The Erickson Report, Page 2: Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs

Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs

Next up, something that looks like Good News but underneath is not.

Eric Threlkeld is a technical engineer living in Utah with his wife Erica. His job requires him to travel a great deal, so he has loads of airline miles. Keep that in mind.

A little over a year ago, in December 2018, Threlkeld was shocked when Jake Balle, who he had hired as his real estate agent as he and his wife looked for a house, when Jake Balle told him that Balle and his wife Marqui fork out $6,600 a year for insulin pens for their son, Reid. Reid has type 1 diabetes, meaning his body produces little or no insulin. There is no cure and the only thing keeping 7-year-old Reid alive is the insulin delivered through a small pump attached to his abdomen.

Knowing that prescription drugs are much cheaper in Mexico, Threlkeld offered to pick up several insulin pens during his next trip there. He found them: same brand that Reid uses, same packaging, same dose, it's the same stuff, for a bit over one-tenth the cost.

In January, Threlkeld and his wife made another trip, this time on his days off, using his airline miles to pay for their flights.

Through this experience, Threlkeld and his wife learned just how great the need is. Last month they started a nonprofit, the Medic(a)tion Found(a)tion, to help people who have been affected by skyrocketing prescription medication costs. They ask people to donate money or airline miles to defray the costs of travel with the idea of having volunteers go to Mexico at least every other month to buy insulin.

And they are expanding: On their next trip they are also going to be picking up some steroid inhalers for another patient being buried under the cost of prescription medicine.

Eric and Erica Threlkeld

All of which seems like a true feel-good story about caring people seeing a need among the people in their local community and using the resources they have to try to do something about it. So why is this bad news?

Because why should they have to?

Why should anyone have to do this? Why should anyone have to go to Mexico, to leave the country, in order to find life-saving medicine at a price they can manage to pay? Why should anyone be financially crippled just trying to keep their child alive? Why should the cost of insulin have doubled over just four years so that type 1 diabetics pay on average $6000 a year? Why should any family ever have to choose between medication and the mortgage, to decide every month which do we risk this time - sickness or homelessness?

How is this even conscionable? Of course, it's not, which is why people like the Threlkelds do what they do: because it's necessary. Because people are suffering to satisfy the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. Because it is unconscionable.

And it's not going to change until and unless we make it change.

The Erickson Report for March 11-24

The Erickson Report for March 11-24

Good News: Hope for abortion rights
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/june-medical-john-roberts-louisiana-abortion-case-arguments.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hospitalist
https://legaldictionary.net/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt/

Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/03/06/this-couple-goes-mexico-buy-low-cost-insulin-strangers-who-need-it/

Everything You Need to Know: about the health care industry
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/20/1920420/-Report-20-of-adults-in-the-U-S-donated-to-crowdfunding-campaigns-to-cover-medical-costs
https://www.norc.org/NewsEventsPublications/PressReleases/Pages/millions-of-americans-donate-through-crowdfunding-sites-to-help-others-pay-for-medical-bills.aspx
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/02/which-side-are-you-ask-progressives-health-insurance-stocks-spike-after-centrists

The death penalty is the death of justice
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/us/nathaniel-woods-executed-reaction/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/nathaniel-woods-alabama.html
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/dont-look-away-this-nation-is-so-cruel-rights-advocates-decry-execution-of-nathaniel-woods-by-alabama/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nathaniel-woods-execution-cast-scrutiny-alabamas-death-penalty/story?id=69433694
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-erickson-report-page-7-two-weeks-of.html
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/06/after-alabama-executes-nathaniel-woods-ayanna-pressley-leads-fresh-calls-us-abolish

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/paula-white-how-do-you-get-from-the-trailer-park-to-a-white-house-job-give-money-to-trumps-spiritual-adviser/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-spiritual-adviser-tells-followers-to-skip-paying-monthly-electric-bills-so-they-can-send-her-church-more-cash/
=
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nina-turner-cnn-hilary-rosen-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-mlk_n_5e63b624c5b605572805b6e0
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-erickson-report-page-4-two-weeks-of.html
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/484196-supreme-court-allow-public-charge-rule-to-take-effect-across-country
=
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/federal-court-gives-trump-a-big-gift-but-exposes-the-impeachment-trials-biggest-fraud/
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000170-8dbe-d93c-a979-bfff3cf80000
https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-the-law-that-requires-steven-mnuchin-to-turn-over-trumps-taxes-or-lose-his-office-and-go-to-prison
=
https://www.aclu.org/mckesson-v-doe-new-petition-writ-certiorari
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/07/will-us-supreme-court-protect-right-protest
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/17/17-30864-CV1.pdf

15.2 - Good News: more support for drug importation bill

Good News: more support for drug importation bill

We have one other bit of Good News which I am calling "sorta Good News." Good News with a question mark, if you will.

A few weeks ago, I told you about an attempt by Sens. Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and some others to allow pharmacists to import drugs from Canada - and how despite attracting the support of a dozen GOPpers the measure failed because 13 Dimcrats voted against it.

One of that demon's dozen, Cory Booker, took the brunt of the heated reaction because of his status as the liberal hero du jour.

Well, the Good News part is that Booker is co-sponsoring a new version of the bill along with Sanders and Amy Klobuchar - as are three others among those who voted against it before. That means that if all the GOPper support from before holds, they have 50 votes and a real chance of passage, at least in the Senate.

Booker, as a politician who sits in their office dreaming of being president someday will, insisted that the criticism had nothing to do with his change of heart. It was, he insisted, that he won inclusion of additional safety standards in the bill, because of course it goes without saying that the protection of the American public was his real concern, not the boatload of campaign contributions he has gotten from the pharmaceutical industry.

Still, he is on the right side now. But this is where the Good News becomes the "sorta" Good News. Some of those so-called "safeguards" are actually loopholes for Big Pharma. Two in particular stand out, one relatively minor, the other important:

The minor one is that that foreign sellers can only sell drugs manufactured in an FDA-registered facility. That would effectively limit things to reimportation of drugs made in the US and exported to Canada. That's not a significant limitation, since most of the drugs that would be involved would fit that description - that is, most of the meds would be ones that are being reimported. That again raises the question about the supposed need for additional safety regulations since we are talking for the most part about US-manufactured drugs (not to mention the implied slam against Canada's own standards), but leave that aside.

The other requirement is that foreign sellers of drugs would have to be certified by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. That would means that the White House could effectively totally block the importation of meds from Canada simply by not getting around to certifying any such foreign sellers or by finding fault with every application for certification.

All of which means that the move to allow for the importation of medications from Canada is back on track - but with enough PSs and footnote to make Big Pharma smile. So yes, I would have to call this "sorta" Good News.

