Medicine

India refuses HIV drug patents

Jason Thibeault

This is great news.

India has rejected applications from two US companies for patents on two key AIDS drugs in a move that could mean more people in poor countries will have access to life-saving medicines.

The decisions are the latest in a string of legal victories for Cipla, India’s largest generic drug maker. The move could also signal that patent offices in emerging economies are set to take a tougher line than industrialized countries on which drugs deserve patents.

Gilead, the manufacturer of Tenofovir, and Tibotec, manufacturer of Darunavir, were both trying to get patents on their respective drugs, and seeing that they were about to lose the court battles, tried to offer a raw deal to Cipla, the generic manufacturer that was making the drugs for distribution in poor countries — that deal being, a 5% cut, and could only sell to 95 of the poorest countries. Both of these restrictions would have limited exactly what kinds of discounts they could offer.

Frankly, patents on drugs that combat scourges like AIDS should be refused. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that patents on drugs should be outright banned.

I’m sure someone will say “but where will the funding come from for research of these products if not the free market?” As if the free market is some kind of panacea. I don’t hold the solution, but wrapping up knowledge about things like drugs that could save countless lives, just so you can make a bit of profit, is bloody criminal. In fact, any attempt to make profit off of health care is disgusting and immoral, if you ask me.

India refuses HIV drug patents
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These are the stakes!

Jason Thibeault, 9 Comments

Hopefully people will realize that merely giving a little girl a chance at life isn’t enough — because that little girl, when saved from her condition through expensive treatment that could all but bankrupt her parents, is consigned to a life without insurance, because she has a “pre-existing condition”.

That is, unless you do something to fix the insurance scam that currently hangs over the heads of every man, woman and child in the USA like the sword of Damocles.

Video by Stephanie Zvan. She actually knows Beatrix, and the video apparently accurately describes everything about the case except for the affordability of her treatment. So even the case it makes is grossly understated.

I had a friend when I was working in Toronto, whose son was born with a transposition of the great arteries. This caused the heart to circulate extremely poorly, and his brain was barely oxygenated at all. My friend was not rich, nor was he terribly well insured, nor was he in the best province in the country for health care (Ontario is notoriously poor compared to the rest of Canada, with no health ombudsman to watchdog the health care system, and all counterexamples you will see about Canadian health care come from that province). And yet, the baby was saved, at no special cost to the parents.

No special cost. Sure, there were a few minor costs, like travel back and forth to and from the hospital, or the cost associated with missing several weeks of work. But think about that for a second. No fund raisers, no charity drives, no fear of bankruptcy.

Would you be willing to pay an extra 2 or 3% on the money you make over $400,000 in order to insure everyone in your country gets a shot at life, without ruining the family in question? Would you be willing to eliminate an entire breed of health care carrion, a bureaucracy that has interposed itself between you and your doctor, making sure they make profits on whether you live or die? If you say no, like many Republicans or fundamentalists do, then are you certain you’re pro-life?

Please repost this video, Stephanie would like it to get wider exposure.

These are the stakes!

Get organized! Get in the fight!

Jason Thibeault4 Comments

I can think of no better general to marshall the ground troops than Stephanie Zvan, who put together a great briefing on your health care situation, why you don’t have as much backup as you could, and what you can do about it.

This is actually a tougher fight than the election was. Corporations far and away recognized that four more years of rule by the monster that the Republican Party had become would be as disastrous for them as it would be for all of us. They were pragmatic in their understand that business cannot flourish anywhere the government doesn’t meet at least its minimal obligations in law and the maintenance of infrastructure, so they supported Obama.

They are not supporting health care reform, which means we need to do more. Their disproportionate influence isn’t all arrayed against us, but neither is it on our side. We’re much more alone this time.

She draws up a brilliant battle plan for organization and activism, one which you should go read immediately.

And here’s a tale of how the UK NHS saved someone’s life, and he didn’t even get stiffed with a gigantic bill that bankrupted him and made him wish he had died! And here’s more information about Canadian health care, and more information about Stephen Hawking, who was unceremoniously dragged into the debate by people who had no idea that he was kept alive only by dint of living in the UK when he was diagnosed — you know, well prior to becoming rich and famous.

Get in the fight, people, your lives are the ones at stake here, and I will not stand for my new e-friends being the ones that are sacrificed on the blood altar of higher profits for the insurance bureaucrats.

Get organized! Get in the fight!

