Certainly, any law Congress passes has to be within their constitutional power to pass. The Supreme Court has found the drug laws constitutional, though.
Meanwhile, in spite of the expense of the FDA process and the very expensive market inefficiencies created by the patent system, you'd have to be hiding under a rock to not have heard about a few rather spectacular failures in the area of safety testing for FDA approval.
Absolutely true, but you have to take into account the situation that the FDA was trying to address with the rules. Time was, a person/company could sell anything in a bottle/box, and claim it had medicinal benefits, with no proof at all. While there are certainly some instances where things get past the FDA without problems being found, you basically have the inverse of the old situation, where most "treatments" either did nothing, or caused harm.
It should also be said that the Vioxx situation didn't come about because of a lack of or ineffective testing. It came about because (to the best of my recollection) Merck knew that doing certain tests would raise flags, so they simply avoided those tests. (If I remember right, they didn't do tests against people w/ heart conditions.)
While foxglove and willow's bark are the sources of digoxin and aspirin, respectively, that has little bearing on whether or not they'd be classified as drugs (and therefore regulated as such) by the FDA. What triggers the regulation is selling them for their therapeutic effects. If you simply sell them as plants, it's not an issue. But put them in a bottle and make medicinal claims about them, and that triggers regulation, because you're selling them as if they were drugs. And the whole reason the neutriceutical companies have to run the disclaimer about not treating, preventing, or curing any disease is that they haven't gone through the clinical testing they'd need to go through to be sold legitimately as drugs.
Also, keep in mind: There's a difference between willow bark and aspirin. Aspirin is refined to include willow bark's active ingredient in sufficient potency to be medicinally beneficial. When you buy a neutriceutical, there's no guarantee that you're getting a medicinally valuable dose at all. That's why I called neutriceuticals placebos: If they were potent enough to make legitimate health claims, they wouldn't be hiding behind disclaimers. They'd do the FDA clinical trials, and bring the substances to market as drugs (because you'd make a boatload more money that way). Nobody in their right minds would take a substance with a measurable therapeutic effect and not try to market it as a drug. The revenue difference is enormous.
Concerning efficacy: We can both agree that efficacy standards should be higher with drugs, but at least there are efficacy standards. With neutriceuticals, there are no standards of efficacy at all, so the only thing you're really buying when you buy one is the promise that it's just as good as doing nothing (i.e., a placebo).
I'm not saying they can regulate intrastate commerce. I'm saying they can regulate marijuana in ways that have nothing to do with intrastate commerce. If they regulate whether or not you can possess a substance, whether or not you can sell it is a moot point.
The rules that you cite apply as long as the supplement in question doesn't make health claims. Yes, anyone can package herbs and sell them. The FDA would only come down on the herb manufacturer if claims are made to treat, prevent, or cure any disease. If you make specific health claims, you have to back them up. (e.g., recently, ginko manufacturers have come under scrutiny from the FDA for making Alzheimer's claims.)
Potency comes into play because a lot of these supplements (see the NY Times article I posted earlier) don't contain high enough concentrations of their active ingredients to have a therapeutic effect. If they did contain high enough levels of their active ingredients, they'd have to be classified as drugs.
It's actually exactly what I said, if you read the post, rather than extracting one line. Let me help you out:
The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease."
Now, anyone reading this with the intention of comprehending it would see that I was talking about health claims. Ingesting broken glass would have an impact on your health. Do you think I was saying that broken glass was regulated as a drug by the FDA?
The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it.
Last time I looked, lemons prevent scurvy. Are you telling me vegetables are regulated by the FDA?
First, vegetables are regulated by the FDA. They're regulated as foods. They're not regulated as drugs because they're not drugs. They're foods that happen to contain beneficial chemicals. If you make claims about treating preventing, or curing any disease with a product, the FDA does consider that a drug.
Here you can see an example of a product for which specific claims were made to cure a disease:
Redco Foods: Salada Naturally Decaffeinated Green Tea (promoted for conditions that cause the product to be a drug; unapproved nutrient claim; unapproved health claim); [Emphasis added.]
Foods are not drugs, and if you make treatment claims on a food, it's going to be regulated as a drug (or you'd better remove the claim.
Now, you're free to say, in the abstract, "Lemons prevent scurvy", but if you try to sell lemons with that claim, the FDA will get involved.
The thing is, most of these genetic causes for high cholesterol are due to diet.
