901. Huckabee Wants A 'Faith-based' Constitution

Comment #112720 by hungarianelephant on January 18, 2008 at 2:01 am

actually mythbusters proved that bulls are well behaved in china shops.
dont know if they tested elephants.

And there's documentary evidence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qb9LBRDaIM

Elephants can definitely not be trusted in china shops ;)

902. Dinesh D'Souza: Winner of the 2007 Bad Faith Award

Comment #112375 by hungarianelephant on January 17, 2008 at 2:18 am

Geoff - I was a little disappointed to see that the BBC article didn't call it a CULT.

That would be the same BBC who are under orders to refer to the people responsible for the 7/7 atrocity as "bombers" instead of "terrorists".

Who says language doesn't matter?

903. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109999 by hungarianelephant on January 10, 2008 at 9:09 am

That's sarcasm, in case you're still having reading comprehension problems with my posts.

904. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109998 by hungarianelephant on January 10, 2008 at 9:08 am

wooter - Your point is pointless. Chickens, bees (with the God instinct, they make their hives as the best mathematician to save the space) sheep, cows,

Good point, well made. I stand corrected.

905. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109561 by hungarianelephant on January 9, 2008 at 7:21 am

I have a new hypothesis. I reckon wooter is actually one of epeeist's early attempts at a creationist random comment generator, before he added the grammar checker module.

Am I right?

906. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #109535 by hungarianelephant on January 9, 2008 at 6:51 am

You have to get in line because we have a very long line here for those who cannot answer my questions reasonably, rather being funny or humoring himself only. Please do not cut the line.

Well, you see, I did answer some of your questions reasonably. You asked about soil, and I explained that it was not a factory for producing vegetables, but that the vegetable was the only one of the thousands of surviving organisms that you were interested in.

You ignored that, and on this thread - quelle surprise - more nonsense about soil being a factory.

So I concluded that taking the piss out of your phraseology was a more productive use of my time than reasoning with you. Nothing I have seen so far has suggested that this conclusion was wrong.

However, if you're looking for the serious aspect of the point, let me make it clear. Chickens do not serve us their eggs and meat, any more than you serve the tapeworm the partially digested products in your intestine. We are the parasite / predator. If you don't understand this relationship, you could go to the zoo and drop into the tigers' enclosure. If you decide you don't fancy that, do call back to let us know why, there's a good chap.

Bok!

907. It was a bad year for God.

Comment #109515 by hungarianelephant on January 9, 2008 at 6:29 am

AndreG - My friend, you are missing the point I am trying to make. I will try once more: Majority of road users have no imput into the road rules. Your example with a flashing lights is not relevant because the use of flashing lights on the road wil not create the emergency situation. But if you try to cross the intersection against the red light then you will suffer the consequences. And no amount of road users breaking that particular rule will ever change the road rules.

So what you are saying is that:
(1) we do have some input
(2) but in the cases shown, this doesn't count as a rule.

Why not?

Are you telling us that God's supposed rules are non-negotiable where breaking them would create an emergency situation, but not otherwise?

908. It was a bad year for God.

Comment #109440 by hungarianelephant on January 9, 2008 at 4:27 am

AndreG - Well, we do not negotiate the road rules. And most of us do not set the road rules, it is done by professionals. Everyone else just either follow them or suffer the consequenses. And that's why we can't do the same for moral systems because it will create the mess on the roads. Indeed, the world is in mess just because of that.

You are completely missing Steve's point here - and I will leave it to him to explain why - but even your basic premiss is false. Road behaviour is frequently renegotiated by people en masse and only later, if ever, formalised by the "professionals".

It used to be illegal in the UK to use the hazard warning flashers while moving. You could be prosecuted for using them on a motorway to warn of slower traffic ahead. The formal rule was universally ignored in favour of the safer and more sensible approach of most drivers. And eventually the formal rule was changed to encourage what people had decided to do anyway.

In saner cities there is an unspoken understanding that allows slow-moving traffic to merge. There's no "professional" rule to enforce this. It's done because it makes sense in that we will all get to work less stressfully. It's a classic example of enlightened self-interest. Far from creating a mess, it improves the situation.

909. Blind Faiths

Comment #109060 by hungarianelephant on January 8, 2008 at 8:33 am

I have said a few times that if Muslims had advanced technology they would not waste their time bombing pizza shops in Haifa, they would target the white house etc...

I've wondered about that for a while.

The methods used by jihadists are decidedly low-tech, to the point of not actually working in some cases. Given that there are supposed to be thousands of embedded radicals in the West, you'd think they'd manage to do rather better than the odd spectacular every few years. But in fact the only thing the jihadists excel at is killing other Muslims.

One possible explanation is that this is actually part of the plan – that the West isn't really the target (yet), but it's necessary to appear hostile to it for the purposes of the political game being played out across the Islamic world.

Of course it's also possible that they are incompetent.

910. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108969 by hungarianelephant on January 8, 2008 at 3:42 am

I am now going to be haunted for the rest of the day by the image of chickens serving me their eggs and meat. "Would you like me to scramble them, sir? Bok!"

Has anyone ever heard of this Birmingham Palace? Is it a curry house?

911. Blind Faiths

Comment #108953 by hungarianelephant on January 8, 2008 at 3:12 am

Steve Zara - My view, for what it is worth, is that a religion consists of what people do who identify as being of that religion. One can insist all one likes that a religion permits this, or condemns that, but this does not matter if people regularly perform acts and claim it is inspired by the religion. The harmfulness (or benefits) of a religion should be defined by its effects, not its intent.

I'd agree, but add that almost regardless of their actual content, religions also encourage people to identify themselves in a tribal way, and thus entrench divisions.

The population of Northern Ireland, for example, is basically homogenous by any reasonable measure, but has been conditioned by religion into dividing itself into Protestant and Catholic. The conflict that has been going on there (and in the rest of Ireland) is not a stupid 17th century theological disagreement but a stupid 17th century political and tribal one.

Take away the religion and while there's still a level of tribalism, it's suddenly much more vulnerable. When the people on the other side of town aren't that different from you, it's difficult to keep finding excuses for a fight once you grow up.

912. Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?

Comment #108565 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 8:44 am

What a waste of time. It didn't even mention house prices once.

