospitals because of wrong dosing. There are no shortages of human error that could have played a large role. I think it is horribly wrong to laugh these people off just because they can't prove it. I suspect these people know their kid better than any of the pundits commenting. I have known people with autistic kids, and they didn't just magically become autistic overnight. To be perfectly honest we could just be looking at mercury poisoning of these kids and getting away with the technicality of it didn't cause autism because these kids have been diagnosed with autism, even though the symptoms are strikingly similar to mercury poisoning. Aspberger's Syndrome is frequently misdiagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
Disregard, Sorry. I read back what I had typed again after reading this and realized I missed a step. %1 adverse reaction (I fell in here), 1% of the adverse reaction was serious complications including death.
I spent a 3 day weekend with the glands under my arms and in my neck so swollen I could barely turn my head. I spent most of the time sitting on the couch sipping water. Now, the alternative of getting small pox would be WAY worse, but the likelyhood was equally miniscule (maybe even smaller) and ultimately I have not been exposed to small pox at all so the bad reaction was the only thing I got out of it.
Ultimately my point is how rare does the disease have to be before the vaccination is declared obsolete. I got mine about 5 years ago. Measels has been declared eradicated in North, Central, and South America. Rubella is claimed as eliminated as of 2004. So where is the massive and irresponsible danger of the parents that aren't vaccinating their children against diseases declared eradicated? I'm not saying prevention isn't a good idea, but lashing out at these parents for the "danger" they are creating seems a bit extreme when 2 of the 3 diseases in the vaccination in question are declared eradicated where they live.
The chickenpox one is hilarious to me. It can go really bad, but it isn't like a horrible epidemic type disease. I remember how all the parents would conspire to get us kids together whenever one of us caught it as a sort of home vaccination thing. The only kids safe were the ones "too young". These days it seems that letting a kid's immune system develop the old fashion way is horrible. It is way better to put them in antibiotic bubbles and then inject them with stuff to prevent disease...
If this was about one woman in one isolated case this would all be nonissue. The fact is we don't understand autism very well at all and to say we can prove/disprove causes without understanding it is a little goofy. I have read the weird rantings of the crazed parents about the autism/vaccination thing, I don't take them very seriously. I have also read a lot of it coming from pediatricians or other medically knowledgable people, that don't take such a zealotry approach, suggest there may be a link, and even offer alternate explanations.
The claim and the person making the claim must be separated. In your example, there were a great number of bad attempts at flight, many operated on fundamentally wrong assumptions about how flight worked, but disproving 1, 10, or 100 of those bad ideas did not disprove that manned flight was capable, only that those specific explanations of how to do it were wrong. The guys jumping off of towers with home made wings had the right idea that man could fly, just a really bad approach. The Wright Brothers are only famous because they got it correct. The specific claims of HOW it is linked can be disproven, but that doesn't disprove the potential link itself.
Exactly my point! The R&D cost of fighting one of the tough bastard diseases is nowhere near the return value even without the insane patent problems. I have said nothing against the effectiveness or importance of vaccines (and even in a few posts say they are effective and worth the risk), but because I dare to say that a lack of proof is not the same thing as disproven and that the companies involved are highly suspect and have little interest in your health, only your dollar, I am ranted against as being anti-vaccine.
You are missing the point. Even the FDA says the mercury additive is toxic and has caused documented reactions. I am not even saying these people are correct in this case. However, there have been people that had evidence that stood up and were mocked/ostracized/executed/etc. There is no shortage of things that were once scientifically proven that were later dismised as nonsense either, especially in the medical realm. Here is a fun one.
There has been a huge rise in autism cases as of late. This could be increased diagnosis. This could be other causes. But honestly, until the root cause of the problem is found, everything is still suspect. Maybe the vaccinations do pose no risk...unless coupled with some other enviromental variable. I am sure you are aware that certain chemicals interact, maybe there is a higher risk in these vaccinations when there are other chemicals present in the child's environment. There have been numerous studies that have shown that because of all the chemicals we use in kids junk these days that kids have far higher levels of toxins in their system than their parents did. What about allergies? I can eat peanuts, it kills other people. Are peanuts safe for most people, sure, can they kill some people, absolutely. Since you seem to demand a black and white answer are peanuts dangerous or not? There can't possibly be enough studies to disprove every possible combination in which the contents of these vaccines could have been a player.