Random Health Care Reform Crap in my Tabs

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

Here’s another rundown of the random crap that’s started to accumulate in my Firefox tabs, to do with the American health care war being waged presently between people who want people to have access to health care, and people who want to continue denying access to health care in order to make a profit.

Lou Dobbs took a tour of other countries’ Single Payer systems and was shocked to discover they were neither crap nor socialism. (Then he went on a rant about illegal immigrants, I bet.)

Mike Haubrich has two great essays up at TUIB, one about the propensity to defend “free market” health care at the cost of even people’s lives, and the very real burden on the economy that private and employer-based insurance entails. As always, Mike is impassioned, eloquent, and absolutely correct.

Thom Hartman has an idea: let all Americans buy into Medicare. Since Medicare works, why not just expand it, instead of a whole new system? Though I’m of the belief that this reform would not go far enough to remedy the health-care-for-profit setup that the free market has saddled you with, one must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. It would be a start, and certainly a hell of a lot less government-expanding. The only problem would be the refrain of “where will you get the money?”

To which I answer, try actually taxing people on more than their first $90,000 dollars in the social security tax cap. Yes, the rich pay higher taxes already, but guess what? They only pay that higher tax on the first tiny sliver of their multimillion dollar incomes! Plus, the capital gains tax was lowered from 20% for the higher tax brackets down to 15% in 2003, and look what happened to the economy. Lower income significantly, AND increase spending by a trillion dollars on a needless war? Gee, let’s ask Paulson or some other Bush crony what they think might happen! The Teabaggers who complain about this idea would see absolutely no increase in their own taxation rates, as they are by no stretch of the imagination rich enough to qualify for these higher taxes. This smacks of “eat the rich”, but honestly, how many millions do you need? Can’t you spare a bit of your walking-around, pocket-change, latte-money as part of your social contract with the country that provided you the opportunity to GET rich?

Greg Laden’s noticed a trend, at the same time: the deathers, the birthers, the teabaggers and the people who conflate Obama with Hitler are incredibly endemically racist, and are using their favorite conspiracies to cover up this fact about themselves. People who sidestep the issue of race are no better, as they are tacitly allowing the retardery to perpetuate.

Retardery like this woman comparing access to health care with Naziism, earnestly, at a town hall meeting with Barney Frank. And Frank dismantles her, then without missing a beat handles the rest of the crowd with aplomb. What a guy. Greg also covered this, with a shorter clip of the video.

And the astroturf has finally gotten so blatant that even Fox News is forced to report on it. And critically, at that! Wonders never cease.

Finally, in an attempt to tie together all the astroturf campaigns, the birthers/deathers/teabaggers/etc., Buzzflash explains how much of The South really feels about the resolution of the civil war — in their hearts, the South never really conceded, so the racists have driven their beliefs underground using coded messages. John Edwards was right — there are two Americas.

Random Health Care Reform Crap in my Tabs

ONOES OBAMACARE KILLS GRANNIES

Jason Thibeault, 3 Comments

Seriously, can the wingnuts get any more shrill? Mike Haubrich over at Tangled Up in Blue has posted a letter by wingnut extraordinaire Gordon James Klingenschmitt, author for the conserva-rag Human Events, and you can practically measure the level of insanity on the Timecube scale if for no other reason than the sheer amount of text-decorations that are used. Yes, THAT Klingenschmitt, as though there were any other — the same guy that violated naval code by attending get-out-the-vote events in full uniform.

Can a government-run hospital still allow Christian chapels, or pay Christian chaplains, or permit Christian doctors to pray Christian prayers with their willing patients, or even allow Christian parents to c ontrol the health care options forced upon their dying children?  Just ask Florida Hospital Chaplain Danny Harvey, fired last year from Leesburg Regional Medical Center because he prayed “in Jesus name” at a public memorial service.   Ask Christian Pharmacists who Washington has already forced to dispense “Plan-B” abortion pills against their conscience, or doctors denied a “conscience clause” to opt out of abortions when Obama refused to renew Bush’s pro-life executive orders.  Ask Nurse Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, who recently was forced to participate in a second-trimester abortion against her will, and is now suing Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan for “blatantly” violating her rights under a 35 year old federal law that protects health care workers with religious objections from being forced to assist in murderous abortions.  Ask Pentecostal Ministers Dale and Leilani Neumann, who were charged with second-degree murder of their 11-year-old daughter, because they refused to trust the power of a government hospital to heal their little girl who tragically died with diabetes.  Can you say mandatory godlessness in “health” care?  If government has power to dictate your health care options, they also have power to seize your children when you refuse. Think about it.  Will you dare refuse the H1N1 vaccine when ordered to poison your children?  No religious exemptions for doctors, patients, or parents are readily apparent in the current Obamacare bill. So take action with me…

And people wonder why us atheists consider the stakes so high. It’s people like this that we worry about getting their hands on children and indoctrinating them into the feedback loop that is the religious wingnutosphere.

