Tuesday, October 02, 2007

4166

Attention John Edwards' supporters

RealClearPolitics provides a lesson in economics.
    "Of the charter members of the first Forbes 400 in 1982, only 32 remain today. Far from a country where only the rich get richer, the wealthy in the US are very much a moving target. While there are 74 Forbes 400 members who inherited their entire fortune, 270 members are entirely self-made. Though many attended Harvard, Yale and Princeton, there are countless stories within of high school and college dropouts, not to mention others who grew up extremely poor. Politicians who regularly engage in class warfare would do well to keep the Forbes 400 out of the hands of their constituents, because it makes a mockery of the kind “Two Americas” rhetoric suggesting the existence of a glass ceiling that keeps hard workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. To read the Forbes 400 is to know with surety that the U.S. is still very much the land of opportunity. . .

    For the hard of hearing, Advanced Bionics founder Alfred Mann (#204) developed cochlear implants, and for those who are immobile, Stryker Corp. CEO John Brown (#380) makes artificial hips and limbs to help the bedridden stand. With cancer still a tragic fact of life for many, Abraxis CEO Patrick Soon-Shiong (#117) presently has the patents for 30 different treatments that will hopefully over time help to make cancer go the way of polio." [unless crafty politicians can tax or sue them out of creativity and existence]
HT HP

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But trial lawyers help us. John Edwards is a trial lawyer and he is helping protect us from disease! He sues doctors when kids are born with Cerebral Palsy he is against this disease and he is suing the doctors to stop it. I think he should sue doctors about cancer because that is bad too.

Of course there is no reputable scientific literature that shows CP is iatrogenic. Nope, the doctors are not causing it, but that really does not matter to John Edwards. He can convince a jury that doctors might cause it and that people should be given money because doctors have insurance and it is big insurance that will suffer and those horrible doctors will stop causing CP. Of course since doctors don't cause CP this is just causing them to quit delivering babies.

If every afternoon some guy came in and threw his cheeseburger at you and said the pickels are too skinny day after day after day you'd quit too, but in John Edwards' case the guy behind the counter is at a hardware store. You just get sick of putting up with nonsense, especially when you have nothing to do with it.

There is a class action pending aginst the manufacturer of cochlear implants because children who have the implant are more likely to get pneumococcal meningitis. Well I guess being deaf is a picnic.

Stryker is facing a lawsuit by hip replacement patients because their ceramic-on-ceramic hip replacements make squeaking noises. I guess the broken hip was better. Wasn't that crepitus a little loud too?

Abraxis is being sued because they said one of their drugs - a replacement for Taxol - Abraxane - was really good. They said that the drug was more effective fighting breast cancer, that it was less toxic, that it was able to be delivered at higher concentrations, that it could be infused more rapidly -30 minutes vs. 3 hours of chemotherapy, that it was just great.

The lawyers sued on behalf of stockholders because they thought the clinical trials were not good enough. They were sued by their shareholders for making false claims and performing flawed research. Well... it seems the drug is just great, twice as effective as Taxol and just wonderful. The lawsuit was tossed out, but not after costing a company that makes medicines for women with breast cancer millions of dollars of legal fees.

Lawyers of John Edwards ilk are certanily good for our health. Although not everyone may share my opinions.

Norma said...

Thanks Matthew. Your medical training and library skills are an unbeatable combination.