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Financial assistance isn't available to everyone. Once again, it's a different situation when you're self-dependent and non-traditional. I didn't say you were premed. I said that you're displaying an attitude that is prevalent among premeds but I can see how that can be an implication.
I've volunteered a lot in college, especially with the impoverished, and it's a lot harder to do so with a research career but I still find time to do that. I'm pretty sensitive and aware of the ripple effect of the lack of access when it comes to students wanting to pursue medicine. So, I'm speaking from first hand experience.
Anyway, I suppose we can disagree. However, It is a little disappointing to see that the attitude that I disklike in some of my peers has really not faded in someone who is probably a physician or faculty member. I sincerely hope that the mindset is changing.
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Promote scarcity and drive up prices/ensure that doctors all have jobs. It's not the worst idea in the world because it also has the intended benefit of ensuring quality.
A great comparison is the LSAT/Bar versus the MCAT/Boards. If you get an okay score on the LSAT, you're guaranteed to go to law school *somewhere*. However, the true test is the Bar, which comes after law school and is the weeding out process. Meanwhile, you need a high MCAT score to go to most med schools and as long as you get an okay score on the Boards, you will eventually match with a residency program *somewhere*, even if it's not your desired specialty. The weeding out has already happened and the market exists.
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That's just pure supply and demand. In the 80s and 90s, the ratio was like 1.3 to 1, applicants to spots. Now it's closert to 2 to 1.
The spots are limited by the number of medical seats which is set by the accrediting body LCME. Opening a medical school is tough, you need quality educators as well as clinical sites that expose students to large amounts of varied pathology. That can't heppen just anywhere. It's why medical schools are in very established schools with affiliated medical centers.
Finally, there is probably a doctor shortage, but it's overblown by concentrating physicians in cities. The real moral of the story should be that small town America isn't sustainable and in the modern era, a city of 10,000 just can't provide a 21st century lifestyle.
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Well, the results in the US are not surprising given that many people suffering from chronic conditions can't afford the expensive healthcare.
The results for UK are a bit disappointing, because the country has good public healthcare, but weirdly lagging ten years behind other European countries in terms of cancer survival rates.
In China, health insurance covers only a low proportion of healthcare costs, which makes expensive treatments like chronic diseases not affordable for many people.
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I don't think it's necessarily because of other interests but the amount of spending is a bit misleading. A lot of waste is on admin. For instance, the government wanted to introduce an IT system that would link everyone together but rather than telling GPs (technically a private enterprise!) To use specific software, they tried to incorporate every type of software available, wasting a lot of money and resulting in failure of the project. I often feel that the management of the NHS is appalling, sure it could always do with more money but it certainly needs better Management
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I’m from Wales...lived there for 36 years and we certainly didn’t have a poor diet or stay indoors a lot. We ate fresh fruit, veg and grass-fed meat everyday and actually did a lot of walking. The weather doesn’t bother the welsh. As for frozen veggies...we didn’t even have a freezer and the nearest takeaway was a few miles down the road. Where’s the Wales you are talking about? You make us sound lazy, dumb and poor!
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What about prevention and cure rather than treatment? Most of these diseases can be prevented. Much are due to bad diet, lack of exercise, poor air quality and lack of sunlight for vitamin D. If "treatment" includes helping people change their lifestyle to effectively eliminate chronic diseases, then treatment will actually have a substantial impact. Also the toxic industries making people ill need to change and stop putting all the blame on the "individual".
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I've no idea why this is in response to my post but I'll respond none the less. There are things you can do to statistically reduce cancers occurring but fundamentally, a lot of them are bad luck or genetics. There are tight environmental controls and a shift in policies around climate and air quality going on in Europe. But you can't just stop. Industry makes the world go around currently and although I'd love to have a utopia where there's no pollution but it's a price being paid to keep civilisation ticking along. Well.. almost. It's a price we pay for the comfort we live in.
Long story short - efforts are ongoing, at least in Europe, to stop externalising the costs of industry and to reduce avoidable illnesses.
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It’s more effective to think of the cause of causes with respect to populations and problems that appear across it.