913. The battle of the butterflies and the ants

Comment #108526 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 6:08 am

you know the well made banana debunks evolution everytime... =))

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9zwbhAXe5yk

Presumably God was having an off day when he created the coconut?

914. Changing my Mind

Comment #108520 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 5:52 am

Steve Zara - But I would be very resistance to accepting some of this methodology while it still had an association with homeopathy.

So would I - assuming of course that the water pill has the same effect as a placebo, as we all expect. I would prefer conventional medicine to reclaim the methodology of spending more time listening to the patient. Leaving it to alternative therapies concedes ground to unreason and superstition.

915. Researchers use neuroimaging to study ESP

Comment #108512 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 5:29 am

rokort - Here in Ireland we have phone-in psychics on the radio. You can't even see the cards. It's terrific entertainment. The way it works is that every fourth caller has to be warned to be wary of something suitably non-specific. Otherwise people might get suspicious.

916. Changing my Mind

Comment #108504 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 5:07 am

epeeist - I don't see why you couldn't do trials incrementally. There are some potential problems with incremental trials, for example when people find out that earlier trials have very positive, or very negative, findings. You tend then to get an enhanced placebo / nocebo effect, but these should be relatively minor issues.

What you'd still have to do is an overall design to meet the same objectives. It's not legitimate to have a number of small studies with different intentions and make inferences from the results. (That doesn't stop some pharma companies attempting to do so, but the FDA rarely lets them get away with it.)

There are lots of studies of the effectiveness of homeopathy, and the conventional narrative is that they do not show a meaningful effect. But what they actually show is that in comparing conventional vs. homeopathic remedies in treating a known and specific disorder, homeopathy is relatively ineffective. Which isn't the same thing at all.

917. Changing my Mind

Comment #108486 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 3:43 am

All my posts these days seem to be about pharmaceuticals, but here goes:

qster - Regarding homeopathy, i refer you to a previous post where I propose that much alternative medicine is supressed by the medical establishment because there is very little money for them in such treatments. Are you aware of the amount of money injected that the main pharma companies make on their drugs. Who do you think funds the medical schools and training clinics, the doctors expensive trips away etc etc. It is very much in the interests of big pharma to ensure that every visit to the doctor ends with a prescription.
The only evidence that would be accepted by the establishment for the use of homoeopathy is that which would be sponsored by the pharma companies - is it likely to happen?

The evidence that would be accepted is if homeopathy proved itself in double-blind, placebo-controlled trials.

It's certainly the case that this principle "favours" conventional medicine over homeopathy. The hypothesis behind homeopathy is that it treats the whole patient, whereas drugs typically treat only one organic cause. This means you can't possibly do a fair comparison between conventional medicine and homeopathy in treating, say, an ulcer, based on the one-treatment principle.

It would be possible to design a study to test homeopathy on its own terms. The study group should have a range of ailments and be taken as homeopathic cases. The homeopath would give a "prescription", but the patient would receive, at random, either a homeopathic remedy or something which everyone can agree is a placebo. Primary endpoints would be improvement in the primary ailment complained of.

You could also include conventional medicine in the group by giving the patients, at random, the indicated conventional remedy or placebo. This would leave you with four groups:
1. C drug + H remedy
2. C drug + H placebo
3. C placebo + H remedy
4. C placebo + H placebo

To truly test whether there is anything in the homeopathic method, you would need two further groups, neither of whom received any homeopathic consultation:
5. C drug only
6. C placebo only

If homeopathy's claims were accurate, then you should expect that group 1 would do better than group 2, and group 3 better than group 4. Conversely, if conventional medicine's view of homeopathy is correct, then you should expect no statistically significant difference between 1 and 2 or between 3 and 4.

The main problem with this trial is that it would be ferociously expensive. No pharma company would carry it out - why should they? - and no homeopath would have the means. It could only sensibly be done with public money.

This could be regarded as a slant in favour of conventional medicine. But it's also the case that conventional medicines can't make claims about their effectiveness without scientific proof. Homeopathic remedies can make all kinds of outlandish claims, and yet be bought off the shelf just next to the sunflower seeds. To justify this position, you have to believe simultaneously that (a) homeopathic remedies don't contain anything that can harm you, and (b) they do however contain something that can have a substantial physiological effect. This is bizarre.

The really interesting comparison would be between groups 1-4 on the one hand and groups 5-6 on the other. I suspect that you would find that groups 1-4 - the ones with the homeopathic consultation - do better than the other two. Prof Dawkins agreed with that in The Enemies of Reason - there's probably something in the hour long consultation which does something the 8 minutes + prescription doesn't.

What mystifies me is that we aren't prepared to take that to its logical conclusion and examine the whole way in which we approach medicine. As Bonzai says, it is about the art of healing and not just scientific validity.

There are vested interests in not changing the medical profession, or the way it is funded. The last time I suggested on this site that this is partly why there is a resistance to accepting some of the methodology of homeopathy, I was called an idiot. It was never quite explained why, though.

918. Monkey, Business

Comment #108472 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 3:13 am

Roger Stanyard - Thanks for that perspective. 20 years of mistakes distilled into a few paragraphs.

This is the real problem, isn't it? If you don't have a coherent plan and a single-minded determination to follow it, the project will fail. The Shuttle programme chased three rabbits and ended up catching none of them.

This doesn't mean that all government projects will fail. As Rtambree points out, projects from Soyuz to Manhattan have succeeded. Nor does it mean that all private projects will succeed. Most IT projects never quite achieve what they were supposed to.

To make a spectacular mess, what you really need are essentially limitless funds and no clear purpose. The NHS' IT project is doomed to fail expensively, not least because no one can work out quite what it is for. The difference in the private sector is that someone would have been fired, and the project shelved, long before now.

919. Monkey, Business

Comment #108469 by hungarianelephant on January 7, 2008 at 3:04 am

lpetrich - Who is arguing for completely unregulated markets?

920. Monkey, Business

Comment #107165 by hungarianelephant on January 4, 2008 at 8:26 am

annabanana - Anyway, my point is that there are those drugs which are necessary to sustain life at all and those that simply improve the quality of life and sometimes help to elongate life.

