Friday, December 18, 2009
I've got a crush on you...
I left my cell phone on top of my car. A few cellular misadventures later, I walk out of US Cellular with a Motorola Crush, the only touch phone that didn't require a data plan to get a discount (Seriously, like any of us need an excuse to spend more time on the internet.) It's the fifth day and it's simply irrational how much I adore this phone. Is it perhaps because it's a smart phone, and I identify? It's much more likely that my life is devoid of spouse, children, and pets, and thus I'm just sad and nerdy (is there a correlation?) I considered (not briefly enough, to my shame) breaking out my camera in order to take pictures of it to post on here. Thoughts of becoming one of those people who post pictures of their pets, doll collections, or any new scores on ebay stayed my hand. The best thing about the phone is that it doubles as an mp3 player, so I've finally got my podcast groove back on. Being that it kills two birds with one stone (barbarous image, really), replacing both my confettied phone and stolen iPod, I was able to rationalize the cost. Very interesting how motivating getting my podcasts back, and having mobile learning is.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Brain Under Construction
Six Finals and Assorted Papers Due This, and Next Week. All Resources Devoted to Paid Academics. Brain Will Resume Normal Function in Two Weeks. Please Use Detour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo
Friday, March 6, 2009
Futurama Friday
Futurama Friday: The Future is NOW!
Well, not really, but it sure is close.
If you haven’t been asleep for the last 25 years or so, or been fed on an entertainment diet of Jane Austin melodramas exclusively, then likely you’ve bumped into science fiction in the various and sundry medias. Whether it’s a children’s show about hyper-intelligent kids from the future stuck in our present-day high schools, or ridged and crested aliens issuing sinister ultimatums to human space-farers in impossibly form-fitting outfits, there are iconic images ingrained in our cultural periphery. From silvered starships twinkling with unnecessary lights swooping past the screen, to flames dancing around a command crew right before some obtuse rewiring of equipment saves the day, these images are as familiar to most people as the gas station brands you pass by daily, but perhaps don’t shop at. Aware, yet unaware at the same time.
One iconic image from our imagined futures is that of a doctor (no matter what species) clad in skin-tight silver, waving a whistling widget above a patient, rays of futuristically-colored light bathing a wound that miraculously heals. As often as science fiction gets it amazingly, and consistently wrong, once in awhile it does get it right, and our reality shapes itself to our imaginations.
Researchers at the school of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University are well into research into science-fiction medical technology. They are well into human clinical trials using lasers to weld, or solder human tissue together. If that seems completely counter-intuitive, it is.
Everyone knows what a laser is, even if they couldn’t explain it technically. A laser is a beam of light, but light that’s been altered for very special properties, most of which we’re aware of. A laser beam is often called coherent light. If you light a flashlight in the dark, light bursts from the bulb in an ever-widening cone, which, because the light spreads out over distance, gets “weaker” the further away from the light (or power) source. So while a flashlight is great for rummaging around in a darkened car for beer money, it’s not so good for checking out owls in a tree a hundred feet away.
Stars are really just the same (though they produce a lot more “kinds” of light than a flashlight bulb does, or even the bulbs we use in our homes, as any pot grower can tell you: you need special bulbs that produce more kinds of light to grow weed) only further away. There are stars that are so much more massive than our sun, trying to grasp the scales is almost (but not entirely) impossible. They are also orders of magnitude (each order is roughly 10 times larger than the previous order. 100 is an order of magnitude larger than 10. 1000 is two orders of magnitude larger than 10.) brighter than our sun, but because they are so far away, they look dim. We only get a little bit of the light they produced. All the rest has spread out to other parts of the universe, just like our flashlight has spread its light out all over the trees, so only a little bit falls on the owl we’re looking for.
