Yeah, book 5 was Midnight Tides, where suddenly you shifted to the Edur conquest of Letheras, after spending a few books on the Seven Cities (Apocalypse/Chain of Dogs) and Genebackis (Pannion Domin) stories. Reaper's Gale is doing an admirable job of tying together those three forks in the story - the end of the Pannion Domin, the reassertion of Malazan power in Seven Cities after the Apocalypse & Chain of Dogs, and the Edur conquest of Letheras.
but the structure could use quite a bit of overhauling
The farther along I get in the Malazan series (working through vol. 7 now), the taller an order I think this is, really. You really are getting dropped into a world (and story) whose history stretches across thousands of years, numerous continents, and a host of species and civilizations. If Erikson held your hand through building that whole world up & explaining it to the reader, he could easily write dozens of books set in that world without exhausting the details... each book covers a fairly complete (and engaging) story as you noted yourself - filling in the details and making the connections is something that could take another 10 books if he had to do it explicitly.
Yes, this, a million times this. I started reading the WoT series when I was still in frigging high school. I graduated high school in 1993... Eye of the World was published in 1990.
When I was a high school junior, the books were like, "wow, this is great!" Now, they're a little... well... flat. Fairly predictable, overly detailed, and I sort of get to the point where I'm like, "JUST TELL ME HOW IT ENDS." On the whole, they're not awful books, but they have tended to drag. The ones Sanderson had a hand in have moved at a much brisker pace, and I think he did an admirable job of tying up a lot of loose ends. I'll read the last book, because I want to see how the story ends. But as a series, 36 year old me finds them far less engaging than the 16 year old me who started reading them.
Second this recommendation for Malazan Book of the Fallen. The first book, "Gardens of the Moon" was really hard for me to get into - very much a "what the fuck is going on here?" feeling, because you really end up plopped down right in the middle of an ongoing story with all kinds of characters and references that just don't make any sense until you really start getting farther along into the books. It was a bit overwhelming - I read the first one with a feeling of, "there's something going on here, but I can't fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense," pretty much throughout.
The SECOND book, "Deadhouse Gates," however... holy hell, what an amazing read. First book almost turned me off, second one thoroughly hooked me in, I'm glad I stuck with it - I'm about 3/4 through volume 7 ("Reaper's Gale") right now. The rest of the series has continued to be a good read, and the scope of the story is really breathtaking, when you start seeing how all of the pieces fit together.
Do people not realize that there short-sighted self-centered outlook on this is creating new breeds of diseases that affect all of us?
I find it amazing that somebody with such "noble" humanitarian goals can be so short sighted and ridiculously anti-humanitarian when it comes down to policies. Why educate, when you can fine & imprison, right? I mean, after all, don't these mouth-breathing idiots realize that they're inconveniencing YOU with their stupid behavior? They should all just be rounded up and shipped off to a south pacific island, or Texas or something, amirite?
Here's the thing: NO, they don't understand the consequences. NO, they can't afford a full series of the drug, so rather than die today, they take their chances and buy enough of the drug to feel better, and maybe die 3 months from now instead. These are the people creating resistant strains, not first-world affluent people who can afford the healthcare (and the doctor's time) to get the little talk about taking the entire course of medication.
Doing a nasal rinse with a hypotonic (less salt than found in your cells) solution will contribute to swelling, and in fact, won't do much of anything to alleviate your symptoms. The goal is to find a salt level that is roughly isotonic, or perhaps a slight bit hypertonic, which will tend to pull moisture out of the cells in the nasal cavity - which has the net effect of reducing swelling. A perfectly isotonic rinse would cause no net loss or gain of water inside the cells, and is perfect. Too much or too little salt will irritate and/or contribute to swelling by adding water to the tissues.
Also, a brita filter will do just about zero to remove microorganisms from water, unless you're literally pouring pond water through it - then it'll probably remove SOME of the microorganisms. Distilled or boiled water is the way to go.
Make them come over to the clinic for their daily dose.
And when they feel better three days in, instead of stopping the antibiotics at home, they'll just stop showing up at the clinic. Showing up at the clinic daily would, in fact, make it MORE difficult for people to do a full course. "I could've taken the antibiotics at home, but stopped because I felt fine," is ignorance that can be mostly eliminated with proper patient education by doctors and pharmacists - "It is VERY important that you take the entire round of antibiotics. Here's why, and you can read this alarming pamphlet with full color nasty photos of tuberculosis victims to underscore the point."