I don't disagree with you. But your assumption is that this makes them a "need", with the further assumption that this means that different rules apply to them being made available. That's just a linguistic game. The alternative open to you is to take the less effective drugs and sustain a higher risk of death. It's not a course I would recommend, but it is open to you. Similarly I can choose a cheaper car with no airbags, and sustain a higher risk of fatal head injury. It does not follow that I "need" airbags or that their cost should be subsidised.

The underlying assumption behind most people's thinking about healthcare is that the prolongation of life is to be valued above everything else. You have obviously moved away from this a little by adding the quality of life into the mix. But this is no more than an opinion on relative values. A jihadist, for example, would take a very different view. So would a Buddhist.

Of course it's open to us as a society to enforce collective opinions on relative values - for example by prioritising certain kinds of healthcare. As I've tried to point out, it doesn't follow that any particular supplier of goods or services should therefore subsidise it. Indeed, it seems perverse to me that a manufacturer of drugs should be forced to subsidise the product, whereas the purveyors of obviously frivolous items such as iPods can make as much lucre as they want.

Anyway, perhaps I am being to harsh on the pharmaceuticals sphere, but perhaps you are being a bit too forgiving.

That is possible.

I don't know if there's a point in arguing any longer since it seems that we will never come to a consensus.

That is also possible :)

Rtambree - The Apollo program took about 10 years to come to fruition and cost many more times than that, without the need for private profits as you suggest.

Well, kinda. The central project wasn't for profit, but I can assure you that lots of private businesses made a lot of money out of it.

Manhattan Project is another example.

Can you think of any examples of non-profit projects where the budget wasn't essentially limitless? If you can, you may have a convert.

921. Monkey, Business

Comment #107138 by hungarianelephant on January 4, 2008 at 7:08 am

epeeist - Would you consider the IT industry as commoditised? The largest software vendor is the least innovative and is actively acting to subvert other groups and organisations that are innovative.

No, but I'd agree that that's another exception, for specific reasons. Namely, that most of the people paying for IT don't know anything about IT and are scared of it, so they buy the apparently least risky solution. Microsoft is toast in a few years, just as IBM was.

I also agreed with an earlier post of yours in which you said that software patents were getting silly. To my mind, filing a BS patent is anti-competitive behaviour, even if it will subsequently be revoked, because of the chilling effect it has on small competitors. It's necessary to distinguish between protecting innovation and taking the piss. I think we can all agree on that, even if we can't always agree on which bucket some things - like a reformulation or new mode of delivery - fall into.

al-rawandi - Kind words, thank you. I have no background in economics other than an amateur interest in it. I'm *shudder* a lawyer, and I've *bigger shudder* worked with life sciences corporations for some years.

As for Monsanto - dunno. I suppose they're a bit of a pantomime horse - the head of an agra business and the hind legs of a biotech. I haven't encountered them much since they were spun out of Pharmacia. Funny company, and of course very controversial.

922. Monkey, Business

Comment #107108 by hungarianelephant on January 4, 2008 at 4:54 am

Rtambree - I'd be inclined to agree that attempting to reduce competition is the norm in commoditised industries such as agriculture, where your chance of profit through innovation is very small.

What I don't see is any evidence that this is the case across industry more broadly.

923. Monkey, Business

Comment #107044 by hungarianelephant on January 4, 2008 at 2:15 am

annabanana - Well it seems we have at least some common ground. And it also seems that we're starting from completely different assumptions, and we may therefore never agree.

You start from the presumption that drugs are a special case; that as a result pharma companies should have their profits capped and should put the rest into charity and, presumably, subsidised medicines; and that only some innovations should be rewarded.

Since the pharma industry doesn't meet these standards, you describe its prices as "exorbitant", its actions as "abhorrent" and creating "pain and suffering around the world" and the industry as a whole as "kind of the devil". Others here have used less subtle language. And on the one hand, you'll agree that plenty of others are responsible for these ills, but you decline to apply these labels to them.

I disagree with your basic premiss.

Pharma is not a special case. It is a business like any other business. It innovates to a certain extent (more than most businesses, since that is where the money is), takes steps to protect its intellectual property, markets aggressively, and sells its products for as much profit as it can take. If it was making Playstations or cartoon characters, no one would have much to say about it. But because it's drugs, all bets are off.

The usual justification for this distinction is the one you use - that people "need" drugs whereas they only "want" other products. But this is illusory. When we say that we "need" something, what we really mean is that having it is a very high priority compared to the alternatives. People don't "need" the newest statin. They choose it - or more accurately their doctor recommends and prescribes it - because it is considered superior to an older, cheaper one, which in turn is considered superior to alternative remedies, or eating better and taking more exercise. That's fine, but it comes at a price.

(Before you say it, I'll freely admit that the alternatives are sometimes deeply unpalatable. Still, the example of insulin is a poor one. Insulin is dirt cheap and broadly available.)

As a society, we may choose to regard it as preferable that in some cases, where the alternatives are particularly unpalatable and the cost of the medicine is disproportionate to a patient's means, that that medicine should be available at a lower cost. But it's illogical to conclude without further discussion that the manufacturer should subsidise this. If a decision is being made by taxpayers generally, why shouldn't the taxpayer pay?

I think most people's reasoning is:
P1: drugs are expensive
P2: some pharma companies make lots of money
C: therefore all pharma companies are ripping us off

This is bollocks, and side arguments about marketing expenses and the independence of resesarchers won't change that.

You could mandate pharma companies to supply their drugs at lower prices, either generally or in specific cases, but in the long run this will result in fewer drugs being available, and the hardest hit areas will be those which have a relatively small patient population. This is not just a hypothesis. It is already happening. Some drugs are simply not made available in France or Spain because those countries refuse to pay a sensible price.

I know the pharma industry is not whiter than white, but I'd like people to think a bit more closely about what is actually happening and what they want to happen, before condemning it as evil.

I'll let others explain why it doesn't make sense to distinguish between different sized businesses with the same rate of return. al-rawandi, are you there?

924. Monkey, Business

Comment #106718 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 10:09 am

anna – I'd love to debate you all day but I have to leave shortly.

I'm not sure why it makes a difference why I'm debating you ("vehemently" I will wear as a badge of honour).