Mike on this paragraph:

The next most disturbing paragraph is the one in which he claims that the gubmint wants to take over all the catholic hospitals so that the atheists can shut down chapels and take down all the crosses. Perhaps Klingenschmitt is just sore because the DOD has not allowed the Crusaders to turn the US Military into God’s Army, whose mission is to kill or convert all the Muslims. He is still smarting because the VA, a secular institution, removed crosses from shared facilites in respect to the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

Mike goes on to break the rest of the argument down with surgical precision and skill.

If there is nothing in writing, the hospital has to make a decision for the patient. The family’s expression of the patient’s wishes will be taken into account, but can’t be used as a final decision maker. If that person had a directive to state hir wishes clearly that he or she wishes to remain alive awaiting a miraculous cure, then the hospital can at least refer to that. This is not so hard, is it?

Nobody knows what Terry Schiavo wanted. In the end result, her husband and her parents waged a prolonged expensive legal battle to make a decision for her. Yes, the same fucking lying hypocrtical conservatives used the power and the authority of the government to step in to make a decision for a patient; taking sides in a battle that should have been left to the family. They even voted without quorum to specifically make a law that would prevent the hospital from removing the machines that kep Terry Sciavo’s brain-dead body alive. This could have all been avoided had Terri Schiavo created an Advance Care Directive. And this is what the provision does. It prevents the government from making a decision contra the patient’s wishes.

But, instead, the insurance lobbies who want no sort of insurance reform, choose to scare the bejabus out of senior citizens by claiming that Obama wants to kill old people. That murdering, lying fascist socialist Nazi bastard!

Thanks for keeping a civil discourse, Gord.

If you’re an American and you’re concerned about health care or what the government has planned, you owe it to yourselves to go read this post, in which both sides of the story — both crazy and rational — are laid bare.

Equal access to health care is a right you should demand as part of your social contract with your government. Stop listening to the lying murderous bastards that control the health care industry and would murder you for an extra dime. Stop listening to the fear-mongering coming from the Bible Beltway. Throw off your yokes, and demand the same rights that, were conservatives in other countries to suggest these rights be abridged, would result in every conservative being run out of town on a rail.

ONOES OBAMACARE KILLS GRANNIES

US health care is presently a con job

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

With your politicians bought and paid for by the health insurance industry, America’s health care industry is a gigantic con job, and you’re being murdered by spreadsheet for profit while the politicians defend this con job from any chance of being disassembled. If anything is immoral and should be illegal, this is it.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Olbermann is a firebrand, however he is more often right than wrong. And when he’s right, he’s damned right. He may be a talking head, but he’s a hell of a lot more eloquent and a hell of a lot more right than Bill O’Reilly. To put them in the same weight class is to completely fail to weigh them at all.

US health care is presently a con job

The reality of “Canada-style health care”

Jason Thibeault4 Comments

Protip: Obama’s health care plan is very little like Canadian health care.

The other day, I saw an ad on CNN that made me gnash my teeth and break out into a sweat. Though, the fact that we don’t have cable (we are interwebs TV watchers), means that I was watching this at the gym while on the treadmill, so that might have had something to do with the sweating and gnashing. The ad proclaims a number of things: a) that emergency services are going undone and people in Canada are dying from lack of health care, b) Obama is bringing “Canada-style” health care to the States, and c) this will interpose a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor.

The ad is shown in this video, in the first 30 or so seconds. The guy afterward offers a good explanation, and it’s a bit long and dry, but well put.

Right now, there are bureaucrats between you and your doctor. They are your HMO, your insurance agents, and the money that it takes to vault these bureaucratic hurdles is disturbingly large — so large that, as 17,000 people in the States lose health insurance daily, the number of uninsured and underinsured and therefore at risk of death or bankruptcy from otherwise minor health issues grows seemingly exponentially.

