The most interesting person I've heard about in a while

The pharmaceutical companies call him a pirate with no respect for the law because he sells HIV medicine at a discount in Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_Hamied

I found out about him from this NPR story about how we might need to start importing his drugs to deal with the flu vaccine shortage.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120254536

But just remember, people, the key word in "swine flu" is "flu." If you're a non-immuno-compromised adult, it really is OK to get the flu every once in a while.

I'm always ahead of the trends

I've been a filthy bastard for years, but here is a great article from a year ago. I'd like to think it contains some info the soap companies don't want you to see.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/style/21iht-web-0221-shampoo.10274688.html

Our national eating disorder's latest manifestation

Attack of the killer oysters!

http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2009/10/louisiana_blasts_fda_plan_to_l.html

Louisiana blasts new FDA rule requiring oysters to be sterilized to prevent rare bacterial illness
By Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune
October 28, 2009, 6:51AM

Oysters are a staple at Drago's restaurant in Metairie.
At the small warehouse tucked away in the back side of the French Quarter, the shuckers at P&J Oyster Co. have arrived before daybreak for 133 years.

Their in-shell and shucked oysters have been on the menus of generations of restaurateurs, from oysters on the halfshell at Acme Oyster House and Casemento’s to the seafood gumbo at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse.

In less than two years, the tradition could become obsolete for seven months out of the year, based on newly announced oyster guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration.

In an effort to reduce cases of a rare, but potentially fatal, bacterial illness contracted from raw oysters, the FDA announced new rules this month that will require any oyster served from April through October to undergo a sterilization process before it can be sold in restaurants or on the market.

The rule will essentially eliminate raw oysters -- at least as Louisianans know them -- from restaurant menus for seven months of the year. Even oysters that will eventually be cooked during those months would have to go through the same cleansing process before being added to any dish, a move some say would undermine the culinary integrity of some of New Orleans’ most famous delicacies.

“It’s not only going to include raw oysters. You can’t fry oysters for a po-boy, you can’t put oysters in a gumbo and you can’t charbroil oysters unless they’re post-harvest processed,” said Tommy Cvitanovich, owner of Drago’s restaurant, a mainstay for oysters in the metro area. “That’s ludicrous.”
Than Nguyen shucks oysters at P&J Oysters in the French Quarter on Tuesday. New FDA regulations that could begin in 2011 would require that oysters, from March to November, go through an intense sanitation process before they could be served in restaurants or on the open market. The effects in Louisiana -- and nationwide -- will be tremendous, from oyster-loving consumers down to seafood dealers and fishers, industry representatives and state government officials say. Louisiana is by far the largest oyster-producing state in the country, responsible for more than a third of the oysters brought to market nationwide.

The vast majority of those oysters are sold out of state.

“You talk about an economic impact that keeps going and going,” said Al Sunseri, the general manager of P&J, which has operated at Rampart and Toulouse streets since 1876. “You’ll have a number of people that count of the Gulf states during those months that will no longer be able to provide product to their customers.”

Local industry representatives and state health officials are highly critical of the FDA plan, with one oyster processor, Mike Voisin, equating the new guidelines to a “nuclear bomb” on the industry.

Alan Levine, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said in a statement Tuesday that his agency has worked with the oyster industry for years to do biological tests and implement new guidelines requiring refrigeration of oysters less than five hours after they are harvested.

“What is particularly interesting is while the FDA seems focused on domestic oyster production, there is wide evidence that imported seafood is a far greater health threat, and there seems to be little movement by the FDA to get their arms around that problem,” Levine said in the statement.

Robert Barham, secretary of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, added in a joint statement, “The effect of the proposed ban would greatly impact the Gulf Coast oyster industry and threaten thousands of jobs here in Louisiana and all along the coast.”

The vibrio vulnificus disease, the target of the FDA initiative, affects about 30 individuals per year nationwide who eat raw oysters from Gulf Coast. About half of those who get the disease, which invades the bloodstream and can cause a severe fever and skin lesions, eventually die.

But those most at risk from vibrio are people who already have immune system disorders, such as AIDS, cancer, kidney disease, diabetes or alcohol abuse.

The oyster industry and FDA have been working for more than a decade to inform consumers who are most susceptible to the disease. But this month the FDA changed course, instead announcing that the industry would have to institute the new technology by 2011 to eliminate any risk from the disease during the months of April through October.

