Wow. I just lost alot of respect for ol' Schiff. I guess he can only seem sharp in a scripted forum.

The fact is, Mr. Schiff was not up to the intellectual level of that protestor, and was rightly called out for it at the end. The guy was very respectful, until Schiff went off into fringe/crackpot territory.

Anyone who advocates banning the FDA and EPA is indeed a fool, or a rich, callous, selfish MF. Which is it, Schiff?

Fuck ReasonTV there is nothing Reasonable about them.

Issues such as the Lets disband the EPA, The Board of Education & FDA are popular now with a lot of conservatives because they like the status of being Fiscal protectionists but never think of the long term costs and how it will likely hurt other individuals (which is completely against the libertarian mantra of don't infringe on the rights and liberties of others if they are not hurting you in any way). this is exactly like how the issue of 'Tort reform' in the healthcare debate was the proposed solution to help bring down costs, but few explained that Tort is the legal right of public individuals to sue others within the healthcare industry for negligence or malpractice, thus taking away the right to protect possible harm caused through no fault of their own & further aid the corporations and healthcare lobby.

Concise point. Now you'd have to agree that all of those protests and movements that got us somewhere had a precise focus that everybody could agree upon. They were marching, picketing, and protesting one specific cause, not a vague "boogie-man". I fail to see that aim within this "movement". In fact, I think the vagueness of it is why there are such numbers. I think if there were a specific aim, that some people might not agree with, they'd lose some strength in numbers. It's easy to just yell and shout that you're being fucked, but it's another thing to march organized towards one goal. That's all I'm saying, no focus, no work will get done.>> ^NetRunner:

@rottenseed and @Boise_Lib, I'm not arguing that boycotts never have an impact, but boycotts alone didn't end apartheid, and boycotts alone didn't desegregate the South. Boycotts didn't get us child labor laws, boycotts didn't get us the Civil Rights Act, and boycotts didn't get us the FDA.
Boycotts are no substitute for laws. You don't stop carjackers by boycotting car companies, or gunmakers. You stop them with law enforcement.

@rottenseed and @Boise_Lib, I'm not arguing that boycotts never have an impact, but boycotts alone didn't end apartheid, and boycotts alone didn't desegregate the South. Boycotts didn't get us child labor laws, boycotts didn't get us the Civil Rights Act, and boycotts didn't get us the FDA.

Boycotts are no substitute for laws. You don't stop carjackers by boycotting car companies, or gunmakers. You stop them with law enforcement.

Ya know how much Rat Feces can be in that thing according to the FDA? Probably a good pound and a half.

@JiggaJonson, huh? I'm not bashing the researchers or university. No, I think what happened here is a huge breakthrough, and I wish we'd see more of this type of ingenuity.

And Salk's research was funded privately, I'm afraid.

Lastly, the FDA restrictions are prohibitive. It costs well into the millions to get a drug passed into the market. The article I cited explains the costs, but the section you quoted is opinion. I like to stick to the facts, thanks. And the facts are that only a handful of big pharma companies can compete in the market. I defy you to prove otherwise.

@blankfist

"I'm sure the researchers there are fantastic."

You are such a hypocrite. In your post you praise the discovery, and now you bash the university that made it all possible with a snide bit of sarcasm.
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"He developed and released a cure to polio, but today the restrictions on the market makes this kind of charitable action illegal."

What EXACTLY are the restrictions that prevent someone from independently researching and independently developing a cure for a disease; and then openly publishing information about said cure.

And before you say "Well the FDA piles on regulations/fees DURRR, that's what my article said!"

Your article also said "Some observers would say that reducing FDA restrictions would reduce the price of drugs consumers face. I do not believe this to be the case. After the R&D is spent, firms price their drug to maximize profits subject to consumer demand."
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Incidentally, the polio vaccine you referred to was also discovered at a state university.
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We have lived in a world without the Pure Food and Drug Act. All it led to was maximization of profit through insidiously horrible work conditions, disgustingly inferior products for consumers, and the publication of The Jungle.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

Nevermind the fact that Washington University, the school that created the Foldit program, is a public (that is to say, funded by the state; a.k.a. statist) institution.


Right, and I'm sure the researchers there are fantastic. Still, they opened the market to allow more people to work on what they themselves and others weren't able to succeed at.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

Nevermind the fact that healthcare, up until very recently, has been privatized (excluding medicare and medicaid) for a substantial time now; yet the lifetime cost of HIV medications and treatment is roughly $385,000.


And available only from big pharma. And that's thanks to government regulations. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine privately and offered it without patent. If he were to bring the same drug to market today by FDA restrictions he'd have to pay millions.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

Shouldn't free market generic meds have landed in your local Wally World for $5 a month by now? Why is the free market dictating these insane prices where how much you can pay is directly relational to how long you get to live.


The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated. I think you're erroneously conflating corporatism with free market.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

Now, as we know, if the market was not worthy, pharmaceutical businessmen would not get involved with it and essentially let the project die. The logical solution to these huge dilemmas in cost then is to create a larger customer base. All they need now is a furtive way to deliver the virus to a sect of the population that is either expendable and large or rich and small.


Again, you're claiming the current market is free. If it was, people like Salk could enter and compete (much like the gamers in the article above) without retribution from government. What you have today is a limited amount of pharma companies that can compete in the market, and because there's less competition, you have higher prices.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

I don't see where the "market" part comes in. Just the "free" part.


