Fake Drug cover-up a worldwide health risk

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that around 10 percent of all available medicines are now faked in a racket earning $35 billion a year. A database of all the fake drugs discovered by the world’s 18 largest drug companies is kept at the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, but this information is not available to the media or the public.
Professor Nicholas J. White and Dr. Paul Newton of Oxford’s Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine concluded that most fake-drug data is kept secret because drug companies fear that publicity will harm sales of brand-name drugs in a fiercely competitive business.
China, Southeast Asia, Russia, India, and the Middle East are major manufacturers of fake drugs. Nigeria, the hub of West Africa’s fake-drug trade and a country notorious for corruption and violence, destroys tons of fake drugs every month. A typical list includes faked versions of products from GSK, Pfizer, Hoffman La Roche, Novartis, Unilever, Janssen, Astra Zeneca, and Upjohn.
High profits, low costs, minimal legal risks, and little publicity are drawing crime gangs away from arms and narcotics. High-tech photocopiers turn out perfect drug packaging for every type of drug. Out-of-date and damaged drugs get relabeled and sold. When GSK put holograms on its Halfan, trying to stop the counterfeits, the criminals faked their hologram.
Once taken, a fake pill made of rice starch or water is virtually untraceable in the body.
Anti-malarial drugs are a very common target, and probably the reason for the current upswing in the disease. The use of fake drugs is helping the malaria parasites to quickly mutate to become resistant to new drugs.
And just in case you think it can't happen here: on December 5, 2002, Kansas City pharmacist Robert R. Courtney pleaded guilty to diluting the cancer drugs Gemzar, made by Eli Lilly, and Taxol, made by Bristol Myers-Squibb. Since 1992, Courtney had diluted 72 different medicines, affecting some 400 doctors and more than 4,000 patients. 17 died.

We spending so much to prevent terrorists from flying more planes into buildings. We give up freedoms to stop terrorists from killing a few hundred people. How ironic if millions die from terrorists selling fake drugs, while we ignore them.

My thanks to The American Prospect Online for most of this information.

Home Schooling vs. Universities

A lawuit claims the University of California is biased against students who were home-schooled in, among other things, the tenets of creationism. The University claims that the students do not meet their science requirements; the parents claim that the university is discriminating against their kid's religion.

This is, I think, only the tip of the iceberg. Home schooling has no set standards; only state schooling does. What happens when students applying for admission start saying things like:

"My mother didn't want me learning anything about that subject. She says it's filthy."
"Humans had H-bombs in ancient times. My teacher showed me a book . . ."
"Only commies think that."
"My teacher said that the Holocaust never happened."
"My teacher said that history was rewritten by the blacks and liberals to make it look like blacks were slaves once, so they can use guilt to dominate whites."
"Psychiatry is a hoax. Only EST works."
"Grades are a mysogenistic system of diminishing achievements. My empathic and psychic leves are sufficiently advanced for higher education."

And so on.
No doubt, new "universities" will spring up, willing to take these paying students, and issuing them whatever papers they want. Then we will start hearing about businesses being sued for not recognizing degrees from Fred's University, or whatever.

There are standards.
A degree means you have been taught this and this and this - belief not included.
When you can get a degree for being taught anything, correct or not, then no degree is worth anything.

Mistletoe shortage

A report from England states that overcutting of this rare plant is making it even more rare, to the point that supply may not be able to keep up with demand.

Two words. Plastic ornament.

Nuclear Power a short term fix

It is estimated that global exploitable reserves of uranium will likely be depleted within 30-40 years. If all the world’s existing fossil fuel based power stations were replaced by nuclear, there would only be enough uranium for 3-4 years.
The global nuclear industry requires approximately 68,000 tonnes of uranium ore a year to operate, and nearly half of all uranium supply is now provided from military sources.

In other words, we need more than reactors to kep us going after the oil runs out.

Sources:
Uranium Information Centre, www.uic.com.au. WISE-Uranium, www.wise-uranium.org.

Nuclear Energy: the Energy Balance, Jan-Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, 2005. Nuclear Monitor, WISE/NIRS.

Merry Christmas to Conrad Black

Lord Conrad Black, on trial for several counts of fraud over allegations he and four other former executives at Chicago-based Hollinger International Inc. took $84-million (U.S.) from the company, acted almost like a Hollywood star yesterday. He told reporters "It's going to be a great trial."
Edward Genson, one of his lawyers, said “When this thing comes to trial, and it's going to come to trial, they are going to find, and that is the jury and all you guys, that he didn't do a darn thing wrong,” Mr. Genson said. “We are going to have an opportunity to show that all of this negative publicity has been unjustified, that he didn't commit any crime.”