“We no longer believe that measures which reduce the hazard, but fall well short of eliminating it, such as improvements in refrigeration, are sufficient to meet the purpose of the regulation, given the severity of the hazard,” Michael Taylor, a senior adviser to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, told an industry group earlier this month.

The primary complaint from industry is that the infrastructure is simply not in place to comply with the FDA’s 2011 timetable.

The months of April through October, identified as the time of risk for the vibrio vulnificus disease, make up about 60 percent of the state’s oyster production, based on average harvests over the past 10 years. But the technology needed to comply, known as post-harvest processing, can currently handle only about 10 percent of the total production during those months.

The result could be oysters priced twice, even three times as much as they are now, according to industry estimates.

“The oyster community is made up of mom-and-pop operations that are not capital-intensive,” said Voisin, the owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, who owns one of the three plants currently equipped to sterilize oysters under the upcoming FDA guidelines. “It would create a huge need for capital investment, at a time when huge capital investments into mom and pops are not being made.”

While there are sterilization processes that would allow consumers to still eat oysters from the shell, the technology in some cases actually would pry open the oyster itself. So the freshly shucked oysters at taverns across the city, dredged from the reefs less than a day earlier, would disappear for most of the year.

We produce one-third of the oysters in the whole country, and 4 million people in Louisiana can’t eat them all,' says John Tesvich, a local oyster processor.C.J. Casamento, the owner of Casamento’s restaurant on Magazine Street, said many chefs have tried the sterilized oysters in the past but have stopped because the flavor isn’t the same. His restaurant is already closed from June through August, but the guidelines would cut into one of his peak seasons: Jazz Fest. “People who come down here to eat raw oysters wouldn’t be coming down here to eat these things,” Casamento said of the sterilized oysters. “If they try to implement this, it will destroy all the raw oyster restaurants in the city.”

Because the guidelines have only recently been announced, it’s possible that the state could issue separate guidelines for oysters sold within Louisiana. FDA controls interstate commerce, but not business within individual states.

But the demand for Louisiana oysters nationwide would still put a crimp on the state’s industry, which employs more than 3,500 residents and is worth more than $300 million.

“Most of our oysters go out of state,” said John Tesvich, an oyster processor who owns one of the other plants capable of processing sterilized oysters. “We produce one-third of the oysters in the whole country, and 4 million people in Louisiana can’t eat them all.”

Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3321.

Food Democracy Now

Dear Friends,

Speak up to stop Big Ag.

President Obama has found himself with some strange bedfellows lately.

While on the campaign trail in Iowa, Barack Obama boasted, “We’ll tell ConAgra that it’s not the Department of Agribusiness. We’re going to put the people’s interests ahead of the special interests.”1 Despite that promise, it seems that ConAgra’s friends at Monsanto and CropLife are still finding their way into the USDA.

Last month, President Obama nominated two “Big Ag” power brokers--Roger Beachy and Islam Siddiqui--to key agency positions, putting agribusiness executives in charge of our country's agricultural research and trade policy. Please join us in telling the President that this isn't the change we voted for. We don't want Big Ag running the show any more.

Siddiqui's confirmation hearing is set for next week. Please help us reach our goal of 50,000 signatures to make a real impact.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

Obama’s first agribusiness selection is Roger Beachy, to be head of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Beachy is the founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO. It may sound innocuous, but the Danforth Center is essentially the non-profit arm of GMO seed giant Monsanto; Monsanto’s CEO sits on its board, and the company provides considerable funding for the Center’s operations.2

As the head of the USDA’s new research arm, formerly known as the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CREES), Beachy is responsible for deciding how U.S. research dollars will be spent in agriculture.3 Translation: more research on biotech, less research on how to scale sustainable and organic agriculture.