Now, I am reasonably certain the reward is greater than the risk by a pretty large margin, but that does not mean that these things may not be linked.
Stay with me. Economics. I didn't say they are holding back the cures. I said they aren't very apt to be investing in them. How much do you think has been spent looking for a cure for Cancer or AIDS in just non profit alone? The amount is huge. Do you honestly expect any company to lay out that kind of money on such a high risk venture knowing full well that as soon as they make a breakthrough that the other companies will follow quickly. Now with other companies following they couldn't even hope to charge enough per cured patient to cover their R&D costs. This isn't some evil villian conspiracy (though much of their other behavior probably qualifies) This is simple economics at work. The fact that it would hurt another companies bottom line on selling treatment for disease X would be irrelevant.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I have said specifically that most of the groundbreaking research is coming out of non-profits like government institutions and universities. While UCLA is performing amazing things with stem cells to fight AIDS, there are big pharma companies sueing third world countries for daring to violate their intellectual property to make cheap AIDS drugs. I also never said Cancer/AIDS was easy...in fact if it was easy big pharma companies probably would invest because the cost of research would be low enough that they could still turn a profit on a cure. The fact that these things are tough sons o bitches to get rid of makes them horrible economic choices to deal with.
Dr. Harry Martin Meyer Jr...as far as I can tell one of the main key players in the whole MMR vaccination. He spent most of his time (and most notably the vaccination development time) at government/military run institutions not working for Big Pharma.
I never said that the vaccine wasn't a good thing. I said that trusting Big Pharma is risky, and mocking people for questioning them is even worse. So even in this case Big Pharma is making sales on research they didn't pioneer.
Me saying that there is more money mandatory vaccinations than cures does not mean that the vaccinations are inherently bad. It means that there is a profit motivation that is suspect and there should be a very high degree of scrutiny of both their scientific/medical claims, the studies that claim everything is ok, as well as their political dealings. Not being able to prove something doesn't make it false. Does the fact they couldn't pin any murders on Al Capone mean he wasn't involved in the murders?
I didn't make accusations of mass manipulation and cover ups. My problem is with all of the people mocking the parents for saying something isn't right. Did you know there were studies that "scientifically proved" that black's couldn't be fighter pilots. Seems that the Tuskegee Airmen being all black and one of the best fighter units should have been "scientifically impossible" based on the research that had been done, and the studies that were run, and the link that was found that said black's were incapable of being fighter pilots.
I'm not even saying that the vaccines are a bad idea. I am saying that people cling to science as often as they cling to religion and resorting to mocking the people who dare question the "authority". Science is about skepticism, not belief. Smoking used to be good for your health...
It wouldn't be any kind of conspiracy. A business exists for profit, investing a tremendous amount of time/money/resources into something that will not generate profit is not something a business is apt to do (and would likely greatly anger the shareholders if they did do it). This is why so much of the groundbreaking research on these things happens at places like UCLA or other universities and such. This isn't even an ethics issue, this is an economics issue. Businesses will go where the percieved profits are. No profit = dead business. I honestly have a hard time believing that big pharm would do much to actually keep cures out of our hands, they just don't do much to put cures into our hands. The ease and profitability of developing treatments trumps the difficulty and loss of developing cures. I suspect these guys make too much money on penis pills to really worry about a cure cutting off a line of profit. There will ALWAYS be some other thing that people will turn to big pharma to fix with chemicals.
Vaccines are preventative treatment and a HUGE profit line when made mandatory.
A cure would be applied to those who are infected to cure.
A vaccine would be applied to everyone.
Tell me...do you think they would make more money giving everyone the MMR vaccine or just curing those that catch it. I realize that there are benefits like preventing the spread by vaccination, but the dollar value is MUCH higher in vaccinations. Arguably you can tell how important it is to get a given vaccination by its cost. Flu vaccinations are handed out like free candy in most places, which would indicate that the threat of infection spreading is much higher than just a strict profit motivation.
