The $443 Million Smallpox Vaccine That Nobody Needs 290
Hugh Pickens writes "Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the US government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox, but if there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire US population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. David Williams writes that over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. So why did the government award a "sole-source" procurement to Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, calling for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile at a price of approximately $255 per dose. 'We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use — how much more do we need?' says epidemiologist Dr. Donald A. Henderson who led the global eradication of smallpox for the WHO. 'The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money.'"
Question: (Score:2)
Is it Budget month?
:( And I thought (Score:3, Funny)
AHA! I know what this is! (Score:4, Insightful)
Person 1 wants money, and person 2 wants to give it to them. Person 2 has lots of money to spend that he's trusted with by other people, so he can't just give the money to person 1, so he comes up with a way to include it as part of a bigger deal that looks like business.
Sounds like the textbook definition of corruption I learned in macro econ in highschool. This clumsy scheme is just above obvious, too. I guess it works so well with Chertoff and Rapiscan, hell, why even try to hide it anymore?
Wallstreet should get a clue - they don't need to create 5 layers of finiancial instruments to hide corruption anymore - this is 2011. The govt does whatever the hell it wants, and if you don't like it the media will paint you to be an unwashed mass who needs "to get a job".
Sorry, I started to vent a little there.
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(Cheat sheet: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.)
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except that's no what is happening.
I actually know a lot about this; which is why I was hesitant to even read the replies hare on /. That article is misleading, and /. knee jerk interpretation is wrong.
It's like watching CSI shows deal with anything IT related, so stupid it's actually hard to watch.
Re:AHA! I know what this is! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, set us straight then.
Re:AHA! I know what this is! (Score:4, Funny)
Me too. I know a lot about this as well. If you knew what was really going on you wouldn't believe it. It's so shocking. You are all misinformed and misguided, unlike geekoid and me.
Time travel (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously this is proof that time travel has been discovered by the military and there is a fear that someone will bring back small pox.
Re:Time travel (Score:5, Interesting)
google "synthesis of smallpox". Bringing it back is easy. Smallpox has an interesting combination of infectiousness, fatality rate, and countermeasures. My guess is that a weponized smallpox could be done for 10-20 million.
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I saw that. It was a bad remake of The Andromeda Strain.
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BW is always a hazard. If the military gets complacent, bad shit happens.
That the Soviets were not so long ago working a vigorous BW program means the leftovers, and leftover scientists, pose a threat.
Stop posting anti Obama articles....you know bette (Score:2, Interesting)
Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Siga's drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans."
The disease has a lot of characteristics that make it a good weaponized agent. In fact, this has been one of the most studied diseases in that regard. To my knowledge, there is no known treatment/cure for smallpox- you either get vaccinated before symptoms show, or you suffer through it and possibly die. Its means of infection are well known, and I would hazard a guess that someone in the US DoD would find a smallpox *treatment/cure* that works after an infection has taken hold something worth studying for other purposes. It would also seem to me that the military is hedging its bets my making sure other nations don't get this technology as well.
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, smallpox does NOT make a good weaponized agent.
One of the key attributes of a bioweapon is controllability. You want it to hit who and where you want it to hit, and you DON'T want it to hit outside that area. In particular, you DON'T want it to be significantly contagious - and smallpox is one of the most horribly contagious diseases known to Man.
Pneumonic anthrax, on the other hand, while highly lethal, is essentially not contagious from person to person. This makes it an ideal bioweapon candidate, as was demonstrated some years back - and they STILL haven't found the $^%#&%$!!! who did it.
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You lack imagination. Small pox dispersal would cause a lot of problems, and if you are the one dispersing it, you simple shut your borders while it spreads.
Of course, a vaccine would be made pretty quick, so you would reap it's benefits.
Or you create a vaccine before dispersal.
This assume you actual are about who gets it. Maybe you just want to bring death to all infidels because, clearly, your god would protect you.
Well not YOU, but who ever did it.
