Category Archives: Uncategorized

Seemingly a mass shooting or two every day.

Medicynical note: is this really what our august, once thoughtful Supreme Court had in mind? Is this the NRA/Libertarians idea of freedom?

Along with our denial of obvious scientific truths, Citizens United and our grotesque healthcare non-system we seem to slowly descending into ungovernable hell.

The price of the drug, (H.P. Acthar Gel) best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder, has increased almost 97,000%, from $40 a vial in 2000 to nearly $39,000 today.

And

The bombshell allegations lay bare what the whistleblowers say was a culture designed to sell the drug at all costs, from lying to the Food and Drug Administration to offering bribes to doctors.

Medicynical Note: this is what passes as acceptable practice by Big Pharma in the U.S. today.

Denial of what’s obvious is the basis of this presidency whether we’re talking about global warming, the racist white supremacy movement or the Mueller report.

Consider the Trump view as noted in this Washington Post editorial

“Unfortunately, the first family remains in denial about this. President Trump, who benefited from the interference, says the investigation was a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.” His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dismissed it as a “distraction” at a panel sponsored by Time magazine on Tuesday. He said, “You look at what Russia did — you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it — and it’s a terrible thing. But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads.” He added, “Quite frankly, the whole thing is just a big distraction for the country.””

And contrast The Kushner/Trump spin with Rosenstein’s recent comments from the AP:

“He also made clear that the Mueller investigation had exposed a sophisticated Russian operation to meddle in American politics, something Trump has been slow to acknowledge.”

“There was overwhelming evidence that Russian operatives hacked American computers and defrauded American citizens, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” Rosenstein said.”

“Janet Porter is a woman who believes life begins at conception and homosexuality is a choice. She has said gay marriage caused Noah’s floods, and was the architect of a 1990s gay conversion campaign. She implied US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a Jewish woman, is a racist. Like Donald Trump, she was a proponent of the Barack Obama “birther” conspiracy theory.”

“The Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading civil rights organization, designates her non-profit Faith 2 Action, as a hate group for its work against LGBT rights. She lost a slot on a Christian radio network when, the station said, an event she held veered into a form of Christian supremacy.””

Medicynical note: This sad woman opposes separation of church and state, gay rights, and abortion. As a biblical literalist she denies reality and accepts biblical stories as her reality. She denies the humanity of those of us who disagree with her ill informed religious fundamentalism.

“col·lab·o·rate

  (kə-lăb′ə-rāt′)

The Trump effect on agriculture exports……it’s not good.

“This means that dozens of other countries now benefit from changes we persuaded Japan to make. And our farmers are about to lose out, big time.”

“Japan’s beef imports were already up 25 percent in the first two months of 2019 compared with a year earlier, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported. The biggest beneficiaries were Canada and New Zealand. This makes sense: As members of TPP 2.0, they have a huge price advantage. U.S. beef is tariffed at 38.5 percent, and TPP 2.0 countries’ beef is now at 26.6 percent, with further reductions slated for coming years.”

“Even before then, these other countries’ advantages will widen. If frozen beef imports surpass a certain threshold, as is expected soon, a “safeguard” tariff will automatically kick in and raise tariffs on  our  products — but  not TPP 2.0’s members’ — to 50 percent.”

Medicynical note: Moving on without us.

Some progress in mitigating a devastating genetic disease

“We recently tested a new drug, called RG6042, that appears to be safe from our first phase-one trial and which reduces levels of the toxic protein that builds up in patients’ brain cells and is believed to trigger the disease,” says Huntington’s expert Professor Sarah Tabrizi of University College London. “It’s a great step forward.”

Medicynical note: If the trial shows the drug to be effective in delaying or mitigating Huntington’s, there is a compelling public interest that it be freely available to those at risk of this uniformly disabling ultimately fatal disease. The cost, emotional and financial, of this disease is incalculable. As such the drug patent and right to produce and market should be publicly owned and the drug provided at a nominal cost to all potential (gene positive) people. The devil of course is in the details and is of course easier to solve, financially and ethically, in the context of nation health schemes.

According to Giuliani, it was OK to share information with the Russians and vice versa, an open collaboration rather than a secret collusion, and that’s OK.

“Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, said Sunday that there is “nothing wrong” with a campaign accepting information from Russians, defending the Trump team’s efforts to obtain damaging material about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 race.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians,” Giuliani said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It depends on where it came from.”

MEDICYNICAL NOTE: Manafort you recall was convicted of sharing polling info with the Russians. So a two way sharing with another country, our sworn enemy, was OK according to Giuliani and I guess the Trump campaign.

“But mostly what makes the report seem old news is that it is … mostly old news. That is, the report produced by the special counsel’s office consists in large part of details confirming reports that have circulated for months, or years. And that’s really the biggest news of the week—we were right. Christopher Steele was right. The FBI agents who suspected Trump’s campaign was reaching out to Russia were right. Reports that Michael Flynn, and Donald Trump Jr, and Jared Kushner were trying to build a “back channel” for secret communications with the Kremlin were right. Stories that the Paul Manafort shared private polling data with a Russian agent were right. The reports about Carter Page were right. The reports about George Papadopoulos were right. The stories about Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to build a giant tower complete with personal space for Vladimir Putin and an Ivanka-branded spa were right. And every story of Trump trying to hide evidence, destroy evidence, suborn perjury, and simply end the investigation … they were all right.

Medicynical note: The purveyors of Trump’s news were of the FOX, Limbaugh and Breibart ilk. It turns out they dissemble, distort and invent…………really really fake news.