it's the same story when dealing with zombies, whatever problem they have in themselves, denial shoots it back at the person they're having a conversation with.
i.e.

Quote:

Look, you are operating from a faulty premise, in that you think I do not know what you know and that if you could only show me the information that you (alone) know, then I would agree with you.

it's fascinating how conditioned responses work.

the most common form has the person's ego refusing to admit there's something they do not know. instead of fighting off this psychological barrier in pursuit of self-growth, free will, (and possibly some truth), they'd rather listen to their ego and turn their denial and frustration on you! they will accuse you of thinking you're special and smarter than everyone else, when it is only they who think like that.

as long as you think you know everything, or others are inferior to you, you'll never have a useful, or original thought.

how do you explain two planes hitting two buildings (built to withstand a hit) and three buildings falling?

i dont care if you're the world's most renowned architect, investigator, whatever.. you don't know everything. right?? but that doesn't stop young bloods from using their very limited knowledge to rationalize anything. people might complete a 2 year flight school and suddenly think they're more qualified to talk about a plane crash than a regular joe. MANY fall into this trap, when you take a big ego, combine it with believing the school's (or professor's) propaganda, a very potent and dangerous case of ignorance is the result.

i've seen it in myself, because all knowledge is self-knowledge. when i was taking anthropology or engineering 101 as a teenager, i caught myself taking these wild leaps to explain something that was really unconnected. even if just for a split second, i thought i actually knew something.

very few people in our society, maybe 5% if that, want to know the truth. most people couldn't push themselves farther from it if they tried. it has nothing to do with intelligence or level of education, but more with ones character and often times plain luck. some believe university is the path to truth, so they join and end up leaving more indoctrinated than when they arrived.

you're absolutely right about deteriorating level of public schools though. i went to a public high school that was probably top 50 in the country and they didn't teach us to write as well as the worst high school in the country would have 20 years prior. actually 40 years prior it was probably better in a low-income elementary school than the high school i went to. there's a book on this i want to read called "deliberate dumbing down of america", it's free for download on her website or you can buy a paper copy. or just read 1984, it talked about destroying communication skills. luckily i never paid attention in school because i learned very early it was run by fascists. i was always in the top classes but that's not saying much. i learned how to write on my own and am above-average for my generation at least when i really need to be. but i have to fight off writer's block. when you don't read enough books writing will inevitably suffer.

LinuxOnly wrote:

i

you're absolutely right about deteriorating level of public schools though. i went to a public high school that was probably top 50 in the country and they didn't teach us to write as well as the worst high school in the country would have 20 years prior. actually 40 years prior it was probably better in a low-income elementary school than the high school i went to. there's a book on this i want to read called "deliberate dumbing down of america", it's free for download on her website or you can buy a paper copy. or just read 1984, it talked about destroying communication skills. luckily i never paid attention in school because i learned very early it was run by fascists. i was always in the top classes but that's not saying much. i learned how to write on my own and am above-average for my generation at least when i really need to be. but i have to fight off writer's block. when you don't read enough books writing will inevitably suffer.

I have a long enough perspective and enough experience trying to teach American college "students" to confirm this, though the deterioration has been pretty steady for about 40 years now, and SAT scores have declined steadily since 1963 (though adjusted and dumbed down in 1995 in order to make 1000 the average score again).

A friend of mine taught 8th graders in California in the mid to late '60s, later taught high school seniors in Arizona from 1980-96. The school districts were socio-economically similar, both upper middle class affluent, and if anything the Arizona district a little more so. He said his 8th graders in the '60s wrote better than his seniors in the '80s and '90s.

A few possible non-vaccine explanations:

LinuxOnly wrote:

do you realize that intelligence/iq scores have been plummeting

This could be due to any number of factors. The quality of American public education heading down the toilet, or women having children with deadshits (and being deadshits themselves), or children not completing their education because they lack parent-instilled discipline of children from two-parent homes, etc. Actually, all of this is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Quote:

do you realize that infertility has shot up faster than...um... charlie sheen's popularity, or the % of western women that consider themselves bi or lesbian

Pollution also plays a factor in fertility, I think. You must also remember that Anglo women are exposed to a media that glorifies homosexuality. Little wonder then that they are lesbian - because the media celebrates it. Women are more easily led than men. Plus there is the internalised misandry in Anglo culture that perhaps compels these women to disdain and avoid men.