That's not really the segment of the population I'm thinking about. I meant people with inherited hypercholesterolemia. These people are always going to produce more cholesterol than they need (as I'm reading it, anyway). Of course, such a person shouldn't make things worse by having a bad diet.
There's always disease and there will always be a reason for research medicine and doctors because of this, but until insurance companies start paying for nutritionists we're stuck in a bit of a rut.
I think we agree on this point. I just wanted to make it clearer that diet isn't always the ultimate solution to the problem.
If you** claim it's because of "some other clause," you're as bad as they are. There's no reason for an explicit interstate commerce clause if they have power over all commerce everywhere.
Intrastate acts can have more than one implication. For instance: If you kill a federal employee in the course of their duties or because of their duties, you get a federal punishment, regardless of what the laws say concerning murder in that state. Similarly, if you commit murder for a racist reason, then in addition to being charged with the murder by the state where you committed the murder, you could be brought up on federal charges of denying the person their civil rights.
In other words, people in each state are subject to federal laws. If something is illegal on the federal level, it doesn't matter which state you're in.
A healthy diet definitely goes a long way, but you can have the healthiest diet in the world and still have high cholesterol and heart disease, because not every case of these is due to diet. Most good doctors will tell you to change your diet if your cardiovascular system is out of whack, but there are also genetic factors that come into play. Not only that, but like any regimen (including drugs, also), it's one thing to tell a patient what they need to do. Getting their compliance is quite another matter. If you've got a patient who's been eating Big Macs for 20 years for dinner, and you give him a choice between meds and cutting out the Big Macs (or give him both instructions), which one do you think he's more likely to follow? So it's more than just a mystique associated with drugs. Some people need drugs for medical reasons, and with others, if you don't give them the drug, you're just wasting your breath, because they're not going to change their diets (as irrational as that may be).
That's simply false. Here is the FDA's own definition of a drug:
How does the law define a drug?
The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)]. [Emphasis added]
That's why when you see a neutriceutical advertised, they're careful about what claims they make (or, more accurately, what they disclaim). If the compound in question is actually touted as doing something for your health, it has to come under the FDA regulations concerning trials. This commercial is typical of how the companies skirt the issue of effects.
Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008.
Of course, that's why treatments based on nicotine (and there certainly are some) are classified as drugs, and have been regulated by the FDA for some time now. (Nicotinic agonists are being investigated for things like asthma.
The issue with tobacco is that it's been a long time since cigarette makers have made any claims about the health benefits of smoking. The cigarette companies are now regulated to the extent that they're not allowed to say "light" or "low tar" in their marketing, they have to have larger warning labels, etc. That's quite different from the regulations the FDA puts on other drugs, because the claims are different.
Caffeine, your other example, is also subject to FDA regulation, when it's claimed to actually do something.
To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".
Caffeine absolutely is regulated as a drug by the FDA, when it's added to a product. There are levels of caffeine recognized as safe by the FDA, and those levels are adhered to. Caffeine drinks (e.g., Red Bull) carefully avoid making health claims, which is why they're not subject to the same testing, but instead are only subject to the regulation about caffeine content. Coffee, as one example, isn't subject to FDA regulation because it's not added, but naturally occurring. This is why the FDA is stepping in with alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.
The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it. If it's not regulated by the FDA, it can't make any health claims (legitimately), and you might as well be eating PEZ.
The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease." Basically, they can make any claims they want in the ads, and the products only have to be as effective as PEZ.
Prescription drugs, on the other hand, have to go through clinical trials show at least three things to get FDA approval:
1) Toxicity (i.e., at what level is the drug going to cause an adverse effect)
2) Safety (i.e., testing to assure that the drug's components, at the formulation intended, is safe)
3) Efficacy (i.e., that the drug does what it's intended to do)
For the neutriceutical companies, the problem is that FDA clinical trials are expensive. It's much cheaper to conduct your own study, focus solely on the active ingredient, and tailor the study carefully to only talk about efficacy. And a study by Congress found that there are many neutriceuticals that either contain hazardous contaminants, or else don't contain enough of the active ingredients they're supposed to have to have any effect on health. (You probably won't hear about that at GNC, though.)
The bottom line is this: If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA. At the very least, the fact that these neutriceuticals aren't subject to testing by the FDA means that, at best, you're taking a placebo (i.e., you'd be better off taking PEZ, since it's cheaper).