Al Qaeda did the anthrax attacks. It's pretty much confir
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By "shut your borders" you are implying a nation would be the one delivering it... if so, there are a lot worse weapons in the arsenals of the top militaries than smallpox. Any attack of this sort (or, really any attack with a chemical, biological or nuclear WMD) is going to be done not by a military, but terrorists who just want to spread fear and aren't all conveniently located in one location that could subsequently be wiped off the planet by the victim...
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Al Qaeda did the anthrax attacks. It's pretty much confirmed."
[citation needed]
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No, smallpox does NOT make a good weaponized agent.
One of the key attributes of a bioweapon is controllability. You want it to hit who and where you want it to hit, and you DON'T want it to hit outside that area. In particular, you DON'T want it to be significantly contagious - and smallpox is one of the most horribly contagious diseases known to Man.
Pneumonic anthrax, on the other hand, while highly lethal, is essentially not contagious from person to person. This makes it an ideal bioweapon candidate, as was demonstrated some years back - and they STILL haven't found the $^%#&%$!!! who did it.
That didn't stop the early American government from using it as a biological weapon against the Native Americans. Those individuals were evil and they were cowards so they exposed blankets and other items to the virus and then "donated" them to the indigenous tribes.
Now imagine a scenario like that but with modern technology (i.e. delivery methods). Controllability could be as simple as "we have a military budget and easy access to vaccines, drugs, and haz-mat suits while our targets don't."
There ju
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Smallpox dies in a couple of days on a blanket.
But keep repeating the myth.
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Viruses are not alive, and never die. You can catch smallpox from a 2000 year old mummy's tomb.
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Informative)
I hope you were trolling. If not, please read the below, viruses are nothing more than complex organic structures, they too are prone to decomposition.
http://liambean.hubpages.com/hub/How-Long-Do-Viruses-Live
A smallpox virus at room temperature in an undisturbed environment could remain viable for years if not decades.
Hepatitis A&B viruses can live, undisturbed on surfaces outside a host cell for up to a week. Hepatitis B can also be contracted sexually.
HIV can typically survive outside a host cell undisturbed for no more than a few hours.
A rhino-virus can live undisturbed outside a host cell for up to a day.
It is thought that influenza viruses can last outside a host cell undisturbed for up to two days.
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You might be able to catch Smallpox from a mummies tomb, but that doesn't mean the virus doesn't break down after a few days in a different set of conditions.
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Informative)
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[Citation needed]
Please provide some evidence that the spread of disease was deliberate rather than incidental. Or that people even understood that blankets could be a vector for disease transmission.
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It does if you want a doomsday deterrent a la MAD. It also does if you want to quickly wipe out the population of target country/region, and then take it over with your inoculated, immune people.
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One of the key attributes of a bioweapon is controllability. You want it to hit who and where you want it to hit, and you DON'T want it to hit outside that area. In particular, you DON'T want it to be significantly contagious - and smallpox is one of the most horribly contagious diseases known to Man.
Smallpox is eminently controllable. We're so good at controlling it that it's been eradicated from the face of the Earth. We're so good at controlling it, in fact, that nobody in the U.S. (with the exception of some military personnel) has received a smallpox vaccination since 1972. The only thing that an enemy would need to "control it" would be to start vaccinating again.
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Are these enough doses to adequately protect a multinational, Israeli-led humanitarian effort to deal with the sudden outbreak of a particularly virulent strain of smallpox, and the complete breakdown in government services that would happen simultaneously, when this happens in Iran??
Should Iran be worrying about such a thing? Would the world be a better place if Iran started to worry about it? Would instigating that worry be worth $433 million?
Now that is the kind of tinfoil hat thinking that I come to
Re:Smallpox is extinct in the wild, not entirely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so simple (Score:5, Informative)
Remember Variolation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your mentioning of the death rate for the ring vaccination reminded me of variolation, the earliest known deliberate vaccination method for smallpox.
Variolation had a death rate of 1-2%. But 'wild caught' smallpox had a death rate of around 30%, so even royalty variolated their kids as the safest alternative.