NB: Misandry is not recognised as a word in this spell-checker.

Quote:

the life expectancy of the average american is now dropping for the first time in recorded history

Obesity, more self-destructive habits (particularly amongst Anglo girls), greater amounts of stress, etc.

I realize all of this and shouldn't of used silly analogies if they caused confusion. Vaccines have nothing to do with brainwashing women to be dysfunctional lesbian whores, but i believe they play their part in increasing infertility. My point was that in regards to the health system, people have nothing to be proud of. I don't plan to inject myself with an unproven vaccine for an unproven disease simply because it was recommended by the same medical establishment that recommends infant circumcision, implanting pets with chips, and all the rest.

LinuxOnly wrote:

it's the same story when dealing with zombies, whatever problem they have in themselves, denial shoots it back at the person they're having a conversation with.
i.e.

Quote:

Look, you are operating from a faulty premise, in that you think I do not know what you know and that if you could only show me the information that you (alone) know, then I would agree with you.

it's fascinating how conditioned responses work.

the most common form has the person's ego refusing to admit there's something they do not know. instead of fighting off this psychological barrier in pursuit of self-growth, free will, (and possibly some truth)

I have read all of your 'truth'. It is all flawed. You simply lack the intelligence to be able to see the flaws that I can spot instantly.

You want to know why intelligence levels dropped a few IQ points if it was caused by vaccines? I will tell you.

Here it is:

If you have a population of people large enough in size, and you do something that increases their survival rate, what you have done is that you have placed Darwin in abeyance. It is very likely, in fact it is observable reality, that people who are poor, dumb, self-destructive and just not too bright tend to do things that make them sicker than the rest of the general population. They get ill, they don't take care of themselves, they have poor hygiene habits, and they tend to die of Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella and all the other odd diseases that their kids would introduce into schools in the 1960's, causing me to contract the Measles and bring it home to place my siblings at risk of death (not an abstraction - this actually happened.)

If you vaccinate everyone in a given population, what you will do is that you will increase the survivability of the dummies. More dummies live, more dummies live to grow up, and more dummies have more dummy children. Over time those dummy children have dummy children too.

This is simple selection process, LinuxOnly. We have helped the stupid to survive and now they have children instead of dying.

This is basic selection alteration of survival of the fittest.

ya, iq's dropped like a rock within 2 generations because a few more dumb people survived and dumb catholics tend to breed like rabbits.

even if that were true, it's not a question of intelligence as you keep insisting. it doesn't take any intelligence to see that 2 passenger jets can't bring down 3 sky scrapers.. it doesn't take a genius to figure out the pharmaceuticals don't have your best interests at heart. it doesn't take very much education to figure out mercury is not good for you, whether in tooth fillings, or injections. i won't mention sodium fluoride in the water because it's not in the top 3 of most deadly substance known to man like mercury is.

if you're such a pro at finding flaws, why don't you take on the official story of 9/11, hitler's WWII, the war on terror, or anything really. or do you believe the official lies outright?

put your massive intellect to use for good

LinuxOnly wrote:

ya, iq's dropped like a rock within 2 generations because a few more dumb people survived and dumb catholics tend to breed like rabbits.

even if that were true, it's not a question of intelligence as you keep insisting. it doesn't take any intelligence to see that 2 passenger jets can't bring down 3 sky scrapers.. it doesn't take a genius to figure out the pharmaceuticals don't have your best interests at heart. it doesn't take very much education to figure out mercury is not good for you, whether in tooth fillings, or injections. i won't mention sodium fluoride in the water because it's not in the top 3 of most deadly substance known to man like mercury is.

if you're such a pro at finding flaws, why don't you take on the official story of 9/11, hitler's WWII, the war on terror, or anything really. or do you believe the official lies outright?

put your massive intellect to use for good

I don't "believe 'official lies outright'" I look at the most likely explanation, think it out for myself, and conclude (in one example you listed above) that WTC happened as it appears.

So you, once again for the third post in this thread, have not replied in a systematic, orderly, logical, science-based nor rational way to any of the points I have raised.