Now, as anyone who’s risked their parent’s ire by snaking their mom’s magnifying class knows, it is possible to take some of that light, and reverse the spread. Light’s pretty flexible, really, even if trying to define what it is essentially is an astoundingly difficult task conceptually (which is why we won’t here). Light bends, and pretty darn easily at that. Light bends (and slows down!) a little when it passes through our atmosphere, or through glass, or quite a bit when it passes through water (rainbows another day, I promise). Have a properly shaped piece of glass, and you can bend light so it “spreads” the opposite way, or concentrates it (only to a point though. You’re just changing the direction light travels, and even through a magnifying glass it will spread out again). Trust me kids, it’s worth the spanking to wander around outside with a magnifying glass on a clear summer day. It’s amazing the power such a small amount of light has. Curiously, I’ve only ever known boys who turn this power onto ants, or caterpillars, wielding the fiery power of destruction upon them in a disturbing bit of megalomania. Interesting.
I suspect it might have been this kind of not-so-charming experiment that set the mental gears of some pre-pubescent scientists spinning, setting them to wonder if there was a way to keep light concentrated. Indeed, it is possible!
I’ll spare you the physics of lasers, if only because I’m still working through them, and haven’t gotten to the point of confidently being able to translate them easily. But we do know it’s possible to concentrate light so that it doesn’t spread out like regular light (at least, not to the same extent that regular light does. I’m simplifying here to an almost ridiculous degree, but at the same time, one doesn’t need to know the physics, and chemistry [nearly the same thing] of mixed and heated eggs, flour, sugar, and milk to enjoy cake). We’re surrounded by lasers.
Laser light’s applications all depend on how much power is put behind them. Very weak (low power) laser light can be used to send data through fiber optic cables when it’s pulsed, or send cats into a wild frenzy if jiggled on a wall. It can be reflected in certain ways, and read to encode music, or movies. It can also be given a tremendous amount of power to weld metals together, or slice cleanly through them. Even if we likely will never run into a cutting laser, we know they exist, and it’s the cutting power of lasers (whether through automotive steel, or the hulls of alien starships) that makes using a laser to replace stitches so counter-intuitive.
Lasers are already widely used in medical procedures, from use as precise scalpels in non-invasive surgeries (snake a small tube fitted with a laser into a little hole in the body, and a surgeon can make internal incisions deep within the body without cutting a person wide open) to cutting and reshaping the eye to improve vision. But laser have always been used for cutting tissue. It makes no sense that you could “weld” or “solder” biological tissue with one. Apparently, it does.
Since 1994, teams from Tel Aviv University have been researching lasers for just such a counter-intuitive use. The terms welding and soldering are also surprisingly accurate. To one degree or another, lasers generate heat (it’s energy, after all), and it appears that precisely controlling this heat has surprising effects on different kinds of tissue. At carefully controlled temperatures, certain tissues actually weld together, though on the abstract I found from Tel Aviv U, they admitted that the biological mechanisms responsible are “not fully understood.” Soldering requires the presence of a biological medium (albumin was mentioned specifically. This is an umbrella term for any water-soluble protein. Egg whites contain certain kinds of albumin. I wonder if the soldering process is akin to making a fried egg on a cut?) introduced to the cut, which under the right temperatures welds the edges of the tissues together.
This has awesome implications. The team claims that this method dramatically reduces scarring, is easier to learn that suturing, and can reduce infection as no foreign bodies are introduced (such as a needle and thread), and because it forms a watertight seal. They do admit some technical challenges, the most daunting being that the temperatures have to be calculated precisely for each and every procedure, but experience will build a database to write software based upon it, so computers could likely determine that in the future. Really, how cool is this?
Imagine the lives that could be saved by repairing internal hemorrhaging without slicing open the torso. The risk of infection reduced to negligible concern, recovery times measured in hours instead of days or weeks, and scarring from “major” surgery reduced from a throat to navel scar to two or three mere pinprick-sized holes. The need to stock closets of suturing supplies reduced, the amount of antibiotics reduced, and especially the amount of pain medication radically reduced. I’ve long advocated that reducing the cost of health care will be done via technology (and elimination of needless insurance), not by socializing it to artificially control its cost. Case in point!