"I could've taken the antibiotics at the clinic but it's 30 minutes out of my way and a huge hassle and I felt fine," is a much bigger problem to work around.
And seriously - fining people for not finishing the course? Good luck creating a giant new invasive government infrastructure to monitor and collect the fines. And good luck penalizing the poor & uneducated who are predominantly the ones who don't finish the course - because "I felt fine, and the drugs are expensive, so why not save them for a time when I don't feel fine again?" or "because I felt fine, and I have no comprehension of how these things work or why it's important to take them, so why bother?" Do you really think that $500k/yr Senior VP at BofA is going to not bother taking his meds? Of course not. You think the kid who had to work 20 extra hours last week to afford the meds might? Sure.
In a just world, LightSquared would be refused the use of this spectrum for terrestrial communications, as it has always been regulated.
LightSquared wants to change the regulations? Great, let them pay for ameliorating the IMPACT of those changes. Namely, let them design a GPS receiver that operates properly with a high-power terrestrial signal interfering with the GPS spectrum, and manufacture & distribute - free of charge to everybody who has a GPS receiver that is "shoddily" designed. And by "shoddy," I assume you mean "built to work properly in the conditions created by regulation guaranteeing them the certainty of no high-powered transmissions on neighboring frequencies."
This is actually one case where it appears that money has NOT bought political sway at the expense of ordinary consumers. I'm pleased to see that result.
Yeah, some stupid exec who realized that large numbers of people were badgering them to say, "When will you have an iPhone?" and large numbers of existing customers were switching to AT&T to get an iphone.
Those stupid execs, trying to retain customers so that revenues don't crash. Apple did NOT "need" Verizon. They were making ridiculous profits selling just through AT&T in the US. Adding Verizon & Sprint allow them to make ridiculous-er profits, but in no way were those additions the thing to take iPhones from "losing money" to "profitable." Verizon, by comparison, *was* losing subscribers to other carriers - they actually WERE losing money over not having the iPhone.
And so they added the iPhone, but the subsidy for the iPhone has squeezed their profit margins by a percent or two. Sucks for Verizon that they have to compete, but when the choices are "earn a 30% profit on 10 million dollars," or "earn a 25% profit on 100 million dollars," I'll take the lower margin and the bigger market any day.
Proview is on the brink of bankruptcy, and essentially, circling the drain. All Apple has to do is drag it out until they have no cash, and then offer their creditors a cool couple million for controlling interests in the company's assets.
If you don't think Apple can delay for a year or two until Proview runs out of money for less than 1.6 billion dollars, then I want some of whatever you're smoking.
Sure, if you've got the guts to go after it and risk being eviscerated in court by a well-funded legal team from Apple.
Settling with no admission of wrongdoing amounts to Apple saying, "Well, we're not agreeing we did anything wrong, but we also don't want a protracted legal battle that will cost us 200 million dollars when we're probably going to lose, so... here's a pile of money for you to drop the issue, and we'd like to continue using your trademarked name in China, too, so we'll need an irrevocable license to do so."
The details in the case seem very thin - this COULD very well be the chinese company trying to defraud Apple, in which case they probably won't settle. But if it's a fuck-up on the part of their legal team, it's likely they'll settle & license the trademark like they probably thought they had originally for far less than 1.6 billion dollars. Some news reports are suggesting that a fine of "38 million" might be levied. That's obviously a great deal smaller than 1.6 billion.
I'm pretty sure Apple will pony up the 1.6 billion
I'm pretty sure they won't pay anywhere near 1.6 billion. They'll probably settle for a sizable amount with no admission of wrongdoing and get use of the name, all for a fraction of the 1.6 billion that Proview is claiming they're owed.
At the core of the dispute is a 2006 agreement in which Apple bought the iPad trademark from Taiwan's Proview Electronics for $55,000, by way of a front business known as IP Application Development. Proview says, though, that Apple didn't win the rights to the Chinese trademark, since those were owned by Proview Technology in Shenzhen, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based Proview International.
So it sounds like Apple perhaps fucked up and they didn't secure the rights in China like they thought they were, or the Taiwanese company deliberately misled them, waiting until they were in financial trouble to cash in this particular chip, and say "Surprise, you didn't buy the rights in China like you thought."