I have said several times in this thread that the system is not perfect. You show your own thinking by framing the question as to whether the industry should be reformed. The whole point I am making is that the industry operates within a context, and that if you want it to operate differently then you have to change the context. Initial musings?

• A more flexible approach where there is real unmet medical need. The orphan drug system is near useless and should be reconsidered.


• Treat people like adults. If they want to take an experimental treatment and understand the risks, let them. Incorporate it as part of the clinical trial process.


• A less flexible approach where there isn't. A sensible system would not allow yet another painkiller be approved (as Vioxx and Celebrex were) without either a big jump in efficacy or very stringent safety criteria


• I agree with the suggestion, I think it was from Rtambree, that all kickbacks should be fully disclosed.


• This probably won't fly in the US, but consider whether we really need advertising of medication

You're asserting that the amounts charged are exorbitant, without a definition of exorbitant. It's up to you to prove this assertion, not for me to disprove it. I couldn't anyway since I can't define it. What's an unacceptable rate of return on capital? 10%? 20%? 30%? Why? Are you going to apply the same standard to every business in the country? If not, why not? Are you going to take into account years and years of losses, and the many failed drug startups along the way? If not, why not? And so on.

My example wasn't hypothetical. If I come up with a radical new treatment for HIV, say, today, it will cost me $1bn and around 10 years to get it into patients. What would you do? Simple question.

Don't dodge the question by saying that most people think that the pharma industry is in need of reform. I don't give a toss what "most people" think. What matters is what is right.

925. Monkey, Business

Comment #106710 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 9:42 am

Rtambree, I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion about what capitalism is. The point I was making is that either you allow people to try to make a profit or you don't.

Certainly, people will try to make a profit by any means available. I'd take issue with the notion that they "usually" do it by reducing competition. If I were a farmer, I'd probably also be campaigning for subsidies and tariffs. That doesn't make me a bad person. It's the job of our lawmakers to ignore them (and, as I'm sure anna will agree, all other lobbyists) as far as possible.

926. Monkey, Business

Comment #106700 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 9:29 am

al-rawandi

I didn't hear of that case, but I really, really want it to be true. It's too funny not to be.

927. Monkey, Business

Comment #106697 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 9:16 am

annabanana - If you shorten the patent life, then you shorten the period in which a return can be made. Certainly, it will result in that drug being made available in generic form i.e. cheaply sooner. But it will also make it less attractive to manufacturers to pursue it. In the medium to long term, this means fewer drugs being developed, which means less competition for those that are, which means higher prices for those that remain and higher profits for their manufacturers. Simple economics.

No, you asked why we attacked the pharmaceutical industry and not the farming industry. PART of my reasoning was because the farming industry isn't generally known for exploiting its customers and making huge profits as a result of the exploitation, but you don't agree with me about that, I'm sure.

No, what I asked was why you would describe the business of pharma as "maximising profits" but not an industry which was less successful at it. Be that as it may, you're still assuming, without explaining, that pharma "exploits" people and farmers don't. I genuinely don't understand this. Please help me with it.

Is it that it encourages "pill-popping", as you say later in your post? I'd certainly agree (a) that such a culture exists (b) that pharma encourages it and (c) that it's a bad thing. But why lay the primary blame at the door of pharma? Why not the doctors who write the prescriptions? Why not the people who insist on a pill? Why not the system which thinks it's appropriate to give people an average of 8 minutes with their doctor?

Or another possibility. The system of regulation we have settled on says that you can't sell a drug unless (i) it's proven [reasonably] safe (ii) it's proven [reasonably] effective and (iii) its label only makes claims that it can substantiate. Generally it was felt, with good reason, that the days of Dr Pinker's Magic Potion Guaranteed To Cure Colds, Warts And Bunions And To Make You Attractive To The Opposite Sex were less than optimal. Well, fine. But you have to understand that this means that research will be directed to treatments which have specific, demonstrable effects. One treatment per condition, and sort out the side effects later. Not ideal, I absolutely agree. But unethical? Abhorrent? Rape (someone else's word, not yours)?

People need to learn that many of the "ailments" they suffer will indeed be vastly improved with exercise and good diet.

Agreed. But I don't see what this adds to your argument. Are you seriously telling me that anyone takes a prescription because they don't know, or don't care, that better diet and exercise is an alternative? And even if they did, are you also going to condemn every manufacturer of products where there is a simpler, cheaper and possibly healthier alternative available? Because if so, that's going to be a very long list indeed.

I admire your stance that if you invented something, you wouldn't seek to make a profit out of it. Really, I do. Now, what if I told you that it would cost you $1bn to ensure that it got to the people it could help. What would you do? Would you license it to someone who you knew intended to make a profit from it (either for free or to cover your costs), or would you wait around for someone to fund it who shared the same mindset? This is what it really comes down to. Either you allow the profit motive to drive development on, i.e. capitalism, or you have to come up with some alternative. There's no point complaining either way. You can't expect people to invest and then subsidise people to buy their own product, which is what you mean when you say "withholding a portion of the wealth and making drugs unaffordable for those who really DO need them".

928. Monkey, Business

Comment #106643 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 8:12 am

annabanana

I've never known of the farming industry to be nearly as profitable as the pharmaceutical industry.

So the proper description of the business you're in depends on the level of profitability? What?

Btw, the biotechnology sector as a whole loses money hand over fist. The profits are concentrated in a few big pharma companies who can afford to buy up the good drugs before their owners run out of cash. That's a bit simplistic, but it's the general picture of the industry

Secondly, we are attacking the pharmaceutical industry partially because that is what has been brought up and also partially because I imagine Rtambree and I both have a heart and are somewhat disturbed by the pain and suffering we see around the world. Some of which can be ascribed to the pharmaceutical industries ideals.

I'll take it that the inference that I don't have a heart is unintentional for now. But you are going to have to explain to me how the pain and suffering around the world can be ascribed to the pharma industry or its ideals. Are you talking about trying to prevent patent violation for anti-retrovirals? (Those would be the same anti-retrovirals which were only made possible by the existence of patents to provide for a profitable return on investment.)

Also, you asserted that the the industry has become what it is due to regulatory framework, which is laughable.