It may be such that one day, every home medical kit will have a little wand that moms wave over scraped knees, and other boo boos, and kids will watch fascinated, tears forgotten, as their wounds close up like magic. No more need for antibiotic ointments, or ripping off band aids in teeth-grinding anticipation. It may, sadly, deprive scab-pickers of their vocation, however. How one evaluates that loss is decidedly personal. What I still wonder, however, is when doctors will start wearing the silver jumpsuits. Probably the same day they use their personal jet-packs to fly into work.
Links for more information:
http://stanford.wellsphere.com/general-medicine-article/laser-for-stitching-wounds/606051
This has a short video giving you the bare bones.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~applphys/research_welding.htm
This is the abstract from Tel Aviv University. More technical, but just general enough.
Well, not really, but it sure is close.
If you haven’t been asleep for the last 25 years or so, or been fed on an entertainment diet of Jane Austin melodramas exclusively, then likely you’ve bumped into science fiction in the various and sundry medias. Whether it’s a children’s show about hyper-intelligent kids from the future stuck in our present-day high schools, or ridged and crested aliens issuing sinister ultimatums to human space-farers in impossibly form-fitting outfits, there are iconic images ingrained in our cultural periphery. From silvered starships twinkling with unnecessary lights swooping past the screen, to flames dancing around a command crew right before some obtuse rewiring of equipment saves the day, these images are as familiar to most people as the gas station brands you pass by daily, but perhaps don’t shop at. Aware, yet unaware at the same time.
One iconic image from our imagined futures is that of a doctor (no matter what species) clad in skin-tight silver, waving a whistling widget above a patient, rays of futuristically-colored light bathing a wound that miraculously heals. As often as science fiction gets it amazingly, and consistently wrong, once in awhile it does get it right, and our reality shapes itself to our imaginations.
Researchers at the school of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University are well into research into science-fiction medical technology. They are well into human clinical trials using lasers to weld, or solder human tissue together. If that seems completely counter-intuitive, it is.
Everyone knows what a laser is, even if they couldn’t explain it technically. A laser is a beam of light, but light that’s been altered for very special properties, most of which we’re aware of. A laser beam is often called coherent light. If you light a flashlight in the dark, light bursts from the bulb in an ever-widening cone, which, because the light spreads out over distance, gets “weaker” the further away from the light (or power) source. So while a flashlight is great for rummaging around in a darkened car for beer money, it’s not so good for checking out owls in a tree a hundred feet away.
Stars are really just the same (though they produce a lot more “kinds” of light than a flashlight bulb does, or even the bulbs we use in our homes, as any pot grower can tell you: you need special bulbs that produce more kinds of light to grow weed) only further away. There are stars that are so much more massive than our sun, trying to grasp the scales is almost (but not entirely) impossible. They are also orders of magnitude (each order is roughly 10 times larger than the previous order. 100 is an order of magnitude larger than 10. 1000 is two orders of magnitude larger than 10.) brighter than our sun, but because they are so far away, they look dim. We only get a little bit of the light they produced. All the rest has spread out to other parts of the universe, just like our flashlight has spread its light out all over the trees, so only a little bit falls on the owl we’re looking for.
Now, as anyone who’s risked their parent’s ire by snaking their mom’s magnifying class knows, it is possible to take some of that light, and reverse the spread. Light’s pretty flexible, really, even if trying to define what it is essentially is an astoundingly difficult task conceptually (which is why we won’t here). Light bends, and pretty darn easily at that. Light bends (and slows down!) a little when it passes through our atmosphere, or through glass, or quite a bit when it passes through water (rainbows another day, I promise). Have a properly shaped piece of glass, and you can bend light so it “spreads” the opposite way, or concentrates it (only to a point though. You’re just changing the direction light travels, and even through a magnifying glass it will spread out again). Trust me kids, it’s worth the spanking to wander around outside with a magnifying glass on a clear summer day. It’s amazing the power such a small amount of light has. Curiously, I’ve only ever known boys who turn this power onto ants, or caterpillars, wielding the fiery power of destruction upon them in a disturbing bit of megalomania. Interesting.