-You dismiss the best logical explanation with a snide remark, but no logic.
-You then list a series of beliefs that you have, because you lack the intelligence and education to analyze them correctly in anything approaching a scientific fashion.
-To you, it is 'obvious' that 2 passenger jets can't bring down 3 sky scrapers.

I would attempt to show you the kinetic and potential energies of two jets at those speeds hitting a structure, the energy contained within their fuel at the time, the potential and kinetic energies of the individual floors of WTC 1 & 2 and how many joules of energy they would impart as they fell to earth or struck adjacent buildings, and the particular design characteristics that made WTC 1 & 2 (and the Standard Oil Bldg in Chicago, btw) particularly vulnerable to just this precise kind of attack (which is why those two buildings were chosen by Bin Laden - an engineer), much more so than a building box and girder like the Empire State Building, the fact that all of the air traffic controllers who say it was a conspiracy were not on duty that day and are speaking heresay, but I would be wasting my time.

Why?

Because your non-replies to my posts reveal that you have no working knowledge of the following concepts:

-1/2 * m * v^2
-h*m
-The kinetic energy in one floor of WTC 1 or 2 falling 1,320 feet and how many joules of energy it would contain, and how many joules of energy it takes to melt one kilo steel, or how many joules would be in a planned for bomb blast to prevent on WTC 6 or 7.
-The design of WTC 1 & 2 and how it differs from box and girder construction
-The differences between Coincidence, Correlation and Causation
-How those prior three concepts relate to scientific proof and the scientific method
-The Scientific Method
-Logic and logical fallacies
-Reason
-Debate
-The ability to figure out something for yourself without relying upon someone else telling you what is 'truth' or not
-The Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people who are neither competent nor smart believe that they are
-The effects that self-esteem education have had upon the ability of the public to think rationally
-Occam's Razor whereby the simplest explanation is the most likely

Since you do not understand the above, you cannot see for yourself that the proof for all that you post above is massively flawed. I see the flaws in seconds when I read pages devoted to such topics. I always do. Since you do not understand the above concepts, you are incapable of realizing when you are wrong or when you have lost a debate or been proven to hold fallacious views.

To those who are not smart, educated or observant, people who are seem to be citing magical thinking, or making things up, or just stating opinion.

Btw, I know many people much much smarter than I, for I do not know it all. Not at all.

LinuxOnly wrote:

Put your intellect to use for good

I am. I am trying to disabuse you, and those like you, of your faith-based and belief-based systems that border on a Religion.

Because you do not understand what happened on 9-11, for example, you must construct a complex ideology to explain to you what seems as though by magic. However to most of us it isn't magic, it is simple cause and effect, physics and materials science. This isn't conditioning, or brainwashing, or whatever you wish to call it.

They understand what happened, and you do not.

In order to allay your fears of the unknown, you believe in Truther Ideology.

There is another area of human experience that most people do not understand, an area that scares most people to their core. This area is death, and the solution to this lack of understanding and fear is that human beings have created Religion. You have done the same, except that your Religion is Truther/Etal Conspiracy Theories.

Because if what happened did occur, then the world is a very terrifying place to be in. Living in a world where your own body, its mass and velocity, are used to destroy 110 storey buildings and kill thousands, is a reality that would terrify most people. The idea that 19 men who are believers in a Religion that has been at war with The West for 1100 years before the USA ever existed and that they wanted to kill people as they did, is a terrifying thought. However most people accept that this is what happened.

You cannot because it scares you so much, so you create or believe in Trutherism.

globetrotter wrote:

I don't "believe 'official lies outright'" I look at the most likely explanation, think it out for myself, and conclude (in one example you listed above) that WTC happened as it appears.

this is precisely your problem. your foundation is unsound. you confuse most likely with most popular. the most likely explanation for any terrorist attack let alone one as large as 9/11 is that it was the job of one of the major govt intelligence services known for terrorist activities, like the cia, kgb, mi6, or israeli mossad.

unfortunately people are completely under the control of the tv, the most awesome tool of deceit ever devised.

an investigator has to start from a neutral perspective. you start from the side of pro-government. that is already enough to compromise your judgement. but not only that you've already shown yourself to label people who question the government as "conspiracy theorists" and view them as diseased morons.