The tablet doesn't look too different (in size) from this, does it? The watch is probably similar (other than color) to the one in the picture, isn't it? No idea about the handheld device, although I assume it's a phone, and that it's probably running WebOS. I'd be very surprised if it looked radically different from the Pre or Pixi (although from the looks of it, my imagination goes more towards a Pixi look than a Pre one.
Of course, I could be completely wrong on all counts, but I'd be surprised if the phone and tablet looked radically different.
I'm pretty sure China forces abortion or something.
Last I heard, China forced abortion of females (although, the policy may have changed by now -- I don't know). Certainly, that's not a policy either of us would want, but if you justify abortion on population grounds, that's the road you're ultimately going to end up going down.
That is not what I desire, as that would definitely be a breach of freedom. However, I just said that the desire to want every single child conceived to be born is unrealistic.
Every single child conceived now isn't born -- even if you ignore aborted fetuses. Women miscarry, and sometimes the fertilized egg simply fails to implant in the woman's uterus.
I'm pretty sure you have the option of adopting them out.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In order to be adopted, children first have to be put up for adoption, but pro-choice people often act as if this is a fate worse than death.
These "pro-life" people take no consideration of people who simply can't afford the child or perhaps it was a complete accident in the first place.
If you're having trouble taking care of your child, there are social services to assist with this. In fact, that's why people are given money for children in public assistance. Second, "unplanned" and "unwanted" aren't necessarily synonyms. Many couples have children sooner than they planned for, but love the children nonetheless. In cases where this isn't true, it's a character defect in the parents, not a problem with the child. Third, if the child is made to suffer by the parents, by all means, the children should be taken away from them. I'm 100% in favor of harsher punishments for abusive parents. A parent's frustration at having a child shouldn't be taken out on the child.
These children will just end up adding to the overpopulation problem while rotting in an orphanage.
The solution is encouraging adoption, not abortion. As far as overpopulation goes, that's a bell people have been ringing since at least the 1960's. If you'd asked Harry Harrison in 1966, he'd've said we'd all be cannibals by now. The overpopulation doomsayers don't have a great track record.
It's actually education that's correlated to a lower birthrate. If someone is determined to stay in school and make something of themselves, they tend to be more careful sexually when they're younger, and wait longer to have children (thus, having fewer children). If the plan is just to let the uneducated have abortions if they want them, you don't really solve the problem. What you have to do is give them a reason not to use their genitals as a cheap form of soma.
Probably because "using" something and "leveraging" it are not the same thing.
They could "use" WebOS in any number of different pieces of hardware, but if the hardware they put it in doesn't really benefit from what WebOS can do (e.g., with the multitasking and Synergy, especially), then they haven't leveraged it well at all. Leveraging a product means you use it in such a way to make other products attractive, as well.
For example: Let's say HP decided to put WebOS exclusively on tablets. You could certainly argue that tablets are a good use scenario for WebOS, but they certainly couldn't be said to be leveraging WebOS well, if that were the case.
Besides that, the world is already overpopulated and filled with children who need homes. I really don't understand why these same people who supposedly want to save children don't adopt a child who needs a home instead of bringing a new child into this already overpopulated world (which they seem to do often). They take absolutely no responsibility for these children that they don't want aborted and pretend the world isn't overpopulated enough.
Well, I don't think we want abortion used for population control. That's not something we want to follow China's lead on. That sounds a little dark to me. I think people who can't afford to have children should be careful not to conceive children. It works for most people in the world. There are a great deal more people who've had pre-marital sex than've had abortions.
Once they've been conceived, the people who're supposed to take responsibility for them are the ones who've brought them about. Sure, it'd be nice for everyone who is pro-life to be able to adopt, but that's not the reality, just like everyone who's pro-death penalty can't be an executioner. It shouldn't be a reason for someone not to have an opinion.
The only one they don't fit is being inside the mother. That's not much of a distinction, though, because, as we've discussed, there's not a really big difference between being inside and outside. It's a matter of development only.
Sometimes. Other times, it doesn't work. Look at weed and prohibition.
Actually, weed is a good example of how keeping things illegal does tamp down on their use. Compare the number of people who smoke marijuana (an illegal substance) to those who smoke tobacco (a legal one). Why is the number of people who smoke tobacco so much greater? Because tobacco cigarettes are cheap, legal, and readily available in any convenience store. Compare that to marijuana. Now, certainly lots more people smoke marijuana than say, shoot heroin, but it's nothing like tobacco or alcohol usage.