9.5 - Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers

Outrage of the Week: TheRump considering panel desired by anti-vaxxers

In a post on my blog a bit over two years ago I - I think rather gently - went after the so-called "anti-vaxxers." These are people who are opposed to vaccinations, either of all children or just of their own, on the grounds that the vaccines, or to be more exact a preservative used in them called thimerosal, is related to a variety of neurological disorders, mainly autism. I called such folks "wrong scientifically and wrong ethically and wrong practically."

The baseline claim, which has been flatly rejected by the scientific community, is that because thimerosal contains a mercury compound, that vaccinations cause mercury poisoning with causes autism.

A few months later I gave the Clown Award to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has long campaigned on a claim of a connection between thimerosal and autism, after he used the term "holocaust" in reference to this imagined link. Kennedy insists he is not against vaccination but continues to spin tales of massive conspiracies among government, Big Pharma, and the medical profession to "hide the truth" about the "holocaust" he claims they have caused.

The fact is, there is no sound scientific basis for any of it.

The whole business arose in the early 1990s, when there was an increase in autism, or, more properly, autism spectrum disorders. People in and out of the medical community were looking for an explanation.

Around the same time, there was a push for more children to be vaccinated earlier and over a shorter time. Aha! said some, embracing the false notion that coincidence equals causality. It's the vaccinations that are causing autism! We know mercury is poisonous, so that must be the cause!

The notion really got going in 1998, when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published a paper linking autism to the MMR vaccine, the one for for measles, mumps, and rubella. It has continued as a fringe belief ever since.

There are, however, a few inconvenient truths for those true believers:

First, it developed that Wakefield's data were fraudulent. In 2010, he was found guilty of professional misconduct by Britain's General Medical Council and his license was revoked.

Next, there is not a single documented case of a connection between vaccinations and autism. Or between thimerosal and autism. Or even between mercury and autism.

In fact, the typical symptoms of mercury poisoning are significantly different from those of autism and under scans the brains of people suffering from mercury poisoning are very different from the brains of autistic people.

What's more, except for flu vaccines, thimerosal has not been used in vaccines in the US for over 15 years - even as the rate of autism in children has more than doubled over that same time.

Bottom line: There is no sound basis either in science or logic to connect vaccination in general or thimerosal in particular to autism. Period.

What there is a sound basis for, on the other hand, is the contention that these fantasy fears have created the community of anti-vaxxers with the predictable result of increases in diseases for which vaccines are routinely available. A 15% increase in whooping cough in the US in 2015, clustered in areas where the rate of vaccination had declined. Some 200 cases of measles that year in a nation from which the disease had been declared eradicated 15 years earlier.

The persistence of this fantasy about the dangers of inoculation is going to cause children to die of preventable diseases - while not saving a single one from autism.

And it promises nothing good to note that among those who question the safety of vaccines is the Great Orange One himself. He claims he's not an anti-vaxxer, just a "slow vaxxer" - that is, have the inoculations spread out over a longer period of time, even though that increases the risk to the children by failing to protect them when they can be. His reason for this is, this is a quote, is that "children are not small horses."

But despite his claim of being "pro-vaccination," TheRump met with the disgraced and discredited Andrew Wakefield and a group of other anti-vaxxers at a donor event in Florida in August.

Subsequent to that event, Wakefield said that one of his two federal priorities as an activist if I can disgrace that honorable term that much is to set up an independent board on vaccine safety.

Well, guess what: TheRump is thinking of setting up a commission on "vaccine safety and scientific integrity." According to who? According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who met with TheRump on January 10 and came out of the meeting not only saying TheRump was planning on such a commission but that he wanted Kennedy to chair it.

TheRump's team demurred, saying the Great Orange One is "exploring the possibility" of such a committee, but "no decisions have been made." But considering TheRump has repeatedly questioned vaccination and has repeatedly publicly embraced the fringe skeptics who have lost themselves in their fantasies while denying the evidence, that is to put it mildly not reassuring.

The fact that such a committee is even being considered is an affront to reason, a slap in the face of scientific research, an insult to the medical and public health communities, and a danger to the health and well-being of the nation's children.

The possibility that such a committee could be headed up by someone who has termed the practice of childhood vaccination as having caused a "holocaust" is even worse and serves to point up the nature of the delusional, anti-science, fact-free world we appear to be entering as a nation.

And that is not only an outrage - it is frightening.

8.6 - Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia

Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia

Since we've been doing Good News, we'll start off our look back at 2016 with our choice for Good News of the Year.

The choice this year was not as obvious as it was last year. The Good News for 2015 was easily the historic Supreme Court decision saying bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. This year it didn't seem to me that there was one story that stood out so clearly from the rest.

Nonetheless, we did have some Good News this year, although at times it might not have felt that way.

We did, for example, see three developments on health and science news that we covered here.

One was a potential breakthrough in treating Alzheimer's based on the fact that inflammation of the brain, often associated with advancing Alzheimer's, now looks to be a driver of the condition rather that a result of it.

When mice with an Alzheimer's-like condition were treated by focusing on immune cells related to the inflammation, the progression of the disease was stopped.

Understand: This is not a prevention or a cure, it's a treatment that if it comes to fruition could severely retard or even halt the progression of the disease. It also needs to be noted that it's too soon for celebrations.

But it's not too soon to move to developing medications based on these discoveries, marking this as one of the most hopeful discoveries about Alzheimer's in over a decade.

Another health story was reported progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

With Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce the insulin the body needs, as opposed to Type 2 diabetes, where the body does produce insulin but can't use it properly.

Researchers have worked on a treatment involving transplanting insulin-producing cells into the patient's body, so the body can produce its own insulin. This works well - except for the fact that the body's immune system sees those cells as invaders and destroys them.

Now, researchers are trying what they call an "invisibility cloak" to keep the immune system from seeing the implanted cells as foreign bodies. In tests, this has worked in mice for nearly six months. That has lead to optimism that an improved "cloak" combined with transplanted insulin-producing cells could, within the foreseeable future, effectively cure Type 1 diabetes.

The third health and science story was progress against the Guinea worm, a parasite found mostly in Africa that rarely kills its victims but leaves them in debilitating pain.

In 1986, the Carter Center began a campaign to end the affliction. At that time, the number of people affected was around 3.5 million.

By 2012, the number of cases was down to 1100. In 2015, that number was down to 22 - and in the first half of 2016, the number of confirmed cases was two. From 3.5 million to two in 30 years.

The Guinea worm is on the verge of being only the second disease after smallpox and the first parasitic disease to be eliminated from the human population.

On a more immediate and more obviously political issue, there was the Good News that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, is dead or at minimum comatose.