Quote:

So you, once again for the third post in this thread, have not replied in a systematic, orderly, logical, science-based nor rational way to any of the points I have raised.

i stated my opinion multiple times. what do you want from me! how about this: when vaccines no longer contain mercury and other poisons put in there for the nefarious reasons of dumbing us down, turning us infertile, shortening our lifespan, and lobotomising us... I'll consider vaccines as a viable method to stay healthy! if they are shown to work!

Quote:

-You dismiss the best logical explanation with a snide remark, but no logic.
-You then list a series of beliefs that you have, because you lack the intelligence and education to analyze them correctly in anything approaching a scientific fashion.
-To you, it is 'obvious' that 2 passenger jets can't bring down 3 sky scrapers.

I would attempt to show you the kinetic and potential energies of two jets at those speeds hitting a structure, the energy contained within their fuel at the time, the potential and kinetic energies of the individual floors of WTC 1 & 2 and how many joules of energy they would impart as they fell to earth or struck adjacent buildings, and the particular design characteristics that made WTC 1 & 2 (and the Standard Oil Bldg in Chicago, btw) particularly vulnerable to just this precise kind of attack (which is why those two buildings were chosen by Bin Laden - an engineer), much more so than a building box and girder like the Empire State Building, the fact that all of the air traffic controllers who say it was a conspiracy were not on duty that day and are speaking heresay, but I would be wasting my time.

Why?

Because your non-replies to my posts reveal that you have no working knowledge of the following concepts:

-1/2 * m * v^2
-h*m
-The kinetic energy in one floor of WTC 1 or 2 falling 1,320 feet and how many joules of energy it would contain, and how many joules of energy it takes to melt one kilo steel, or how many joules would be in a planned for bomb blast to prevent on WTC 6 or 7.
-The design of WTC 1 & 2 and how it differs from box and girder construction
-The differences between Coincidence, Correlation and Causation
-How those prior three concepts relate to scientific proof and the scientific method
-The Scientific Method
-Logic and logical fallacies
-Reason
-Debate
-The ability to figure out something for yourself without relying upon someone else telling you what is 'truth' or not
-The Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people who are neither competent nor smart believe that they are
-The effects that self-esteem education have had upon the ability of the public to think rationally
-Occam's Razor whereby the simplest explanation is the most likely

Since you do not understand the above, you cannot see for yourself that the proof for all that you post above is massively flawed. I see the flaws in seconds when I read pages devoted to such topics. I always do. Since you do not understand the above concepts, you are incapable of realizing when you are wrong or when you have lost a debate or been proven to hold fallacious views.

To those who are not smart, educated or observant, people who are seem to be citing magical thinking, or making things up, or just stating opinion.

Btw, I know many people much much smarter than I, for I do not know it all. Not at all.

LinuxOnly wrote:

Put your intellect to use for good

I am. I am trying to disabuse you, and those like you, of your faith-based and belief-based systems that border on a Religion.

Because you do not understand what happened on 9-11, for example, you must construct a complex ideology to explain to you what seems as though by magic. However to most of us it isn't magic, it is simple cause and effect, physics and materials science. This isn't conditioning, or brainwashing, or whatever you wish to call it.

They understand what happened, and you do not.

In order to allay your fears of the unknown, you believe in Truther Ideology.

There is another area of human experience that most people do not understand, an area that scares most people to their core. This area is death, and the solution to this lack of understanding and fear is that human beings have created Religion. You have done the same, except that your Religion is Truther/Etal Conspiracy Theories.

Because if what happened did occur, then the world is a very terrifying place to be in. Living in a world where your own body, its mass and velocity, are used to destroy 110 storey buildings and kill thousands, is a reality that would terrify most people. The idea that 19 men who are believers in a Religion that has been at war with The West for 1100 years before the USA ever existed and that they wanted to kill people as they did, is a terrifying thought. However most people accept that this is what happened.

You cannot because it scares you so much, so you create or believe in Trutherism.

if you can't beat them with sense baffle them with bullshit. ^

as i've already talked about, you can use science to sully any argument. whether you have 2 semesters under your belt or a phd. a good example is disinformation documentaries on discovery & the history channel. i.e. TWA flight-800, which hundreds of witnesses saw get hit by two missles. But at the end of the day americans would rather believe a fairy tale.


