More on Pristiq
Posted on May 16, 2008 in Generic prescription drug list
Marissa Miller has a fine spot widely desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), Wyeth's assessment to teem with settled through their quarto Effexor coming off patent intervening the relating tour. Coverup? Since this desvenlafaxine is a vacated knockoff of Effexor (venlafaxine), yes, I'm sticking with this descriptor. Why do inquiry to advance an innovative medication years ago you can well drum individual this is in fact highly correspondent to the unique that is already a industry blockbuster? The idea is not new – make a drug that very closely resembles your existing product, then get it FDA-approved slightly before the old one goes off patent. Lexapro-Celexa, Invega-Risperdal, and now Effexor-Pristiq. The new drug offers no advantage over the drug that is about to go generic, and why would it – if you have a red 1975 Ford Pinto or a green 1975 Pinto, you still have the same crappy car. Aren’t patents supposed to protect inventions that possess the potential to benefit people? Aren’t patents supposed to reward creativity? There is no creativity here – we’re talking a slight manipulation of a molecule to create a new compound that is no better than the first one. But the blame does not just lie with the patent process. Why are physicians prone to fall for this game? Why do so many physicians prescribe Lexapro (escitalopram), which is pert-near a clone of Celexa (citalopram), when Lexapro is much more pricey? In fact according to Walgreens, 90 pills of 10mg generic citalopram will run $127.59, whereas the same supply of Lexapro costs $210.79. The marketing miracle that constitutes the heart and soul of modern psychiatry is damn good at convincing physicians that newer equals better. Perhaps if physicians received adequate training in research methods and statistics during medical school, they could actually learn to critically review clinical trial data to discover that the ploy of near-clone medicines usually does nothing but increase costs. Then doctors could also laugh their way through continuing medical education or, better yet, insist that CME start to resemble education rather than advertising. generic cialis cheap viagra Cheap Viagra viagra
Tags: patent, lexapro, physicians, effexor, pristiq
New York Times says their work is done in USA
Posted on May 14, 2008 in Generic prescription drugs
Declaring their happening halfway the USA gone by, the New York Times today printed an editorial hail over British Figure Cram Tony Blair to resign, post-haste. Biz him a lame eschew, they go for the PM should resign finished the span you've over schooling that ship. I'm sure somewhere inserted a London pub Gordon Brown is hoisting repeated pint to Fare Keller. generic cheap cialis buy cilais viagra
Air and water
Posted on April 21, 2008 in Medical care
Last weekend I took some advice often given to bloggers and got out more. Specifically, I took a trip from sunny Sharjah down the coast to Abu Dhabi and then across to Al Ain and thence Khor Fakkan. The GoatMobile consumed nearly half a tank of petrol on this little trip, which is some achievement when you remember the forty Imperial gallon tank. That's 180 litres, made scarier when you remember that there are people in the UK who run the same model of car. Ouch, expense. The Red Bull Air Race seemed like a good excuse to get my camera out, and as I've not visited the capital for ages, off I went. Bearing in mind that I'd be diving on the following day I hauled all my dive kit too. Traffic on Abu Dhabi corniche was predictably chaotic. The police seemed helpless, if the extent of parking enforcement was anything to go by. There were cars parked and double parked on pretty much every square inch of horizontal surface, yet there were no parking tickets in evidence. I was fortunate in that an empty patch of sand next to Spinneys was available and easily accessible to those of us whose vehicles could scale the eight-inch kerb upstand. Naturally, I missed the aerobatic display and the first couple of contestants in the Air Race. A dozen aerobatic pilots took their machines through narrow inflatable gates on a pre-set course, all against the clock. Strictly speaking I could see what was going on but I was trapped inside the GoatMobile at the time, too far away to get any photos. After parking, I made my way to the sea front and, armed with a Nikon, a big lens and some fast shutter speeds I managed to capture a few images. Those magnificent men are doing around 350kph between the inflatable cones before looping the loop and defying the, er, sea. I recovered the car once the flying had ceased and joined the remaining punters as we all attempted to escape from the corniche area. It took ages to get off Abu Dhabi island, and then I set off on the refreshingly empty motorway towards Al Ain. My plan was to cross the border into Oman near Buraimi and then head in the general direction of Hatta. I've not been to Al Ain for ages either. The casual border gate with a single bored guard - if there were two they'd be boreder I suppose - has