We're absolutely spoiled in modern society when it comes to disease. It used to be the #1 killer. Disease used to kill more soldiers in campaigns than the fighting did.
Re:Remember Variolation? (Score:5, Interesting)
As a former (and probably future) volunteer first responder, I'm ok with us (government of/by/for the people) spending an extra $250 for my old coworkers' vaccines, rather than kill even one in TENS of thousands of first responders..
This story smells like more 'how to lie with statistics' by some reactionary rightwing think tank. Typical day on slashdot, alas.
Huwha? (Score:3)
It's not a vaccine for first responders though. By some readings, it's not even a true vaccine, not being intended to provide immunity before catching the disease.
I'm also fine with giving first responders vaccines for stuff that they're fairly unlikely to encounter. Still, I think we need to consider the likelihood that smallpox will either somehow be released (perhaps by an unknown store), or redevelop in the wild. The first is fairly unlikely at this point, and the second would most likely simply be a
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But with further cuts to 'wasteful' government, we can return to the good ol' days. Diseases, Rober barons, factory fires, and toxic sludge dump into the drink water. As an added bonus, the people won't have recourse.
Can we stop with the conspiracy theories? (Score:3)
But with further cuts to 'wasteful' government, we can return to the good ol' days.
Personally, I'd consider this a valid target for 'pork' spending. Expensive with no real prospect of providing serious benefit. The government doesn't even need to just NOT spend this money, spending it somewhere more effective is a valid alternative. There's plenty of options.
What about using this money to fund a poison control center(previously subject to attempted cuts)? They not only prevent unnecessary emergency room visits, they save lives. What about orphan drugs? Rural medical programs? Givin
Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
The government puts the vaccine to use regularly. The fill up airplanes with it and the resulting chemtrails are what give people autism.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE.
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You, Sir, win at the internets.
Corruption is only news... (Score:2, Insightful)
...when Democrats do it. Never mind a certain $3T war with lots of tasty no-bid contracts to the Vice President's company...
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Re:Corruption is only news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, but at $255 per dose? On a drug that hasn't even been tested? This has "corporate handjob" written all over it.
There is a drug in manufactured in Mexico used for treating Scorpion sting. The drug cost $400 per dose in Mexico. The same drug is imported to America and cost $12,000 per dose. That’s how much the hospital charges you. Specialty drugs cost a lot of money and at $255 per dose that’s not bad at all.
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Oh, wait...
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...when Democrats do it. Never mind a certain $3T war with lots of tasty no-bid contracts to the Vice President's company...
Oh, then that makes it OK.
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Someone forget that this was reported in the news? Repeatedly, and often about the no-bid contracts. Well not only that, but that he'd long since sold shares and ownership in said company? But hey, what about all those democrats that have been making money by illegally using insider trading? I mean they've been on with the republicans who did it, but the dem's? Hah no. And only one democrat is willing to put a stop to it, but has full backing of the republicans.
Partisan hacks suck.
Consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
"National Cost of “Occupation” to Top $12 Million"
"Toomey Offers Democrats a Way Out of Supercommittee Standoff"
"Warren Backs Away From OWS"
"Police Reportedly Slashed, Attacked With Liquid at OWS"
Etc. I don't know anything about this story myself, but I know enough by this point not to just believe people when they say something bad happened at the hands of "the Obama administration."
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Granted what you say may be true.
However, an alternate explanation would be that only peripheral media outlets - not being in the tank for the current administration - would carry such a story.
Remember, nobody believed the Monica Lewinsky story at first, because it was on this stupid blog called the Drudge Report.
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it's funny how at the very end they just kind of mention the fact that it hasn't been awarded, and they administration changed key parts to make the bidding fair.
While 438 million is a lot of money, it's not the 1.2+billion is was going to be in 2008.
"Known to exist only..." (Score:2)
That's the phrase that bothers me...
Americans are bad at math (Score:2, Insightful)
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So, because there exist numbers larger than the sum in discussion, we should never bother with it ? This may be smaller than the military budget, but is not a small number by any measure. This is not five bucks we're talking about. I will not make this much money in my entire life. You won't either, since you invoked "the rich" argument.