There were also a number of scattered victories, too many to go through, victories legislative, judicial, and by ballot initiative, on matters like voting rights, gun control, privacy, the minimum wage, there was even a win for unions at the Supreme Court. Even where the sky seems darkest, there were a few breaks in the clouds.

But what I suspect many among us would consider the Good News of the Year would be the - again at least temporary - victory achieved by the courage, determination, faithfulness, and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness of the water protectors at Standing Rock.

I didn't devote as much time to that as I should have, partly due to my own shortcomings involving getting caught up in week-to-week events rather than following an on-going story and partly due to a sense that the story was being told well enough elsewhere.

But surely it was one of the top news stories of the year, and its true value, at least in my mind, lay not in the story itself, not just in the events themselves and not even in the success in at least delaying and perhaps killing the DAPL, but in the movement that made it a story, a movement that showed that the passion for Native American rights is still there, the passion for the environment is still there, the passion about global warming is still there, and most importantly, a passion for justice that can still drive people into the streets in large numbers for the long term is still there, a passion that showed again that people power can face down the massed might of the state.

Despite all that, Standing Rock is not my choice for Good News of the Year for 2016. Understand this, as is true of all the awards, is a personal decision, related to how I reacted to the news.

I'm often struck by how insular we are, how narrow our American worldview is, how little we know about the world around us, how unaware we are of events that do not, as far as we think, affect us more or less directly. So when I myself become aware of such a case, ruing my own ignorance I tend to feel it more strongly.

So my choice for Good News of the Year, 2016, is the peace settlement reached between the government of Colombia and the rebel group known as FARC - in English, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - putting, if all goes well, an end to a civil war that has been going on for something like 52 years. Over a quarter of a million people have been killed, I don't know how many more wounded, somewhere between 5 and 8 million driven from their homes. And now it may be ending. And how can that not be Good News.

Especially because it almost wasn't: The deal was announced in August but nearly fell apart when a national plebiscite on October 2 narrowly rejected the pact by a margin of 0.4%.

But a quickly renegotiated deal between the government and FARC was passed by the Colombian Congress in early December, putting things back on track - at least hopefully.

There are still potential snags: For one big one, the failure of the plebiscite, which had been widely expected to pass easily, threw a monkey wrench into planning for the demobilization of FARC. Originally, some 16,000 FARC fighters were to turn in their weapons by December 31 but because of the lack of government-built infrastructure at the UN-monitored camps where that is supposed to happen, which was caused by the delay, the deadline has been pushed back to January 10.

But progress is being made on that front, along with legislative issues such as the passing of an amnesty law, which was accomplished just three days before the deadline for action.

At the same time, there is another rebel group in Colombia. It's the ELN, or in English the National Liberation Army.

ELN, which is much smaller than FARC, having an estimated 1300 fighters as compared to FARC's 16,000-20,000, is now in the early stages of having peace talks with the government.

In March, both sides agreed to talks to start in October, but that broke down when the rebels failed to release a hostage. However, a fresh attempt at talks is to take place in Ecuador later this month.

All of which means that there are still hills to climb, particularly to overcome the mental scars of decades of war - but just a year ago those hills looked like mountains. Which makes the prospect of the end of 50 years of civil war in Colombia my choice for Good News of the Year, 2016.

What's Left #8

What's Left
for the week of January 5-11, 2017

This week:

Good News: support for the death penalty continues to decline
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/28/u-s-ends-year-with-fewest-executions-since-1991/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/

Good News: Americans support tougher environmental laws
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/14/most-americans-favor-stricter-environmental-laws-and-regulations/

Good News: public support for transgender rights
http://www.pewforum.org/2016/09/28/3-public-split-over-bathroom-use-by-transgender-people/

Good News: Obama signs law to include non-believers in protections against religious persecution
http://www.snopes.com/2016/12/21/obama-signs-law-protecting-atheists/
https://americanhumanist.org/
https://americanhumanist.org/featured/international-religious-freedom-bill-heads-president-includes-language-protect-humanists-nontheists/

Good News: 120 million acres of federal waters protected from fossil fuel exploration
http://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/12/20/obama-bans-new-oil-gas-drilling-off-alaska-part-of-atlantic-co/21632127/

Good News of the Year, 2016: peace settlement in Colombia
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2341-good-news-potential-breakthrough.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2361-good-news-progress-on-cure-for.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2342-good-news-parasitic-disease-on.html
http://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-the-last-days-of-guinea-worm/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/32-good-news-tpp-is-dead.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/51-good-news-victory-at-standing-rock.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/44-outrage-of-week-standing-rock.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/08/2587-colombia-and-farc-sign-peace-deal.html
https://thecitypaperbogota.com/news/no-wins-colombians-narrowly-rejects-peace-accord-with-farc/14639
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/53-good-news-peace-settlement-in.html
http://colombiareports.com/peace-vote-delayed-farc-demobilization-colombias-peace-commissioner/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/29/colombia-approves-amnesty-deal-for-thousands-of-farc-rebels
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-congress-approves-amnesty-law-3-days-farc-demobilization-deadline/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-35929399
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37677853
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38486897
https://www.yahoo.com/news/colombias-war-traumas-leave-deep-mental-scars-060028256.html

RIPs of 2016
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2335-rip-john-trudell.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2345-rip-david-bowie.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2352-rip-alan-rickman.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2353-rip-glenn-frey.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/02/2379-rip-paul-kantner-and-signe-toly.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2394-rip-al-jazeera-america.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2417-rips-keith-emerson-and-ben.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2434-rip-patty-duke.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/05/2469-rip-dan-berrigan.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/09/2604-rip-vin-scully-sets-retirement-date.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/27-rip-john-zacherley.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/11/38-rip-leonard-cohen.html

Clown of the Year Award 2016, Basic Stupid Category: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2336-clown-award-right-wing-troll.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2056-clown-award-immigration-judge-jack.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/12/57-clown-award-christina-alesci-of-cnn.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2435-clown-award-idaho-gov-butch-otter.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2354-clown-award-sc-gov-nikki-haley.html

Clown of the Year Award 2016, Total Jackassery Category: GOPper Rep. Steve King
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/03/2395-clown-award-right-wing-attorney.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2445-clown-award-florida-gov-rick-scott.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/01/2344-clown-award-clown-award-new.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/07/2544-clown-award-rep-steve-king.html

254.5 - The world in numbers

The world in numbers

Finally for this week, we'll take a quick tour around the world using numbers.

The first number is 50,000. That is the number of people who have been fired or suspended from their jobs in Turkey in wake of last week's failed coup in what now has every sign of being a combination purge and witch-hunt intended to suppress any dissent to the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. More than 9400 people have been arrested. Amnesty International has called it "a crackdown of exceptional proportions."