Why they're trying him before trying Ken Lay is a mystery. But then, they tried Martha Stewart before Ken Lay, too.
Maybe it is who you know . . .

Things go better in Columbia

A company in southern Colombia has created a golden, carbonated drink made from coca leaf extract called Coca Sek, or Coca of the Sun. They plan to market it as an alternative to foreign soft drinks.
"Six years ago we took on the job of trying to re-establish the good name of the coca leaf, which is a plant with enormous medicinal properties," said David Curtidor, head of the company.
Mr. Curtidor also said the drink is a political statement against companies such as the Coca-Cola Co., which "symbolizes imperialist domination."
The amount of cocaine is miniscule, if any.
The drink will not be exported into the US, due to restrictions against importing anything containing raw coca.

I wish them luck. If their sales go worldwide, there may not be enough coca plants left to be turned into narcotics.

Policeman tasers partner over pop dispute

A police officer in Hamtramck, Mich., has been charged with using a Taser on his partner over whether they should stop for a soft drink.
Ronald Dupuis began arguing with partner Prema Graham after Dupuis demanded she stop their car at a store so he could buy a soft drink. The two then fought over the steering wheel, and Dupuis hit her leg with his department-issued Taser.

Another example for the "If you take away their guns, they will fight with knives." folder.
One can only imagine what would have happened if these two had been members of a SWAT team.

Principal of Space Travel

Victoria Principal is set to be the first female tourist in space.
The actress and former start of Dallas has apparently paid out $200,000 to British businessman Sir Richard Branson, in order to be on his first commercial space flight in 2008.
Tom Hanks also said to be interested.

An unnamed source stated that William Shatner withdrew his request for a ticket upon learning that he would not be in command.

Actually, I hope this catches on. A new frontier may be just the thing our species needs to distract it from idiocy.

Can we become immortal?

Since 1900, the average human lifespan has increased 60%, due to, among other things, education on hygene and new medicines. New research may extend this generations lifespans by 500%.

Meanwhile, obesity, violence, and poverty are doing their best to reverse the trend.
Either way, we need to really look into better nursing homes.

Ban the Bombs

Chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei said Saturday, in accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, that we must ban nuclear arms worldwide.

1) duh.
2) Most terrorists are making the switch to biological weapons anyway - no need for exotic metals and big reactors, just a little lab and some pond scum. Oh, and some germs for the pond scum to breed into bioweapons.

I hope Mr. ElBaradei is careful - 30 years ago this week, the last man to say "Give peace a chance" was gunned down.

Ethiopia to gain it's own sea

The Afar desert is being torn off the continent at a rate of about two centimetres each year.
A fissure, now four metres wide, formed in three weeks after a Sept. 14 earthquake in a barren region called Boina, some 1,000 kilometres northeast of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Believed similar to the basin of the Red Sea, the split is the beginning of a long process that will eventually lead to Ethiopia's eastern part tearing off from the rest of Africa - in about a million years. Scientists plan to monitor the process.

An unnamed associate states she is "fairly certain" that the armed disputes in the area will finally be brought to an end once the sea forms. She also hopes to be alive to see the monitoring process through, although she admitted this is "unlikely."

UFO Anniversary

On Dec. 9, 1965, in Kecksburg, about 50 kilometres southeast of Pittsburgh, something many believe was a UFO landed. A metal "acorn", about four metres high and three metres in diameter, landed in the woods. Military personnel cordoned off the site and removed the object, which the military later called a meteor.
Two years ago, Leslie Kean, an investigative reporter, sued NASA two years ago under the Freedom of Information Act. Apparently, NASA studied whatever it was came down, and declared it was a Soviet satellite. But government records documenting it have been lost.
Ms. Kean doesn't believe them. She says an expert, Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris, studied the orbital paths of known satellites in 1965, and determined that it could not have been a manmade object.

Gee - could it be the government is lying?
The truth is out there.

Quebec hockey

Canada's Bloc Quebecois, the only party outside of the third world devoted to fragmenting its own country, yesterday began its election campaign by promising to ask for a Quebec national hockey team. Citing the fact that both Scotland and Wales both had national soccer and rugby teams, despite being a part of Great Britain, the Bloc leadership called for a Quebec hockey team to compete alongside Team Canada.

Well, I noticed them.

Palistinians corrupt?

Reporter Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post states he is mystified by the billions of dollars that the U.S. and other countries sends to the Palistinian Authority, a group that refuses to abide by any conditions imposed on the receipt of that money.
“It’s your money, don’t you care?” he asked the American audience. "You keep rewarding gangsterism and violence with increasing levels of funding, so it’s no wonder the Arab Palestinian leadership doesn’t reform."

Apparently the man has never heard of Ken Lay, or he wouldn't be so suprised.

Thanks to Power Line for this story.