I suppose you are already sufficiently disgusted with the healthcare system in the US, but here's a piece on the preauthorisation of new drugs and medical procedures. And oh boy, it's a doozy. I should have expected it to be set up this way, but I didn't guess. Need to crank my cynicism up to 12.

Edit: also, Ronan Farrow has a new piece out on Weinstein: Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies. Farrow's reporting on the issue has been nothing short of sublime. An absolute must-read if you're interested in the case.

After this report hit Sunday, Tom Marino withdrew his name as Trumps new drug czar.

Just gonna throw that number out there without a reference? So i looked and the group who came up with that is largely funded by the PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY. Try again
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/upshot/calculating-the-real-costs-of-developing-a-new-drug.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

Hello 911? There are bunch of people running around the park screaming like idiots! On ran past me and my son yelling about killing the gnoll or something. Another was yelling about being attacked by a dragon!!! What is this some new drug!?

John Oliver is wrong.

Yes, some supplements (say, the milk thistle found in Rockstar Energy Drink) are just snake oil. But other supplements have clinical effects, such as St. John's Wort (http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/st-johns-wort) for minor depression and, arguably, glucosamine and chondroitin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trials_on_glucosamine_and_chondroitin)

Here's the thing though - if the FDA regulates supplements in the same way they do drugs, the price of supplements would go through the roof. It costs 1.3 BILLION DOLLARS to get a new drug approved by the FDA. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/01/24/shocking-secrets-of-fda-clinical-trials-revealed/)

So the supplements market provides a very useful alternative, something that John Oliver simply doesn't understand. You can either pay ten bucks for a 300 pack of St. John's Wort, or you can pay ten times that amount for the FDA approved antidepressant, Zoloft.

The sad truth is that the FDA really does overregulate the drug market, which is one of the major reasons health care is so fucking expensive in this country. John Oliver lives in magical fairly land where regulating supplements would come with no cost, but in reality regulating it would just close down the only inexpensive drug system we have in the world.

Scientific studies do exist for supplements (I read through the studies while my wife was at UCSF Pharmacy School taking their mandatory alt med class), and if you do your research, you can distinguish the snake oil from the supplements that have real effects.

Wing-suiters aren't messing around, it takes some fit musculature and control, and definite body-mind-type reflexes under free fall conditions already plugged-in through a lot of parachute work. These guys are fit and professional that do the wing suits, I dare say if the novice strapped one on and jumped-off a cliff they'd drop like a rock without the kind of above experience mentioned.

I suggest getting to know your local airport and start a new hobby-Jumping from planes every weekend for a year or two, maybe join a chute club-Research the craft and travel to an event once the love of free-fall is all up in yer brain. You may soon claim your new drug of choice adrenaline!

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Huey-Lewis-and-the-News-I-Want-A-New-Drug & I Want a New Duck.

Huey Lewis and the News - I Want A New Drug has been added as a related post - related requested by Trancecoach.

1) In a perfect world, there'd be no drug use...or pain from which to seek escape. But because this is a world with pain, a trade-off should be preferred where there is no solution (and never will be due to human nature).

2) If two (or three) million out of 142 million people are illegal drug addicts, it's a problem but hardly a crisis.

3) If heroin were cheap and legal, this "new" drug would hardly be bothered with, plus there would be access to clean needles.

So you're saying because they don't copy your exact method of inducing a DMT trip, and live up to your psuedo-enlighted idea of how one should induce their own personal, spiritual journey they.

Glad to see that whole humility lesson you're supposed to take from DMT is working for you. And Ive based DMT off of weed with dozens individuals both creators and users. May not be preferable but it is an option. So lookslike your whole analysis was shot to shit.

Besides them referring to it as a new drug, that was wrong and insipid. As well as their implicit subtle association they made towards it with Crack and Heroine.

Besides that you're being pissy and needlessly judgemental

Jesus, I don't even remember submitting this. Time for new drugs.

>> ^ChaosEngine:
Bollocks, ip doesn't stifle innovation, it encourages it. Take pharmaceuticals for instance, without patent protection companies simply couldn't afford the millions required to research new drugs (yes, drug companies are evil, etc, but theyre still kinda important).
As for the difference between physical property and intellectual property, are you really saying that a sculptor deserves compensation for their work, but a writer/musician/programmer doesn't?
That kind of attitude is why idiotic laws like this get written in the first place.


If I want to own your statue I need the physical artifact itself (until 3d printing technology matures...), if I want to listen to your CD I never need to touch the thing. These are real distinctions. This is not a question of what you deserve; it's reality. You cannot cry about it and try to oppose the basic operation of the universe because you want to make your living by singing once into a box. Do gigs, sell tshirts, update your business model and stop crying.