Unfortunately, Beachy has already started work at the USDA, but the next nominee—Islam Siddiqui—still must be confirmed by the U.S.Senate. Siddiqui, the Vice President of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America, was recently nominated to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative.4 Amazingly, when Michele Obama planted her “organic” garden on the White House lawn, Siddiqui’s CropLife MidAmerica sent the First Lady a letter saying that it made them “shudder”.5

During his career, Siddiqui spent over 3 years as a pesticide lobbyist, an Undersecretary at the USDA and a VP at CropLife. In defending Siddiqui, the White House has stated that he played a key role in helping establish the country’s first organic standards.6 What they neglect to mention, though, is that those original organic standards would have allowed irradiation, sewage sludge and GMOs to undermine organic integrity! The standards were so watered down that 230,000 people signed a petition for them to be changed, which they eventually were.7

Fortunately, the organic community stopped Siddiqui and his cronies then, and we need your help now to do it again. If Siddiqui’s nomination is allowed to go through, then agribusiness will continue to control the seeds, the science, and the distribution of global food and agriculture.

Please join Food Democracy Now! and a broad coalition of other groups, in calling on President Obama to keep his campaign promise of closing the revolving door between agribusiness and his administration.

Please click here to add your voice.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/65?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

Thanks for standing with us and our coalition partners from across the country, including: The Pesticide Action Network (PAN), National Family Farm Coalition, Food & Water Watch, Farmworker's Association of Florida, Institute of Agriculture & Trade Policy, Greenpeace and the Center for Food Safety in calling for President Obama to live up to his promises to put people's interests ahead of special interests

Sustainably Yours,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team.

If you'd like to see Food Democracy Now!'s grassroots work continue, please consider donating. Your donation of $5 or more will help us continue our work. We appreciate your support! http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/25?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

Sources:

1. Obama slams corporate agriculture, two Illinois firms, The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 2007
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/58?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

2. Another Monsanto man in a key USDA post?, Grist, September 24, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/59?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

3. A New Direction on Research at the USDA? The Experts Weigh In, The Huffington Post, October 15, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/60?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

4. Obama’s attempt to tap an agrichemical-industry flack runs into trouble, Grist, October 10, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/61?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

5. Michelle’s green garden upsets pesticide makers, The First Post, April 23, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/62?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

6. Agriculture nomination steams greens, Politico, October 10, 2009
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/63?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

7. USDA Enters Debate on Organic Label Law, The New York Times, February 23, 2003 http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/72?akid=35.1117.opQTqV&t=1

Tort Reform Discussion

Person 1 (lawyer):

For obvious reasons, I'm vehemently against tort reform (the only real democratic leaning I have, besides being closer to pro-choice than I am pro-life). For those of you who are for tort reform, what you need is real stories of human tragedy to put a face on the issue. How's this for the worst thing you've ever heard:

17 year-old girl in rural Kansas. Father is abusive, mom an alcoholic. She goes to see a hack psychiatrist in rural Kansas for her emotional issues stemming from parents. Psychiatrist prescribes an anxiety drug that is extremely potent, and bears a warning on the box in big letters that strongly warns against exceeding max dosage, and says that if you see any sign of a rash to go to the doctor immediately. Problem is, he gives her the samples without the warnings, and while he's at it gives her double the max. dose. She takes it, ignores the rash that begins growing on her chest after a couple days, and finally is life-flighted to city hospital. after going into arrest. Turns out, she has Stevens-Johnson syndrome - the worst possible side effect from overdose of this drug. It literally burns your body from the inside-out. It burns up all your organs, then burns off all of your skin, burns your eyelids so you go blind, and burns off your scalp. Many organs are rendered essentially useless, and you spend your life in extreme pain as a complete vegetable, at constant risk of fatal organ failure. She is treated at KU Med. in the worst case of SJS they have ever seen, and racks up over $2 million in medical bills.

She is now at home, a complete vegetable, with little skin, no hair, is blind, and in immense pain every minute of the day. I have over 50 pictures that I can't show you, but believe me, you wouldn't want to eat after seeing them.

Who to sue? Well, the hack psychiatrist only has $200K in insurance, because that's all he's required to have under Kansas-law. He's judgment proof, as he's basically broke, because he's a sh*tty doctor. No case against the manufacturer, because the warnings were clearly there, had the doc. not given the samples only without a supplemental warning. Thus, the max she can collect is $200K. Medicaid paid all of her medical bills, and has a lien for the $2 million, so any of the $200K she collects goes straight to their pockets. Thus, what can she collect? 0.

I've seen dozens and dozens of cases of brain-dead infants, quadriplegics, people who died too young, crippling orthopedic injuries, strokes leaving people incapacitated with cognitive deficits, and nearly everything else you can imagine. I think this is the worst I've seen, which is why I felt compelled to share.