The government is a like a sieve, leaking money to interested parties everywhere. 400 million here, 500 million for solar power, some more for body scanners, hey, shit adds
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Re:Americans are bad at math (Score:5, Insightful)
So it's fine to piss away $443mn because it's less than $70bn?
Do you code? If I'm trying to improve the performance of a program I've written, I might notice little things here and there that could be done a bit faster. For example, I might have be saying pow(x, 2) someplace, and I know that for integers, it's far more efficient to just type x*x. I'm not wrong, that would be faster. And yet, if I waste any time fixing that type of stuff, I'm an idiot. You profile the program, you find the sections where your code is spending the most time on, and you fix that. If the profiler is telling you that the pow function is the problem, then you fix it. Otherwise I've spent a lot of time fixing things and my code will still perform super-slow.
It's not fine to piss away $443 mn. That said, it's also not fine to waste resources trying to fix that problem when there are bigger problems to be fixed. Fix the bigger problems first, then go back to the $443mn when it actually does represent a significant portion of the problem. Otherwise you waste a lot of time only to discover we're still just as broke.
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No, but this isn't pissing it away.
Re:Americans are bad at math (Score:5, Insightful)
...$443 million isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Now, $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich? Well, we're starting to talk some real money. The cost of the Iraq war? Yeah, about that...
Cost of the Iraqi war? Peanuts compared to the $20 trillion lost during the financial meltdown, but enough about numbers...I find it quite refreshing that people are upset over even half a billion in possible waste. Maybe it's a sign of the apathy starting to thaw out from the frozen flock. Hey, Obama wanted more "open Government"...he's only getting exactly what he asked for. The spotlight.
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So you are saying that if everyone currently paying into SS were to stop paying (and possibly receive their investment back if they promise never to claim benefits), then all people currently receiving benefits would continue to receive those benefit in perpetuity based solely on their own contributions? If that's not the case then SS pretty much meets the textbook definition of a Ponzi Scheme.
And so does every insurance company and most banks. And since those are explicitly not ponzi schemes, I claim bullshit on your claim.
It isn't a vaccine (Score:4, Insightful)
Nearly what we pay (Score:4, Insightful)
For Air Conditioning for one week in Afghanistan.
If They're That Worried About It (Score:3)
Re:If They're That Worried About It (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the current smallpox vaccine can kill. Not many, sure, but if you try to apply it to an entire population? Some people are going to die.
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My comments that the editors disregarded (Score:5, Informative)
Here are my comments that I attached to this post while it was in slashdot/recent. I guess the editors didn't take much heed.
RTFA
Ok, I know that the LA times is not what I would call the paragon of great journalism but still you should closely RTFA. (Compare the writing in this, where the writer just seems to go on and on reciting facts without concise summarization and a coherent narrative to that of a well written NYTimes piece).
First the fact that these guys "are long time political donors" and "65% of their donations went to the Democratic party in 2008 and 2010" do not automatically make them "longtime Democratic donors". I'm not saying they aren't but don't jump to conclusions (Isn't it possible that these guys, seeing the way the political winds were shifting sent more of their money to the Democrats those years? Also if they gave only 65% to anyone that implies they weren't hardcore supporters, they didn't give 100% did they?).
Second; according to TFA most of the company's actions took place under the Bush administration. The company was formed after Bush made anti-bio weapons preparedness a priority and the Bush administration were the ones who gave the company its grants (did they receive even a dime under the Obama administration?).
Third; again according to TFA, the reason for the "sole source" agreement is because of a regulation otherwise requiring them to be a small business (they aren't, they have more than 500 people). So, according to TFA, that was the reason they had to do this and not because the Bush?/Obama? administration unduly applied pressure.