If people feel there's no good reason for something being illegal, they'll break the law. Many will feel as if their freedoms were stripped away, and they will likely end up getting an illegal abortion.
Yes, there is. The person who was conscious is already born, isn't leeching off of a womens body, and actually has a personality to speak of. None of which can be said about the fetus, yet.
Being "already born" is just a matter of positioning. Feeding inside vs. outside of the womb I could see being important to some people, but making it out of the vagina itself is just a stage of development. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with consciousness. There are people born who never develop personalities, as such, because their mental handicaps are too severe. I've seen such people, and it's certainly not pretty, but it's reality. By your criteria, such people would be fair game to be killed throughout their lives.
Uh, I didn't dehumanize it. I said it was basically a parasite leeching off of the mother until it is born. If the mother doesn't want it, she doesn't have to put up with it. It has no personality or attributes to speak of yet, so you're not killing a human who was already born.
Again, being born isn't necessarily the huge marker you think it is. In fact, even under current law, 3rd trimester abortions (e.g., up to 3 months before the child is born) can be regulated.
Secondly, of course it's dehumanizing to compare a fetus to a leech or a parasite. If you substitute "tapeworm" for "leech", can you see how that looks? (There's no real difference, because "parasite", "leech", and "tapeworm" all refer to animals, but "tapeworm" makes it easier to see, I think.)
She also has the option of getting an abortion if she doesn't want it inside her body.
Currently, she does. That's correct.
If these people really don't want the baby and abortion is illegal, there's almost no doubt in my mind that they'll do it illegally, putting their own life at risk to remove something from their own bodies that they should have been able to remove legally.
I'm going to partially agree with you here, insofar as making something illegal doesn't, in itself, prevent anyone from doing anything. We still have people who rob banks, who commit murders, and drive drunk. But what having laws against those behaviors do is discourage them, and thus, reduce their incidence.
No one can stop people, if they really want to do something stupid and risky (e.g., drunk driving). If a woman really wants an abortion, she'll get one. If a 15 yr. old wants to smoke or drink alcohol, they will, and if adults want to provide it to them, they will. But the very fact that we know people will do such things doesn't mean we have to, or even should, remove the restrictions from them.
It was never, ever aware that it was alive, unlike a living person who went to sleep.
What possible difference does that make? A person who's unconscious doesn't know they were conscious once, because they're not self-aware enough to know that while they're unconscious. 9 months from conception, the fetus will be (barring a miscarriage or abortion) conscious. There's no difference between killing someone who was conscious and someone who will be conscious. It's just a game of semantics.
I said similar to a parasite, not really a parasite itself.
It's certainly different enough from a parasite that the comparison isn't worth making. It just dehumanizes the fetus to allow those who are pro-abortion to rationalize it.
It's just a fetus, like a sperm cell is just a sperm cell. Is it really a human, though? Yes, I think it is. Maybe not a fully grown human, but it's still a human.
I'm glad we agree on that much.:)
That said, the mother shouldn't have to put up with it being inside her body if she doesn't want it.
In a perfect world (and, hopefully, some time in the near future) a woman wouldn't have to bring a child to term in her womb if she didn't want it. The time is coming where it will be possible to have the blastocyst removed and transplanted to another woman, or frozen. The reason this can't currently be done is that a woman who's not trying to get pregnant doesn't find out about it early enough for such a procedure to be successful, but with better pregnancy detection techniques, that could change.
Again, a woman has the option of not having sex if they don't want to get pregnant. Then, abortion wouldn't be an issue for them.
so you believe i've already achieved everything you find is necessary for those you speak for, while you remain unable to provide it to them.
Quite the contrary. All you've been able to do is string words together semi-randomly. But your inability to understand science, history, or paleontology is of no concern to me, actually. As I said, carry on.
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Certainly, any law Congress passes has to be within their constitutional power to pass. The Supreme Court has found the drug laws constitutional, though.
What you seem to not understand is that by default congress CANNOT regulate anything. They have very specific areas they are allowed to regulate.
In regards to marijuana, the Supreme Court has upheld the federal drug laws -- including those regarding marijuana.
Meanwhile, in spite of the expense of the FDA process and the very expensive market inefficiencies created by the patent system, you'd have to be hiding under a rock to not have heard about a few rather spectacular failures in the area of safety testing for FDA approval.