Link


you know what i've seen?
i've seen regular monday night football watching joes suddenly take up studying math & physics in their free time. hours and hours of studying per day. they thought it was necessary to convince another human being that 9/11 was a controlled demolition. or when the bees started dying, or the BP oil spill happened, again the cycle repeated. except this time it was biology, fluid mechanics, whatever.

i never went that root. i mean learning new things is great, but the path to truth is not a linear one and if you start reading wikipedia articles you'll be dumber than when you began. i'm still young, i could be an engineer if i wanted to. i'd rather do something meaningful with my life. 1930s germany led the world in basically everything. yet having the best and largest amount of engineers, scientists, etc didn't stop hitler from seizing power.

you know what i've learned in my spare time?
i've learned for example that george bush is a talmud reading zionist jew.
here's a fake picture to prove it!

even more so than free masons, talmudic jews are told that lies, cheating, and stealing is completely fine if it serves the agenda. how many americans even know what a jew is
i prefer to look at actions but you could go the route of someone like webster tarpley and "scientifically" explain the reasons for what the US government is doing. by studying skull & bones, the psychopathy of bush & cheney, and so on. but you're rather stay clueless about certain things (the things that really matter) and use the limited education which you're so proud of to try to demean good natured people and divert their concerns, in the process protecting those who have ruined your homeland by doing the work of a paid gate keeper, and all for free (i'm guessing).

might want to check this out: http://www.happierabroad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37422#37422

i've been online since the mid-90s. i don't particularly like computers. i've had my share of online arguments. i got weary of them by the early 2000s.

i've been working an ungodly ammount of hours last several weeks. i come on here once an hour sometimes to take a break from thinking. sometimes i write my posts at 4am when i'm "doing work" cause i can't sleep. i'm not here to sway anyone as stubborn as you. i'm not here to write essays.
on the positive side i think my spamming has helped make this forum at least seem more active. i think posting pictures and videos helps draw random visitors. so that helps winston and his cause (meaning his crusade against american women as well as his hope to make a few $ off advertisements).



Last edited by odbo on Sat Mar 12, 2011 7:01 am; edited 1 time in total

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110307/hl_nm/us_japan_vaccine

Japan halts Pfizer, Sanofi vaccines after four die

Reuters – The entrance of Pfizer World headquaters in New York City, August 31, 2003. REUTERS/Jeff Christensen
By James Topham – Mon Mar 7, 2:30 pm ET
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan's health ministry halted the use of vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and Sanofi-Aventis SA that prevent meningitis and pneumonia following the deaths of four children.
The infants died shortly after receiving the vaccines. While it was unclear if there was link between the deaths and vaccines, use of Pfizer's Prevenar and Sanofi's ActHIB will be suspended while the deaths are investigated, the ministry said in a statement.
A ministry safety panel is scheduled to discuss findings in the investigations on Tuesday.
Pfizer shares fell 0.5 percent to $19.56 in New York on Monday. Its vaccine, known as Prevnar in the United States, was one of the most important products it picked up in its $67 billion acquisition of Wyeth in 2009. Sanofi's U.S.-listed shares were down 0.8 percent at $35.27 after earlier ending 1.2 percent lower in Paris.
Health officials said they were aware of the deaths in Japan but have not seen any such safety concerns in the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "will continue to monitor the safety of all vaccines, including" the two at issue from Pfizer and Sanofi, FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.
In February last year health authorities in the Netherlands said no relation was found between Prevenar and the deaths of three infants who had received the vaccine.
Three of the children that died in Japan were administered Prevenar together with ActHIB. In addition, three of the children also received a mixed vaccine against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus on the same day they received the other vaccines.
Three of the four children died a day after being immunized. The deaths happened between March 2 and March 4.
Representatives for Pfizer and Sanofi in Tokyo said the companies were cooperating with the investigation.
A spokesman for Sanofi said that the company has shipped more than 3 million doses of ActHIB in Japan since 2008 while a spokesman for Pfizer said the firm has distributed more than 2 million doses of Prevenar in Japan since last year.
(Reporting by James Topham, additional reporting by Lewis Krauskopf in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Edwina Gibbs, Derek Caney, Dave Zimmerman)