mutated into a complete international crossing with customs, police and passport control. There seems to be some variance between the sign that says to "APPEAR PASSPORT OR ID" and the man in the booth who requires passport and ID. Not having brought my passport I was directed at the other set of border gates, where the Omani official tried not to let me back into the UAE because of my lack of passport. "But that's why they won't let me leave. So I'm not entering the UAE because I never left." Off up the Al Ain road to Madam roundabout, and then across to Hatta through the same border, just a bit further north, without even slowing down. Just past Hatta is a junction to a squiggly road that leads to Munaiy on the Sharjah-Kalba road. Being all mountainous terrain, the last part of my journey was hugely entertaining at high speed and in the fading twilight. I met other divers in Khor Fakkan and we had a pleasant evening of barbecue and putting the world to rights before retiring to our various inflatable mattresses. Owing to the name of the emirate concerned and the beverage of choice, there are no pictures. The diving on Saturday was very refreshing. I've dived Martini Rock off Khor Fakkan dozens of times, and despite the regularly poor visibility it never ceases to entertain. But I've not dived Inchcape 10 before. Lying just off Fujairah, I hope to dive it a lot more. The wreck is teeming with life. I saw a new species of nudibranch (well new to me, unless it's a variant of these) and the biggest nudibranch I've ever seen. Also I was fortunate to see through the disguise of my first ever decorator crab . The moray , hiding in an old tyre, was crying out to be photographed. The water temperature is still a little chilly. It's in the low to mid twenties Celsius. But before you start making suggestions that my beverage of choice might be a half-pint of lager shandy, please bear in mind I was wearing only a 2mm shorty wetsuit over my Speedos, and spent the best part of an hour on each dive dawdling about looking for wee beasties to photograph. Labels: driving, intemperance, officialdom, scuba, sport buy cilais cheap cialis cheap viagra generic viagra online
Life's for livin'
Posted on April 14, 2008 in Antibiotic
Have a drink, have a drive Go out and see what you can find -Mungo Jerry from "In the Summertime" The Wisconsin State Journal today devoted their staff editorial to the need to getting serial DUI offenders off the road. To recap... Shockingly, Thomas J. Dworak has been convicted a dozen times for drunken driving. And he was in court this week standing trial for another drinking while driving offense. William A. Skare has been convicted on fourteen counts of drinking and driving. Clearly, these two Wisconsin men should not be allowed behind the wheel. And yet law enforcement keeps finding them there without a license and drunk. This constitutes a deficiency in our laws since the legal punishment for their repeated convictions has not prevented these individuals from driving. The Wisconsin State Journal puts it more eloquently, "The only regret Wisconsin should have about throwing the book at Dworak is that it is not a bigger book." Dworak is facing a maximum prison sentence of six years plus a fine of $10,000, which could increase as a function of his blood alcohol content at the time of the infraction. Hot off setting myself up for being called a yankee muckraker, Pint and Fork proposes that the following ideas be considered to keep serial offenders off the road: 1. Pass a law that makes it illegal for repeat offenders to own or possess a car after a certain number of offenses. I mean if we can make laws that "infringe" upon a convicted felon's "second amendment right" to bear arms, we can make a law that restricts access to motor vehicles. Cars in the hands of the intoxicated are deadly weapons and killed nearly 17,000 people in 2005 alone (insert obligatory comment about the number of US soldiers killed in the Iraq War, or on September 11, 2001). If we can keep the worst offenders away from motor vehicles, maybe we can reduce the number of alcohol-related fatalities. 2. Impose criminal penalties for allowing a known repeat offender to operate a vehicle in your possession. In my mind, this is similar to laws that we have in place concerning the provision of alcohol to minors. Law enforcement doesn't just penalize the offending minors; they can also penalize those who provided the alcohol in the first place. And so it is with cars and repeat DUI offenders. 