http://lmgtfy.com/?q=paternity...

I understand that there are risks involved and the benefits are dubious, but I'm one of those odd-ball whackjobs who thinks that it isn't Uncle Sam's business what foods I choose to eat. Maybe in a few more generations, people like me will die out and we'll have a docile population of people who do what they are told without question.

Hi Lazy! I'm very glad to hear that you're feeling better, regardless of what treatment you're using. I'll be first to admit that I'm not a CH expert and I don't know all the facts, but I hate to know that there is a painful illness out there and be told that red tape is holding back progress in treating it. Here's to many pain-free days to come, for you!

Yes, FCUK the FDA! One of the most thoroughly corrupt agencies in the fedgov. I can't believe we actually put up with their bullshit.

You could start by putting a stop to the sting ops and SWAT raids on farmers who sell raw milk.

A million times this. I recently heard some news about a new medical discovery. It is a treatment for a chronic illness called "cluster headache", which reportedly causes such severe pain that people literally kill themselves to stop the pain.

A CH sufferer serendipitously discovered that using LSD recreationally stopped his pain. Word quickly spread among CH sufferers, but as you can imagine, they were worried about being busted by the man who wears the badge.

A medical researcher got wind of this and did some rudimentary research on a drug that is chemically similar to LSD, but does not cause a "high"; in other words, it has no abuse potential. He made a remarkable discovery: many of the patients he studied reported that taking just THREE DOSES PER YEAR stopped the pain.

The problem then, is that the illness is rare enough that you could never make back $2.5 billion dollars selling three pills per year to patients, so no big pharma company would want to go thru all the red tape to get it approved by the FDA. As a result, there remains no effective FDA-approved treatment for CH.

Many of these patients continue to self-medicate with old-fashioned LSD while looking over their shoulder for "The Man". How sad....

Profit indeed comes before people, but I had no idea how abusive the system could be. And for the record, I do not have CH.

No thanks, I'll worry about the quality of the sound from my TV when I can expect a TV I paid $1000 for to not introduce a quarter-second of input latency.

Call me picky, but as far as I am concerned, any discernible input latency is completely unacceptable. I can't believe that people actually save their old CRTs to play Guitar Hero because the new ones tend to be so laggy.

^^^ This!

I've been working as a contract software developer for a few years now. I feel like I get a out of working on different projects. I meet smart people who have stayed in the same place for years. They definitely have the advantage of deep knowledge of the environment, but I find that they often lack breadth of knowledge sometimes.

It gives me cringe when I hear people say that they trust to gov't to tell what is good for us. I once asked a doctor "Do you trust the gov't to tell what is best for our health?" and he said "Yes" without hesitating.

You're saying that diversity is good for owners and weakness for labor because... a diverse workforce is easy to divide against itself, or did you have something else in mind?

The estimates of the number of Jews killed typically range in the millions, with six million being the most frequently cited number. However, there were other "undesirables" mass-murdered, as well. I just presumed he must have included them in the 12 million figure.

They could declare encrypted traffic unlawful today. They have been agitating for that for years. Today for the terrorists, in years past, for the paedophiles.

You jest, but I once read that at least one European country seeks to hire women as prison guards in the hopes that it will make it easier to transition to life outside prison. I'm too lazy to look it up.

The point is, the drug was FREELY AVAILABLE over the counter. I'm told it cost less than $100 for a typical months supply, and people were using it as a general purpose sleep aid, not just as a last-resort treatment for hard cases of narcolepsy. If you had a time machine and little bit of money, you could easily walk into a drug store in the early 90s and buy as much as you want.

Before the fedgov got involved, it was freely available. The companies that have owned the patent have done NOTHING ZERO ZIP NADA except act as monopoly suppliers of the drug. A pharmacist who shares my point of view says that it costs pennies per dose to manufacture. But through careful manipulation of the legal and insurance systems, they are able to collect over ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR for this drug.

You are absolutely correct to point out that most patients pay only a very small co-payment. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, the company that currently owns the patent, knows this. They know that they can't charge $12,000 per month if a patient with a 10% copay is on the hook for $1,200 per month. They will simply collect $10,800 per month from insurance and write off the remaining $1,200 (because they are so nice, ya know).

Seriously, these people are evil geniuses. They are gaming the system, preventing sick people from receiving medication that they did absolutely nothing to develop.

Oh, and they are notorious for parking their money overseas to avoid paying taxes, just like Apple has been criticized for. At least Apple researches and develops useful products that people want to buy.

Come to think of it, Jazz is sort of like SCO could be if they had one their LINUX lawsuit and been able to demand $699 license fees from LINUX users for a product they did not create.

Oh, and to make matters worse, the fedgov refused to approve the drug for more uses, not because they thought it wasn't effective. No, they want to keep it from being used for more common illnesses because it is a drug of abuse, you see. They have to protect us from ourselves. I'm sure you understand this, given your .sig

Wikipedia has some good information about the drug. It was originally known as GHB, and Xyrem is a trade name. The short story about the "patent capture" is that it was criminalized on Schedule I in the 1990s after a Dateline special reported that it was being used as a date-rape drug. The FDA would several years later award a patent for the medicinal use of the drug, so that's how it became "patent captured". Several years later, the company, realizing that it was a crime to obtain the drug anywhere else and that there is no other drug like it, decided that they would raise the price to what it is today. Most recently, I read that over one billion dollars was paid for this drug last year.

Having seen how people are affected by what they do, that people who need the drug can't get it because of the cost, I wanted to spread this knowledge far and wide so that people can know what the government is doing to sick people in their own name.