Turkey had stood as the proof that a nation could be both Muslim and democratic, but in recent times there had been concern that Erdogan and his allies in the national legislature had been pushing the nation in an Islamist - by which I mean here a theocratic - direction. In the wake of the failed coup, Erdogan has taken steps to further centralize his power, intensifying that concern.

The next number is 30. That is the number of years for which the British parliament voted to renew the country's Trident program, Trident being a submarine-launched nuclear missile. Trident program is, that is, Britain's nuclear weapons program.

According to new prime minister Theresa May, apparently out to prove she is as Margaret Thatcher as can be, abandoning weapons of mass destruction would be "an act of gross irresponsibility" while she accused critics of the program of being "the first to defend the country's enemies."

The approval for extending the program came despite the fact that the government's own "National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review" found, quoting, "no direct threat to the UK or its vital interests from states developing weapons of mass destruction" - which means, put another way, there is no basis for the claim that Trident is needed to "defend" Great Britain.

The renewal passed handily, 472-117, but beyond absolutely dreaming of a time when 20% of the US Congress would vote to shut down our nuclear weapons programs, I do wonder how many of the "ayes" were based on the attitude expressed by UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon, who said he hoped the vote would somehow prove in the wake of the Brexit vote that the UK is still a player.

Because, it still seems, being able to commit mass murder is how you show you count as a nation.

Next up is the number "less than 9." According to Oxfam, that is the percentage of the world's refugees being hosted by the world's six richest nations combined - and of those six, one hosts a third of their combined total. Those six - the US, China, Japan, Germany, the UK, and France - together account for nearly 57% of the world's GDP.

By contrast, the six nations - Jordan, Turkey, the Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, Lebanon, and South Africa - that host more than half of the world's 24.5 million refugees and asylum seekers account for less than 2% of the world's GDP.

Those with the most are doing the least; those with the least are struggling to do what they can. Sadly, not an unusual situation.

As a quick footnote, these figures do not include people who have been driven from their homes by violence, war, and human rights violations but who have not left their country and so are not counted as refugees but as "internally displaced persons." Include those people and the number of displaced persons rises from 24.5 million to over 65 million, the highest total that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has ever recorded.

The next number is 8. That is how many of the nine primary uses for which medical marijuana is recommended for which prescriptions for corporate-produced drugs have declined in states with medical marijuana laws.

This is based on a detailed study of drug prescriptions over the period 2010-2013 which examined the difference between the annual number of prescriptions per doctor in each category of use in states with and without medical marijuana laws. Thus, for example, they found that a typical doctor in a state with medical marijuana issued nearly 1900 fewer prescriptions for pain killers each year than did doctors in states without medical marijuana.

And so on down the line: Fewer prescriptions per year for anxiety, nausea, psychosis, seizures, sleep disorders, depression, and spasticity, which is uncontrolled muscle stiffness or spasms and is often associated with conditions such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis. The only exception was glaucoma, for which prescriptions per doctor rose in states with medical marijuana.

To check their results, the researchers looked at prescriptions for other conditions, ones for which medical marijuana is not recommended, specifically, blood thinners, anti-viral drugs, and antibiotics. They found no difference between medical marijuana states and others, confirming that it was the medical marijuana laws, not something else, that made the difference.

Want to know why Big Pharma is fighting against medical marijuana? The answer is in the numbers: Medical marijuana is cutting into their profits.

Next comes 63. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, that is the percentage of Americans who hold that race relations in the US are generally bad, with a majority of respondents saying they are getting worse.

The good news, if you can call it that, hidden in the bad is that the increase from 48 percent found in a Pew Research survey this spring was largely driven by white Republicans and white independents who had resisted seeing racial discrimination as a problem but now have been forced to acknowledge it.

Finally, 0.0067, or if you prefer 1/150, or 2/3 of 1 percent. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a company that invests in renewable energy, that is how much solar power per unit of output cost in 2015 as compared to what it cost in 1975. Meanwhile, the number of solar installations is now 115,000 times what it was then.

The company predicts that even as coal and natural gas prices stay low, within 15 years wind and solar will be cheaper in many countries and cheaper in most of the world not long after. In some places where solar energy is most easily available, it is already clearly cheaper: Dubai has received a bid to supply 800 megawatts of solar power at a rate equivalent to "US 2.99 cents per kilowatt hour." By comparison, the average residential price for electricity in the United States is 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

It's not just the Middle East, either: Austin, Texas, and Palo Alto, California, have signed contracts for solar-generated power at under 4 cents/kwh. Even if you take out the federal investment tax credit, it still comes out at 7 cents/kwh, still well below that national average of 12 cents/kwh.

Unfortunately, this still means that we are truly up against it when it comes to global warming because the timelines involved reach out to 2040, by which time we may already be irrevocably committed to blasting through the 2 degrees Celsius target if in fact we have not already done so - but at least it offers some hope and a promise that the very worst can be headed off.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/20/europe/turkey-failed-coup-attempt/index.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/18/erdogans-appeal-to-islamists-in-wake-failed-coup-spurs-fears-for-turkeys-future.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/british-parliament-set-to-renew-nuclear-weapons-program-for-three-more-decades/2016/07/18/5892583e-4c5e-11e6-bf27-405106836f96_story.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36820416
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trident-vote-nuclear-weapons-theresa-may-a7142726.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/world/oxfam-richest-countries-refugees/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/refugees-us-china-japan-germany-france-uk-host-9-per-cent
http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends-2015.html
http://www.unhcr.org/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/one-striking-chart-shows-why-pharma-companies-are-fighting-legal-marijuana/?wpisrc=nl_p1wemost-partner-1&wpmm=1
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/35/7/1230
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/pain-management-spasticity
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/more-than-6-in-10-adults-say-us-race-relations-are-generally-bad-poll-indicates/2016/07/16/66548936-4aa8-11e6-90a8-fb84201e0645_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/18/3797907/solar-energy-miracle-charts/
http://www.bloomberg.com/company/new-energy-outlook/#findings

248.2 - Not Good News: "End of the road" for antibiotics in sight?

Not Good News: "End of the road" for antibiotics in sight?

So to keep things in balance, we have some not good news.

Something that doctors and other medical professionals have been fearing for some time has happened: a so-called "superbug," this one resistant to antibiotics of last resort, has been found in the US.

It was only a matter of time, of course, before such bacteria were found here since they had already been found in China, Europe, and elsewhere.

Strains of bacteria gain resistance to antibiotics in one of two ways: One is by plain old evolution, where due to genetic variations some are not killed by some antibiotic and so go on to reproduce until they are the dominant form of that particular bacteria and that antibiotic no longer works on them.

