this depends on which laboratory you are talking about. most regional toxicology laboratory are able to detect these drugs (usually by LC-MS/MS), and then chemical standards of these drugs are commercially available (despite, perhaps, the big price tag on the chemical standards which are ~1 grand a piece...)

At least we are still seeing sensible comments here in slashdot

depending on where the patient live, depending on whether they got insurance, depending on their insurance coverage,
they can now choose

(1) to die now and leave a fortune to their wife, sons and daughters
(2) to die later and leave everyone broke

and that is a difficult question. when i worked back then as a junior doctor in an oncology center, they had trouble buying those "expensive" "next generation" chemotherapy which may last a few cycle (only), which was already a money hog to the family... now they have to buy it for years.

imagine the difficulty. there are still quite a number of countries where health insurance is not common and/or insurance company are not covering these type of drugs....

as for the new TKIs, i think they will only be more expensive. give it another 20-30 years, when the patents expire, then we can talk again on this...

hepatitis B is now quite treatable. resistance since the introduction of entacavir and adefovir is very low. cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma is now considered preventable with these therapy. the problem is the access to medication in the far east.

the virulence of hepatitis B is quite low in terms of environmental source. it is primarily transmitted by body fluid transmission.

the deal with these is that flu, pneumonia and perhaps urinary tract infection is almost always the presentation of the patient in the death episode. it's not fair comparing it to flu. Among those who died of flu, it is rather rare to find a person who enjoyed relatively good past health and is young.

Hepatitis C (and hepatitis B), on the other hand, leads to cirrhosis, hepatocellular cellular carcinoma and liver failure. It is exactly one of those diseases which will cause deterioration of the patient's health to such extent that a flu could kill.

It is rather unfair to compare Hep C to Flu in terms of mortality.

Well, there are more than a hundred discoveries like these that demonstrated effectiveness of curing the uncurables in the past decade. Of those which went through the testing in man, well, maybe 2 or 3...

Back then, avastin, glivec and so on were expected to be magical cures for cancers.. now they exist only as expensive life-prolonging (with or without quality) therapy and only for those who are rich.

not just medical examination. it is just a co-incidence that the medical profession is one that is tangled with most examinations. speaking of examinations, though, the most important examination for us medical doctors are usually conducted in the oral style (viva examination) which allowed impromptu questions set immediately, testing the doctor on how they would handle a patient step-by-step. i'm not sure about the american system but that's true for most british systems.

that'd be painful given the shape.

<quote>REAL GLASS fiber optics are heavier than copper cable, with the approximate atomic weight of copper being 29 and silicon dioxide being 30 having two oxygen atoms at 8 and one silicon atom at 14.</quote>

<quote><p>The plastic stuff is even heavier, (C5O2H8) for a total of approximately 54. Glass handles more power than pretty much every plastic given its lower thermal conductivity and higher tolerance to heat buildup.</p><p>Extremely thin glass fiber can be almost as flexible as a plastic fiber, and carry more energy.</p></quote>

atomic mass has little to do with the mass density of solid structure, for the matter. For plastics it is even a more complicated matter, even for plastics made of a single monomer, depending on the condition the plastic is formed there may be different density.

Your geek badge is herein revoked. not only that you should not tell others to go back to their chemistry class, it is you who need to go back to your high school physical chemistry.

This illustrate a problem: People think that CS degree is a degree training programmers - they are simply wrong.

<quote><p>The G4 is to the G5 as the Pentium 3 is to the Pentium 4 :)</p></quote>

Sorry, but i just don't get it... do you mean that the G4 is 1) clocked slower, 2) having a superior, more efficient architecture, 3) don't use as much energy compared with G5?