Which do you think is worth more money, AIDS treatment or a cure for AIDS? Then go look at who is really dumping money and research into AIDS treatment vs AIDS cures. Look who is making leaps and bounds in research involving things like stem cells to combat AIDS vs those who are suing third world countries for violating their intellectual property rights by making generic AIDS treatment so that the poor can afford it.
Small pox killed tons of people too, yet that one isn't getting passed out these days. Now, maybe I am biased, but I get to see thos Big Bad Pharma reps on a regular basis and the way they peddle their shit makes me sick to my stomach. I won't eat/drink any of the bribery garbage they bring in for the Docs because of it. My point with HPV is that it was declared safe by pharma and made mandatory in many places with little oversight and many people made the same insane claims about how the parents refusing were just ignorant and exposing children to danger. It is the perfect drug selling rhetoric. Now, I'm not even saying that these vaccines are dangerous, but I am saying there is a HUGE vested interest in covering that information up. Look how much Tazer international spends chasing down anyone who dares says their weapons are dangerous...
So...1% risk of death from taking the Small Pox vaccine . What are the odds that you are going to catch Small Pox AND die from it living in suburbia these days? It is all fine to talk about how the people that may die or be disabled by vaccinations as collateral damage of wiping out some disease, but I bet you wouldn't feel that way if it was your child being counted as collateral damage.
Oh hush you! We all know the toxicity of mercury is inversely proportional to how much profit is being made by using it. So the more money is made by using it, the less dangerous it becomes. Since the drug companies are raking in so much cash then clearly the mercury they use has virtually no risk. I mean we could inject this stuff and not suffer from it...
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least. Congress critters get mailed anthrax letters, then the military gets mandatory anthrax shots while congress critters refuse the treatment... A few mishaps later then some lawsuits and the mandatory anthrax shots are a bit less mandatory... and battle has raged for a while, but this whole time the number of military members exposed to anthrax is LESS than the number of Congress critters exposed, yet military members got it mandatory and Congress critters refused...
I don't doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines at doing their intended job of protecting from whatever disease. I question how risky they may be as the drug companies involved are certainly less than honest (would hurt their bottom line) and the government critters are more than happy to make it mandatory for others (making for a great test bed before they take it).
Really? What would you call the parents that fought against the HPV vaccination that had barely been tested yet has been made mandatory in places where the drug lords making it have the local officials in their back pocket? I do agree that vaccines in general are a good thing, but leaping into accusing parents of fighting against them as being a danger to society is exactly the kind of rhetoric and propoganda the drug companies want to push their stuff.
Remember, these are the same companies that will probably never find a cure for anything because there is no money in a cure. If they can research how to cure your cancer for a one time charge, or keep you alive for an extra 10-20 years on expensive treatments which do you think they will pick? Blindly trusting the word of companies that have a vested interest in making sure everyone pays to have these things injected into every child is more irresponsible.
I have personally had a rather bad interaction with the MMR vaccine. It was the 3rd shot in the series, about 5 minutes after the shot I wandered back from the waiting room and said I didn't feel good. I woke up with 2 ER folks checking my blood pressure and checking for damage from collapsing. So...while I generally believe vaccines are a good thing blindly trusting those who profit on you getting them when they say there is no risk is stupid and dangerous to say the least.
Have you been to the south?! Good lord, on top of that idiot destroying states rights and otherwise making a complete mockery of our government he did it to keep the south!. We should have forced them to leave at gunpoint and then built a big wall to keep them out. Personally I think we should get all of the illegals we have now to build this wall, and in return we give them citizenship and let them stay on the northern side. Then, just to be fair we can cut off California too, just to balance the number of far left/right wing voters getting kicked out.
Are you insane?! You can't connect Monkey to the net! Are you TRYING to destroy us all?! I have Monkey 2.5 and she spends most of her time in Gcompris. She liked the little hit both shift keys to roll the ball to tux game. Then she started playing the colored ducky game where it says a color and you click on the duck... Now, a month or two of really playing with it and she knows where more of the games are than I do. Just the other day we caught here playing the letter train game and getting about 80% correct and even then half of the incorrect is done on purpose just to get a reaction out of us watching. Good lord...if I hooked that PC to the net she would be hacking SCADA systems by the end of the week just because she could make the lights flash!