Is it? Why? I believe you work in regulation yourself. Surely you don't think that your efforts have absolutely no effect on industry?

Did you forget about lobbying???!!!! WTF, they are one of the biggest contributors to lobbying. What's the point of lobbying if you aren't influencing the regulatory framework.

Of course not. Once there's a vested interest in place, it will lobby to get legislation passed which will consolidate its position. And possibly more importantly, it will lobby against legislation that will weaken its position. But that tells you absolutely nothing about how the position is reached in the first place and sustained.

At its most basic:
More regulation => longer trial period => shorter effective patent life => shorter time frame to achieve return => higher prices => higher profits for the successful => consolidation of power in a few successful corporations.

If you want to reform the pharma industry without dismantling the entire capitalist structure, you need a much more intelligent approach than simply designating it as the bogeyman.

929. Monkey, Business

Comment #106618 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 7:51 am

annabanana – Kirk is not just a CEO, he's the founder of Shire. He created the company and built it up … and that's one person. Most CEOs are, I repeat, not billionaires.

If you find it abhorrent that an industry has the bottom line as its main goal, then you have to find the whole of Western capitalism abhorrent. How is it exploitation to make a product that people want to buy, and sell it to them? You've already conceded that you don't object to patents per se, and therefore that you don't object to a limited monopoly position per se. So what exactly is the problem here?

Rtambree – I see you edited post #234.

Here is your original claim:

Many of the pharmaceuticals get their research done with government support through university research and then all they do is wrap a plastic bubble around it, stick it on the shelf and call themselves "entrepreneurs"

And here is the quote you provided as evidence:

According to NIH [National Institutes of Health], taxpayer-funded scientists conducted 55 percent of the research projects that led to the discovery and development of the top five selling drugs in 1995.

Do you really think this supports what you said?

Wrt ADHD / ADD (as an example), there are several possibilities:
(1) It is being overdiagnosed in the US.
(2) It is being underdiagnosed elsewhere.
(3) It is genuinely 4x more prevalent in the US than elsewhere.
(4) Some combination of the above.

You seem to be prepared to contemplate only option (1). Why is this?

930. Monkey, Business

Comment #106602 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 7:35 am

>Not all profit is evil, even pharma profit.

I didn't say it's evil. I just corrected hungarianelephant's naive assertion that Pharma are in "business of improving people's lives", made in post #230.

Doubtless you will also describe the business of farmers as "maximising profits" rather than "growing food". Right?

931. Monkey, Business

Comment #106594 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 7:31 am

RtambreeThey're in the business of maximising profits. If it improves lives as a consequence, that's great. But if they can do it through overpricing, price-fixing, stifling competition, inventing new diseases, paying consultants off in peer-review, lobbying for favourable government legislation and research subsidies, selling harmful or non-effective medicines, etc, they'll employ that too - whatever it takes.

Sure, if they can. Big if.

So would any other industry. What's your point? Why single out pharma for criticism?

I really think you missed the point of my original post, which is that the industry is a product of the legal and regulatory framework. Demonise it if you want, but if you really want it to change, you need to ask why its business model is what it is.

932. Monkey, Business

Comment #106574 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 7:04 am

Rtambree

>Evidence, please.

Plenty already given in #192

I don't think so.

Of the three rants articles you cite, one alleges lack of independence of researchers, one says that pharma companies are talking up diseases in order to sell their products and the other is a general critique of the profits made by the industry.

You allege that "Many of the pharmaceuticals get their research done with government support through university research and then all they do is wrap a plastic bubble around it, stick it on the shelf and call themselves "entrepreneurs"."

Evidence, please.

933. Monkey, Business

Comment #106571 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 6:56 am

annabanana – 20 years is the maximum taking all the extensions into account. There's an additional case where the drug is off-patent, or its patent expires very soon after approval to market, but you brought it through its clinical trials. In that case, you can get a period of "data exclusivity", which means that someone else can produce the same drug but would have to produce their own data. This seems reasonable, otherwise you would never get people to invest in good, off-patent drugs.

You can certainly repatent a drug for a new indication, assuming of course that you hadn't already discovered it, but that won't affect the expiry date for the original indication. To get the new indication approved, you still need to go through most of the vastly expensive testing process. You may be let off some of the initial safety testing if there is lots of data available. And that's the same whether you created the original drug or not. There are plenty of niche companies finding new uses for older medicines created by someone else. What's the objection?

I am no fan of most pharma CEOs, but they are not billionaires. They are not even noticeably overpaid by comparison to CEOs of comparable sized corporations (which admittedly is not saying much). Of course what matters is the bottom line. That's business. But no amount of marketing will turn a poor drug into a good one. The bottom line looks healthiest when they produce good drugs which benefit real people's lives.

I find it very peculiar that people view pharma companies as "the devil" – your words – when they are in the business of improving lives. Few would put such a label on a doctor, farmer or songwriter, and only the most zealous would even apply it to a homeopath. Why do you suppose this is?

934. Monkey, Business

Comment #106524 by hungarianelephant on January 3, 2008 at 4:42 am

annabanana – Apologies for the delay in replying.

As you picked up in later posts, the pharma company has a patent lasting up to 20 years. But this is from the time of discovery, not commercial launch. Given the time R&D takes, you will typically get a maximum of 7 years of exclusivity.

This doesn't entitle them to set "whatever cost they like". They can set whatever cost the market will bear. Insurers frequently refuse to cover certain treatments at certain prices, and pricing is often a sticky issue within the industry. The drugs which attract huge prices are the ones which address an unmet medical need, which can be more expensive to treat if the drug isn't available. For example, there are a few promising Alzheimers treatments in development, and I would expect a successful one to be very highly priced. $50k a year sounds a lot until you realise that managing the terminal decline of a patient costs twice that.

Of course, the market price will be very much higher if there is no competition because of an effective patent in place. That's the price of the patent system. If that goes, so does R&D. I think you acknowledge this in some of your later posts. Your other alternative is to shorten it. That means a shorter window for the pharma companies to make a return on their very substantial investment. And that means one of two things – either the price goes up or fewer drugs will be developed.

Naturally, pharma companies will try to extend their effective patent life by various means. They would be foolish not to. The main one is reformulation.