Whichever it is, I suspect it'd be easier and cheaper for Apple to simply buy the company and shutter it than it would be to pay 1.6 billion dollars and lose the right to use the name. Realistically, I think you can expect the companies to settle with Apple being granted the rights to the name, and Proview getting a nice chunk of cash for it.
Your concern for him is touching, but misplaced. I didn't "claim the higher moral ground."
What I did was point out that he'd be better off sticking to the facts, rather than engaging in ridiculous demagoguery. His first paragraph was factual, and well reasoned. His closing paragraph was a glaring example of pointless purple prose, and only served to detract from his overall argument by making him sound like a partisan hack.
In fact, your response is exactly an example of what I was getting at: my still-valid point that he should have just argued the facts gets overlooked because throwing in colorful and partisan language causes people to ignore the facts and focus on the empty rhetoric.
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I take it you'd vote for such a law, siding with the communists and socialists in an effort to turn us into a third world country, which as we all know would let the terrorists win? Why, exactly, do you hate America?
Wow, I can build stupid rhetorical devices too. Mutually assured destruction, how about that?!
It sounds weird because he seems to be confusing "small claims" with nonbinding arbitration.
A judgement issued by a small claims court is absolutely binding. Nonbinding arbitration is a form of alternate dispute resolution which leaves both the plaintiff and the defendant able to file claims with a court to pursue a resolution, if the arbitration result is found to be unpalatable for some reason by either party.
Of course, small claims is NOT arbitration, and there are also forms of arbitration and mediation which ARE binding, so really, he's just spouting off b.s. in an attempt to convince us that his silly groupthink is based on facts and reason.
In what way is marketing your unlicensed medical treatment to people across the nation, encouraging them to cross state lines and spend their money in Colorado on said unlicensed treatment... NOT interstate commerce?
Also, from the FAQ section of their web site: "Are you licensed by the state?"
Colorado has no tissue bank licensure. However, recently New York state asserted that we needed a New York tissue banking license to treat NY patients. While we disagreed with the general assertion that NY can regulate medical activities in Colorado, we did apply for such a license and did receive a provision license, which can be seen here.
Oops... looks like they just conceded that they're performing their treatment protocols on people who've crossed state lines from New York, at the very least - otherwise why would NY tell them they needed licensure, and why would they apply for a license from NY? If you cross from one state to another to perform a transaction, you're engaging in interstate commerce.
Also, it's generally accepted by the courts that the federal government can also regulate commerce *within* a state when it may impact interstate movement of goods and services.
Also, this is a medical treatment, whose efficacy claims are subject to FDA oversight and regulation.
And if you go scan, or - and I know this is a stretch here on/. - read the actual motion for summary dismissal, you see that the Commerce Clause argument is actually a very small (and probably the flimsiest) part of their argument. It is cited by the ANH specifically because they know it'll draw 10 kinds of tin foil hat outrage.
That this procedure is a therapeutic treatment, that it is being marketed as a beneficial treatment for certain conditions involving joint and bone pain, and that it is being marketed with such claims without any certification that the claims are accurate or even remotely true (and that none of these points are disputed other than the defendant company saying that their marketing claims somehow make this treatment a "practice of medicine" and should thus be exempted from FDA oversight) would all seem to be very compelling and legitimate reasons for the FDA to take a role in overseeing & regulating this treatment.
From the Article, that excerpt seems to be the "Association for Natural Health's" contention that the FDA is just waltzing in and saying "HA HA WE OWN YOUR BODY LOL." That's not the case. You could educate yourself by reading the actual motion for summary judgement here, and see the actual wording of the claims.
The defendants are claiming that their use of the stem cell material constitutes the "practice of medicine" (outside the jurisdiction of the FDA), but they are absolutely extracting and processing blood then re-introducing that extracted material into the body elsewhere as a treatment for a medical condition involving bone and joint pain. This is a therapeutic technique by any stretch of the imagination, and as such the regulation of oversight of that therapeutic technique ARE subject to FDA regulation.