>One summer in the village, the people in the town gathered for a picnic. As they leisurely shared food and conversation, someone noticed a baby in the river, struggling and crying. The baby was going to drown!
>Someone rushed to save the baby. Then, they noticed another screaming baby in the river, and they pulled that baby out. Soon, more babies were seen drowning in the river, and the townspeople were pulling them out as fast as they could. It took great effort, and they began to organize their activities in order to save the babies as they came down the river. As everyone else was busy in the rescue efforts to save the babies, two of the townspeople started to run away along the shore of the river.
>"Where are you going?" shouted one of the rescuers. "We need you here to help us save these babies!"
>"We are going upstream to stop whoever is throwing them in!"
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Fantastic! This is great! I'm very pleased that we have established this common ground! Too often when people encounter each other on the internet who have different opinions it rapidly descended into petty name calling etc. This is in my opinion a very bad thing.
So do you also agree that changes in atmospheric chemistry can and have in the past changed the earths climate? Causing raising/falling sea levels and such?
Edit: words.
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Yeah volcanos can and do release a shit ton of it.
I personally don't think that their has been a significant increase in the amount of volcanic activity since the 1800. I think it's burning coal and oil. My reasons for thinking this is that we do actually keep a very good record of how much coal and oil we mine/drill for. And the output has increased exponentially, what with more people and vehicles etc.
However I would encourage you to research this for yourself. You are obviously not stupid and capable of doing your own research and drawing your own conclusions.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you identify as a conservative? Whether or not you do I will say this: The greatest failing of the modern environmental movement is its lack of inclusivity. Particularly with respect for people who hold conservative points of view. This hostility has led to a total breakdown of any rational discourse, like we're having now. Why would you believe anything anyone said of half they time they were calling you racist/stupid?
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Just so everyone is aware.
> "gender" as a word is meaningless in the same way as "detox" or "natural" when divorced from biological sex.
>A fetus's brain doesn't start functioning until about 8 weeks (1), so any argument past that must be based on religious doctrine, which is inherently lacking in falsifiability and therefore meaningless.
>(1): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4078859
Is a stealth edit made after the first lines and after my original reply. I also want to point out it ignores my original points.
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I believe that’s a strawman. I’m 100% atheist and I participate heavily in the Libertarian sub, a group also largely atheistic, where they seem split about 50/50 on whether or not the fetus has rights with regards to the NAP.
And as far as the religious crowd is concerned, I think it would be a violation of their rights to force them to pay taxes towards something they consider to be a mortal sin. Just like your argument that their religious views shouldn’t trump other people’s rights, other people’s personal moralities shouldn’t trump theirs.
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How does legalizing a substance that a huge percentage of the population consumes create another crutch? They are already using it. All that happens with criminalization is the punishment of innocent people for an act that hurts no one but the person making the decision, and in many cases actively benefits the person.
Also, would you rather people lean on alcohol or marijuana? This is not a frivolous question. People WILL choose to use some state altering substance. That is a fact. Marijuana causes fat less harm than alcohol, hands down. Hell, marijuana is safe than opioids and in many cases a better fit for pain management strategies.
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For medicinal uses, I’m all for. But to purchase for recreational use I’m not.
The same argument your stating was used for every other drug at one point. The only drug that was legal and removed was cocaine and even heroine.
And getting facts from a study is nothing compared to real world exposure, living in Neighborhoods that have been completely taken over by marijuana, You have no clue. Keep reading your case studies, making marijuana federally legal will never happen.
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Because "fun" (as long as it's reasonably safe) **is** a good enough reason.
It's great that CBD shows promise for use in a wide array of hard-to-treat conditions; but *so what*? Not everything legally available to us needs to be both functional and boring; conversely, not everything fun for its own sake needs to be illegal.
Why do you listen to music? It's completely useless, causes your brain to dump dopamine, and many people use it as an emotional crutch during hard times.
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> The only drug that was legal and removed was cocaine and even heroine.
If you're from the US/Canada, you have no excuse for not knowing about Prohibition in the early 20th century - as well as the fallout. And that was for a drug (alcohol) that to this day is more harmful than marijuana by most measures.
> And getting facts from a study is nothing compared to real world exposure
Pot, meet kettle.