But you're quite wrong to assume that reformulation is always an illegitimate ploy. The mechanism of delivery can be very important. Taking a drug orally instead of intravenously is – all other things being equal – a huge advantage. So is being able to take your medication once a day instead of twice, or not having it tied to when you eat. These are better drugs than the ones they replace, not "the same drug". You can't assume that you get an extra 20 years, either. What you actually get is the length of time before someone else figures out how to achieve the same result by another means. Sometimes that's a matter of months.

There's a questionable practice of withdrawing the earlier drug from the market, so that competitors have to match the new one rather than the old one. But that's also a result of the regulatory regime. Take that up with the FDA.

It's also wrong to assume that all that matters is "across the board" effect. Some drugs don't work well in subsets of patients, and others have bad side effects in other patients. If an alternative appears which may work better or more pleasantly in a particular group, why is that a bad thing?

Rtambree #106108
Many of the pharmaceuticals get their research done with government support through university research and then all they do is wrap a plastic bubble around it, stick it on the shelf and call themselves "entrepreneurs".

Evidence, please.

935. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #106087 by hungarianelephant on January 2, 2008 at 10:45 am

Steve Zara - I said I was puzzled by Picard's baldness in Star Trek - would they not have advanced sufficiently to have cured baldness by that time?

Someone posted a response which made me feel rather silly: Surely they would have advanced sufficiently not to care about it!

Patrick Stewart claims that the director said this to him. But I enjoyed it this time too.

I think (hope?) the same applies to homosexuality (mentioned earlier).

I would also hope so, but I'd suspect we have a long way to go. Most parents are able to make their peace with their children's sexuality, but there's still the nagging issue of the absence of grandchildren. Unless of course ...

(On the other hand, there's also my brother in law, who has a pink fit whenever his 4 year old daughter dresses his 2 year old son in high heeled shoes. Now there's someone who has his own issues.)

936. Monkey, Business

Comment #106078 by hungarianelephant on January 2, 2008 at 10:35 am

About the pharmaceutical industry:

You have to appreciate that the industry in its modern form is not the product of laissez-faire capitalism. Rather, it is the result of the regulatory framework around it.

For sensible reasons, we decided that new medicines must be rigorously tested for safety and efficacy. The net result of what is currently expected by the FDA is that new drugs cost, on average, between $800 million and $1 billion to get to market. Most drugs fail along the way. Rather obviously, as the cost is pushed up, so is the necessary reward for success. That is why your drugs are so expensive.

You can argue that they are overpriced - and it's certainly true that US consumers are subsidising the rest of the world - but you must appreciate that if the price is controlled, the result will be fewer drugs. Or alternatively, you could loosen the criteria for approval, which will result in more, but not necessarily better, drugs.

Vioxx, and the other Cox-2's, are essentially a product of an overly litigious system. They are a response to a specific problem of anti-inflammatories such as aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen (NSAIDs). NSAIDs carry a small risk of gastric ulcers. A few of those ulcers will prove fatal. But importantly, there is no way of telling which patients will be the unlucky ones.

The Cox-2's do not have this problem. They were no more effective than the NSAIDs, and they cost many times more, but they weren't going to get a primary care physician sued for prescribing them. True, there were more incidents of heart problems, but the pre-marketing studies indicated that this was most likely a result of the known side-benefits of the NSAIDs being taken away. In fact, it turned out when looking at the results of millions of people that there were indeed adverse cardiac events. But this wasn't in the original data. When it did appear, the products were rightly pulled.

It's worth noting that most of the allegations made against Merck relate to the alleged suppression of admittedly scant evidence, and not to the original placing of the product. Merck has won most of its cases.

For sure, there are problems with the current model. It favours drugs for the mass market ahead of unmet medical need. And it makes it nigh impossible to deal with some disorders - such as strokes - where you can't pin down a primary endpoint. It also guarantees that power will be consolidated in the hands of a few pharmaceutical giants; the biotechnology industry as a whole actually loses money, while big pharma are amongst the most profitable companies in the world.

Blaming the industry for this is senseless. If you want to make improvements, look to the system in which it operates. Don't even think about centralised research. The Communist Bloc produced not a single novel treatment in its entire history.

Not wishing to single out a particular comment, but:

128. Comment #106013 by epeeist on January 2, 2008 at 9:23 am

Comment #105998 by al-rawandi

They spend a lot of that money on research for new drugs.

Not compared with the amount they spend on marketing.

That is false.

To support what passes for its current policy, the European Union argued that marketing comprised a significant part of the industry's costs, apparently in the fond belief that this is an optional cost for a business. But even then, they had to cook the books by removing cost of capital from the deemed development costs. I've applied to the EU for a 10 year interest free loan for developing my business, but for some reason they don't seem very interested.

Have a look at some of the efforts to stop countries with significant HIV problems manufacturing cheap anti-retrovirals.

What you forgot to say was "and paying nothing for it". The likes of South Africa apparently think it is the role of US consumers to solve their health problems, rather than (say) using some real purchasing power to get the price lowered.

The major pharma companies no longer have much interest in HIV. Why in the world would they want to spend $1bn so they could be told that they are the devil incarnate, and have their research exploited for free? As a matter of humanity, that sucks. From a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense.

937. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #106011 by hungarianelephant on January 2, 2008 at 9:21 am

A secondary concern to me, a gay person, is the possiblility of gene-manipulation attempts to control sexual preference. Even in social environments where gays are accepted, potential parents are rarely neutral on the subject. While no one is ever going to genetically control race, there are many who openly espouse genetic control of sexual preference. (esuther - 105954)

For instance, I am pretty sure that many people would like to find a way to screen out "gay genes" and other attributes deemed undesirable. (Bonzai - 105840)

While I'm sympathetic to the notion that the question of how technology should be deployed is a political one and not a scientific one, I'm having trouble understanding how these points advance the argument.

I have male pattern baldness. While I don't think of it as a "defect", and it certainly cuts down the maintenance, I don't imagine too many parents would choose it for their sons. But why exactly should I have any qualms about eliminating it genetically? Or is it that sexual preference has a special status, and if so why?