Given that it's a legal brief, the interstate commerce aspect is included as one of SEVERAL points supporting the motion for a summary judgement. It is one of the flimsiest, but the ANH has decided not to address the much stronger claims, and focus on the flimsy ones. This is not a case of FDA over-regulation, this is a case of selective quoting and sensationalistic whinging by a - by all appearances - rabidly anti-FDA "Natural Health" advocacy group. That the FDA asserts its authority to regulate and oversee a treatment technique which uses blood products re-injected into the human body, and which claims to successfully treat / cure specific kinds of joint and bone pain should not be a surprise to anybody who hasn't been asleep for the last 20 years.
Now you just need to explain how the FDA gets the power to do that from the Constitution.
Commerce clause, as I'm sure you know.
Now please explain for us how a return to the pre-FDA muckraker's paradise of food & drug safety is in any way a positive argument for the abolition of the FDA? Or perhaps you meant to say that the FDA should have some regulatory authority, but you disagree with specific regulatory decisions or powers that it's been granted?
It's extracted from the blood of patients. That extract is then transfused into another body part. It is a treatment for a medical condition. The FDA has regulatory authority over other blood components - plasma, platelets, and whole blood - so why are stem cells in that same blood magically exempted when no other individual fractions of blood are?
Honest question, because this case seems to be much ado about nothing. We can CERTAINLY discuss whether the FDA *should* - as a matter of principle - have the broad authority it's given, but I don't see how this case represents any sort of broad expansion of powers by the FDA - they're asserting that they have the power to regulate this treatment. Given the information in the link you provided, and the simple fact that they oversee & regulate every other use of whole or fractional blood, I'm not sure how you reach the conclusion that the stem cells in that blood belong to some exempt category of blood components.
(As far as the semantic quibble about "narcotic," the Federal code defines the term as it's used. It may not be a 'medically exact' use of the term, but it is defined pretty clearly in the law, where it says "the term narcotic drug is defined as...:")
The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceutical drugs (medications), vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices (ERED), veterinary products, and cosmetics.
It sounds to me like this procedure would surely fall under the medication, biopharmaceutical, or blood transfusion category... can you explain for us slow kids why this treatment would be (or should be) exempted? Genuinely curious, because it seems to me that regulating treatment for a medical condition like this would fall within the FDA's jurisdiction.
You clearly have a problem with calling things what they really are. [...] In every functional sense, the property in question is the property of the person who holds the rights to it.
And you clearly have a problem with distinguishing between the notions of jurisdiction and ownership. Claiming that running somebody over with a car by accident is "functionally equivalent" to murdering them - after all, they're no longer alive! - doesn't amount to a legal argument. I'm not sure what sort of axe you're grinding, but your inability to comprehend the differences by this point can only be the result of a willful refusal to understand.
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Yeah, book 5 was Midnight Tides, where suddenly you shifted to the Edur conquest of Letheras, after spending a few books on the Seven Cities (Apocalypse/Chain of Dogs) and Genebackis (Pannion Domin) stories. Reaper's Gale is doing an admirable job of tying together those three forks in the story - the end of the Pannion Domin, the reassertion of Malazan power in Seven Cities after the Apocalypse & Chain of Dogs, and the Edur conquest of Letheras.
The farther along I get in the Malazan series (working through vol. 7 now), the taller an order I think this is, really. You really are getting dropped into a world (and story) whose history stretches across thousands of years, numerous continents, and a host of species and civilizations. If Erikson held your hand through building that whole world up & explaining it to the reader, he could easily write dozens of books set in that world without exhausting the details... each book covers a fairly complete (and engaging) story as you noted yourself - filling in the details and making the connections is something that could take another 10 books if he had to do it explicitly.
Yes, this, a million times this. I started reading the WoT series when I was still in frigging high school. I graduated high school in 1993... Eye of the World was published in 1990.
When I was a high school junior, the books were like, "wow, this is great!" Now, they're a little... well... flat. Fairly predictable, overly detailed, and I sort of get to the point where I'm like, "JUST TELL ME HOW IT ENDS." On the whole, they're not awful books, but they have tended to drag. The ones Sanderson had a hand in have moved at a much brisker pace, and I think he did an admirable job of tying up a lot of loose ends. I'll read the last book, because I want to see how the story ends. But as a series, 36 year old me finds them far less engaging than the 16 year old me who started reading them.