Absolutely true, but you have to take into account the situation that the FDA was trying to address with the rules. Time was, a person/company could sell anything in a bottle/box, and claim it had medicinal benefits, with no proof at all. While there are certainly some instances where things get past the FDA without problems being found, you basically have the inverse of the old situation, where most "treatments" either did nothing, or caused harm.
It should also be said that the Vioxx situation didn't come about because of a lack of or ineffective testing. It came about because (to the best of my recollection) Merck knew that doing certain tests would raise flags, so they simply avoided those tests. (If I remember right, they didn't do tests against people w/ heart conditions.)
While foxglove and willow's bark are the sources of digoxin and aspirin, respectively, that has little bearing on whether or not they'd be classified as drugs (and therefore regulated as such) by the FDA. What triggers the regulation is selling them for their therapeutic effects. If you simply sell them as plants, it's not an issue. But put them in a bottle and make medicinal claims about them, and that triggers regulation, because you're selling them as if they were drugs. And the whole reason the neutriceutical companies have to run the disclaimer about not treating, preventing, or curing any disease is that they haven't gone through the clinical testing they'd need to go through to be sold legitimately as drugs.
Also, keep in mind: There's a difference between willow bark and aspirin. Aspirin is refined to include willow bark's active ingredient in sufficient potency to be medicinally beneficial. When you buy a neutriceutical, there's no guarantee that you're getting a medicinally valuable dose at all. That's why I called neutriceuticals placebos: If they were potent enough to make legitimate health claims, they wouldn't be hiding behind disclaimers. They'd do the FDA clinical trials, and bring the substances to market as drugs (because you'd make a boatload more money that way). Nobody in their right minds would take a substance with a measurable therapeutic effect and not try to market it as a drug. The revenue difference is enormous.
Concerning efficacy: We can both agree that efficacy standards should be higher with drugs, but at least there are efficacy standards. With neutriceuticals, there are no standards of efficacy at all, so the only thing you're really buying when you buy one is the promise that it's just as good as doing nothing (i.e., a placebo).
I'm not saying they can regulate intrastate commerce. I'm saying they can regulate marijuana in ways that have nothing to do with intrastate commerce. If they regulate whether or not you can possess a substance, whether or not you can sell it is a moot point.
The rules that you cite apply as long as the supplement in question doesn't make health claims. Yes, anyone can package herbs and sell them. The FDA would only come down on the herb manufacturer if claims are made to treat, prevent, or cure any disease. If you make specific health claims, you have to back them up. (e.g., recently, ginko manufacturers have come under scrutiny from the FDA for making Alzheimer's claims.)
Potency comes into play because a lot of these supplements (see the NY Times article I posted earlier) don't contain high enough concentrations of their active ingredients to have a therapeutic effect. If they did contain high enough levels of their active ingredients, they'd have to be classified as drugs.
It's actually exactly what I said, if you read the post, rather than extracting one line. Let me help you out:
The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease."
Now, anyone reading this with the intention of comprehending it would see that I was talking about health claims. Ingesting broken glass would have an impact on your health. Do you think I was saying that broken glass was regulated as a drug by the FDA?
Last time I looked, lemons prevent scurvy. Are you telling me vegetables are regulated by the FDA?
First, vegetables are regulated by the FDA. They're regulated as foods. They're not regulated as drugs because they're not drugs. They're foods that happen to contain beneficial chemicals. If you make claims about treating preventing, or curing any disease with a product, the FDA does consider that a drug.
Here you can see an example of a product for which specific claims were made to cure a disease:
Redco Foods: Salada Naturally Decaffeinated Green Tea (promoted for conditions that cause the product to be a drug; unapproved nutrient claim; unapproved health claim); [Emphasis added.]
Foods are not drugs, and if you make treatment claims on a food, it's going to be regulated as a drug (or you'd better remove the claim.
Now, you're free to say, in the abstract, "Lemons prevent scurvy", but if you try to sell lemons with that claim, the FDA will get involved.
The thing is, most of these genetic causes for high cholesterol are due to diet.
That's not really the segment of the population I'm thinking about. I meant people with inherited hypercholesterolemia. These people are always going to produce more cholesterol than they need (as I'm reading it, anyway). Of course, such a person shouldn't make things worse by having a bad diet.