938. Three wise men just legend: archbishop

Comment #101425 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 10:50 am

black wolf - Which clearly shows that it's not principal honesty about lack of evidence and therefore retracting unjustified conclusions keeping them going. It's defensive behavior for protecting core beliefs, doctrines or dogmas, being such inspite of their equally unevidential sillyness because they were so defined by others for no better reason than provision of an intently divisive framework.

All those things may be true, but that's not the point here. What the Archbish is saying, and what the Catholic church also said a long time ago, is that some of the stuff built up around Christmas has no biblical basis.

The whole story is very incomplete, even on its face. For example, Matthew appears to say that Jesus was born at Joseph's house. The stable thing comes from Luke - except Luke doesn't mention a stable. He says that Jesus was laid in a manger, from which people assume that it was in a stable. They also assume that an ox and ass were present, but that's not in the story either (may also be a throwback to some of the weird stuff in Isaiah).

Still, I expect there will be a big fir tree in Canterbury Cathedral at the moment.

939. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #101291 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 7:27 am

I do get the impression from time to time that some people here are running around looking for grievances against religion, as if there weren't enough real ones.

Thanks to SharrieG and k1mgy for injecting some clear-headedness into the thread.

940. Three wise men just legend: archbishop

Comment #101268 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 6:56 am

This is not a very good report of what the Archbish said. It's much clearer from other reports that what he's really saying is that some of the stuff around Christmas doesn't have a biblical basis.

Big deal. The Vatican has got rid of the stable theme this year and is portraying the birth of Jesus as being in Joseph's house, which is what Matthew's gospel says.

But the part that made my brain burp was this:

He went on to say that while he believed in it himself, new Christians need not leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the virgin birth before they could join the church.

Huh?

Last time I was in a church, which was admittedly a good few years ago, you were supposed to recite the Apostles' Creed -

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Perhaps I am a little naive, but that seems a fairly unambiguous belief to me.

I wonder what other "hurdles" you don't have to get over to join the C of E these days. Is belief in God still necessary?

941. Do the laws of God trump those of man?

Comment #101226 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 5:48 am

wooter - I appreciate that comment 101194 addresses steve and not me, but if I may be so bold:

The basic problem with all of your questions is that they make a big assumption: that the planet and everything on it exists for our benefit.

You've probably made another assumption too, which is that the world has not been around for very long. That's understandable - it's very difficult for humans to comprehend geological time. The Industrial Revolution seems like a very long time ago, but in geological terms it's nothing - barely the blink of an eye. The evidence we have is that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. That's 64 million human lifetimes, one after another. A lot can happen in that time.

Once you ditch these assumptions and look down the other end of the telescope, you'll find that some answers start to fall into place.

Take your example of soil. You think of it as a factory for producing fruit and vegetables. But it doesn't really work that way at all. In nature, that soil is made up of thousands of different types of organisms. They all do their own stuff, some of them in competition with each other and some working together. As humans we see the carrot growing and tend to ignore the "dirt". That's what we eat and so that's what's important to us. In our heads, we may see the aim of the soil as to produce the carrot. Indeed, when we took up farming, we learned to harness the power of the soil to produce the carrot. But that doesn't prove an intention in nature. Nature doesn't care. The carrot is just one of the many surviving organisms - the one that's of most interest to us as carrot-eaters.

Or take your example of photosynthesis. (I don't think you've fully understood how it works, but we can skip that for now.) We regard it as the production of an essential life-giving substance: oxygen.

Other organisms would take a very different view of this. Oxygen is highly corrosive and dangerous. Chemically, it is quite similar to fluorine, which is used for etching glass. When the first cyanobacteria started producing oxygen, it caused a crisis for all the other lifeforms on earth. It was a pollutant, incompatible with life. Of course, what happened was that those organisms which could cope survived, and those which could not died out. And others changed in such a way that they could thrive on it. Eventually giving rise to us.

If you're genuinely looking for explanations for why things are as they are, there are plenty of good books. I'd recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything as a good starting point. Some here would find it rather simplistic, but it's intended for non-scientists and it's very readable. But to be honest, you may not get a lot out of it unless you're prepared to suspend for a while the assumption that the Earth is made for Man, and instead consider the possibility that Man is evolved for the Earth.

942. Do the laws of God trump those of man?

Comment #101211 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 5:17 am

Since no one else is picking this up directly:

wooter - Praying and prayers go with the belief. If you want to prove that all prayers of believers go unanswered, you have to go check on all believers and confirm that they do no get answer. For me, If I prove it for one person, it will be enough. A lot of believers today they pray to God and they get their answers.

I'll agree with that.

But:

(1) You are positing that prayer works, at least in some cases, so the burden of proof is on you. It isn't for nonbelievers to prove the negative. So with that in mind.

(2) Please feel free to show us any example of where prayer works. In order to do this, you will have to eliminate every other possible cause of the prayed-for event. To put it into formal logical terms, the following argument won't wash:
P1 - My friend Sarah [or insert as applicable] prayed for her cancer to be cured.
P2 - It was cured.
C - Therefore prayer works.

If you can't find a way of eliminating every other possible cause, then I'll accept evidence of an event with no feasible organic cause. To make it easy, any example of an amputated limb growing back fully functional in response to prayers will do; I reserve the right to impose further conditions as and when medical knowledge advances to the point where this can be done by deliberate scientific intervention.

Or you can borrow a scientific method and do a blind controlled study of a reasonable sized group, to minimise the effect of other possible causes. For example, prayers for the sick. Some will be prayed for and some will not, and the beneificiaries of the prayers won't be told which group they are in. If you can show a statistically significantly greater improvement in the condition of the prayed-for group, then that will constitute evidence (though not proof) that prayer works.

The problem you'll have is that this has already been done, and shows no evidence that prayer works. In fact a third group who were told they were being prayed for did worse than the other two.

Over to you.

943. What Your Brain Looks Like on Faith

Comment #101135 by hungarianelephant on December 20, 2007 at 1:32 am

ADH - Any rational individual on this site will see that his is just crass - on a par with 19th century Phrenology. What would neuroimaging of "faith" actually prove? It would prove that our brain is physically, "mechanically" if you like, involved in the act of believing in God or in any other religious proposition. So what? How does that impinge upon the content of the proposition? Maybe neuroimaging will prove different in the presence of a belief statement than in the presence of a fact statement: eg "Chevrolet make trucks". What about the statement "My wife (mother/son/husband etc.) loves me". Would this be represented as a "faith" statement or as a "fact statement"? What implications would it have in the event of it being the former? Would it actually be, in itself, a reason for doubting the truth of the alleged "love"?