Second this recommendation for Malazan Book of the Fallen. The first book, "Gardens of the Moon" was really hard for me to get into - very much a "what the fuck is going on here?" feeling, because you really end up plopped down right in the middle of an ongoing story with all kinds of characters and references that just don't make any sense until you really start getting farther along into the books. It was a bit overwhelming - I read the first one with a feeling of, "there's something going on here, but I can't fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense," pretty much throughout.
The SECOND book, "Deadhouse Gates," however... holy hell, what an amazing read. First book almost turned me off, second one thoroughly hooked me in, I'm glad I stuck with it - I'm about 3/4 through volume 7 ("Reaper's Gale") right now. The rest of the series has continued to be a good read, and the scope of the story is really breathtaking, when you start seeing how all of the pieces fit together.
I find it amazing that somebody with such "noble" humanitarian goals can be so short sighted and ridiculously anti-humanitarian when it comes down to policies. Why educate, when you can fine & imprison, right? I mean, after all, don't these mouth-breathing idiots realize that they're inconveniencing YOU with their stupid behavior? They should all just be rounded up and shipped off to a south pacific island, or Texas or something, amirite?
Here's the thing: NO, they don't understand the consequences. NO, they can't afford a full series of the drug, so rather than die today, they take their chances and buy enough of the drug to feel better, and maybe die 3 months from now instead. These are the people creating resistant strains, not first-world affluent people who can afford the healthcare (and the doctor's time) to get the little talk about taking the entire course of medication.
Doing a nasal rinse with a hypotonic (less salt than found in your cells) solution will contribute to swelling, and in fact, won't do much of anything to alleviate your symptoms. The goal is to find a salt level that is roughly isotonic, or perhaps a slight bit hypertonic, which will tend to pull moisture out of the cells in the nasal cavity - which has the net effect of reducing swelling. A perfectly isotonic rinse would cause no net loss or gain of water inside the cells, and is perfect. Too much or too little salt will irritate and/or contribute to swelling by adding water to the tissues.
Also, a brita filter will do just about zero to remove microorganisms from water, unless you're literally pouring pond water through it - then it'll probably remove SOME of the microorganisms. Distilled or boiled water is the way to go.
And when they feel better three days in, instead of stopping the antibiotics at home, they'll just stop showing up at the clinic. Showing up at the clinic daily would, in fact, make it MORE difficult for people to do a full course. "I could've taken the antibiotics at home, but stopped because I felt fine," is ignorance that can be mostly eliminated with proper patient education by doctors and pharmacists - "It is VERY important that you take the entire round of antibiotics. Here's why, and you can read this alarming pamphlet with full color nasty photos of tuberculosis victims to underscore the point."
"I could've taken the antibiotics at the clinic but it's 30 minutes out of my way and a huge hassle and I felt fine," is a much bigger problem to work around.
And seriously - fining people for not finishing the course? Good luck creating a giant new invasive government infrastructure to monitor and collect the fines. And good luck penalizing the poor & uneducated who are predominantly the ones who don't finish the course - because "I felt fine, and the drugs are expensive, so why not save them for a time when I don't feel fine again?" or "because I felt fine, and I have no comprehension of how these things work or why it's important to take them, so why bother?" Do you really think that $500k/yr Senior VP at BofA is going to not bother taking his meds? Of course not. You think the kid who had to work 20 extra hours last week to afford the meds might? Sure.
In a just world, LightSquared would be refused the use of this spectrum for terrestrial communications, as it has always been regulated.
LightSquared wants to change the regulations? Great, let them pay for ameliorating the IMPACT of those changes. Namely, let them design a GPS receiver that operates properly with a high-power terrestrial signal interfering with the GPS spectrum, and manufacture & distribute - free of charge to everybody who has a GPS receiver that is "shoddily" designed. And by "shoddy," I assume you mean "built to work properly in the conditions created by regulation guaranteeing them the certainty of no high-powered transmissions on neighboring frequencies."
This is actually one case where it appears that money has NOT bought political sway at the expense of ordinary consumers. I'm pleased to see that result.
Yeah, some stupid exec who realized that large numbers of people were badgering them to say, "When will you have an iPhone?" and large numbers of existing customers were switching to AT&T to get an iphone.
