Oh, I'm not saying that early human experiments couldn't be carried out scientifically. I'm essentially asking about practicality and cost-effectiveness. Let's say I've got a research budget of a billion dollars and ten years, which I can spend experimenting on bunnies and/or humans. Let's further posit that experiments on a human take fifty times as much time and money as a bunny experiment (difference in life spans, metabolism differences, fewer forms to fill out, etc., etc.). Do I try to save a few humans now without knowing quite as much about the proposed treatment, or do I concentrate on bunny research now and, after five or eight years, start working with humans, using the knowledge I've gained working on bunnies to perform more focused experiments with a relatively greater chance of success?
"Expensive drugs like AIDS treatments have found their way into the hands of plenty of poor people."
Major pharmecutical companies have been fighting attempts by African governments to essentially pirate the design of AIDS drugs. Poor African countries, which are suffering from AIDS epidemics, might be able to buy significant quantities of drugs at cost, but certainly can't pay prices which include the drug companies getting their royalties. Which means that lots of poor Africans are dying so that multinational drug companies can show a profit.
Of course, if they did give away those drug designs (and, by extention, other massively useful and necessary drug designs) so that the poor could live, there's every chance that the companies would fold and there wouldn't be any new drugs to stop the next plague.
And would starting to treat terminally ill patients right now provide as much scientific value? Or would it divert funding from possibly cheaper or at least more informative on a dollar by dollar basis animal testing, so that in the long run we might save X people but not develop effective stem cell therapies for Y years longer, thereby losing another X+N people who might have been saved had we gone a more orthodox route?
(Seriously, I'm asking. I have no idea what the answer is.)
Things had already not been going well for computer book publishers, but the last quarter of 2001 was, in fact, disastrously bad for the publishing industry. O'Riley took a serious hit, the publisher I was working for at the time had to let a number of people go, and another small publisher (Coriolis? I don't recall clearly) pretty much went under. And the preciptious drop in sales does seem to date to mid-September of that year. Even if that wasn't ultimately an effect of the attacks (and I suspect it was, in fact, a major factor; the weak publishing industry was in no shape to withstand any kind of economic stress such as that experienced in the immediate aftermath), 9/11 is a good signpost for a time when things in computer book publishing went Very Bad Indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
It's still early.
*blink*
I'll see your Iraq and raise you large parts of Central America, but when did the US ever set up governments in Ireland and Britain?
(Yes, I know the roots of the IRA go back to the Fennian Society, but that's hardly the same thing as the US setting up a puppet Irish government.)
I for one welcome our...oh, you know the rest.
"Don't worry about me, though, I dropped all my clothes in the mail so I can't be tracked now."
Maybe not electronically, but all they have to do now is look for the naked guy who bought all those stamps.
Well, there will always be a demand for people who can do stuff with things.
Oh, I'm not saying that early human experiments couldn't be carried out scientifically. I'm essentially asking about practicality and cost-effectiveness. Let's say I've got a research budget of a billion dollars and ten years, which I can spend experimenting on bunnies and/or humans. Let's further posit that experiments on a human take fifty times as much time and money as a bunny experiment (difference in life spans, metabolism differences, fewer forms to fill out, etc., etc.). Do I try to save a few humans now without knowing quite as much about the proposed treatment, or do I concentrate on bunny research now and, after five or eight years, start working with humans, using the knowledge I've gained working on bunnies to perform more focused experiments with a relatively greater chance of success?
"Expensive drugs like AIDS treatments have found their way into the hands of plenty of poor people."
Major pharmecutical companies have been fighting attempts by African governments to essentially pirate the design of AIDS drugs. Poor African countries, which are suffering from AIDS epidemics, might be able to buy significant quantities of drugs at cost, but certainly can't pay prices which include the drug companies getting their royalties. Which means that lots of poor Africans are dying so that multinational drug companies can show a profit.
Of course, if they did give away those drug designs (and, by extention, other massively useful and necessary drug designs) so that the poor could live, there's every chance that the companies would fold and there wouldn't be any new drugs to stop the next plague.
To sum up: life sucks.
And would starting to treat terminally ill patients right now provide as much scientific value? Or would it divert funding from possibly cheaper or at least more informative on a dollar by dollar basis animal testing, so that in the long run we might save X people but not develop effective stem cell therapies for Y years longer, thereby losing another X+N people who might have been saved had we gone a more orthodox route?
(Seriously, I'm asking. I have no idea what the answer is.)
That's a question which answers itself, really.
Any use of the word "extreme" with regards to a silicon chip is wrong.
That said, I will withdraw my statement if this processor parachutes off of cliffs.
Things had already not been going well for computer book publishers, but the last quarter of 2001 was, in fact, disastrously bad for the publishing industry. O'Riley took a serious hit, the publisher I was working for at the time had to let a number of people go, and another small publisher (Coriolis? I don't recall clearly) pretty much went under. And the preciptious drop in sales does seem to date to mid-September of that year. Even if that wasn't ultimately an effect of the attacks (and I suspect it was, in fact, a major factor; the weak publishing industry was in no shape to withstand any kind of economic stress such as that experienced in the immediate aftermath), 9/11 is a good signpost for a time when things in computer book publishing went Very Bad Indeed.