I suspect it might have been this kind of not-so-charming experiment that set the mental gears of some pre-pubescent scientists spinning, setting them to wonder if there was a way to keep light concentrated. Indeed, it is possible!
I’ll spare you the physics of lasers, if only because I’m still working through them, and haven’t gotten to the point of confidently being able to translate them easily. But we do know it’s possible to concentrate light so that it doesn’t spread out like regular light (at least, not to the same extent that regular light does. I’m simplifying here to an almost ridiculous degree, but at the same time, one doesn’t need to know the physics, and chemistry [nearly the same thing] of mixed and heated eggs, flour, sugar, and milk to enjoy cake). We’re surrounded by lasers.
Laser light’s applications all depend on how much power is put behind them. Very weak (low power) laser light can be used to send data through fiber optic cables when it’s pulsed, or send cats into a wild frenzy if jiggled on a wall. It can be reflected in certain ways, and read to encode music, or movies. It can also be given a tremendous amount of power to weld metals together, or slice cleanly through them. Even if we likely will never run into a cutting laser, we know they exist, and it’s the cutting power of lasers (whether through automotive steel, or the hulls of alien starships) that makes using a laser to replace stitches so counter-intuitive.
Lasers are already widely used in medical procedures, from use as precise scalpels in non-invasive surgeries (snake a small tube fitted with a laser into a little hole in the body, and a surgeon can make internal incisions deep within the body without cutting a person wide open) to cutting and reshaping the eye to improve vision. But laser have always been used for cutting tissue. It makes no sense that you could “weld” or “solder” biological tissue with one. Apparently, it does.
Since 1994, teams from Tel Aviv University have been researching lasers for just such a counter-intuitive use. The terms welding and soldering are also surprisingly accurate. To one degree or another, lasers generate heat (it’s energy, after all), and it appears that precisely controlling this heat has surprising effects on different kinds of tissue. At carefully controlled temperatures, certain tissues actually weld together, though on the abstract I found from Tel Aviv U, they admitted that the biological mechanisms responsible are “not fully understood.” Soldering requires the presence of a biological medium (albumin was mentioned specifically. This is an umbrella term for any water-soluble protein. Egg whites contain certain kinds of albumin. I wonder if the soldering process is akin to making a fried egg on a cut?) introduced to the cut, which under the right temperatures welds the edges of the tissues together.
This has awesome implications. The team claims that this method dramatically reduces scarring, is easier to learn that suturing, and can reduce infection as no foreign bodies are introduced (such as a needle and thread), and because it forms a watertight seal. They do admit some technical challenges, the most daunting being that the temperatures have to be calculated precisely for each and every procedure, but experience will build a database to write software based upon it, so computers could likely determine that in the future. Really, how cool is this?
Imagine the lives that could be saved by repairing internal hemorrhaging without slicing open the torso. The risk of infection reduced to negligible concern, recovery times measured in hours instead of days or weeks, and scarring from “major” surgery reduced from a throat to navel scar to two or three mere pinprick-sized holes. The need to stock closets of suturing supplies reduced, the amount of antibiotics reduced, and especially the amount of pain medication radically reduced. I’ve long advocated that reducing the cost of health care will be done via technology (and elimination of needless insurance), not by socializing it to artificially control its cost. Case in point!
It may be such that one day, every home medical kit will have a little wand that moms wave over scraped knees, and other boo boos, and kids will watch fascinated, tears forgotten, as their wounds close up like magic. No more need for antibiotic ointments, or ripping off band aids in teeth-grinding anticipation. It may, sadly, deprive scab-pickers of their vocation, however. How one evaluates that loss is decidedly personal. What I still wonder, however, is when doctors will start wearing the silver jumpsuits. Probably the same day they use their personal jet-packs to fly into work.
Links for more information:
http://stanford.wellsphere.com/general-medicine-article/laser-for-stitching-wounds/606051
This has a short video giving you the bare bones.
http://www.tau.ac.il/~applphys/research_welding.htm
This is the abstract from Tel Aviv University. More technical, but just general enough.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Skeptical Sunday
Working on one right now. Hope to get it posted while it's technically still Sunday. Let me ask my readers, which is basically you, Gretchen, are there any subjects you'd like me to tackle, something near and dear to your hearts?