Do not mistake me. There are indeed examples of Canadians that get shafted by the Canadian health care system. Including the woman in the example, who is being shafted by Ontario’s health care charter, which is slightly different — it has no health ombudsman. This is a travesty, but it occurs mostly only in Ontario (and slightly so in Quebec, where the ombudsman is fairly weak). And to compare the few people getting shafted in our system, which is tangibly superior in almost every way, to the vast number of people in the States who are completely without any kind of reasonable health care expectations, is ludicrous.

There’s one particular Canadian doctor that’s advocating a US-style, privatized health care reform in Canada: Dr. Brian Day, owner of the largest for-profit, privatized hospital in Canada. Obviously, he is biased, insofar as any push toward privatization of health care and health insurance would allow his model of profit-maximization to expand and become the common mode of health care in Canada. This interview with Natalie Mehra, director of the Ontario Health Coalition, who gets the whole problem, and the *actual* problems with Canadian health care, exactly right — and they are nothing like the commercials claim, taking the worst case scenarios from the Ontario health debacle and painting the entire system with that same brush.

So armed, my dear American friends, go forth and crush this ridiculous set of right-wing anti-healthcare talking points, and win yourselves freedom from fear of bankruptcy or job loss from a mere medical accident.

The reality of “Canada-style health care”

Spam about the swine flu? How apropos!

Jason Thibeault

As usual, don’t take investment, safety or medical advice from e-mail forwards. Here’s a blog post at the Great Orange Satan dissecting the origin of a new chain mail about the swine flu.

– There are 10-25 times more actual cases (not “possible” cases — actual), than what is being reported in the media. The way they fudge on reporting this is that it takes 3 days to get the confirmatory nod from the CDC on a given viral culture, but based on epidemiological grounds, we know that there are more than 10 cases for each “confirmed” case right now.
– During the night, we crossed the threshold for the definition of a WHO, Phase 6 global pandemic. This has not happened in any of our lifetimes so far.. We are in uncharted territory.
– They are advising President Obama to declare an emergency sometime in the next 72-96 hours. This may not happen, but if it doesn’t, I will be surprised. When this happens, all public gathering will be cancelled for 10 days minimum.
– I suggest all of us avoid public gatherings. Outdoor activities are not as likely to lead to infection.. It is contained areas and close contact that are the biggest risk.
– Tamiflu is running out. There is a national stockpile, but it will have to be carefully managed for law enforcement and first responders as it is not enough to treat the likely number of infections when this is full-blown. I don’t think there is a big supply of Relenza, but I do not know those numbers. If I had to choose, I would take Relenza, as I think it gets more drug to the affected tissue than Tamiflu.
– You should avoid going to the ER if you think you have been exposed or are symptomatic. ER’s south of here are becoming overwhelmed today– and I mean that — already.

I can’t even begin to tell you how irresponsible it is telling people not to visit the doctor if they believe they’re sick, not to mention proclaiming the only treatment to be in short supply when in actuality, virologists are metering out Tamiflu usage to only the most dire cases in hopes of keeping the virus from mutating. Bet the nutjobs will start stockpiling Relenza and Tamiflu because of this. Way to help the virus evolve, nutjobs. Thanks for your diligent work in trying to shorten our species’ life expectancy, you always do give 110% at it.

And that doesn’t even touch on the homeopathic and herbal remedy suggestions!

– N-Acetyl-Cysteine — a nutritional supplement available at the health food store or Wimberley Pharmacy, has been shown to prevent or lessen the severity of influenza. I suggest 1200mg, twice a day for adults, and 600mg twice a day in kids over 12. It would be hard to get kids under 12 to take it, but you could try opening the capsules and putting it on yogurt. For 40 pounds and up, 300-600 mg twice a day, for less than 40 pounds, half that.
– Oscillococinum, a homeopathic remedy, has been vindicated as quite effective in a large clinical trial in Europe, with an H1N1 variant. You can buy this at Hill Country Natural Foods, or the Wimberley Pharmacy.

The fearmongering and outright bullshit in this letter comes thick and fast, so we can’t afford to wait for a Snopes counterpoint to counter this letter. Naturally it’s making the rounds on the rightwing websites like Free Republic, along with aspersions cast about Obama refusing to close borders (you know, now that the virus is already in the country). Beyond all this, none of these assertions are sourced. So, can anyone help debunk this stuff?

Spam about the swine flu? How apropos!