http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...
Disabilities Act Prompts Flood of Suits Some Cite as Unfair
By MOSI SECRET
New York Times
APRIL 16, 2012

The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.

The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses. ...

All of those suits were filed by Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz, a lawyer based in Florida, who has a regular group of people with disabilities from whom he selects plaintiffs. One of them, Todd Kreisler, a man in a wheelchair who lives on the East Side of Manhattan, sued 19 businesses over 16 months — a Chinese restaurant, a liquor store and a sandwich shop among them. ...

Mr. Weitz is leading the charge into New York’s courtrooms. Since October 2009, he has sued almost 200 businesses in the state, mostly in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He has eight years of experience filing these suits in Florida, where his practice does not seem to be lagging. Two weeks ago, he brought claims against four Tampa businesses — a strip mall, a convenience store, a bar and a print shop.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...
Judge Rebukes 2 Lawyers Profiting From U.S. Disability Law
By MOSI SECRET
MARCH 29, 2013

Now a Brooklyn federal court judge has ruled squarely against two lawyers who bring most of such lawsuits in New York, writing in a cutting opinion on Thursday that their tactics lacked expertise, possibly violated the rules of professional conduct and were “disingenuous at best.” The judge, Sterling Johnson Jr., denied them legal fees and took the rare step of ordering them to stop filing such cases. ...

Though such arrangements have typically been shielded by confidentiality agreements, Judge Johnson revealed how much money the lawyers — Adam Shore and B. Bradley Weitz — claimed in fees, typically $425 per hour for a total of $15,000 per case even though the cases were so similar that he described them as boilerplate. The two lawyers had filed as many as 10 cases in a single day.

I don't think that's been proven anywhere, unless you define "proof" as "It seems true to me."

We don't have much proof of anything about guns. The NRA lobbied Congress to eliminate all research on gun violence from the federal budget. The NRA also lobbied states and the federal government to prohibit releasing or even collecting most data about gun ownership. So we haven't had any scientifically solid gun research in about 15 years.

What ticked the NRA off was a study based on gun purchase records which found that people who bought guns were more likely to use them for suicide than self-defense.

Doctors have told me (and there are published studies to back them up) that people who are assaulted with guns are much more likely to die than people assaulted by any other means.

So eliminating guns from the scene is a very good deterrent of murder.

But not cops who kill black people.

Europeans never seem to understand that.

Actually, what deters murders most is not having a gun.

No. I can accept the death penalty under 3 conditions: (1) The defendant must actually be guilty (2) The defendant must have a fair trial (3) People who commit the same crimes must all be executed.

American combatants committed worse crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and were not given the death penalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Therefore, it doesn't meet my third condition. If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is executed, it will demonstrate the unfairness of our justice system.

The Greek philosopher Thrasymacus told Socrates, "Justice is the interest of the strong." That's the kind of justice system we have.

Punishments (and prosecutions in the first place), are determined by the political support that the accused gets. In our system, we avoid punishment for even the worst crimes committed by our military or cops.

For example, consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The Nisour Square massacres and the rape and murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi were worse than the Boston Massacre, and yet none of those involved got the death penalty. Those responsible for the death of Dilawar didn't even serve jail terms.

Do you also think the death penalty was appropriate for those American murderers?

Do you now conclude that our system has devalued the lives of Iraqis and Afghanis? (I would agree.)

Are you willing to execute Dzhokar, when people who committed equal or worse crimes aren't executed?

I could accept the death penalty if it were applied fairly and consistently. But it's not.

Science magazine had a special issue on human conflict. http://www.sciencemag.org/site...

tldr: Human groups have always killed each other. But they've also reconciled with each other.

The model is South Africa, where some of the worst criminals were pardoned in order to get a resolution.

That worked when people were fighting with bows and arrows. Once modern weapons came along, that attitude wound up in wars in which both sides were massacred.

The USA does have a hypocrisy problem.

Or, as we prefer to say, "Several factors go into our decisions."

There are similarities between Dzhokar killing civilian spectators and the U.S. military killing civilian spectators at a wedding.

The main difference is that the U.S. military will say, "We only intended to kill bad guys. We didn't intend to kill civilians."