Monday, February 23, 2009
Microblog Mondays
Douchionary
Douche from the French, shower: 1) A stream of water or air applied to a body part or cavity. 2) An instrument for applying a douche. American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Edition p255
Douchiness: The quality of being a douche, whether whole or in part. In scientific notation, exponential quantities of being a penis, cunt, or whore, expressed in powers of douche: total, complete, unbelievable, et al.
Douchy: An expression describing noticeable levels of douchiness.
Douche Canoe: What one travels in when immersed in complete douchiness.
Douche Bag: A human vessel for carrying douchiness, theoretically of infinite size.
Douche Lord: 1) One to whom other douches defer as having the superior quantity or quality of douchiness. 2) Male having transcended the limits of being a penis.
Ménage a Douche: Three or more douche bags, usually traveling via douche canoe.
Douche Master: Douche bag who helps others discover their inner douche.
Douche Fu: Self defense techniques practiced mainly by douche bags, though can be used to combat douchiness.
Douche Camp: Congregational location for various douche bags, douche masters, and douche lords to commingle unequal quantities of douchiness until equilibrium of equal douchiness is reached by all. Often produces compete douchiness, requiring douche canoes.
Douchetastic: Expression of admiration for incorporating douchiness where none was thought possible.
Douchaccino: The bitter drink of being unalterably stuck in the company of a douche bag.
Douchage: Informal, all the douchiness one has left in one’s wake, douche bag or not.
Megadouche: a douche bag exceeding his or her normal ability to douche. Only one is able to fit per canoe.
Instadouchional: Formalized and traditional modes and practices of douchiness.
Douchebaggery: Improvisational acts of varying douchiness.
Douchependant/Douchependancy: Douchbags whose effective douchiness is dependant on proximity of other douche bags. The number and strength of douchiness varies as to whether the needed douchebag is a bag, master, or lord.
Douchesaur: A limitless megadouche.
Douche from the French, shower: 1) A stream of water or air applied to a body part or cavity. 2) An instrument for applying a douche. American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Edition p255
Douchiness: The quality of being a douche, whether whole or in part. In scientific notation, exponential quantities of being a penis, cunt, or whore, expressed in powers of douche: total, complete, unbelievable, et al.
Douchy: An expression describing noticeable levels of douchiness.
Douche Canoe: What one travels in when immersed in complete douchiness.
Douche Bag: A human vessel for carrying douchiness, theoretically of infinite size.
Douche Lord: 1) One to whom other douches defer as having the superior quantity or quality of douchiness. 2) Male having transcended the limits of being a penis.
Ménage a Douche: Three or more douche bags, usually traveling via douche canoe.
Douche Master: Douche bag who helps others discover their inner douche.
Douche Fu: Self defense techniques practiced mainly by douche bags, though can be used to combat douchiness.
Douche Camp: Congregational location for various douche bags, douche masters, and douche lords to commingle unequal quantities of douchiness until equilibrium of equal douchiness is reached by all. Often produces compete douchiness, requiring douche canoes.
Douchetastic: Expression of admiration for incorporating douchiness where none was thought possible.
Douchaccino: The bitter drink of being unalterably stuck in the company of a douche bag.
Douchage: Informal, all the douchiness one has left in one’s wake, douche bag or not.
Megadouche: a douche bag exceeding his or her normal ability to douche. Only one is able to fit per canoe.
Instadouchional: Formalized and traditional modes and practices of douchiness.
Douchebaggery: Improvisational acts of varying douchiness.
Douchependant/Douchependancy: Douchbags whose effective douchiness is dependant on proximity of other douche bags. The number and strength of douchiness varies as to whether the needed douchebag is a bag, master, or lord.
Douchesaur: A limitless megadouche.
Skeptical Sunday!
But a day late...ah well.