_________________
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, 121-180 A.D.

The cost of an injection to prevent premature birth jumps from $10 to $1500. Why? Because the FDA officially approved it and gave the exclusive manufacturing right to one company, thus, eliminating competition. [Be grateful. This was done to improve safety, of course.]

http://www.ajc.com/health/preemie-birth-preventive-spikes-866617.html


Preemie birth preventive spikes from $10 to $1,500

ShareThis PrintE-mail
By MIKE STOBBE
The Associated Press

ATLANTA — The price of preventing preterm labor is about to go through the roof.


Beatrice Diaz, left, and her daughter Haily Parker,3 pose for a photo with her son Garrison Diaz, 8, at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Diaz unexpectedly went into labor at 24 weeks while pregnant with Garrison, who after delivery was so fragile she was not even allowed to hold him for a month. Today he is in a wheelchair and has the mental capacity of a 9-month old. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)

Beatrice Diaz, left, holds her daughter Hailyn Parker,3, as she talks to her son Garrison Diaz, 8, at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Diaz unexpectedly went into labor at 24 weeks while pregnant with Garrison, who after delivery was so fragile she was not even allowed to hold him for a month. Today he is in a wheelchair and has the mental capacity of a 9-month old. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)

Beatrice Diaz undress her son Garrison Diaz 8, after he arrived home from school in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Diaz unexpectedly went into labor at 24 weeks while pregnant with Garrison, who after delivery was so fragile she was not even allowed to hold him for a month. Today he is in a wheelchair and has the mental capacity of a 9-month old. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)

Beatrice Diaz, left, and her daughter Hailyn Parker,3 pose for a photo with her son Garrison Diaz, 8, at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Diaz unexpectedly went into labor at 24 weeks while pregnant with Garrison, who after delivery was so fragile she was not even allowed to hold him for a month. Today he is in a wheelchair and has the mental capacity of a 9-month old. (AP Photo/Jim R. Bounds)
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A drug for high-risk pregnant women has cost about $10 to $20 per injection. Next week, the price shoots up to $1,500 a dose, meaning the total cost during a pregnancy could be as much as $30,000.

That's because the drug, a form of progesterone given as a weekly shot, has been made cheaply for years, mixed in special pharmacies that custom-compound treatments that are not federally approved.

But recently, KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE'-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.

None of them anticipated the dramatic price hike, though — especially since most of the cost for development and research was shouldered by others in the past.

"That's a huge increase for something that can't be costing them that much to make. For crying out loud, this is about making money," said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts' Medicaid program.

"I've never seen anything as outrageous as this," said Dr. Arnold Cohen, an obstetrician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

"I'm breathless," said Dr. Joanne Armstrong, the head of women's health for Aetna, the Hartford-based national health insurer.

Doctors say the price hike may deter low-income women from getting the drug, leading to more premature births. And it will certainly be a huge financial burden for health insurance companies and government programs that have been paying for it.

The cost is justified to avoid the mental and physical disabilities that can come with very premature births, said KV Pharmaceutical chief executive Gregory J. Divis Jr. The cost of care for a preemie is estimated at $51,000 in the first year alone.

"Makena can help offset some of those costs," Divis told The Associated Press. "These moms deserve the opportunity to have the benefits of an FDA-approved Makena."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is not involved in setting the price for the drugs it approves.

A KV subsidiary, Ther-Rx Corp., will market the drug. On Tuesday, it announced a patient assistance program designed to help uninsured and low-income women get the drug at little or no cost.

But Snow and others said someone is going to have to pay the higher price. Some of the burden will fall on health insurance companies, which will have to raise premiums or other costs to their other customers. And some will fall on cash-strapped state Medicaid programs, which may be forced to stop paying for the drug or enroll fewer people.

"There's no question they can't afford this," said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.

Salo and Snow said they do not know how many state Medicaid programs currently pay for Makena, which as a generic was recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Aetna will continue to pay for the drug, Armstrong said, but it will be an expensive pill to swallow. Aetna currently covers it for about 1,000 women a year, so the new federal endorsement is likely to cost an estimated $30 million more annually.