3. The Wisconsin State Journal cites South Dakota law that allows repeat offenders to drive if they submit to Breathalyzer tests twice daily with the sheriff. I'm not sure that the article makes it clear, but the South Dakota law is a so-called "24/7 sobriety" zero-tolerance law. That is, a person can get a special permit to operate a motor vehicle so long as they get tested, pay the expenses of the testing, and consume absolutely no ethanol. The detection of any amount of alcohol necessarily revokes that individual's right to operate a motor vehicle. However unlikely, it may be possible to fool a Breathalyzer. Google helped me find all sorts of tricks for beating a Breathalyzer including breathing heavily before analysis, eating shit, and sucking on activated charcoal. My scientific training and an episode of Mythbusters has me doubting the effectiveness of any way to cheat the test. To obviate any technique for fooling a Breathalyzer analysis, blood samples should be randomly collected from program participants. I'm not sure that measure three would stop Dworak from driving, seeing as how he wasn't deterred by having his license revoked by a preponderance of repeat offenses. So while this 24/7 sobriety program offers a legal road map to obtaining a driving permit, it is insufficient to keep the worst offenders from driving because they will do so with or without a permit. Still, I regard this as a significant step forward. cialis generic viagra online buy cilais viagra
A frank discussion about Pint and Fork
Posted on April 14, 2008 in Antibiotic
In case you haven't noticed, Pint and Fork has been on hiatus for the past two months. I've spent that time reflecting on what I'm trying to achieve by writing this blog, and what direction this blog should follow in the future. See, it's like this. You can get food and beer writing from a lot of places. But I've always attempted to infuse a subtle perspective drawn from my experiences into this blog that gives it terroir . Right now, I live in Madison, Wisconsin and many of my posts have been germane to the local food, beer, and the politics of each. But as the focus of Pint and Fork has become increasingly specific, its readership I fear has become smaller. Which is fine with me on the whole. As Dario Cecchichi is quoted as saying in Bill Buford's book "Heat", I'm not interested in "bizzzness." I'm not interested in showing how "refined" my palate is by writing, say, restaurant reviews in which I find fault with everything and write about it in the most mocking ways. Such reviews, while fun to read perhaps, lower the bottom line of food blogging as a whole. Writing mean things about people is not what I'm about. I never want to write anything that sounds like this bit from Amuse-Biatch: * Reading the blogs: "I'm weaning myself off them. They're vicious. They attack me, my wife, my dog. These people don't seem to have anything better to do." [Um, first of all, we do have better things to do (and we do them); it's just that we enjoy doing this (like Hung, we lack both "heart" and "soul"). Secondly, we never attacked your dog; we believe in intraspecies honor. Look, Brian, possum, we'll level with you. You're a very cute guy (especially once you shaved that asinine soul patch), but it's not our fault that you had a penchant for bullshit, airy-fairy dish names, ugly man-jewelry and stupid hats (we're not positive, but we think even the International Male catalogue has banned thumb rings and leather wristbands). You might, as you claim, be loved by the Gays, but possum, we's a tough crowd, and tough crowd equals tough love. Also, it's not our fault that your wife put specific information that presumably implicates you on a public MySpace page for all the world to see. On the positive side, we applaud and congratulate you for not saying that you were weaning yourself "off of" blogs. Good grammar is a wonderful thing to behold. See? We're not all bad.] Just as I'm not interested in being another tabloid blog, I also have no desire to be the CNN of the food blogging world. Pint and Fork isn't "first on the scene" journalism, nor is it going to report on gossip. I'm not the blogger that shows up on restaurants on their first night in operation or reviews a beer after a single bottle. I've been working on an ethics policy and I'll post it when it's ready. In the mean time, let it suffice it to say that a fair amount of effort goes into fair representation of facts. Pint and Fork is slow and deliberate. It is the opinion page of the newspaper and not the front page. It's tempting to sell out these principles to boost my blog's popularity, but I believe that there's an audience out there that isn't interested in that kind of blogging and who prefers the perspective that I can bring to the table. So to speak. I hope I'm right. I'm inspired by Alder from Vinography who continues to be one of the strongest voices in the wine blogging community. He has gotten there not by being flashy, mean, or spurious, but by being thorough, consistent, and a fine writer. Alder stays on topic and he does it well. That said, I have some exciting plans for this blog to dish up when the time is right. In the meantime, I hope to return to a regular weekly posting schedule. For all of my readers, welcome back! buy cilais cialis cheap viagra Generic Viagra
Tags: blog, fork, pint, writing, interested
All's Quiet on the Western Front
Posted on April 14, 2008 in Antibiotic