Those stupid execs, trying to retain customers so that revenues don't crash. Apple did NOT "need" Verizon. They were making ridiculous profits selling just through AT&T in the US. Adding Verizon & Sprint allow them to make ridiculous-er profits, but in no way were those additions the thing to take iPhones from "losing money" to "profitable." Verizon, by comparison, *was* losing subscribers to other carriers - they actually WERE losing money over not having the iPhone.
And so they added the iPhone, but the subsidy for the iPhone has squeezed their profit margins by a percent or two. Sucks for Verizon that they have to compete, but when the choices are "earn a 30% profit on 10 million dollars," or "earn a 25% profit on 100 million dollars," I'll take the lower margin and the bigger market any day.
Proview is on the brink of bankruptcy, and essentially, circling the drain. All Apple has to do is drag it out until they have no cash, and then offer their creditors a cool couple million for controlling interests in the company's assets.
If you don't think Apple can delay for a year or two until Proview runs out of money for less than 1.6 billion dollars, then I want some of whatever you're smoking.
Sure, if you've got the guts to go after it and risk being eviscerated in court by a well-funded legal team from Apple.
Settling with no admission of wrongdoing amounts to Apple saying, "Well, we're not agreeing we did anything wrong, but we also don't want a protracted legal battle that will cost us 200 million dollars when we're probably going to lose, so... here's a pile of money for you to drop the issue, and we'd like to continue using your trademarked name in China, too, so we'll need an irrevocable license to do so."
The details in the case seem very thin - this COULD very well be the chinese company trying to defraud Apple, in which case they probably won't settle. But if it's a fuck-up on the part of their legal team, it's likely they'll settle & license the trademark like they probably thought they had originally for far less than 1.6 billion dollars. Some news reports are suggesting that a fine of "38 million" might be levied. That's obviously a great deal smaller than 1.6 billion.
I'm pretty sure they won't pay anywhere near 1.6 billion. They'll probably settle for a sizable amount with no admission of wrongdoing and get use of the name, all for a fraction of the 1.6 billion that Proview is claiming they're owed.
Here's more.
So it sounds like Apple perhaps fucked up and they didn't secure the rights in China like they thought they were, or the Taiwanese company deliberately misled them, waiting until they were in financial trouble to cash in this particular chip, and say "Surprise, you didn't buy the rights in China like you thought."
Whichever it is, I suspect it'd be easier and cheaper for Apple to simply buy the company and shutter it than it would be to pay 1.6 billion dollars and lose the right to use the name. Realistically, I think you can expect the companies to settle with Apple being granted the rights to the name, and Proview getting a nice chunk of cash for it.
Your concern for him is touching, but misplaced. I didn't "claim the higher moral ground."
What I did was point out that he'd be better off sticking to the facts, rather than engaging in ridiculous demagoguery. His first paragraph was factual, and well reasoned. His closing paragraph was a glaring example of pointless purple prose, and only served to detract from his overall argument by making him sound like a partisan hack.
In fact, your response is exactly an example of what I was getting at: my still-valid point that he should have just argued the facts gets overlooked because throwing in colorful and partisan language causes people to ignore the facts and focus on the empty rhetoric.
Here, let me try:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I take it you'd vote for such a law, siding with the communists and socialists in an effort to turn us into a third world country, which as we all know would let the terrorists win? Why, exactly, do you hate America?
Wow, I can build stupid rhetorical devices too. Mutually assured destruction, how about that?!
Next time, stick to the facts.
It sounds weird because he seems to be confusing "small claims" with nonbinding arbitration.
A judgement issued by a small claims court is absolutely binding. Nonbinding arbitration is a form of alternate dispute resolution which leaves both the plaintiff and the defendant able to file claims with a court to pursue a resolution, if the arbitration result is found to be unpalatable for some reason by either party.
Of course, small claims is NOT arbitration, and there are also forms of arbitration and mediation which ARE binding, so really, he's just spouting off b.s. in an attempt to convince us that his silly groupthink is based on facts and reason.
And whose vision of evil should we enshrine as the one true vision everybody must use to decide whether they are engaged in "evil"? Yours, I presume?
In what way is marketing your unlicensed medical treatment to people across the nation, encouraging them to cross state lines and spend their money in Colorado on said unlicensed treatment... NOT interstate commerce?
Also, from the FAQ section of their web site: "Are you licensed by the state?"