Big, Greedy, Unscrupuous Pharma
Corporate Conspiracy Theory #4:
“The pharmaceutical companies are making up diseases to sell us their drugs.”
I’ve heard this actually come out of more than one person’s mouth. This makes absolutely. no. sense. if you think about it. Are they advertising drugs to treat existing diseases? Yes, they are, and they market them to the hilt. You can certainly accuse them of “repackaging” or “rebranding” diseases, and giving them a sexy acronym, but they aren’t making diseases up out of thin air, and then bilking you out your money.
Drug companies have a very powerful incentive to make things that actually do something, and treat very real diseases that they spend millions of advertising dollars on: reputation. If they sell millions of sugar pills, that treat a fictitious disease, they are going to get sued sooner rather than later, no one would ever trust a company that got caught selling a sugar pill, ever buy their products again, and the company would die.
If you buy into the above Big Pharma conspiracy, here are the assumptions you have to make:
1) That they really make up diseases (which, you can look up on PubMed and see, yes, there is literature on each and every disease advertised), and that a television commercial, or magazine ad is going to somehow convince a large number of people who do not have the fictional disease that they do. This assumes an ridiculous amount of gullibility on the part of the general public.
2) That they do this instead of making real drugs to treat real diseases. So they're what, spending hudreds of millions of dollars just looking busy?
3) That all these now-convinced people, victims of marketing, will go to their doctors, who are also in on the conspiracy, because what doctor isn’t going to lie to someone who could sue him into the poor house for a box of logo pens, demanding the drug for the fictitious disease, and the doctor will, of course, oblige, sniggering in his complicity.
4) That these sugar pills are actually loaded with stuff that mimics side-effects, which will enhance the placebo effect, and remove the symptoms you don’t have for a disease you never did.
5) And all this while, you’d have to assume that not a single person within the pharmaceutical company has a shred of morality, that every single doctor in the medical community has a lifetime’s supply of pens to keep her mouth shut, and that everyone in the FDA is so far in the pockets of every Pharma, that not a single one would ever speak out.
“But, but, but they have to make up stuff and sell drugs, because they’ve invested so much money into their drugs.”
Well, yes, that’s why real drugs that work are so expensive. You’re not just paying for all the testing for the one that works, but for all the others that didn’t! It takes years to develop a drug that works and doesn’t kill people, and it’s not 7-11 employees doing the researching folks, but highly trained,educated, expensive people. They deserve to be profitable, or else there’s no point in making the drugs. If you think they should be giving the drugs away because it’s wrong to charge people who are sick, take that same logic to your grocer and see if he’ll give you food because you get hungry. Heaven help you if he buys into your philosophy because he’ll be out of business in a New York minute, and then where will you be?
Good Lord, people, everybody loves a multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster, which is completely frivolous, uses insane amounts of resources, is horrific for the environment, usually contributes nothing to the intellectual or artistic progress of anyone, and hopes it makes buckets of money. Manufacture a drug that may relieve human suffering, possibly offering hope for the first time in history for its sufferers, perhaps even save someone's life, but make so much as a dime, and you're a greedy, evil fucker. Am I the only one who sees the moral inversion necessay here?
Yes, bad things have happened. People make mistakes, some things aren't found out before damages are done, and yes there have been cases of corruption. Nothing's perfect, but the nature of the industry is such that it's pretty much self-correcting.
Pharmaceutical companies are not making up diseases to sell drugs. They are marketing their drugs in the hopes that if you have the very real disease, your doctor will prescribe it. They are expensive because it was expensive to make them. The more profit they make, the more new drugs they can research. And some of that profit is fun money for a job well done, and they deserve it. Why is this last paragraph so difficult for people to believe, but the gigantic conspiracy theory, with millions of people keeping their silence in its interdependent assumptions is the preferred reasoning for some people? These are the same people who would never be fooled by that bogus advertising, but insultingly think everyone else is being fooled. Unreal.
Big, Greedy, Unscrupuous Pharma
Corporate Conspiracy Theory #4:
“The pharmaceutical companies are making up diseases to sell us their drugs.”