As someone who's lived in Colorado for most of my life, and has had *actual* real world exposure to the effects of legalization, you have no idea what you're talking about.
And for the record, I don't use marijuana, I barely even drink alcohol. I still strongly support legalization.
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I don't think that would work. Sure you can clone him, but you'd have to do a lot of brain washing to change that clones personality to be like Hitler's, plus you would need to do more brain washing to implant Nazi ideology into the clone as well. If I had to choose what would be cheaper, I'd say just kidnapping a random person and brain washing them would be cheaper.
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I'm speaking as someone who lived in one of the poorest countries in the world. Nearly any life in America is better than a life where you're at risk of getting malaria, or cholera, or an infected wound you can't treat, or losing your job and dying of starvation every single day.
My point is that even when you're living in a developed country with protections against explicit discrimination, you still have the right to speak out against injustice when you experience it, even if it's not drastic enough to make you flee the country.
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Those people you refer to that “built better nations” did it a the ethical cost of souls, livelihoods and by fostering slavery.
It’s not as though America found its way to being a leading nation through high morals and the considerations of the people they stole, bought, auctioned, raped, traded and enslaved for centuries.
You don’t have to “appease” people seeking a better opportunity to not be a racist fuck that psychologically damages the children of immigrants. They have enough tension in their lives acclimating between two cultures without the additional burden of being stereotyped and heinously judged.
And then to tackle your question as to why other nations struggle to build the sort of “wealth” and status that America achieves ignores a rich history of imperialism, capitalism, and social issues that often times have led to the corruption of nations trying desperately to work their way to earn the sort of privileges Americans possess. Privileges bestowed upon them on the backs of ancestors and more often that not slaves or impoverished citizens and the fortune of being born in such a locale.
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So if people suddenly started being mean to you due to no fault of your own, as happened to comment OP after 9/11, you would just move somewhere you haven't lived in years / have never lived in. My parents are from Poland and I was born in America - if suddenly plenty of people started being racist to Poles you think the best thing to do would he for me to leave the country where I've spent my whole life making friends and a hard-fought career? Think about that before you type asinine ideas.
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For the first part - I know no one is racist to Poles. Ever heard of a hypothetical?
For the second part - you do you but that's a ridiculous solution. Most people can't just up and leave. My family is decently well off but I'm a med student - even I couldn't just up and leave without completely derailing my career. Your oversimplifications are astounding and frankly your comments to OP smack of racism.
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I've mentioned it before but the same honestly applies to everyone. I personally was labeled "not a team player" because I refused to break safety laws while everyone else was. I heard my co-workers and boss complaining about one chick who had to call in sick because they felt she should have just "toughed it out".
This is a universal problem that needs to be dealt with. People need to have time to themselves and be payed for work they do.
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He did end up sending the email on his own, but only because I successfully convinced him that I had no idea what he was talking about -
HIM: hey, can you send an email to Bob in Purchasing and ask him about *legal mumbo jumbo that might as well be Greek to me* for our *technical mumbo jumbo that might as well be Greek to me* order?
ME: Well, I don't really know what any of that stuff means, I can try to repeat it, but I'll probably get it wrong so wouldn't it just be easier for you to type that up and send it to him yourself?
This went on for several minutes, it was ridiculous how hard this guy was trying to get out of sending a simple email on his first day at our location.
He did this kind of thing to me *a lot* for the first few weeks, but he's gotten the picture.
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The title of the post is a copy and paste from the title, subtitle and second paragraph of the linked popular press article here :
> Man paralysed from waist down makes history by walking again using mind-controlled implant to power his legs
> ‘The reason why this is important is because the patient's own mind, thought, was able to drive movement in his legs,' scientist says
> Doctors in the US state of Minnesota implanted a remote-controlled electrode in his back to stimulate surviving nerves in the patient’s spinal cord.
Journal Reference:
Megan L. Gill, Peter J. Grahn, Jonathan S. Calvert, Margaux B. Linde, Igor A. Lavrov, Jeffrey A. Strommen, Lisa A. Beck, Dimitry G. Sayenko, Meegan G. Van Straaten, Dina I. Drubach, Daniel D. Veith, Andrew R. Thoreson, Cesar Lopez, Yury P. Gerasimenko, V. Reggie Edgerton, Kendall H. Lee, Kristin D. Zhao.