Makena is a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone that first came on the market more than 50 years ago to treat other problems. Hormone drugs came under fire in the 1970s, following reports they might damage fetuses in early pregnancy. In the 1990s, the early incarnation of Makena was withdrawn from the market.

But the drug got a new life in 2003, with publication of a study that reported it helped prevent early births to women who had a history of spontaneous preterm deliveries.

These very early births produce children who — if they survive — need months of intensive care and often suffer disabilities. The cause of sudden preterm delivery is not understood, but it occurs in black mothers at much higher rates than whites or Hispanics.

The study of women at risk for this condition found that only about 36 percent of those given the progesterone drug had preterm births, compared with 55 percent among those not on the drug.

It's believed the treatment calms the muscles of the uterus, experts said.

There is no good alternative in most cases and in the years following the study, more obstetricians, Medicaid programs and others began prescribing it. By some estimates, about 130,000 women a year might benefit from the drug. Only a fraction of them get it, but the number has been growing steadily.

One success story is Beatrice Diaz, 33, of Chapel Hill, N.C.

During her first pregnancy nine years ago, Diaz unexpectedly went into labor at about 24 weeks. She delivered a son, Garrison, who was so fragile she was not allowed to hold him for a month. Today he is in a wheelchair and has the mental capacity of a 9-month-old.

It was a shock, said Diaz, who at the time was a legal assistant in a prosecutor's office.

"Honestly I thought the only people who had 1-pound babies were crackheads," she said.

When she became pregnant again, her doctor prescribed the progesterone drug, a weekly injection that starts as early as the 16th week and may be given for as much as 20 weeks. She has since had two healthy, full-term baby girls, Hailyn and Alexa.

Diaz said she's not planning to have any more children — and that's a good thing.

"That's an insane amount of money. I don't know what I would do to get the money to afford it," she said.

The Ther-Rx patient assistance program promises free injections or much reduced prices based on income. Uninsured households making less than $100,000 are eligible for a copay of $20 or less.

Ther-Rx and its parent company became involved about three years ago and acquired rights to the drug from a Massachusetts company named Hologic Inc., said Divis, who is also Ther-Rx's president.

To get FDA approval, the company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in additional research, including an international study involving 1,700 women, Divis said. The FDA last month signed off and gave Makena orphan drug status. That designation ensures Ther-Rx will be the sole source of the drug for seven years.

The March of Dimes, which gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Ther-Rx, celebrated the approval in a press release, saying if all women eligible for the shots receive them, nearly 10,000 spontaneous premature births could be prevented each year.

"For the first time, we have an FDA-approved treatment to offer women who have delivered a baby too soon, giving them hope that their next child will have a better chance at a healthy start in life," said Dr. Alan Fleischman, the organization's medical director.

As for the cost, he said the drug maker's financial assistance program will ensure no eligible woman is denied the drug due to inability to pay.

Some doctors said they were happy getting the cheaper version from compounding pharmacies, and Aetna's Armstrong said she was unaware of any quality concerns.

Still, doctors will use the Ther-Rx brand, in part because of legal worries.

Not that they have a choice: Last month, KV sent cease-and-desist letters to compounding pharmacies, telling them they could face FDA enforcement actions if they kept making the drug.


_________________
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, 121-180 A.D.

"The Japanese traditionally barred their children from immunization until six years of age; they understood the immune system to be too fragile for anything other than acquired natural immunities until that age."

nice to see japan finally joined the 21st century and stopped using sense

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/06/osu-had-role-in-old-drug-trials.html


OSU had role in old drug trials
Federal probe into disturbing tests stirs painful memories

Sunday, March 6, 2011 02:59 AM
BY SPENCER HUNT

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PHOTOS
In the 1950s, Ohio State doctors injected prisoners at the Ohio Penitentiary with live cancer cells to test vaccines.

The cancer study ended up producing no useful results.
Human-subject

research

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues is preparing a report for President Barack Obama on protecting human subjects in research.

What it is

The commission was formed to examine ethical issues and questions created

by advances in scientific research and to identify policies that will ensure

that scientific research is conducted in an ethically responsible manner.

Members

The 13-person panel is composed of university presidents, bioethicists, doctors, medical researchers and advocates.