I’ve heard this actually come out of more than one person’s mouth. This makes absolutely. no. sense. if you think about it. Are they advertising drugs to treat existing diseases? Yes, they are, and they market them to the hilt. You can certainly accuse them of “repackaging” or “rebranding” diseases, and giving them a sexy acronym, but they aren’t making diseases up out of thin air, and then bilking you out your money.
Drug companies have a very powerful incentive to make things that actually do something, and treat very real diseases that they spend millions of advertising dollars on: reputation. If they sell millions of sugar pills, that treat a fictitious disease, they are going to get sued sooner rather than later, no one would ever trust a company that got caught selling a sugar pill, ever buy their products again, and the company would die.
If you buy into the above Big Pharma conspiracy, here are the assumptions you have to make:
1) That they really make up diseases (which, you can look up on PubMed and see, yes, there is literature on each and every disease advertised), and that a television commercial, or magazine ad is going to somehow convince a large number of people who do not have the fictional disease that they do. This assumes an ridiculous amount of gullibility on the part of the general public.
2) That they do this instead of making real drugs to treat real diseases. So they're what, spending hudreds of millions of dollars just looking busy?
3) That all these now-convinced people, victims of marketing, will go to their doctors, who are also in on the conspiracy, because what doctor isn’t going to lie to someone who could sue him into the poor house for a box of logo pens, demanding the drug for the fictitious disease, and the doctor will, of course, oblige, sniggering in his complicity.
4) That these sugar pills are actually loaded with stuff that mimics side-effects, which will enhance the placebo effect, and remove the symptoms you don’t have for a disease you never did.
5) And all this while, you’d have to assume that not a single person within the pharmaceutical company has a shred of morality, that every single doctor in the medical community has a lifetime’s supply of pens to keep her mouth shut, and that everyone in the FDA is so far in the pockets of every Pharma, that not a single one would ever speak out.
“But, but, but they have to make up stuff and sell drugs, because they’ve invested so much money into their drugs.”
Well, yes, that’s why real drugs that work are so expensive. You’re not just paying for all the testing for the one that works, but for all the others that didn’t! It takes years to develop a drug that works and doesn’t kill people, and it’s not 7-11 employees doing the researching folks, but highly trained,educated, expensive people. They deserve to be profitable, or else there’s no point in making the drugs. If you think they should be giving the drugs away because it’s wrong to charge people who are sick, take that same logic to your grocer and see if he’ll give you food because you get hungry. Heaven help you if he buys into your philosophy because he’ll be out of business in a New York minute, and then where will you be?
Good Lord, people, everybody loves a multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster, which is completely frivolous, uses insane amounts of resources, is horrific for the environment, usually contributes nothing to the intellectual or artistic progress of anyone, and hopes it makes buckets of money. Manufacture a drug that may relieve human suffering, possibly offering hope for the first time in history for its sufferers, perhaps even save someone's life, but make so much as a dime, and you're a greedy, evil fucker. Am I the only one who sees the moral inversion necessay here?
Yes, bad things have happened. People make mistakes, some things aren't found out before damages are done, and yes there have been cases of corruption. Nothing's perfect, but the nature of the industry is such that it's pretty much self-correcting.
Pharmaceutical companies are not making up diseases to sell drugs. They are marketing their drugs in the hopes that if you have the very real disease, your doctor will prescribe it. They are expensive because it was expensive to make them. The more profit they make, the more new drugs they can research. And some of that profit is fun money for a job well done, and they deserve it. Why is this last paragraph so difficult for people to believe, but the gigantic conspiracy theory, with millions of people keeping their silence in its interdependent assumptions is the preferred reasoning for some people? These are the same people who would never be fooled by that bogus advertising, but insultingly think everyone else is being fooled. Unreal.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sorry!!!
Likely not to get a skeptical sunday blog up today. I've got something to do today, and schoolwork all week have priority over the blog, even though I tried to get one done aheads of time. Maybe tonight, but don't hold your breath.
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