The service of installing OSX on non-apple hardware is a violation of the OSX license. They are selling an illegal service. I agree they are a hardware company, which pretty much shows clearly why they do not mean to sell OS X as a stand alone product, but as an upgrade to their hardware products. The whole idea is that you cannot have a legal copy of OS X without also owning a Mac. I think it is pretty no brainer that Apple is pissed that it will eat their hardware sales. I imagine they are even more pissed that they tried to offer their consumers a simple way to upgrade and these asshats are using it to try and kill their own product. I suspect what will happen is that no future versions will be available with such ease, and that Apple is going to require some kind of verification/registration of your Mac to recieve updates. Bravo...talk about a win for the consumer... The very idea that Apple intended their OS X upgrades to be sold as full OSs is unbelievably stupid and this will do nothing but force Apple to make it harder. Now...ask yourself...what kind of company would want Apple to make it more difficult to get their software upgrades...I know it couldn't be any of those giants that are suddenly losing market share... What really kills me here is the crowd is cheering when tech illiterate judges go in their favor, and then scream bloody murder when tech illiterate judges go against them. The best solution is to keep the judges from making these tech decisions and just enforcing the damned license as is until people quit buying it.
TRULY innovate? I think that whole iPod/iTunes becomming the dominante music platform didn't happen because of leveraging their monopoly... Though I suspect them killing DRM had a bit to do with them leveraging the near monopoly they got on that iPod/iTunes thing. Apple took BSD and put a shiney interface on it, that isn't exactly innovation. All of their innovation has been in the hardware/usage realm. To say they haven't innovated in that area is just blind. You don't have to like their stuff to admit that they have well designed hardware.
Right up until they take the CD out of the box to reinforce the fact that you are purchasing a license to use OS X and not a copy of OS X. I can sell my license of OS X LionCatThing to you so you can run it on your Mac so first sale is fine. The problem is people are convinced that they are buying an OS and not a license. Then take all manner of insane steps to show how they bought OS X and not a license from Apple to use it according to the terms Apple provided. Now, I think software licensing as it exists now is a pretty screwed up system, but it is perfectly legal, and should be enforced by contract law. I have NO sympathy for uneducated consumers, I have nothing but disgust for consumers that agree to foul terms and then run to lawyers to fix things. If you don't like the terms, don't f'ing buy it. It is that simple. If the terms are THAT foul, then noone will buy it and life goes on. The problem is, companies are using really foul terms because consumers can't be bothered to educate themselves and would rather stuff wads of cash into the pockets of lawyers to solve the problem. This is actually a huge economic drag and we would be doing MUCH better if consumers would just quit buying bad products rather than finding every excuse under the sun why they should be allowed to dictate terms after the sale.
To be fair, I find companies that try to change the terms after the sale to be equally disgusting, but Apple makes NO secret that OS X is meant for use on Apple hardware only, so it isn't like the consumer shouldn't know that it is meant for Apple branded hardware only.
I am glad that you took the time to read the second paragraph where I explicitly talk about dealing with terms of contracts that run afoul of existing laws. I even specifically covered the slavery example as well as the AutoCAD first sale lawsuit. So you can add AutoCAD to your "Examples abound".
Which is the problem here. It should be enforcable if both parties entered into that contract willingly. Otherwise it is nothing more than accepting the contract in bad faith with the intent to use lawyers to modify the contract in your favor AFTER it has been agreed upon. This undermines all business contracts and makes the market a very dangerous and unpredictable place. If this kind of shit continues to follow through so often it only serves to grow the coffers of bottom feeding lawyers and there is really no purpose to having contracts and agreements in the first place. If someone decides to enter into a contract with you, and you both agree to the terms, how would you feel if you knew that it was all worthless posturing since they could just have a judge change the terms in their favor because they hired a fast talking lawyer? It quits making sense to even go into business at all because it would be such a dangerous market to do business in.