That, however, doesn't mean other that antibiotics don't work and such resistance can only be carried within that bacteria's particular strain. But what can happen is that this same family of bacteria, through that same process of evolution, can acquire resistance to the next antibiotic used to treat it and so over time you can have families of bacteria resistant to a number of different antibiotics.

The other means for transfer resistance is through a plasmid, a small piece of DNA carrying a gene for resistance to some antibiotic. Plasmids can make copies of themselves and transfer their genes not only to other bacteria in the same family but can "jump" to other families of bacteria, in essence "infecting" them with their DNA and so giving them resistance to that antibiotic without the need for evolution.

The superbug just found, a type of E. coli, has this type of gene. It is resistant to a drug called colistin, which is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, including a family of bacteria known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae - CRE, for short - which health officials have dubbed "nightmare bacteria" because in some instances, these infections have mortality rates of up to 50 percent; half of patients who become infected die.

The particular strain of E. coli involved here is still treatable by other antibiotics, but the fear is that its resistance to colistin will be spread via plasmids to other bacteria - which could result in there being an entire family of dangerous diseases for which there is no effective treatment.

I don't want to get too long or complex, so let me cut to the chase. What does all this mean, in the final analysis? It means, in the words of Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), "The end of the road isn't very far away for antibiotics."

"I've been there for TB patients," he said. "I've cared for patients for whom there are no drugs left. It is a feeling of such horror and helplessness. This is not where we need to be."

But it is where we are headed.

And dammit, we have - as is so true in so many ways - we have done this to ourselves. According to a new and major study, nearly a third of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are not needed. Most of those are for conditions such as colds, sore throats, bronchitis, flu, and other illnesses which are caused by viruses, not bacteria - so antibiotics don't even work on them. But what such over-prescribing does do is help the bacteria develop resistance.

What's more, human use pales in comparison to the massive amounts of antibiotics routinely given to livestock both here and abroad for the sake of agribusiness profits.

We are headed for a situation where within a couple of decades, even sooner, people will be dying of diseases which are now curable, dying not because they lack effective access to medicine but because there is no effective medicine for them to access.

And it will be our own damn fault.

Sources cited in links:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241
http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cre/index.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/27/1531441/-First-superbug-resistant-to-a-last-resort-antibiotic-confirmed-in-US
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/1-in-3-antibiotics-prescribed-in-u-s-are-unnecessary-major-study-finds/?tid=a_inl
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241

Left Side of the Aisle #248

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of June 2-8, 2016

This week:

Good News: Mr. Death loses a couple
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/05/john_roberts_s_court_sees_racism_in_foster_v_chatman.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/im-not-saying-the-supreme-court-is-passive-aggressive-but/484007/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/05/supreme-court-foster-chatman
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/05/31/supreme_court_makes_death_penalty_less_inhumane_in_lynch_v_arizona.html
http://www.npr.org/2016/05/31/480181285/amid-strong-dissent-supreme-court-weighs-in-on-2-death-penalty-cases

Not Good News: "End of the road" for antibiotics in sight?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/26/the-superbug-that-doctors-have-been-dreading-just-reached-the-u-s/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_p1most-partner-1
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241
http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/organisms/cre/index.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/27/1531441/-First-superbug-resistant-to-a-last-resort-antibiotic-confirmed-in-US
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/1-in-3-antibiotics-prescribed-in-u-s-are-unnecessary-major-study-finds/?tid=a_inl
http://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2016/05/26/dreaded-superbug-found-for-first-time-in-u-s-patient-a-physicians-perspective/#752e7a786241

Hero Award: Rep. Zoe Lofgren
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Lofgren
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/zoe-lofgren-witness-bigot-transgender

Ya Gotta Just Laugh: what TheRump wants in a VP
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/26/1531171/-Trump-adviser-Trump-wants-a-white-male-vice-president-to-do-all-the-presidenting-he-won-t-do

"Disqualifying" change by "disqualifying" Bernie Sanders
http://fivethirtyeight.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/06/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-democrats-unity/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2016/04/2455-what-now-for-progressives.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/after-new-york-win-clinton-campaign-says-bernie-sanders-attacks-help-republicans
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/glenn-thrush-clinton-aide-fck-bernie
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ivonaiacob/2016/05/27/top-donors-hillary-clinton-superpac/#48d875222740
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-snap-htmlstory.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-abramson/clinton-must-release-wall_b_9857934.html?m=false
http://www.thehill.com/opinion/markos-moulitsas/281114-moulistas-sanderss-socialist-coup
http://www.xojane.com/issues/bernie-vs-hillary-is-only-about-sexism
http://heavy.com/news/2016/05/bernie-sanders-supporters-not-violent-nevada-democratic-convention-what-happened-shots-fired-at-campaign-office/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea-nRWrEDTs

Footnote: media ignore poverty in debates
http://fair.org/home/in-nine-democratic-debates-not-a-single-question-about-poverty/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/23/youre-more-likely-to-be-fatally-crushed-by-furniture-than-killed-by-a-terrorist/

236.1 - Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes

Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes

According to a study newly published in the journal Nature, researchers at MIT and Harvard believe they are close to developing a treatment that would effectively cure Type 1 diabetes, sometimes if rather inaccurately called juvenile onset diabetes.

With Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce the insulin necessary to get the glucose in your bloodstream into the cells where it is used for energy. This is as opposed to Type 2 diabetes, where the body does produce insulin but can't use it properly so there is never enough to prevent a buildup of glucose in the blood.

For some time, researchers have worked on a treatment involving transplanting insulin-producing cells into the patient's body, which seems to control blood sugar better than drugs or injections and in 2014 a method was developed to mass produce these cells. The problem is these cells can be destroyed by the immune system, rendering them useless.

The new study tested what it dubbed an "invisibility cloak" that in effect prevented the immune system from seeing the implanted cells as foreign bodies. The researchers were able to keep the immune systems in mice from attacking the transplanted cells for nearly six months.

Obviously more work needs to be done, but the researchers expressed optimism that a combination of an improved "cloak" plus the existing ability to transplant insulin-producing cells could, they said, effectively cure Type 1 diabetes.