There's always disease and there will always be a reason for research medicine and doctors because of this, but until insurance companies start paying for nutritionists we're stuck in a bit of a rut.
I think we agree on this point. I just wanted to make it clearer that diet isn't always the ultimate solution to the problem.
If you** claim it's because of "some other clause," you're as bad as they are. There's no reason for an explicit interstate commerce clause if they have power over all commerce everywhere.
Intrastate acts can have more than one implication. For instance: If you kill a federal employee in the course of their duties or because of their duties, you get a federal punishment, regardless of what the laws say concerning murder in that state. Similarly, if you commit murder for a racist reason, then in addition to being charged with the murder by the state where you committed the murder, you could be brought up on federal charges of denying the person their civil rights.
In other words, people in each state are subject to federal laws. If something is illegal on the federal level, it doesn't matter which state you're in.
And yes, that's in the Constitution.
A healthy diet definitely goes a long way, but you can have the healthiest diet in the world and still have high cholesterol and heart disease, because not every case of these is due to diet. Most good doctors will tell you to change your diet if your cardiovascular system is out of whack, but there are also genetic factors that come into play. Not only that, but like any regimen (including drugs, also), it's one thing to tell a patient what they need to do. Getting their compliance is quite another matter. If you've got a patient who's been eating Big Macs for 20 years for dinner, and you give him a choice between meds and cutting out the Big Macs (or give him both instructions), which one do you think he's more likely to follow? So it's more than just a mystique associated with drugs. Some people need drugs for medical reasons, and with others, if you don't give them the drug, you're just wasting your breath, because they're not going to change their diets (as irrational as that may be).
That's simply false. Here is the FDA's own definition of a drug:
How does the law define a drug?
The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use, as "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" and "articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" [FD&C Act, sec. 201(g)(1)]. [Emphasis added]
That's why when you see a neutriceutical advertised, they're careful about what claims they make (or, more accurately, what they disclaim). If the compound in question is actually touted as doing something for your health, it has to come under the FDA regulations concerning trials. This commercial is typical of how the companies skirt the issue of effects.
Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008.
Of course, that's why treatments based on nicotine (and there certainly are some) are classified as drugs, and have been regulated by the FDA for some time now. (Nicotinic agonists are being investigated for things like asthma.
The issue with tobacco is that it's been a long time since cigarette makers have made any claims about the health benefits of smoking. The cigarette companies are now regulated to the extent that they're not allowed to say "light" or "low tar" in their marketing, they have to have larger warning labels, etc. That's quite different from the regulations the FDA puts on other drugs, because the claims are different.
Caffeine, your other example, is also subject to FDA regulation, when it's claimed to actually do something.
To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".
Caffeine absolutely is regulated as a drug by the FDA, when it's added to a product. There are levels of caffeine recognized as safe by the FDA, and those levels are adhered to. Caffeine drinks (e.g., Red Bull) carefully avoid making health claims, which is why they're not subject to the same testing, but instead are only subject to the regulation about caffeine content. Coffee, as one example, isn't subject to FDA regulation because it's not added, but naturally occurring. This is why the FDA is stepping in with alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.
The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it. If it's not regulated by the FDA, it can't make any health claims (legitimately), and you might as well be eating PEZ.
The problem with all neutriceuticals is that there's a loophole in the law (at least in the U.S.) that allows them to bypass the FDA testing process. That's why with all of the TV ads, you'll see, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to cure, prevent, or treat any disease." Basically, they can make any claims they want in the ads, and the products only have to be as effective as PEZ.
Prescription drugs, on the other hand, have to go through clinical trials show at least three things to get FDA approval:
1) Toxicity (i.e., at what level is the drug going to cause an adverse effect)
2) Safety (i.e., testing to assure that the drug's components, at the formulation intended, is safe)
3) Efficacy (i.e., that the drug does what it's intended to do)
For the neutriceutical companies, the problem is that FDA clinical trials are expensive. It's much cheaper to conduct your own study, focus solely on the active ingredient, and tailor the study carefully to only talk about efficacy. And a study by Congress found that there are many neutriceuticals that either contain hazardous contaminants, or else don't contain enough of the active ingredients they're supposed to have to have any effect on health. (You probably won't hear about that at GNC, though.)
The bottom line is this: If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA. At the very least, the fact that these neutriceuticals aren't subject to testing by the FDA means that, at best, you're taking a placebo (i.e., you'd be better off taking PEZ, since it's cheaper).