---

Ug hits a couple of rocks together and makes a spark, the spark starts a fire. He shows his innovation off to the rest of his tribe, everyone's very impressed. Soon they learn to copy his technique, now they can eat a wider variety of food, stay warm in winter, keep the god damn flies away - they flourish. Other tribes take notice, so on, pretty soon everyone is using fire.

Ug hits a couple of rocks together and makes a spark, the spark starts a fire. He knows fire is now his intellectual property. He makes a comfortable living starting fires for people, but only if they agree to turn away while he does it. He gets the biggest share of the food, which he never has to bother to hunt for, never mind how hungry the others are. Anyone who accidentally observes his method keeps it to themselves because they know Ug owns the patent to fire, and they're not allowed to know how to make it without his permission. Ug dies. No one is using fire any more.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^ChaosEngine:
First up, read my original post. I do not, in any way shape or form support SOPA or PIPA. In fact, I abhor them. So you can leave the childish "government thugs" line out of it.
As to the rest of your arguments, I'm not going to pay you to take a dump, because I don't want your dump. If I did want your "output", I would expect to pay you for it.
As for "extracting the tribute I'm owed", I don't believe I'm owed a damn thing, until you use what I've created, in which case, pay me. If you don't want to use it, fine. But it's still my ip that I worked hard on. It's not "imaginary" property, it is intellectual property and the principal has been around for longer than you would believe (look up the story of Colm Cille copying art works in medieval Ireland).
The quality of the work is irrelevant. If Transformers or CoD or whatever is so shit, don't watch/play it.
As for these posts, I'm pretty sure that when you signed up to this site, we agreed that posts were made under creative commons, or are the property of siftbot or whatever. The point is that there is no expectation of remuneration here. I have no problem with people sharing their content or whatever, but it's still their decision to make.

Do we really have to go over the differences between physical property and indefinitely replicable information?
If you create something, create it for yourself and be satisfied. If I like it, I'm going to use it. That's how our culture advances.
Do you realise how devastating it would have been to human progress if IP had always been around stifling the propagation of new ideas and technologies? I wonder if we'd have made it to the bronze age yet.


Bollocks, ip doesn't stifle innovation, it encourages it. Take pharmaceuticals for instance, without patent protection companies simply couldn't afford the millions required to research new drugs (yes, drug companies are evil, etc, but theyre still kinda important).

As for the difference between physical property and intellectual property, are you really saying that a sculptor deserves compensation for their work, but a writer/musician/programmer doesn't?

That kind of attitude is why idiotic laws like this get written in the first place.

>> ^spoco2:
Wow, seriously, you don't get the issue here? You really are going to suck if you never see the larger picture.
"Garry, we've done it! This pill makes people be able to speak for a couple of hours at a time!"
"Awesome, what are the side effects?"
"Pffft, like I give a shit, it works man."
"Um, you aren't concerned at all about long term effects?"
"Nope, I made someone talk... I'm a fucking GOD man"
"Ok, good luck with that."


No, I don't think you get the issue. The guy is downright lucky an existing drug "solves" his problem. It isn't as though he's part of a large group of post tooth pull TMD sufferers. This isn't the sort of thing you can convince anyone to spend any money to research. Simply saying something like "look ambien works" doesn't really mean somebody can just run to their garage and whip up a new drug that only targets the specific parts he wanted it to target, or some stem cell therapy that could repair damage.

Part of my snarky undercurrent, and I hesitate to say this, is that I think this might be fake. If it is fake, it isn't funny because people do suffer from these sorts of disorders. If it isn't fake, the diagnosis is probably wrong because it is likely a central not peripheral nervous issue. I was just watching the video with a professional speech therapist. She pointed out that not only does he have the temporomandibular joint issue, but he also seems to be having tongue and mouth shape ataxia. His facial symmetry is good, which suggests it isn't lateralized nerve damage (like you might expect from a tooth pull). Further, it is difficult to conceive of a mechanism by which pharmacology could have that sort of effect on "damaged wires" so to speak. It's possible he's simply the victim of a misdiagnosis, in which case I feel bad him. However, given that he is a voice actor, I fear this might be a publicity stunt in horribly poor taste. That's not even mentioning the fact that he looks remarkably cogent for a guy on ambien (you know, all those side effects you were talking about).

Oh look someone who doesn't understand that when you're testing new drugs, that you occasionally find something that does something else. Ever hear of Rogaine, that magical drug for hair loss recovery? Did you know it was originally a heart medication. So was viagra. I'm sure that understanding the differences between the two will be illuminating. Besides, killing microscopic parasites is hard, unless you want to kill the patient.

I'm sure it'll further amaze you that some of the immunoboosters used in cancer treatment are the class-a drugs for treating aids now.

>> ^wraith:

Oh look, someone with a "The Invisible Hand Of The Market will sheperd and protect us all" attitude!
(From wikipedia)
I don't know of a single death from Erectile Dysfunction that could have been prevented if Viagra would have been invented earlier.
>>