The market is just a system of exchange. Look at my example of Salk above. He developed and released a cure to polio, but today the restrictions on the market makes this kind of charitable action illegal. But in regards to the article specifically, Wash. Univ. opened their system of exchange and asked the online gaming community to help in figuring out a complex structure of an AIDS protein. The exchange was charitable. That's the free market.

Now if there was a regulation against this sort of thing because the online gamers weren't "licensed" for instance, then that would be a restrictive market. Right?

FDA really does a poor job anymore. We're a decade behind on most medications and medical procedures, and medical equipment is outrageously expensive due in part to their long and costly procedures to get verified in the US when they've been using it in other countries for years. Plus we get to eat contaminated food that obviously should have been detected and banned from import.

And as bad as the FDA is, politicians keep wanting to cut their funding so they can't even maintain the testing procedures they have in place now. It's like the government is actively trying to kill us while making us homeless, plus cutting out medical care for when our food supply is tainted.

@spoco2

Let me get this straight... A young kid gets vaccinated, suffers an adverse reaction to it which leads to "autism like" symptoms. And the vaccine did NOT cause autism? The kid was going to get autism anyway? Bullshit. You have no evidence to back up that position.

BTW, they can make mercury-free vaccines. So why do you statist idiots want to mandate everyone get blasted with neurotoxins?

And typical deflecting argument... you can't argue a position without blurring the debate with ad hominem static. What happened to your false analogy? Did you fart again? You must have if you thought HPV vaccines lower cervical cancer rates. And you're ignoring the unintended consequences of trying to vaccinate a relatively common STD that's usually harmless and goes away without treatment. How's that happen you say? Our body has it's own defense system that eliminates the virus. Maybe we should start vaccinating people for colds, you think? Then no one will have colds anymore!

Neil Miller: "Research has shown that when vaccines only target a small number of strains capable of causing disease, less prevalent strains can replace the targeted vaccine strains. These less prevalent strains graduate from minor factors to major influences and may even become more dangerous. Scientists are now concerned that Gardasil -- which only targets two of at least 15 different cancer-causing HPV strains -- might be allowing HPV strains previously considered minor to flourish and become major influences."

More from the article:
By February 2011, more than 20,500 adverse reaction reports pertaining to Gardasil were filed with the U.S. government -- an average of 12 reports per day [VAERS]. Nearly half of all reports required a doctor or emergency room visit, with hundreds of teenage girls and young women needing extended hospitalization.

In the case reports submitted to the FDA, 89 deaths were described due to blood clots, heart disease and other causes. In addition, many of the vaccine recipients -- young women -- were stricken with serious and life-threatening disabilities, including Guillain-Barre syndrome (paralysis), seizures, convulsions, swollen limbs, chest pain, heart irregularities, kidney failure, visual disturbances, arthritis, difficulty breathing, severe rashes, persistent vomiting, miscarriages, menstrual irregularities, reproductive complications, genital warts, vaginal lesions and HPV infection -- the main reason to vaccinate.

According to Dr. Diane Harper, director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the University of Missouri, 'The rate of serious adverse events [from Gardasil] is greater than the incidence rate of cervical cancer.' [ABC News (August 19, 2009).]

Gardasil is being promoted as 100 percent effective. However, this is a deceptive assessment of its true ability to protect against cervical cancer. Gardasil is effective against just two strains of cancer-causing HPV -- the ones included in the vaccine -- but researchers have identified at least 15 cancer-causing HPV strains!

Gardasil will not prevent infection with HPV types not contained in the vaccine. In fact, during clinical trials of the vaccine, hundreds of women who received Gardasil contracted HPV disease. Furthermore, the drug maker warns women (in its product insert) that 'vaccination does not substitute for routine cervical cancer screening.'
/source
In other words, your propaganda quote from the NCI is horseshit.

nope not joking

Researchers at the University of Texas showed that the closer a family lives to a power plant or industrial facility, the higher the risk of autism. Autism rates decreased by 1 to 2 percent for every 10 miles that a child lives away from such mercury sources. They also found that for every 1000 pounds of mercury released by such facilities, autism rates in the surrounding area increased by 2.6 to 3.7 percent.

Dec. 11, 2003 -- To protect developing babies from high levels of potentially brain-damaging mercury, the government plans to warn women who are pregnant, nursing, or even considering having children to eat no more than two to three servings of fish each week. And for the first time, federal officials are making specific recommendations concerning tuna -- second only to shrimp as the most consumed seafood in the U.S.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Actually, the FDA did not make the changes. >> ^blankfist:
>> ^MarineGunrock:
From Wikipedia:
In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes.[8] Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.[9][10]

Oh snap! Thanks wonderful FDA for helping corporate douchebags to make American chocolate the worst in the world. We the people thank you.



Well then thanks American corporations for single-handedly making American chocolate the worst in the world. Hershey's blows.

Actually, the FDA did not make the changes. >> ^blankfist:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
From Wikipedia:
In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes.[8] Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.[9][10]

Oh snap! Thanks wonderful FDA for helping corporate douchebags to make American chocolate the worst in the world. We the people thank you.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

From Wikipedia:
In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes.[8] Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.[9][10]


Oh snap! Thanks wonderful FDA for helping corporate douchebags to make American chocolate the worst in the world. We the people thank you.

From Wikipedia:
In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes.[8] Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.[9][10]