And wouldn't that be good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Left Side of the Aisle #236

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of February 4-10, 2015

This week:

Good News: progress on a cure for Type 1 diabetes
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Good News: SCOTUS rejects corporate attempt to short-circuit class action suits
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/26/scientists-say-they-are-close-to-finding-a-cure-for-type-1-diabe/21303162/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-1/
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/

Good News: Texas grand jury indicts makers of doctored videos attacking Planned Parenthood
http://www.care2.com/causes/activists-behind-doctored-planned-parenthood-videos-indicted.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/25/1475022/-Breaking-Indictments-for-Planned-Parenthood-Anti-abortion-Activists
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/planned-parenthood-lawsuit-videos-center-medical-progress_us_5697ead3e4b0b4eb759d9a61

A rare (and potentially my only) commentary on the Democratic primaries
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/02/hillary-clinton-won-6-iowa-precincts-thanks-to-coin-tosses/21306679/
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/10/27/hillary-clinton-surges-in-latest-iowa-poll/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/2/1478477/-NYT-Lede-Iowa-results-deeply-unnerving-to-Clintons-Sanders-is-right-to-call-it-a-virtual-tie
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/hillary-bernie-math#.iy2bv2P2X
http://www.vocativ.com/news/277988/clinton-sanders-omalley-iowaflint
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/2/1478960/-Clinton-last-night-I-m-a-progressive-Clinton-today-We-ve-got-to-get-back-to-the-middle
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41754/chris-matthews-hillary-clinton-interview/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2011/04/most-important-fact-about-libya-is-not.html
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33299-clinton-syria-fact-check-safe-zones-ground-troops
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29052-five-reasons-no-progressive-should-support-hillary-clinton
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-clinton-calls-no-fly-zones-syria
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/17/diplomacy-works-peace-groups-hail-iran-deal-clinton-talks-hawk
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/2014/04/25/hillary-clinton-edward-snowdens-leaks-helped-terrorists
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34629-chamber-of-commerce-lobbyist-tom-donohue-clinton-will-support-tpp-after-election
http://grist.org/climate-energy/where-does-hillary-clinton-stand-on-fracking/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/22/hillary-clinton-opposes-keystone-xl-pipeline
http://grist.org/climate-energy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hillary-clinton-and-climate-change/
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/my-day-bernie-sanders-and-hillary-clinton-two-iowa-rallies-explain-why-hillary-may-be

234.2 - Good News: parasitic disease on the verge of being eliminated

Good News: parasitic disease on the verge of being eliminated

About three and a-half years ago, way back in May 2012, I wrote something about the Guinea worm.

The Guinea worm is a parasite which humans contract by drinking infested water. In a simplified version of its life-cycle, once ingested the worm burrows through the intestinal wall and slowly moves through the subcutaneous tissues until about a year later it exits the body through a swollen, painful blister, usually on the lower leg or foot. By this time the female worm has grown from a few millimeters to as much as a meter - that's about three feet - long and has hundreds of thousands of eggs.

Trying to ease the pain of the blister, the infected person puts their feet in the water - where the eggs are released, to be ingested by the next victim.

The pain involved with the blister, which is described as feeling like the area around the worm is on fire, can be crippling.

The way to remove the worm is to catch it as it starts to exit the wound and then wind it around a stick as you slowly pull it out - slowly in this case meaning very slowly: The process can take weeks to complete, leaving people to live through months of debilitating pain, making it impossible for them to tend to cows or harvest crops or otherwise provide for themselves or their families.

It's an ancient affliction. In fact, some suggest the "fiery serpents" of Numbers 21:6-9 were guinea worms. On the other hand, 21:6 says "much people of Israel died" from these "serpents" and actual deaths from Guinea worm are rare, so I tend to doubt it.

However, there is a clear reference to it in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to c. 1550 BCE - interestingly just 100 years earlier than Numbers 21.

In 1986, the Carter Center, founded by Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, began a campaign to end the affliction through education about the worm's behavior and improving the availability of means to filter water so that new people don't get infected.

At that time, in 1986, the number of people affected was around 3.5 million.

In that 2012 post, I was able to report that by 2011, the number of cases was down to 1100.

Okay, so why I bring all this up now? Because now I can report that the Carter Center says that the number of cases of Guinea worm in 2015 was just 22 - a reduction, quite literally, of 99.999 percent since 1986.

There's still much to do; anyone involved knows that in any such effort the last few cases are the most difficult to get rid of. But the fact remains that the Guinea worm is on the brink of being the second disease after smallpox and the first parasitic disease to be eliminated from the human population. And there is no vaccine and no drug treatment for the condition - this has all been accomplished through improving the knowledge and the health environment of the people affected.

How's that for feel-good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/05/left-side-of-aisle-55-part-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Numbers-Chapter-21/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebers_Papyrus
http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html
http://www.voanews.com/content/end-of-guinea-worm-in-sight-for-carter-center/2977461.html

234.1 - Good News: potential breakthrough in treatment of Alzheimer's

Good News: potential breakthrough in treatment of Alzheimer's

We start this week with two bits of health-related Good News.

The first is connected to the fact that researchers have known for some time that neuroimflammation - inflammation of the brain - is associated with Alzheimer's.

New research just published in the journal Brain strongly suggests that such inflammation - which can arise from an overactive immune system - is not a result of Alzheimer's as much as it is a driver of the disease.

The brains of people with Alzheimer's were found to have higher levels of microglia, or immune cells, which suggested brain inflammation, and the number of such cells increased as the disease progressed. But in an experiment, mice with an Alzheimer's-like condition were given an inhibitor to keep such microglia from multiplying - and the progression of the disease stalled once the numbers of microglia stabilized.

Dr. Diego Gomez-Nicola, lead author of the study, said the results are

as close to evidence as we can get that this particular pathway is active in the development of Alzheimer's disease

and that it's "time to progress to the clinical setup," that is, to developing medications.

It's obviously too early for celebrations and remember, assuming an appropriate medication can be found, this is neither a vaccine nor a cure but only a way to prevent the disease from progressing. But in individuals and especially families dealing with someone with Alzheimer's, that "only" is a very big thing.

And this is still one of the most exciting and even hopeful discoveries about Alzheimer's in over a decade. And that makes it good news.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brain-inflammation-alzheimers_568fff10e4b0a2b6fb6fe1c4

Left Side of the Aisle #234

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of January 14-20, 2015

This week:

Good News: potential breakthrough in treatment of Alzheimer's
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brain-inflammation-alzheimers_568fff10e4b0a2b6fb6fe1c4

Good News: parasitic disease on the verge of being eliminated
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/05/left-side-of-aisle-55-part-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Numbers-Chapter-21/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebers_Papyrus
http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/case-totals.html
http://www.voanews.com/content/end-of-guinea-worm-in-sight-for-carter-center/2977461.html

Good News: Iran deal advances
http://news.yahoo.com/implementation-iran-nuclear-deal-days-away-kerry-193148623.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1108/Imminent-Iran-nuclear-threat-A-timeline-of-warnings-since-1979/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/goody-goody.html
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-removes-core-arak-heavy-water-nuclear-reactor-171943841.html
http://www.albawaba.com/news/iran’s-arak-nuclear-reactor-begins-process-‘modernization-792190
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-arak-reactor.html
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-sell-40-tonnes-heavy-water-us-official-145525336.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-elsner/opponents-of-iran-nuclear_b_8962566.html