I could go on and say how, in TFA, some epidemiologists think it's a waste of money and how other, equally credentialed ones say it isn't. Still, please note that it DOES have a use beyond the original vaccine. If you get sick and don't get the original vaccine within four days, this will save you. Otherwise you die. Is that a waste of money? Reasonable people may disagree. (Smallpox the physical virus MAY* be present in only two locations but I believe its DNA sequence was published on the Internet).
Look, maybe the poorly written LA times article caused these mistakes in the summary. But that's what you get when you choose poor journalism. You should be prepared to put in the time and effort to get what is (hopefully) the true story behind the ill-presented facts.
*you could probably retrieve some from someone buried in the arctic prior to say 1950. That's how they retrieved the black plague recently.
Start here (Score:2)
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11240&page=R1 [nap.edu]
then you can yap about smalpox need.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not?
If it were a Republican president this would be considered fair posting for Slashdot.
(Gimme those troll points.) :-{=
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just being partisan.
Real trolling would be pointing out that the whole premise of universal healthcare is that the collective wisdom of the government can make better decisions about how to spend money on health than individuals can. Yet here we have the same government blowing a billion dollars on a vaccine for a disease that doesn't exist any more. Meanwhile, people are suffering and dying because the FDA is holding up lifesaving experimental medicine.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Informative)
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this.
B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this. B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world. C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
Most of the arguments against an American universal healthcare system are based on the idea that *this* government wouldn't do a good job even if various European nations handle it well. If you consider other federal projects and programs to be a track record, it's difficult to argue against this. If you think this one thing is somehow unique and special, that people who display extreme corruption/cronyism and gross incompetence will somehow perform wonderfully when you put them in charge of a health system, please understand that you are proposing something contrary to reasonable expectation and there is a burden of proof that goes with that.
I notice in the EU corporations with business practices hostile to the customers actually do get slapped down once in a while by the regulators. If that were the norm here, I would have a lot more confidence that the government is representing the correct set of interests when it takes action. The situation in the USA is not a matter of whether such a system could work in theory or has worked for others. It's a matter of trust; there is none, and trust is a particularly difficult thing to earn back once it is destroyed.
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Actually, it's even worse than mere corruption. If Congress nationalized healthcare tomorrow, they'd create some huge new federal agency to run it (in all likelihood). Where would this agency get the "trained" people to function?
That's right...from the now-defunct health insurance companies.
The people currently denying healthcare to average Americans would STILL be doing so.
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Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Informative)
None of that is really true. The Greeks went broke because they run a tin pot third world country that pretends to be in Europe. No one seems to pay any tax at all and the government is corrupt and inefficient. The Irish went down because they followed NeoCon ideals and let unregulated financial and property markets go wild and then bailed out the banks to the tune of their entire economy. A few years ago they were being hailed as the Free Market dream of Europe. Italy is also corrupt and has been run for the last couple decades by a guy who was much more interested in having lots of sex than actually running the country.
Europe as a whole is doing ok, and the Euro zone is only screwed because they have a single currency and single interest rate across countries with vastly different economies and legal structures which doesn't work. This means that the countries with crappy economies can't get themselves out of trouble and the countries with good economies are getting dragged down.
In no way is Europe going broke because of Universal Health care. The few countries where you can place even some of the blame on social policies were basked cases to begin with.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Add to this that Greece going under is mainly due to there being a culture of not paying taxes & the huge cash-in-hand economy.
Isn't that what these Libertarian/Republicans in the US want? Small government, low taxes, etc?
Greece is a chilling vision of things to come for the US if this neoconservative ideology is continued to be pushed.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:4, Interesting)
You've got this totally wrong - Greece has a HUGE government, AND low taxes. I'm pretty sure no US party is advocating that.
For example, Greeks get state pensions at 55 at 90% of earnings, and at 50 if you are in one of 580 hazardous professions (for example if you cut people's hair). In some situations, children can inherit their parents state pension when their parents die !
Plus no one pays any Taxes and the Greeks have spent the last 10 years running up debts to keep everything running, so now interest rates have gone up they are fucked.