The tablet doesn't look too different (in size) from this, does it? The watch is probably similar (other than color) to the one in the picture, isn't it? No idea about the handheld device, although I assume it's a phone, and that it's probably running WebOS. I'd be very surprised if it looked radically different from the Pre or Pixi (although from the looks of it, my imagination goes more towards a Pixi look than a Pre one.
Of course, I could be completely wrong on all counts, but I'd be surprised if the phone and tablet looked radically different.
I'm pretty sure China forces abortion or something.
Last I heard, China forced abortion of females (although, the policy may have changed by now -- I don't know). Certainly, that's not a policy either of us would want, but if you justify abortion on population grounds, that's the road you're ultimately going to end up going down.
That is not what I desire, as that would definitely be a breach of freedom. However, I just said that the desire to want every single child conceived to be born is unrealistic.
Every single child conceived now isn't born -- even if you ignore aborted fetuses. Women miscarry, and sometimes the fertilized egg simply fails to implant in the woman's uterus.
I'm pretty sure you have the option of adopting them out.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In order to be adopted, children first have to be put up for adoption, but pro-choice people often act as if this is a fate worse than death.
These "pro-life" people take no consideration of people who simply can't afford the child or perhaps it was a complete accident in the first place.
If you're having trouble taking care of your child, there are social services to assist with this. In fact, that's why people are given money for children in public assistance. Second, "unplanned" and "unwanted" aren't necessarily synonyms. Many couples have children sooner than they planned for, but love the children nonetheless. In cases where this isn't true, it's a character defect in the parents, not a problem with the child. Third, if the child is made to suffer by the parents, by all means, the children should be taken away from them. I'm 100% in favor of harsher punishments for abusive parents. A parent's frustration at having a child shouldn't be taken out on the child.
These children will just end up adding to the overpopulation problem while rotting in an orphanage.
The solution is encouraging adoption, not abortion. As far as overpopulation goes, that's a bell people have been ringing since at least the 1960's. If you'd asked Harry Harrison in 1966, he'd've said we'd all be cannibals by now. The overpopulation doomsayers don't have a great track record.
It's actually education that's correlated to a lower birthrate. If someone is determined to stay in school and make something of themselves, they tend to be more careful sexually when they're younger, and wait longer to have children (thus, having fewer children). If the plan is just to let the uneducated have abortions if they want them, you don't really solve the problem. What you have to do is give them a reason not to use their genitals as a cheap form of soma.
I apologize for feeding a troll, everyone. My mistake.
Probably because "using" something and "leveraging" it are not the same thing.
They could "use" WebOS in any number of different pieces of hardware, but if the hardware they put it in doesn't really benefit from what WebOS can do (e.g., with the multitasking and Synergy, especially), then they haven't leveraged it well at all. Leveraging a product means you use it in such a way to make other products attractive, as well.
For example: Let's say HP decided to put WebOS exclusively on tablets. You could certainly argue that tablets are a good use scenario for WebOS, but they certainly couldn't be said to be leveraging WebOS well, if that were the case.
It was announced at CES, but it wasn't released until last June.
Besides that, the world is already overpopulated and filled with children who need homes. I really don't understand why these same people who supposedly want to save children don't adopt a child who needs a home instead of bringing a new child into this already overpopulated world (which they seem to do often). They take absolutely no responsibility for these children that they don't want aborted and pretend the world isn't overpopulated enough.
Well, I don't think we want abortion used for population control. That's not something we want to follow China's lead on. That sounds a little dark to me. I think people who can't afford to have children should be careful not to conceive children. It works for most people in the world. There are a great deal more people who've had pre-marital sex than've had abortions.
Once they've been conceived, the people who're supposed to take responsibility for them are the ones who've brought them about. Sure, it'd be nice for everyone who is pro-life to be able to adopt, but that's not the reality, just like everyone who's pro-death penalty can't be an executioner. It shouldn't be a reason for someone not to have an opinion.
They don't fit all of the things I mentioned.
The only one they don't fit is being inside the mother. That's not much of a distinction, though, because, as we've discussed, there's not a really big difference between being inside and outside. It's a matter of development only.
Sometimes. Other times, it doesn't work. Look at weed and prohibition.