Oops... looks like they just conceded that they're performing their treatment protocols on people who've crossed state lines from New York, at the very least - otherwise why would NY tell them they needed licensure, and why would they apply for a license from NY? If you cross from one state to another to perform a transaction, you're engaging in interstate commerce.
Also, it's generally accepted by the courts that the federal government can also regulate commerce *within* a state when it may impact interstate movement of goods and services.
Also, this is a medical treatment, whose efficacy claims are subject to FDA oversight and regulation.
And if you go scan, or - and I know this is a stretch here on /. - read the actual motion for summary dismissal, you see that the Commerce Clause argument is actually a very small (and probably the flimsiest) part of their argument. It is cited by the ANH specifically because they know it'll draw 10 kinds of tin foil hat outrage.
That this procedure is a therapeutic treatment, that it is being marketed as a beneficial treatment for certain conditions involving joint and bone pain, and that it is being marketed with such claims without any certification that the claims are accurate or even remotely true (and that none of these points are disputed other than the defendant company saying that their marketing claims somehow make this treatment a "practice of medicine" and should thus be exempted from FDA oversight) would all seem to be very compelling and legitimate reasons for the FDA to take a role in overseeing & regulating this treatment.
From the Article, that excerpt seems to be the "Association for Natural Health's" contention that the FDA is just waltzing in and saying "HA HA WE OWN YOUR BODY LOL." That's not the case. You could educate yourself by reading the actual motion for summary judgement here, and see the actual wording of the claims.
The defendants are claiming that their use of the stem cell material constitutes the "practice of medicine" (outside the jurisdiction of the FDA), but they are absolutely extracting and processing blood then re-introducing that extracted material into the body elsewhere as a treatment for a medical condition involving bone and joint pain. This is a therapeutic technique by any stretch of the imagination, and as such the regulation of oversight of that therapeutic technique ARE subject to FDA regulation.
Given that it's a legal brief, the interstate commerce aspect is included as one of SEVERAL points supporting the motion for a summary judgement. It is one of the flimsiest, but the ANH has decided not to address the much stronger claims, and focus on the flimsy ones. This is not a case of FDA over-regulation, this is a case of selective quoting and sensationalistic whinging by a - by all appearances - rabidly anti-FDA "Natural Health" advocacy group. That the FDA asserts its authority to regulate and oversee a treatment technique which uses blood products re-injected into the human body, and which claims to successfully treat / cure specific kinds of joint and bone pain should not be a surprise to anybody who hasn't been asleep for the last 20 years.
Commerce clause, as I'm sure you know.
Now please explain for us how a return to the pre-FDA muckraker's paradise of food & drug safety is in any way a positive argument for the abolition of the FDA? Or perhaps you meant to say that the FDA should have some regulatory authority, but you disagree with specific regulatory decisions or powers that it's been granted?
It's extracted from the blood of patients. That extract is then transfused into another body part. It is a treatment for a medical condition. The FDA has regulatory authority over other blood components - plasma, platelets, and whole blood - so why are stem cells in that same blood magically exempted when no other individual fractions of blood are?
Honest question, because this case seems to be much ado about nothing. We can CERTAINLY discuss whether the FDA *should* - as a matter of principle - have the broad authority it's given, but I don't see how this case represents any sort of broad expansion of powers by the FDA - they're asserting that they have the power to regulate this treatment. Given the information in the link you provided, and the simple fact that they oversee & regulate every other use of whole or fractional blood, I'm not sure how you reach the conclusion that the stem cells in that blood belong to some exempt category of blood components.
(As far as the semantic quibble about "narcotic," the Federal code defines the term as it's used. It may not be a 'medically exact' use of the term, but it is defined pretty clearly in the law, where it says "the term narcotic drug is defined as...:")
Not sure I follow you... from your own link:
It sounds to me like this procedure would surely fall under the medication, biopharmaceutical, or blood transfusion category... can you explain for us slow kids why this treatment would be (or should be) exempted? Genuinely curious, because it seems to me that regulating treatment for a medical condition like this would fall within the FDA's jurisdiction.
And you clearly have a problem with distinguishing between the notions of jurisdiction and ownership. Claiming that running somebody over with a car by accident is "functionally equivalent" to murdering them - after all, they're no longer alive! - doesn't amount to a legal argument. I'm not sure what sort of axe you're grinding, but your inability to comprehend the differences by this point can only be the result of a willful refusal to understand.