This is subject to a just war analysis. A war is justified when the aggressor has tried every other reasonable approach, when the goal is justified, and the aggressor tries to minimize damages. I'm not convinced this is true for the drone attacks.

I'm not absolutely against the death penalty. I could accept it under 3 conditions: (1) The defendant must actually be guilty (2) The defendant must have had a fair trial (3) Other defendants who committed similar crimes must have gotten the same penalty.

I would compare the Boston Marathon killings to the Nusoor Square killings, where Blackwater private security contractors killed 17 people. My interpretation of the evidence is that the killings were unjustified and indiscriminate, and part of a pattern of such killings by Blackwater. One Blackwater contractor was sentenced to life in prison, and 3 others were sentenced to 30 years.

Dzhokar's death sentence fails my third condition. If we didn't sentence any of the Blackwater contractors to death, then we can't sentence Dzhokar to death.

Actually the federal government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a reasonable basis.

There are 2 kinds of vaccine injuries:

(1) The avoidable injuries that come from the manufacturer clearly violating the good manufacturing procedures, like improperly filtering the vaccine preparation or letting it get infected.

(2) The inevitable injuries that come even when the manufacturer does everything right, meets the good manufacturing procedures. That's because the immune system is complicated, and we don't understand everything about it. (Furthermore, they sometimes have to make tradeoffs between a vaccine that protects you better from the infectious disease, but has more adverse effects, and a vaccine that has fewer adverse effects, but doesn't protect you from the infectious disease as well.)

I think the inevitable serious injuries occur at the rate of 1 in a million vaccinations. These are the kids who just drew an unlucky lottery ticket. Nobody's wrong.

There were a lot of problems with the vaccine program, and manufacturers stopped making a lot of vaccines, because they were getting hit with big-dollar product liability lawsuits. Some of them were justified, some of them weren't, and some of them, nobody knows, because the immune system is complicated, and we don't understand everything about it.

In order to encourage manufacturers to make vaccines, and parents to vaccinate their kids, the federal government set up what amounts to a no-fault program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They listed a lot of known serious complications that everybody agreed were caused by vaccines. Kids with those complications were automatically compensated, and it was fairly generous compensation, designed to match what they would get if they went to court and won. That's worked pretty well.

The idea is, if a kid gets vaccinated, in order to protect society as a whole, and draws the unlucky lottery ticket, then society ought to insure him for that bad luck. That's the proper role of insurance.

Then along come the parents whose kids have serious complications where people don't agree it was caused by vaccines. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, and sometimes (usually) nobody knows. Those go to a special vaccine court. From the occasional articles I've read about it, they seem to be pretty generous in giving the injured child the benefit of the doubt. I can accept that. It's better to err on the side of compensating people who don't deserve it, than err on the side of not compensating people who do deserve it. But they held the line at the vaccine-autism connection, and rejected those cases.

I am referring to the frequent claim, repeated here, that you can donate your used cell phone to an organization that will redistribute it to a battered woman who can't afford a cell phone herself, so that she can use it to only call 911 in an emergency.

First, none of the organizations I contacted had a program like that. They accept old cell phones, but they don't redistribute them. They give out cheap new cell phones, with full service, including 911.

But you don't need an organization for that. Anybody who can't afford a cell phone is likely to meet the very flexible requirements for Assurance or Safelink and get a free phone directly, with full service, including 911. Assurance now has unlimited calling and texting.

Yes, if you're right, you could go to Radio Shack or its successors, and buy a cell phone for $15, and use it to call 911 in an emergency, which might be useful in some scenarios.

But you can't donate your phone to an organization that will give it to a battered woman.

I don't believe that you can donate your old cell phones to be used as 911-only phones by victims of domestic violence, etc. It's an urban myth.

I checked it out once because of a 90-year-old neighbor. He had a stroke, and he was lying in the bathroom for 24 hours, unable to call for help, until one of his children came over for their daily check-in.

I tried to find out where in New York City I could get one of those 911-only reconditioned cell phones, that he could carry with him and use if something similar happened again. I researched the Internet, made several calls, and couldn't find one.

But who needs one? Low-income people can get a free Assurance or Safelink phone, that they can use to call 911 and everything else (like doctors and relatives). So why would anybody want a phone that could do nothing but call 911?

