You learn something new every day. Shame someone moderated me as trolling in the process, but nevertheless, cool!

Yes it is true. Meta-analyses reveal what the individual trials do not. If I wasn't typing this on my phone I'd direct you to the correct Cochrane Collaboration review on the matter. Meta analyses reveal what smaller individual trials cannot. In mild to moderate depression, ssris fail to be better than placebo. Furthermore, yes, lots of research has gone in to which placebo route of administration works best. The more painful the better. Ebocalp pills (the ones I've seen in the UK) are cool-- pink seems to work best. May I direct you to the archives of badscience.net for both details on both matters?

I may be reading some political bias that isn't there into that statement, but... A "liberal arts degree"?

What are you trying to say? That degrees that get you "proper" jobs are Conservative? Or that degrees that once were thought to be worth something but were over-sold and after a financial crisis are now next-to-worthless "conservative" degrees?!

I'd contest that SSRIs (or SNRIs) are much use in anxiety. Frankly, large meta-analyses of trials show that this class of drug is of no benefit over placebo in mild-to-moderate depression, and not much better in severe depression. Over placebo is the key bit here. Most of the benefits are the placebo effect -- an effect that seems to be in the mind, and works better on psych illnesses than others.

Now, take that placebo and create a new market for it. "Generalised Anxiety Disorder". That's classic example of a "creeping indication" of a drug./P

The reason why more than 2g acetaminophen kills you is that your liver has finite supplies of glucuronide, that it attaches to the drug. When that runs out, the other metabolic pathways (I forget which) cause the formation of free radicals that kill you. Glucuronide is cheap, and can be added to packs for little cost. Why hasn't it...?

You might be lucky. You may have an underactive thyroid gland leading to your slow metabolism. A quick blood test of T3/T4 levels will pretty much diagnose if this is the case; some thyroxin pills will sort you out pretty quickly.

My tip, if it ain't that, don't carry any money that can be spent in vending machines!

Windows Live Mesh?

It works on Macs, Windows PCs, and mobile devices, (apparently, but I do use it on the first two happily). Could you not share your desktop folders on your devices, and get MS to sync it all for you? Alas, Linux is excluded. 5Gb space online last time I looked.

The answers from slashdot's finest are equally applicable to freedom-wanting Iranians or people wanting to coordinate an attack on, say, americal soldiers in Iraq.

Hmm. I always understood it to be way more complex than that. The immune system not only mops up pathogens, but also errant cells that are then programmer to die.

Also, cancer isn't a binary yes we bad cells escape this, or don't, but a relative ratio of escaping the body's safety mechanisms to being mopped up. But then, I'm no expert these days. But I was Reading a cyclosporin patient information leaflet, and cancer spreading is one adverse event you're warned about. I'm worried Steve has had this because his quality of life will ne better in the short term, but ultately he will die faster. I really hop the wsj is wrong and Steve isn't suffering.

Your immune system keeps cancer at bay -- not always -- but often. Your immune system also causes transplant rejection.

Surely suppressing the immune system for stopping transplant rejection = massive increase in cancer aggressiveness!

If this is true, then either steve's doctors are crazy, or the WSJ are telling porkies!

Really. Well done. This story; the "sound of found" name for something I'd associate with the waste product of coal mining (bing). Actually, Bing's pretty good too. I did bother to try it, thanks to the marketing. But for some reason, I've returned to Google since trying it. Hmm...

No, this guy is New Here.

My brother photoshopped that concept: http://www.b3ta.com/board/5779869

seems like if water is meeting resistance, then pressure's building up. Server explosion!

I think you're making the very big assumption that they made up the data AND the journal to promote their drug... andthe drug is bad.

More likely, they have a boring drug with boring results that's #4 to the market, with #3 efficacy. This is just laziness on merck's part so that reps can show results quickly. Don't worry. Doctors, in general, aren't stupid. They see right through this.