ADH - No, belief or doubt don't tell you anything much about the truth of the proposition believed in or doubted in.

However, a central plank of the belief system of most believers is precisely the opposite. They know God exists, and since they cannot know this by rational means, then it must have been put there by God. This may be a silly argument to you - it certainly is to me - but it is a common one and needs to be disabused.

That is, I think, what Harris is saying. There's no suggestion in the article that this will prove the existence or non-existence of God.

944. Abstinence Programs Face Rejection

Comment #100731 by hungarianelephant on December 19, 2007 at 8:24 am

While I am no supporter of abstinence education, does anyone really think that sex education in the UK over the last 40 years has been a resounding success?

945. 'Boycott Worked': Compass Flops - Opening Weekend $26 Million; Narnia $63 Million

Comment #96861 by hungarianelephant on December 11, 2007 at 2:51 am

And ease up on demonizing Catholicism-no other religion has done more to promote human rights, science and goodwill.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Brilliant satire!

946. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #96859 by hungarianelephant on December 11, 2007 at 2:48 am

Not a scientist, but:

There's no increased threat to those who have been effectively vaccinated. Not all vaccinations are effective.

The vaccination programme works generally by reducing the number of susceptible people, which in turn reduces the risk of epidemic. If you were the only person in the world not vaccinated against polio, for example, you are not going to catch it because you have no one to catch it from.

The programmes are substantially effective when 95-98% of the population are vaccinated, depending on the disease. The remaining 2-5% who are not vaccinated, together with the small number whose vaccines are not effective, together make up a small enough population that epidemic is very unlikely.

If you increase the number of unvaccinated, you increase the risk of epidemic exponentially. Those affected will primarily be the unvaccinated, but the not-effectives will also be at an exponentially greater risk.

So, yes in some cases, no in most.

947. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96854 by hungarianelephant on December 11, 2007 at 2:35 am

Newton30 - "Only" around a quarter of the Jewish people who died in the Holocaust were deliberately executed. Most of the rest, even in the camps, died of starvation or disease. This doesn't seem all that different from sending people to the gulags to me. Not much of an excuse, of course.

948. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #96849 by hungarianelephant on December 11, 2007 at 2:28 am

I began our debate by reminding you of that day in March of the year 2000 when John Paul II, supported by his then "deputy for doctrine," Joseph Ratzinger (future Benedict XVI), made an unprecedented plea for forgiveness for the evils committed throughout history by Christians. The Inquisition was front and center. Although the role of the Church in the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition is regularly exaggerated by simplistic readings of history, in his public prayer of atonement John Paul II focused only on the Church's role in this fanaticism. During that 350 year period of history, it is estimated that 5,000- 10,000 people were put to death in the name of orthodoxy. John Paul II likewise asked forgiveness for other types of bigotry and violence carried out by Christians.

That's very nice of them, I'm sure. And it's a start.

The problem is that it doesn't actually change anything. What's needed is to change the features of the church that allowed these things to happen.

It's abundantly clear that Joe Rat doesn't understand this. This was the man who probably knew more than any other individual about the abuse of children by priests. His concern throughout has not been to adapt to avoid bad things happening, but to protect the hierachy and authority of the church.

In the absence of the church disappearing from the face of the planet, we might at least hope that the next Pope will be someone with a little more humanity.

As to the whole nonsense about Stalin, I'm really tired of this crap. Don't they have anything more profound to say?

949. This deadly religious resistance to vaccinations

Comment #96843 by hungarianelephant on December 11, 2007 at 2:17 am

Blame religion if you like, but you'll be missing the point.

Much of the public is deeply sceptical of science in general and medical science in particular. Its macro achievements, such as the eradication of smallpox and polio, are not what most people see. They go to their doctor and are given 8 minutes and a prescription. If it looks serious, they will go onto a 6 month waiting list for further tests.

Meanwhile, they are fed a daily diet of condensed summaries of what "scientists" say they should do: eat more greens, or less greens; direct sunlight for vitamin D, but avoid it because of skin cancer; two drinks is a binge; etc. With no proper understanding of what science is - because schools don't teach it properly - and no grasp of how the media distort scientific research, people feel pushed around by an amorphous scientific establishment.

There's no doubt that vaccination has saved many thousands, if not millions of lives. But there are also some people who do not tolerate them well. Among them are my parents - and as children our GP advised against innoculating us. As an adult, I have had doctors attempt to refuse me as a patient unless I have all the jabs I missed as a child. Why? Because they are paid bonuses based on a particular percentage of their patients having a complete set of jabs.

When my own child's time came around, we were first told, "Do it anyway", then "Family history is immaterial" (this is in printed literature and is an outright lie), then "Do it in the hospital so they can resuscitate if there's a problem". Finally, after a serious adverse reaction to something else, it was acknowledged that vaccinating her might not be the smartest idea.

This just isn't good enough. People with some scientific knowledge appreciate that it really is a numbers game - that you can pretty much guarantee that there won't be an epidemic if you vaccinate 95% to 98% of the population, depending on the disease. But these are people's children. They will do everything in their power to prevent something bad from happening to them. Some people's concerns are unfounded - that a friend of a friend of someone they met in a pub had a child who was ill for 3 days after a jab. Others have genuine and reasonable concerns, which are being poorly addressed.

Resistance to vaccines, especially "new" ones, is by and large a resistance to the perceived power of the medical establishment - the same one, it should be noted, that told us thalidomide was safe and that injecting short kids with human growth hormone from ground-up pituiarty glands was a great idea. It may not be wholly rational but that is not the point. You are not going to get over it with the sort of condescension contained in this article.

950. Is Infant Male Circumcision An Abuse Of The Rights Of The Child?

Comment #96241 by hungarianelephant on December 10, 2007 at 8:14 am

It's not just a Jewish practice, even in origin. Muslims are also circumcised. And until fairly recently, soldiers in the US army.

I don't know why I know that.