Funding

$1.2 million

Deadline

The commission will prepare a report outlining ethical issues and recommending new policies by September.

Henry Langlois was one of 38 soldiers who were told in 1955 that they were serving their country when they volunteered to inhale a biological agent that the government was testing.

A year later, inmates at the Ohio Penitentiary were told they were serving society when they volunteered to let researchers inject them with live cancer cells.

In the 1960s and 1970s, 15,000 Marines were told the same thing when Ohio State University scientists tested a pneumonia vaccine on them.

These and other government-funded experiments on military personnel, prisoners and mental patients are driving an investigation into the rules that are meant to protect people who volunteer for scientific studies.

Story continues below
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The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues met last week to discuss "human subjects protection" after the government apologized in October for a 1940s-era experiment. In the research, Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners and mental patients were infected with syphilis to test penicillin treatments.

As the commission prepares a report it is to deliver to President Barack Obama in September, its work is stirring up memories.

Langlois, a 74-year-old Hilliard retiree, calls the summer that he participated in Q-fever tests at the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah a mistake. He blames the government test for two leaky heart valves that a surgeon replaced in 2003.

Q fever is a disease caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii, which usually affects animals.

"They could not explain what caused it. I never smoked in my life," Langlois said of his damaged heart. "When you are 18 years old, you do dumb things."

At the time, such experiments were not unusual.

"It was kind of a free-for-all. It seemed like it was unregulated and uncontrolled," said Karla Zadnik, chairwoman of one of three OSU committees that review proposals for research involving human subjects. Each year, OSU researchers conduct as many as 5,000 studies that involve human subjects.

"There are people here who work really, really hard every day to prevent anything even close to those events of the past from ever happening," she said.

A review of Dispatch archives revealed several studies in the 1950s and 1960s that used prisoners at the old Ohio Pen. They included a vaccine test in which inmates were infected with tularemia, or rabbit fever, and a test of fluoride pills to determine their effect on human blood.

In 1958, tranquilizers were tested on 90 prisoners.

Perhaps the most famous was the cancer-vaccine test. As many as 160 prisoners were injected with live cancer cells.

The study, co-sponsored by Ohio State and the Sloan-Kettering Research Institute, ran from 1956 until 1961. Eventually, researchers said they lost track of most of the prisoners and thus had no results.

Zadnik said experiments such as that would not be approved today. There would be too many concerns about scientific value, risks and whether inmates and troops were pushed to volunteer.

"That's a vulnerable population you could take advantage of," she said.

Today, researchers must assure review boards that test subjects are fully aware of potential risks and benefits. That's called "informed consent."

Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, said even tougher protections are needed. He said U.S. research increasingly involves human test subjects in other countries, and it's not always clear whether the same rules are applied there.

And as industries such as pharmaceutical companies increasingly fund research efforts, there are growing concerns about whether finances are influencing the studies.

"Research itself is changing," Caplan said. "You don't want to (oversee) a 21st-century research enterprise with a 1970s guidance system."

Dispatch news researcher Julie Albert contributed to this story.

shunt@dispatch.com


_________________
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, 121-180 A.D.

Link



_________________
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, 121-180 A.D.

LinuxOnly wrote:

"The Japanese traditionally barred their children from immunization until six years of age; they understood the immune system to be too fragile for anything other than acquired natural immunities until that age."

nice to see japan finally joined the 21st century and stopped using sense

I'm not sure where the author got that idea from. Here's a comparison of Japanese immunization schedule for children vs. US:




Japan is listed to the left, and US to the right. Chart to the left starts with newborn (0 year) to 1-9 months, then 1st year, 3rd year, 4th year, 5th-6th year, 9 year, and 11-12 years old. It should also be noted that Japan's pharmaceutical companies developed their own vaccines, which may differ from the ones used in the US. i.e. Japanese encephalitis (日本脳炎) immunization is usually not given in the US. Vaccines that are contraindicated to infants are placed later on the schedule. Some vaccines require multiple dosage and are spread out through months or years.

Momopi,

Please.

Do not interrupt.

Facts, reason, logic, reality - all of those concepts are irrelevant to LinuxOnly and people like him/her.