Clown Award: NH State Rep. Josh Moore
http://www.care2.com/causes/meet-the-republicans-who-want-to-legislate-your-nipples.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/al-baldasaro-ray-buckley-twitter-war-guns_n_2433108.html
http://www.londonderrynh.net/2011/10/local-state-rep-catches-national-attention/43162

RIP: David Bowie
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/01/11/david-bowie-dies-at-69-after-battle-with-cancer/21295155/
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/david_bowie_wows_broadway_as_the_elephant_man
http://www.people.com/article/david-bowie-bing-crosby-christmas-little-drummer-boy

EPA board challenges EPA report on fracking
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/05/some-states-confirm-water-pollution-from-drilling/4328859/
https://ecowatch.com/2016/01/08/epa-call-foul-fracking-study/
http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/24/usgs-fracking-earthquakes/
http://ecowatch.com/2015/04/23/oklahoma-earthquakes-caused-by-fracking/

Outrage of the Week: protecting cops in the Eric Garner killing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-garner/failure-to-supervise-all-the-way-to-the-top_b_8952058.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/12/1857-eric-garner-and-untouchable-cops.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nypd-sergeant-in-eric-garners-death-faces-departmental-charges_5692a7eae4b0cad15e65334e

Lyrics: good and bad

225.3 - Footnote: Shkreli is far from the first to price-gouge on medicine

Footnote: Shkreli is far from the first to price-gouge on medicine

As a footnote to the update, we should all bear in mind the important fact that this is not the first case of pharmaceutical price-gouging and Shkreli is hardly alone.

For one example, in 2011, a company called K-V Pharmaceuticals acquired a seven-year license to be the sole provider of Makena, a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone, which has been successful in preventing premature births in women who had a history of them. At the time, the drug cost $10-$20 per dose; with a course of treatment typically being about 20 doses, the total cost was $200-400. After buying the license, K-V increased the price to $1500 a dose, making the cost of the average treatment go from maybe $400 to $30,000.

For another, around the same time that Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to pyrimethamine, Rodelis Therapeutics purchased the rights to cycloserine, used to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis - and immediately raised the price from $500 for 30 capsules to $10,800.

Pyrimethamine itself had been on the price escalator before Shkreli came along. GlaxoSmithKline, the original makers, sold the US marketing rights to CorePharma in 2010. At that time, the medication cost about a dollar a pill. In one year, sales of pyrimethamine jumped from $667,000 in 2010 to $6.3 million in 2011, even as the number of prescriptions remained about the same. By 2014, sales were up to $9.9 million even as the number of prescriptions dropped by nearly 30%.

Remember, that was before Shkreli entered the picture.

Indeed, the drug industry as a whole is a good example of what's wrong with trusting The Market (pbui) to deal with human needs. If you need a medicine, you need a medicine, and if there is only one or only a handful of sources of that medicine, then you can be told in essence, "your money or your life." That's why the profit margins of the world's 10 largest drug companies ranged from a low of 10% - still more than the average in most industrial sectors - to a jaw-dropping 43%.

And while those companies would insist that this was all just for the sake of developing even newer, better and better in every way drugs, the fact is that those companies spent more - in some cases far more, even double the amount - on sales and marketing as they did on research.

It's just another example - yet another example - of how the pursuit of profit is incompatable with justice.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.care2.com/causes/prescription-drug-price-controversy-highlights-whats-wrong-with-big-pharma.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/big-price-increase-for-tb-drug-is-rescinded.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223

225.2 - Update: Martin Shkreli is meeting reality

Update: Martin Shkreli is meeting reality

A couple of weeks ago I went after Martin Shkreli, the smirking little prig of a man who bought the rights to a generic drug called pyrimethamine, marketed under the trade name Daraprim. It's used to treat toxoplasmosis, which is a parasitic infection, and is useful against malaria. He immediately jacked up the already-inflated price of $13.50 a pill to a mind-wrecking $750 a pill.

Okay, you probably remember that. Here are two updates you may not have caught.

First, Turing Pharmaceuticals, Shkreli's company, is being investigated by the New York state attorney general's office for possible violation of antitrust laws. The issue is that Daraprim has been removed from distribution by the usual wholesalers and by most retail drugstores. Even hospitals have to use a special phone number to order it. By restricting access, Turing makes it harder for any potential competitor to obtain the samples they need to do the testing required to show their product is the same.

Lending credence to the charge is the fact that at his previous company, Retrophin, Shkreli pulled the same sort of crap as he did with pyrimethamine - but at that time talked openly about using restricted distribution to deny samples to generics manufacturers. And if you restrict access deliberately to prevent competition, that is illegal restraint of trade.

The other thing? Smirking little prig Martin Shkreli, who justified jacking up the prices of needed medicine on the grounds that "I'm a capitalist," may be about to find that The Market giveth and The Market taketh away.

Imprimis is a specialist pharmaceutical company, which means that it develops "novel compound pharmaceuticals" - drugs made from combinations of other drugs that can be used "off label," that is, not for their original intended use, to treat specific illnesses.

Well, Imprimis has announced that it has come up with a compound drug that does the same job as Daraprim without some of the side effects. The kicker is the price: A bottle of 100 pills is to go for $99 - just 99 cents a pill.

No word yet on whether or not little prig Martin Shkreli is still smirking.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/new-york-attorney-general-examining-if-turing-restricted-drug-access.html?_r=1
http://www.care2.com/causes/a-big-pharma-company-just-did-something-that-may-shock-you.html
http://www.cbs8.com/story/30327142/san-diego-based-drug-company-offers-low-cost-version-of-price-hiked-turing-drug

Left Side of the Aisle #225

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of October 29 - November 4, 2015

This week:

Good News: DOJ gets slapped down on prosecutions of medical marijuana dispensaries
http://norml.org/legal/medical-marijuana-2
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2015/10/23/gallup-marijuana-legalization-support-holds-at-58-percent
http://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml
http://www.scribd.com/doc/285976410/MAMM-vs-USDOJ-Charles-R-Breyer-ruling-to-lift-injunction
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/20/federal-court-tells-the-dea-to-stop-harassing-medical-marijuana-providers/

Update: Martin Shkreli is meeting reallity
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/new-york-attorney-general-examining-if-turing-restricted-drug-access.html?_r=1
http://www.care2.com/causes/a-big-pharma-company-just-did-something-that-may-shock-you.html
http://www.cbs8.com/story/30327142/san-diego-based-drug-company-offers-low-cost-version-of-price-hiked-turing-drug