Alex
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The parts suffering are those who got screwed by external forces imposing demands on them, and instead of being like Iceland and telling the multinational banks to shove it
This is a pleasant fiction being floated around the Internet. In reality, Iceland is seeking to solve its economic woes by joining the EU, ditching its sovereign currency, and adopting the euro -- hardly telling the banks and foreign interests to "shove it."
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The problem is, individuals aren't able to decide how to spend money on health care so would you rather have the government deciding on your behalf or an insurance company (keeping in mind an insurance company makes more money by finding ways to screw you)?
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Really? You're going to go there?
The problem is, individuals aren't able to decide how to spend money on health care so would you rather have the government deciding on your behalf or an insurance company (keeping in mind an insurance company makes more money by finding ways to screw you)?
And with government run healthcare the excuse for screwing you changes from "making money" to "keeping the budget deficit down". Either way you're still screwed.
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Can you not smell a bad cover story when you step in it? Did you never read about Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the Glomar Explorer [wikipedia.org]? Sheesh, you people should turn in your tinfoil hats, you do not deserve them.
Hard saying what the $433 million is really buying, or where the money is going, but it is pretty obviously not going to a smallpox vaccine.
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Real trolling would be pointing out that the whole premise of universal healthcare is that the collective wisdom of the government can make better decisions about how to spend money on health than individuals can.
We already have collective wisdom of the government deciding how to spend money on health care. They do it through what the FDA approves and does not approve. This will just go one step further and instead of just approving will also rate the efficacy of various treatments so that we aren't accidentally using leaches when an antibiotic is 10x more effective.
Re:News for nerds?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, I guess you've never met Peter King. Or Herman Cain. Sarah Palin. Or even Frank Miller.
Heck maybe you've never seen Mitt Romney's outright distortion of a comment President Obama made about "We've been Lazy" ? Or perhaps you believe that calling somebody a Nazi is only done by the Left...never used by anybody on Fox News.
Yeah, keep pushing the "Conservatives are innocent of any outbursts, and are always polite and decorous" you'll get far with that. Maybe all the way to a slot on Fox News or MSNBC.
Until you're ridiculed for your own hypocrisy on the Daily Show!
Just hope there's not video.
Oh wait, there is!
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Re:Why (Score:4, Funny)
Because the Obama administration is the most corrupt presidency in modern history.
It's like he took "Can't be worse than Bush" as a challenge.
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Bwahahahah! Oh you sweet, benighted thing, if you think Obama is the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history. This doesn't even scratch the fucking surface, dude. Look up Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, or Reagan.
Hell, Cheney's relationships with KBR and Haliburton alone stand as a high water mark in corruption.
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Hell, Cheney's relationships with KBR and Haliburton alone stand as a high water mark in corruption.
The fact that you didn't know that KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton when Cheney was VP or that Halliburton has two L's, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you really have no clue as to what you are talking about. For that matter, the very fact that you believe something is compelling evidence that the opposite is true.
But, yes, Cheney did have extensive ties with Halliburton. It's kinda hard not to when you are CEO of the company.
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Are you sure that the only samples left in existence are those in government fridges, or that it's impossible for a new outbreak to occur from some natural reservoir?
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We still give it to soldier going to certain places over seas. Lets not forget that small pox evolved, and there is no reason it couldn't come back from a similar evolutionary pressure or events.
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Because Siga is the only company offering such a drug. It's hard not to sole source something when there's only a sole source.
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Oh, I don't know...for the same reason the government gave sole source contract for Anthrax vaccine to the company owned and/or run by former Bush (the First) people? Same company that had problems keeping the FDA out of its hair for production problems, as well as problems staying afloat, before it got that contract? Oh, but that was OK, I suppose... R = OK, D = Bad. Check.
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Or, you know, Siga was the only company to meet the guidelines for this specific request? oh, no that cant be it. clearly they should allow companies that don't meet the requirements to bid.
If they did that, you would be whining abut what a waste it is to have an open bid on a product when there can only be one winner.
requirements (Score:3)
sometimes requirements are written in a way so that only the favored company can meet them
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Obama is corrupt, but you would still vote for him instead of Ron Paul who wants to cut taxes, get rid of income tax, cut departments that don't serve a purpose, and cut overseas military spending?