The only time a EULA shouldn't be enforcable is when it runs foul of existing laws such as the AutoCAD thing where they try to overwrite the doctrine of first sale. Now in your slavery example, ownership of humans is illegal, however "You will work for me for X years for room and board" is not slavery even if it is pretty close in practice and should be enforcable. The ONLY way to get the market to fix itself is with educated consumers. Relying on an already overtaxed and rather broken and unpredictable legal system to "fix" things is a bad bad plan. Unless of course you think the judgement of $220,000 for "making available" copyrighted works is reasonable...
The OS X license explicitly says that it must be installed on Apple hardware. They are violating the license to profit in a way that undermines Apple's brand recognition, their reputation, and their ability to sell their computers because OS X is part of the vehicle used to sell Macs, it is not a stand alone product (hence the license that says it must be installed on Apple hardware). You may not like the terms associated with OS X so don't buy it, that simple. People get this notion that they somehow have some entitlement to use OS X on their own terms because that is what they want. It is incedibly short sighted and selfish, putting forward the notion that you should be able to violate whatever agreements you don't like is assinine and will undermine the entire economy even outside of software sales. There is absolutely no comparison to the RIAA/iPod stuff because Apple does not sell OS X as data, they sell OS X licenses.
The BSD license explicitly allows Apple to do that. Psystar is violating Apples license, see the difference? As far as iPod accessories, there is nothing that says you can't make those accessories and sell them, license, law, or otherwise. However, there is license AND law that says Psystar can't install OS X on non Mac hardware. Pretty significant difference.
Please don't ever go into law or business because it is clear that your understanding of either is unbelievably flawed. Monopolies aren't illegal. A monopoly is perfectly legal so long as it came to be through legal competition. The only real question here is whether or not a company can enforce a EULA. There is no monopoly nonsense here. The Psystar assholes are trying to profit off of someone elses work, that is all there is to it. I hope they get their asses handed ot them for it. I have yet to hear any stories about Apple giving a rats ass about people installing on x86 themselves, only about them getting pissed that these assholes are taking what is an upgrade and installing it as a full OS. The pricing of the OS X isntalls are based on the fact that you are required to install it on a Mac that you purchased...a Mac that has part of the OS costs rolled into it.
At the end of the day if the judge rules that Psystar can do this because Apple sells OS X in stores and voids their ability to say that it can only be installed on Apple hardware I suspect Apple will pull OS X off the shelves pretty fast and modify the way their users can get access to the upgraded software. Or worse, they will put in some godforsaken activation shit like Windows. I frequently get to experience the joy of trying to recover an OEM system using non OEM hardware and Windows demands reactivation and then fails, and then MS says "fuck off, that is an OEM product key." Selling OEM licenses on PCs you built if you don't have an OEM deal has been repeatedly held up as illegal.
End of day, this is a bunch of greedy little assholes trying to take someone else's work and profit from it and a bunch of people expressing a disgusting sense of entitlement in defending their nonsense. Look, if you don't like Apple's terms, DON'T FUCKING BUY IT! That is how this is supposed to work, this is how the market is supposed to regulate itself. Instead, a bunch of moron consumers buy shit they KNOW has bad terms and then pays lawyers piles of cash to try and get their way. But hey, for all the bitching that goes on around here about how evil lawyers are, the prevailing mentality is to support the lawyers rather than not buying products with shitty terms and letting the market sort itself out.
You are Joe Sixpack. You buy one of those fancy Best Buy machines. It comes with Windows 7 Home Basic. You find out later that you need Home Premium or Ultimate to use XYZ. You go back to Best Buy and purchase Windows Ultimate. You just bought 2 copies. Where if they only sold 1 version people would only pay for the version that came with their PC.
In terms of cost of support...have you ever called MS support for their desktop products? You "speak" with someone who barely speaks english, who barely understands english, MIGHT read the script they are provided, or they might just transfer you in circles through departments for 45 minutes. I don't think the "support" cost difference is significant between 1 and 100 versions.
If you notice, when CDs were still relatively expensive to produce they weren't doing this mass version garbage. Now it costs diddly to make 18 different CDs so it doesn't exactly make a significant difference in overhead.