Footnote: Shkreli is far from the first to price-gouge on medicine
http://www.care2.com/causes/prescription-drug-price-controversy-highlights-whats-wrong-with-big-pharma.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/business/big-price-increase-for-tb-drug-is-rescinded.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223

Update: Gravity Systems, the company that raised its minimum wage to $70,000, is doing just fine
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/14/1377642/-Washington-employer-shocks-employees-by-raising-his-company-s-minimum-wage-to-70-000-per-year
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/26/1439456/-Update-on-the-CEO-who-made-70-000-minimum-wage-for-all-his-employees

The little Thing: House GOP admits Obamacare is good for the federal budget
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/10/23/gop-bill-would-gut-health-law-halt-planned-parenthood-money/21253180/

The good news is who Obama tapped to fill a vacancy on the SEC; the bad and revealing news is who he wanted to pick
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/sec-poised-to-gut-corporate-disclosure-in-financial-statements.html
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/20/obama-names-lisa-fairfax-to-sec-a-vote-for-wall-street-reform/
https://theintercept.com/2015/06/15/sec-pick-specializes-in-helping-corporations-hide-political-expenditures/

Outrage of the Week: our expanding lovely little war in Iraq and Syria
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/politics/iraq-syria-mideast-hearing/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2087-our-lovely-little-war-new-us-base.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2076-obamas-lovely-little-war-grows.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-weighs-moving-us-troops-closer-to-front-lines-in-syria-iraq/2015/10/26/4ae2f36c-7bec-11e5-b575-d8dcfedb4ea1_story.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/master-sergeant-joshua-wheeler-idd-commando-killed-isis-hostage-rescue-n449876
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/carter-us-to-conduct-more-ground-raids-in-iraq-syria/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-kills-islamic-state-leader-in-syria-raid/2015/05/16/31280b26-fbca-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/23/politics/iraq-combat-hostage-raid-wheeler-/

A better way to deal with ISIS

219.2 - To Laugh, Not Weep: FDA approves Oxycontin for children as young as 11

To Laugh, Not Weep: FDA approves Oxycontin for children as young as 11

This is an occasional feature, nicknamed "To Laugh, Not Weep," where we look to embrace the absurdity of something just to avoid the ugliness of it.

The evidence is indisputable. Marijuana, or more precisely cannabis, is a beneficial plant with a range of demonstrated and potential medical applications, including treatment of severe pain. While it, like any other chemical substance, can have some undesired effects, there is no evidence to date that anyone has ever died from it.

The evidence is also indisputable. OxyContin and other opioid-based prescription drugs have a small range of uses from pain management to cough relief. There are many harmful side effects. They are highly addictive, kill thousands of people a year, and sicken tens of thousands more. Opioids have a place in medicine as they are used to treat severe pain. But they are incredibly dangerous.

In the US, 23 states and Washington, DC have legalized marijuana for medical use. However, in all but five of those states, it is nearly impossible to obtain. In the other 27 states, you can't legally get it at all.

On the other hand, narcs won’t kick down your door, shoot your dog, and throw you in prison if you have doctor-prescribed OxyContin, which is legal in all 50 states.

Here's one outcome: Tens of thousands of children suffer from epilepsy in this country. Of those tens of thousands, only a very small handful have access to medical marijuana, which has shown some benefits in reducing seizures. But if you want your child to start a regime of opioid drugs, you can: Last month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it has approved the use of OxyContin for children as young as 11.

Its use is to be highly regulated, but it still means that the federal government is allowing children as young as 11 to be given a highly-addictive, dangerous drug while denying them even the opportunity to find out if the non-addictive, far, far safer, alternative of medical marijuana would help them.

It is to laugh - so we don't weep.

[Special hanks to the linked article at AlterNet, from which this is largely taken.]

Sources cited in links:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/same-govt-locks-people-jail-cannabis-just-approved-oxycontin-young-children
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-approves-oxycontin-children-young-11-n409621

Left Side of the Aisle #219

Left Side of the Aislefor the week of September 10-16, 2015

This week:

Kim Davis and the religious right
http://time.com/4025308/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-release/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-orders-kim-davis-freed-kentucky-jail-n423541
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-emily-c-heath/religious-liberty-marriage-licence_b_7985894.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kentucky-clerk-asks-court-to-force-governor-to-let-her-deny-gay-marriages_55edc301e4b03784e27637ed
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/kim-davis-is-no-rosa-parks-213127
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherit_the_Wind_%28play%29
http://time.com/4023824/oregon-judge-gay-marriages-refusal/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

To Laugh, Not Weep: FDA approves Oxycontin for children as young as 11
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/same-govt-locks-people-jail-cannabis-just-approved-oxycontin-young-children
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-approves-oxycontin-children-young-11-n409621

Clown Award: David Brooks
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/opinion/the-anti-party-men-trump-carson-sanders-and-corbyn.html?ref=international&_r=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders
http://fair.org/home/does-your-candidate-support-workers-interests-david-brooks-thinks-you-have-a-psychological-problem/

Outrage of the Week: new Pentagon manual could allow for indefinite confinement of journalists
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-dod-manual-journalists_55dd6b14e4b0a40aa3acc576?cps=gravity_2425_-1752368580054525173&kvcommref=mostpopular
http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/images/law_war_manual15.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/11/pentagon-war-reporters-unprivileged-belligerents-spies

Say It With Numbers: "Black Lives Matter = warfare on law enforcement" is a lie
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/04/1418344/-American-police-are-300-more-likely-to-kill-themselves-than-be-shot-killed-by-someone-else?detail=email
https://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2014
https://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2015
http://www.tnonline.com/2013/oct/29/suicide-rate-higher-among-cops
http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/2012/02/10/cops-and-addiction/

216.5 - Good News: New vaccine highly effective against Ebola

Good News: New vaccine highly effective against Ebola

One last bit of good news for this week:

According to the World Health Organization, a vaccine against Ebola has proved to be 100 percent effective during trials conducted in Guinea and might be highly effective in protecting people against the virus. It could be, the WHO said, a "game-changer".

It's a single-dose vaccine called VSV-EBOV. It combined a fragment of the Ebola virus with another safer virus in order to train the immune system to beat Ebola. And it apparently works.

Trials began in March in Guinea, one of three West African nations hit by the Ebola outbreak; the others are Liberia and Sierra Leone. Over 4,000 people who had just recently been exposed to Ebola were vaccinated. After 10 days, not one of them was sick, a result called "remarkable" by medical experts, not only for the effectiveness of the result but for the fact that the entire process of developing the vaccine took less than a year.

So we may - and for the moment have to emphasize may - have beaten Ebola. And isn't that good news.

As a footnote, it's also a measure of what governments and yes, corporations - the vaccine was developed by Merck - can accomplish when they really want to.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/235347869