I just called another nationwide service (which I am not identifying because I don't want everybody calling them), and the woman answering the phone told me that they really don't provide people with reconditioned 911-only cell phones. They collect the old phones, turn them into Verizon, and Verizon gives them "Help" phones which are cheap cell phones with free minutes on them.

Try it yourself. Call one of those services and ask them whether they can give you a reconditioned phone. They can't.

Think about it. You can buy a low-end wireless phone new for $15 retail (and probably $5 wholesale). In order to "recondition" them, you'd need a technician to check it out, to make sure it's working. People would be using them for life-threatening emergencies, so they have to work reliably. You'd have to repackage and distribute them. It's cheaper for a phone company or any agency to just buy new phones in bulk. But why bother? Why not just let people get a phone directly from Assurance or Safelink?

The problem is that all autoimmune diseases are reactive, and most of them involve arthritis.

As a compromise, it would have been better to hang Reiter at Nuremberg and keep his name on the disease.

It's really simple:

Neurologic syndrome

New neurologic syndrome

Newer neurologic syndrome

Even newer neurologic syndrome

Really new neurologic syndrome

Really new neurologic syndrome with strawberry rash

Suggestions like this have gone nowhere in the past.

http://www.qfever.com/2002/11/...

“Confusing” Brand, Generic Drug Name System To Be Replaced
Full scientific nomenclature will soon be mandatory
November 1, 2002

WASHINGTON, DC--In an effort to decrease prescription errors, The American Pharmaceutical Association announced today that a new naming system will be enforced by pharmacies nationwide beginning in January.

Instead of the current system of brand and generic names, clinicians will be required to use full scientific nomenclature on all prescriptions, and are urged to use the new names when discussing medications with patients and with other providers.

"There's mounting evidence that having both a brand and a generic name causes a lot of unnecessary confusion," said APhA spokesman Noreen Marzette. "You get patients taking both Lasix and furosemide, not knowing they're the same thing."

"Now in the new system, they're on 4-chloro-N-furfuryl-5-sulfamoylanthranilic acid. It just doesn't get much more unambiguous than that."

According to the APhA, responses to the planned implementation have been mixed. At a trial implementation in Baltimore, MD, some patients were reportedly unable to obtain (3b, 5b, 12b)-3-[(O-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl-(1“4)-O-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl-(1“4)-2,6-dideoxy-b-D-ribo-hexopyranosyl)oxy]-12,14-dihydroxy-card-20(22)-enolide (formerly known as digoxin) when a computer glitch caused the third hexopyranosyl to be omitted.

Nevertheless, the new system will be universally adopted by pharmacies, hospitals, and medical centers throughout the nation in January 2003. Prescriptions not written in scientific notation after that time will be sent back to the prescribing clinician for revision.

Old New
Prozac (fluoxetine) (±)-N-methyl-3-phenyl-3-[(a,a,a-trifluoro-p-tolyl)-oxy]propylamine hydrochloride
Viagra (sildafenil) 1-[[3-(6,7-dihydro-1-methyl-7-oxo-3-propyl-1H-pyrazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidin-5-yl)-4-ethoxyphenyl]sulfonyl]-4-methylpiperazine citrate
Tagamet (cimetidine) guanidine, N''- cyano-N-methyl-N- [2-[[(5-methyl-1H-imidazol-4-yl)methyl]thio]-ethyl]-monohydrochloride
Valium (diazepam) 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-1,4-benzodiazepin-2-one
Norvasc (amlodipine) (R.S.) 3-ethyl-5-methyl-2-(2-aminoethoxymethyl)-4-(2-chlorophenyl)-1,4-dihydro-6-methyl-3,5-pyridinedicarboxylate benzenesulphonate
Zithromax (azithro-mycin) (2R,3S,4R,5R,8R,10R,11R,12S,13S,14R)-13-[(2,6-dideoxy-3-C-methyl-3-O-methyl-a-L-ribo-hexopyranosyl)oxy]-2-ethyl-3,4,10-trihydroxy-3,5,6,8,10,12,14-heptamethyl-11-[[3,4,6-trideoxy-3-(dimethylamino)-b-D-xylo-hexopyranosyl]oxy]-1-oxa-6-azacyclopentadecan-15-one