That, and I'm sure their legal team would have a seizure trying to figure out their potential liability from helping to launder monopoly drug money back into the economy.

"Didn't approve of it" is not the same as "Never heard of it".

Yes, and they value their charitable patient assistance at the most favorable possible retail price to inflate the number. Pharma's gonna pharma, and all that. Strong-armed by the g-men or not, they give away life-saving medication to a large number of people in desperate need, which is the opposite of what JonahsDad suggested. They may be perfectly willing to let silver foxes go without their boner medication if they can't afford it, but I work in oncology research and very rarely have I heard of a patient not being able to get their chemo if they have financial hardships due to these manufacturer and other third-party programs.

I've seen papers that estimate it costs between $500 million and $2000 million to get a new drug approved in the US, and it takes 10-15 years to complete the process, after which there's not much time left to recoup before the patent expires. So yeah, they market the hell out of everything they make, particularly when a competitors have a similar drug in the pipeline.

GlaxoSmithKline gave away half a billion dollars worth of chemotherapeutics to low-income American patients who couldn't afford it in 2010. Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and Wyeth have similar programs.

AppleTV.

No it isn't. Every dollar of credit a bank extends creates a debit on their books as well. That's what lending is. Fractional reserve banking is a *limiter* on this activity, not a facilitator.

You base this on what, exactly? How cool of a Tom Clancy novel it would make? Seriously. Do you have even a shred of evidence that this is the case? FOIA-obtained documents that describe an agency receiving funding for this operation? An interview with an official or member of the gov or anonymous leaking the details relationship? Anything?

Any biochem /.ers want to chime on the potential for this technique to trigger apoptosis in cancerous tissues (or any targeted tissues)?

Not sure why you think they're "to" worried about those things. NASA's whole job is developing technology and processes for a long-term human presence in space, and environmental science and sustainability are crucial elements of that goal.

I've seen it promised as a money-making scheme almost everywhere. You don't often see a BitCoin discussion, article, or sales pitch that doesn't position it as a future-safe currency outside of the reach of central banking, like gold. This is the scam. You spend electricity on digital bits that you're told entitle you to a chunk of a market that will be worth billions (like in TFA) in the future, or pay a fee/spread to an exchange to get in on it while they still cost very little.

It's not hard to understand what it works, it's hard to understand how it's an improvement. For physical currency, taxes to the government prevent counterfeiting. For electronic transactions, fees paid to the bank or credit card company prevent double spending. For bitcions, money is spent on GPU cycles to prevents both. If you can prove that it's actually cheaper, and just just a cost shift, be my guest.