A curious thing happened in Viroqua on Monday. People actually demonstrated in favor of concentrated animal feeding operations. Local large-scale farmers hauled over fifty pieces of farm equipment onto the streets surrounding Western Technical College, mostly to express opposition to a measure being evaluated by Vernon County's Health Committee that would temporarily restrict development of new livestock operations of 500-1000 animals. Regulations surrounding herds of more than 1000 "animal units" would still fall under Wisconsin Statute 93.90. So basically, Vernon County has proposed to have a stricter standard than the rest of the state of Wisconsin. City folks and small-scale farmers demonstrated to express their support for the proposed moratorium. Virginia Goeke was there are and laments that Unfortunately, some of the media has portrayed this issue as Vernon county Farmers are against the moratorium, meanwhile city folks are for it. John and I, along with other small family farms have spoken publicly in favor of the moratorium at the recent public hearing, however there was a very large showing of very large-scale farmers, replete with their large, new, shiny tractors & spray rigs, that of course grabbed the media eye. It all started when Jeff and Bonnie Parr proposed the development of a 2400 "animal unit" hog operation. As a moratorium, it wouldn't permanently ban the development of such large-scale farms. Health Committee member Gail Frie said, "This is a temporary short-term moratorium, not a prohibition." The idea is that the committee needs more time to arrive at a definitive conclusion on the best way to move forward. The board supported passing the draft moratorium on June 11 on the testimony of David Chakoian who demonstrated that large scale hog farms promote the spread of antibiotic-resistance pathogens. Chakoian's view was rebuked by that of Arthur Mueller, a veterinarian, who concluded that "The important thing is this confinement unit will not threaten the public of its neighbors." This moratorium is not only a good idea; it doesn't go far enough. The conditions that allow concentrated animal feeding operations to exist ought to be made illegal, and I hope that Vernon County will make it so. Furthermore, it is in the best interests of everyone that Vernon County acts in this manner. In a confined animal operation, animals are kept in such close proximity that anti-biotics have to be administered to entire herds. This is even more important because many of these pigs, once able to subsist on anything, are bred or genetically engineered in such a way that they would die outside. Pumping an animal full of antibiotics and then eating it sounds like a recipe for the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and it does in fact result in nasty infections. Chee-Sanford et al. demonstrated in 2001 that antibiotic-resistance can also be transmitted by ground water from liquid animal waste. Given the solid scientific evidence demonstrating that the continued use of antibiotics poses a human health risk, and given that such antibiotics are administered most on concentrated animal feedlot operations, it only makes sense that the proposed moratorium would have a positive impact upon human health. In talking about health risks, we run a risk of focusing too myopically on health and safety issues in neglect of environmental, ethical, culinary, and public interest considerations. These large farms won't be able to compost their animal waste, leading to groundwater pollution. The swine that will live on the Parr's farm will experience very low quality of life, which many people would consider unethical. Omnivores ought to demand this moratorium in light of the fact that happy animals taste better than sad animals. Is it in the public interest that the swine industry should become progressively more consolidated? Is this in support of the area's famed rural agrarian heritage? Does the potentially lethal malodorous effluent rank high on the dread-and-outrage scale in the public view? Does an increase in antibiotic resistance bacteria post a threat to national security? This is precisely the sort of political trap the food industry has relied upon for decades. Hasn't anyone read Safe Food by Marion Nestle? The Vernon County board should open the discussion to consider all relevant views of the topic, not just health and safety. The real insult to injury here is that the Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection (!!!) (DATCAP) has threatened to sue Vernon County if the moratorium goes into effect. Virginia Goeke alleges that the "DATCAP/ state of Wisconsin has been consulting with the National Pork Industry Council on this issue." Pint and Fork cannot confirm nor deny this claim. If they define consumer protection as doing everything in their power to subvert the public interest in favor of private interest, they're doing an excellent job fulfilling their mission statement. Farms that confine animals and use antibiotics pose a threat to human health, contaminate Wisconsin's ground and surface waters, threatens our heritage and debases our collective identity, and is not in the interests of anyone. Wisconsin has long been an agricultural leader; standing our ground and not giving in to the interests of a few factory farms preserves that leadership. cheap viagra buy cilais Generic Viagra cheap cialis