This isn't a direct product of tort reform, but is a product of the state allowing doctors to run around committing malpractice with too little insurance coverage, when they are otherwise judgment proof. What other recourse is there for this girl? None. Because some doctors who make well over $500K a year, which believe me, most do, whine that their coverage is too high. There are no easy answers, but believe me, if you saw cases like these everyday, you would not believe in tort reform.
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Person 2 (lawyer):

Completely agree. Legal costs are expensive, yes, but that doesn't mean you punish victims to fix it. I think damage caps are unconstitutional and unconscionable because they take the power out of the courts' hands to make their own decisions on a case. Why would the legislature know how much a victim should be awarded more than the jury in the case?

So the newspapers pick up a story and run "Woman spills hot coffee and is awarded a billion dollars." People look at that and think, "god, I'd spill hot coffee on my crotch for that. Sh!t happens. We need to do something about tort judgments." But you never hear the full, gory details like what you just gave us.

Damage caps to me are like saying we need to fix the health care system so we're just going to allow doctors to perform $50,000 of treatment, no matter how much treatment is actually required to fix the person. We certainly would cut down on medical costs but I don't think people would actually be better off for it.
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Person 3 (non-lawyer):

Interesting commentary. I know little of the subject and welcome the knowledge.

I guess I have the following questions:

- who ultimately finances the cost of justice-seeking?

- to what extent is there data available that categorizes the nature
(degree of frivolity - not that such a score is easily and unanimously
determined, but you know what I mean) of all cases. I require data.
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Person 1:

Good questions. Here's the best I could answer:

(1) A doctor or R.N. typically pays (or has paid on his/her behalf) insurance premiums for "primary" coverage through a carrier of either his/hers or the hospital's choosing. Such primary policies are high in jurisdictions where there has been no tort reform (in Illinois, most docs. or nurses have at least $2 million in primary coverage) and abysmally low in jurisdictions where the insurance lobby has convinced the legislature to invoke caps on pain and suffering, wrongful death, etc. and/or doesn't require that doctors carry much by way of primary coverage (in Kansas, most docs. or nurses have $200,000 in primary coverage - which doesn't begin to cover damages in a catastrophic case).

Then, the doc. or nurse has excess coverage from a different carrier or state fund in the event that the primary coverage is satisfied by way of a jury verdict (verdict is 1.2 million, primary policy is only 200K, the excess policy comes into play), or settlement (primary carrier tenders their 200K, bringing the excess policy into play). Again, the extent of excess or "umbrella" coverage varies by state. Using IL and KS as examples, again, most excess policies are 4-6 million in IL, and 800K in Kansas.

The decision to settle or try a case to verdict is solely in the hands of the carrier. A doc. may pressure the carrier to settle on his/her behalf if it's a bad case, because he doesn't want the bad PR, but it is ultimately up to the carrier and the doc. has little to say about it. A carrier can be liable for bad faith if they refuse to settle in a case that is clearly very bad, because by refusing to settle within policy limits they are exposing their insured to a personal excess verdict. If they are found to be in bad faith, they will have to cover the excess. (This factors in in the case with the 17 year-old girl - there is no coverage at stake and a verdict in excess is of no value, because the psychiatrist has no assets).

Thus, insurance comes heavily, heavily into play here, and the state legislatures dictate how much coverage a health care professional must have, and whether damages are capped.

(2) Whether on the defense or the plaintiff's side, I have always been against tort reform, but in favor of getting rid of frivolous suits. The thing people don't realize, and why the issue gets muddled, is that the frivolous suits weed themselves out. It costs so much money for a plaintiff's attorney (who only gets paid on a contingency, if his client gets a settlement or verdict) to try a medical malpractice case these days (at least $100 - $150,000 for a big case) that he can't afford to go on a witch hunt and try cases of no merit. It simply doesn't happen. If it does, the insurance company refuses to settle, and the case goes to trial. Then, in 99% of frivolous cases, the jury will return the right verdict. The "McDonald's case" is representative of .0000000000001% of the cases that are filed. It simply doesn't happen. It's a freak occurrence, and is not representative in any way of the types of cases we see now. I can tell you personally that I never saw a "frivolous" suit, ever, as a defense attorney - only, at worst, ones that we would probably win, but that could reasonably be brought by a plaintiff. Now, on the plaintiff's side, we look for reasons to reject cases, not the other way around. It's fiscally irresponsible, and gives you a bad reputation. Thus, while I can't give you a percentage, I can tell you that anyone who supports tort reform because of "these frivolous lawsuits" has no idea what they're talking about.
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Person 2:

Generally, the cost of justice seeking is financed by two parties: the injured person's attorney and the injurer's insurance company, which really gets passed along to everybody who pays for that type of insurance (med mal, etc.), which then gets passed along to the customers of that industry (patients in the med mal case). That's why the tort reform movement is so appealing to some people. It seeks to cut down on costs for everyone.

As for frivolity, you could try looking at jury verdicts but those almost always tend to be 50/50 for the plaintiffs and defendants. Going to trial is literally a coin flip's chance of getting a favorable result. Therefore, statistics are hard to measure because an overwhelming majority of cases are settled out of court. Nobody wants to spend the money to fully litigate something that is so uncertain. Even a lot of frivolous cases settle because it sometimes costs less to pay out a relatively small settlement than to litigate it fully. The settlement agreement is usually not public record either. I have a feeling that companies generally do a pretty good job of knowing which cases are frivolous and which are not, and they tend to act in their best financial interests when it comes to litigating or settling.

Legal costs are a problem, in my opinion, because of the lengthy discovery process. Much of this is set up to provide victims--especially poor ones--with as much access to the courts and to information in the control of the other party. As a country, we decided long ago (whether you agree or not) that it was good public policy to not deny injured people access to the court system because they couldn't afford it or because they couldn't get to the information. That is why we have contingency fee arrangements where a lawyer can provide services where he gets money only if he gets a favorable result*: people with no money can still hire a lawyer. For the same reason, we don't make the loser pay the other's costs. I don't necessarily agree with that policy, but that's the way it is. We have decided that nobody should ever be injured and not be able to be made whole again because he was too broke to sue. I think it comes down to America regarding the plight of one person as being more important than the health of our overall society. Same with criminal justice. We would rather see 99 guilty men walk free than incarcerate one innocent man.

Legal costs are ridiculously out of control, I think we could cut down on this by making the loser pay and encouraging mediation as much as possible.

*So lawyers are also gate keepers when it comes to frivolous lawsuits. Good lawyers don't take bad cases.
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Person 3:

I would be interested to see numbers on the percentage of cases (or claimed failures) per "treatment" (or doctor-patient interaction)... The number of failures should have a positive correlation with the increase in the number of the patients and care-givers. The greater the number of treatments, the greater the number of failures. In theory, any deviation from this fixed % should be able to be explained... unless of course there was a boon in frivolity, which, as you say, is not the case.

Naturally, as treatments increase with technology and population, it reasons that the cost to fix malpractice will increase accordingly, along with all the other healthcare costs.

The answer to who pays for this is everybody.

And, quite simply, the only way to curb health care costs is to decrease treatments, which can only be achieved by improving the health of the population.

Tort-reform - upon cursory thought - therefore appears to be missing the point...

Food Democracy Now

Tell Tom Vilsack to stand up for family farmers.

It’s time to end the bureaucratic squabbling at the USDA and put beginning and minority farmers first.

What new and minority farmers need most is access to affordable land — unfortunately USDA officials are stalling a potential solution.

A new program created by sustainable agriculture advocates in the 2008 Farm Bill, called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Transition Option, offers incentives to land owners enrolled in the CRP to sell or lease the land to beginning and minority farmers using sustainable or organic practices at the end of CRP contracts.

Please sign this petition to help grow the next generation of sustainable and organic farmers by giving them access to the land.

Currently, 4.3 million acres enrolled in CRP are about to leave the program and this land is badly needed by the next generation of farmers to overcome the greatest obstacle to new farmers – affordable land.2

Unfortunately the USDA’s bureaucratic wrangling and fear of lawsuits is holding up implementation of this vital program. Rather than release the land as it should be under new Farm Bill rules, the USDA is holding it up with an unnecesary environmental impact study. Any further delay will deny beginning and minority farmers the opportunity to get access to the land they need in the next 2 years.3

Please join Food Democracy Now! by asking Secretary Vilsack to implement the Conservation Reserve Program Transition Option now.