Actually, weed is a good example of how keeping things illegal does tamp down on their use. Compare the number of people who smoke marijuana (an illegal substance) to those who smoke tobacco (a legal one). Why is the number of people who smoke tobacco so much greater? Because tobacco cigarettes are cheap, legal, and readily available in any convenience store. Compare that to marijuana. Now, certainly lots more people smoke marijuana than say, shoot heroin, but it's nothing like tobacco or alcohol usage. If people feel there's no good reason for something being illegal, they'll break the law. Many will feel as if their freedoms were stripped away, and they will likely end up getting an illegal abortion.
Yes, there is. The person who was conscious is already born, isn't leeching off of a womens body, and actually has a personality to speak of. None of which can be said about the fetus, yet.
Being "already born" is just a matter of positioning. Feeding inside vs. outside of the womb I could see being important to some people, but making it out of the vagina itself is just a stage of development. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with consciousness. There are people born who never develop personalities, as such, because their mental handicaps are too severe. I've seen such people, and it's certainly not pretty, but it's reality. By your criteria, such people would be fair game to be killed throughout their lives.
Uh, I didn't dehumanize it. I said it was basically a parasite leeching off of the mother until it is born. If the mother doesn't want it, she doesn't have to put up with it. It has no personality or attributes to speak of yet, so you're not killing a human who was already born.
Again, being born isn't necessarily the huge marker you think it is. In fact, even under current law, 3rd trimester abortions (e.g., up to 3 months before the child is born) can be regulated.
Secondly, of course it's dehumanizing to compare a fetus to a leech or a parasite. If you substitute "tapeworm" for "leech", can you see how that looks? (There's no real difference, because "parasite", "leech", and "tapeworm" all refer to animals, but "tapeworm" makes it easier to see, I think.)
She also has the option of getting an abortion if she doesn't want it inside her body.
Currently, she does. That's correct.
If these people really don't want the baby and abortion is illegal, there's almost no doubt in my mind that they'll do it illegally, putting their own life at risk to remove something from their own bodies that they should have been able to remove legally.
I'm going to partially agree with you here, insofar as making something illegal doesn't, in itself, prevent anyone from doing anything. We still have people who rob banks, who commit murders, and drive drunk. But what having laws against those behaviors do is discourage them, and thus, reduce their incidence.
No one can stop people, if they really want to do something stupid and risky (e.g., drunk driving). If a woman really wants an abortion, she'll get one. If a 15 yr. old wants to smoke or drink alcohol, they will, and if adults want to provide it to them, they will. But the very fact that we know people will do such things doesn't mean we have to, or even should, remove the restrictions from them.
It was never, ever aware that it was alive, unlike a living person who went to sleep.
What possible difference does that make? A person who's unconscious doesn't know they were conscious once, because they're not self-aware enough to know that while they're unconscious. 9 months from conception, the fetus will be (barring a miscarriage or abortion) conscious. There's no difference between killing someone who was conscious and someone who will be conscious. It's just a game of semantics.
I said similar to a parasite, not really a parasite itself.
It's certainly different enough from a parasite that the comparison isn't worth making. It just dehumanizes the fetus to allow those who are pro-abortion to rationalize it.
It's just a fetus, like a sperm cell is just a sperm cell. Is it really a human, though? Yes, I think it is. Maybe not a fully grown human, but it's still a human.
I'm glad we agree on that much. :)
That said, the mother shouldn't have to put up with it being inside her body if she doesn't want it.
In a perfect world (and, hopefully, some time in the near future) a woman wouldn't have to bring a child to term in her womb if she didn't want it. The time is coming where it will be possible to have the blastocyst removed and transplanted to another woman, or frozen. The reason this can't currently be done is that a woman who's not trying to get pregnant doesn't find out about it early enough for such a procedure to be successful, but with better pregnancy detection techniques, that could change.
Again, a woman has the option of not having sex if they don't want to get pregnant. Then, abortion wouldn't be an issue for them.
so you believe i've already achieved everything you find is necessary for those you speak for, while you remain unable to provide it to them.
Quite the contrary. All you've been able to do is string words together semi-randomly. But your inability to understand science, history, or paleontology is of no concern to me, actually. As I said, carry on.
who is this "we" you keep talking about?
you don't speak for me.
you are NOTHING.
By "we", I meant people who happen to live on Earth. You're obviously off on your own little world, so apparently it doesn't apply to you. Carry on. :)
Good point. Just another reason to start working on a Plan B.