Re: (Score:2)
Obama is corrupt, but you would still vote for him instead of Ron Paul who wants to cut taxes, get rid of income tax, cut departments that don't serve a purpose, and cut overseas military spending?
Obviously you haven't heard this [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
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> the same Ron Paul that said we should "go back to
> 1901" when it came to disasters
I have no idea what that means or what context it was said in. But assuming he meant we should abolish FEMA, rescue aircraft, and good samaritan laws - so what? Is federal emergency response the single greatest issue facing America today?
No candidate will ever perfectly agree with any other thinking person. Pick your battles.
Identify the two or three problems you believe to be most fundamental, read up on a variety
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Paul has some good ideas when it comes to dealing with foreign lands (like not being the world's police)
That sounds like Obama talking. Also with the Libya thing it looks like we already have a President (and Secretary of State) who have learned a little something about how to walk that talk.
Like the parent post, I too have problems with Paul's faith-based economics. I mean, capitalism is the best theory we may have for explaining economic phenomena, but if it was a successful theory, then the USA would have foreseen and avoided the economic disaster that started in 2007, eh?
Capitalism needs to be recognize
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Cold War BioWarfare Types, not just Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
The US Military hasn't been willing to let go of biological warfare, and probably also hasn't been willing to let go of chemical warfare either. And the Ex-Soviet Cold Warriors haven't been willing to either, and neither side trusts the other, and they aren't going to let little events like the fall of the Soviet Empire calm them down. If you remember the late years of the Clinton Administration, the fearmonger types were busy ranting about Anthrax and Terrorism, so after 9/11 happened, it was US biowarfare weaponized anthrax they kept working on got used for terrorism, and Bush got to lie about Saddam making anthrax and force US soldiers to get relatively risky vaccines to keep his pharma and biowarfare friends happy. Bush and Cheney also tried to ramp up anti-Russian fear and push NATO to be aggressive toward them (and after all, fighting Russians is NATO's whole purpose, so if they didn't do it they'd be obsolete), and that helped Russia pick Putin as a tough-guy leader, who's happy to have a quasi-enemy to give him an excuse to get tougher, and both sides get to use terrorism as an excuse to pretend that they need to keep developing biowarfare capabilities in case terrorists or crazy employees steal the other side's smallpox*, while quietly telling their own political hardliners that they don't trust the other side's military hardliners.
It's especially egregious with smallpox, because you can make anti-smallpox vaccines the old-fashioned way, from cowpox, and don't have to keep smallpox itself around. There's no excuse for either side not to eradicate their stash, and by doing so, they can reduce the risk to themselves as well as the rest of the world, even if the other side cheats . But even with anthrax, there's no excuse for the US to be developing techniques to weaponize it, as opposed to just keeping it around for vaccine and antibiotic testing, and while Cipro's now out of patent, countries like Argentina which have occasional anthrax problems (from cattle ranching) generally just use penicillins.
( * And it turns out not to matter whether the FBI is right that Bruce Ivins was guilty, or the crazy conspiracy theorists who say Ivins was framed as a coverup by the spooks who really did it are right, or the FBI-is-incompetent theorists who say that Ivins was believable enough to get people off the FBI's case after they were wrong about Hatfill, because either way there can be another Bruce Ivins or Ivan Brewski around to flip out or frame. Only way to prevent it is to destroy it all.)
Re:Change (Score:5, Informative)
Did you read the article?
no, of course you didn't.
Do you know why they particular cure is valuable?
no, of course you don't.
". In June, the government settled the dispute by dropping the exclusivity provision. That limited the value of Siga's contract to $433 million and meant that other companies could compete to fill future orders for the drug."
So they stopped it from being the runaway expense and exclusive deal that Bush sought for them. But, lets blame Obama, cause we think he makes every decision there is. Lets ignore the fact that the company gave to both sides.