Our beginning and minority farmers don’t have a moment to waste.

Please sign this petition to tell Secretary Vilsack to provide access to a new generation of beginning and minority farmers so they can create more sustainable and organic farms.

Sustainably yours,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! team.

If you'd like to see Food Democracy Now!'s grassroots work continue, please consider donating as little as $10 or $25. We appreciate your support! http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/25?akid=30.1117.We9Xnn&t=1

Sources:

1. 2008 U.S. Farm Bill Enhances Beginning Farmer Provisions

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/48?akid=30.1117.We9Xnn&t=1

2. CRP Transition Option

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/49?akid=30.1117.We9Xnn&t=1

3. USDA Delays Land Program that Enables Beginning Farmers

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/50?akid=30.1117.We9Xnn&t=1

In honor of one of the best weekends in San Francisco

First, a big Thank You goes out to Warren Hellman, the billionaire investment banker who puts on the what is probably the best free music festival in the country, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. It's in a forest (Golden Gate Park), there are top acts, and you're allowed to bring in whatever you want to the festival: chairs, coolers, beer, wine....anything.

Check out this quote from Hellman, who is also an amateur banjo player and puts on the festival as a gift to the city. I talked to a guy who said there is even a provision in his will that the festival should continue after his death.

Hellman says "it costs a lot -- bigger than a bread box, smaller than a house, one of those new billionaire homes, I guess." He tells how he was approached by someone who said he ran America's biggest (non-bluegrass) festival. "He wanted to buy mine. I said, 'Why? It's free.' He said, 'Well it wouldn't be if I owned it.' " Hellman said it wasn't for sale. "There's this famous Texas oil guy's remark about money: 'It's like manure -- if you spread it around, beautiful things grow. But if you leave it in a pile it smells like manure.' "

Awesome.

Thanks again, Warren, for paying for me to see Okkervil River, Dave Alvin, Boz Scaggs, The Old 97s, Steve Martin (comedian/banjo player), The Ferocious Few*, Richie Havens, Robert Earl Keene, Steve Earle, Elvis Perkins, Booker T and the Drive-By Truckers, Billy Bragg, Allen Toussaint, Galactic, Mavis Staples, Neko Case, Emmylou Harris, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Amadou and Mariam.

*Actually, you didn't pay for them. They just showed up.

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This weekend was also LovEvolution*. I went this year and didn't feel the need to go hear obscenely loud electronic music in front of City Hall amidst sweaty spunions while Hardly Strictly was going on, no matter how many underage topless girls there were at Love Parade. But that orgy of late 20th Century chemical energy gives me the perfect excuse to post this all-time classic video, TECHNOVIKING:



*Formerly Love Parade and then Love Fest.

Part Three: The Relationship Between the Level of Regulation under the FDCA and the Health Status of a Product’s Targeted Population

[From BioLaw/AgLaw]

An Introduction to the History of Quack Medicine

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a remarkable growth in the marketing of sham products to treat and cure disease.

At that time, the rate at which quack medicines were being introduced into the market far outpaced the development of the science necessary to establish the efficacy and identify the risks associated with each new product. This scientific lag time created a period when there was an information void that
predatory commercial interests were quick to use to their advantage. As the FDA carried the burden of proof to show that a product did not work or was unsafe in order to remove the product from the market, during this lag time predatory commercial interests were able to profit from scientific uncertainty to the detriment of public health.

During this long period in U.S. history, the curative claims of the predatory sham medicine salesmen were limited only by the gullibility of their targets. In many cases, the degree of gullibility was proportional to the level of desperation of the individual for a cure. The more dire the condition, the more vulnerable an individual was to the ‘flim flam’ of the greedy snake oil salesman. And the more dire the condition, the greater the degree of harm when the sham medicine did not work, causing injury over and above the original illness and/or causing a delay in seeking effective medical treatment. Thus, this lag time between initial marketing of a sham product and the development of the science necessary to resolve uncertainties over the new product’s safety and effectiveness was very costly in terms of human suffering and loss of life. Slaying the Hydra: The History of Quack Medicines

In 1962, after a series of highly publicized public health crises, legislation was passed to close this ‘space between’ created by scientific uncertainty by switching the burden of proof for safety and effectiveness from the FDA and onto product manufacturers.

Read the rest here...