Neuromodulation of lumbosacral spinal networks enables independent stepping after complete paraplegia.
Nature Medicine, 2018;
DOI: 10.1038/s41591-018-0175-7
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0175-7
Abstract:
Spinal sensorimotor networks that are functionally disconnected from the brain because of spinal cord injury (SCI) can be facilitated via epidural electrical stimulation (EES) to restore robust, coordinated motor activity in humans with paralysis1,2,3. Previously, we reported a clinical case of complete sensorimotor paralysis of the lower extremities in which EES restored the ability to stand and the ability to control step-like activity while side-lying or suspended vertically in a body-weight support system (BWS)4. Since then, dynamic task-specific training in the presence of EES, termed multimodal rehabilitation (MMR), was performed for 43 weeks and resulted in bilateral stepping on a treadmill, independent from trainer assistance or BWS. Additionally, MMR enabled independent stepping over ground while using a front-wheeled walker with trainer assistance at the hips to maintain balance. Furthermore, MMR engaged sensorimotor networks to achieve dynamic performance of standing and stepping. To our knowledge, this is the first report of independent stepping enabled by task-specific training in the presence of EES by a human with complete loss of lower extremity sensorimotor function due to SCI.
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That's not entirely accurate, is it? I've only spent about 5 minutes skimming this article (being lazy), so I very well could be wrong. But it seems like they are "facilitating" transmission ... meaning that there is no closed-loop or jump. In that case, they would not pick up a signal in one part of the nervous system and transfer it to another. Rather, they make the target region of the nervous system -- the more peripheral part -- more sensitive to the natural-but-disrupted signals from the controlling region. I think this is really awesome -- and could be supremely meaningful for this particular patient population -- but the tech seems a lot less sophisticated than the sorts of brain interfaces that are out there. Will appreciate any corrections.
​
EDIT: When I say "less sophisticated", I mean in the sense of the computation required to translate signals. I don't mean to diminish this contribution in any way. It's very cool.
EDIT 2: Took a stab at [explaining what I mean](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/9ir7g9/man_paralysed_from_waist_down_since_2013_makes/e6nhliy).
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The only thing I can think to add is this isn't a *brain* interface as much as a *nerve* interface. You mention other "brain interfaces" which I'm concerned some may interpret as meaning other brain-machine interfaces like controlling a drone via EEG or a mouse on a computer via EEG. Granted, the module isn't likely receiving a very simple signal, but it should need far less bandwidth and computing power than EEG.
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Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It seems like the interpretation in these comments is that there is a gap being bridged via hardware (i.e., a signal being routed around a lesion via electronics). As far as I can tell, that's not the case. The clinical contribution is potentially big, but the technology itself doesn't seem like it would need to be much more sophisticated than a pacemaker. I'll check out the article later when I have full access to be sure.
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Just judging by the amount of therapist-mediated help he needs, it looks like this is still very early in development. He's unable to lock his knees without help and they are helping him make other minute adjustments that are required to maintain a proper gait. It's still exciting, but it looks like a lot of additional signal processing is required to help him and others become independently capable of walking/movement.
That said, it's crazy that the kind of stuff as featured in that movie "Upgrade" is coming closer and closer to being reality, even if only in broad strokes. Imagine in the future normal people being able to 'download' skillsets of expert-level tennis players, or martial artists like the Matrix, but with your own body as the recipient, and not some digital avatar.
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That's a really good point. My understanding is that muscle tone is in part due to maintaining signal connection with the brain, in addition to the normal effects of exertion and exercise. There will need to be some kind of preventive or work-around mechanism to act as a substitute when people suffer catastrophic spinal injuries until they can be treated with these tools. I had nerve damage in my arm and I remember how the muscles shrank and became atrophied very quickly, even though most of my range of motion was still there. It was really scary.
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Sadly no, I don't have specific knowledge of neuronal recovery. I know a bit of the basics vis-a-vis the dead neuronal scaffolding promoting directional growth for the regenerating neuron, but as far as targeted growth factors go I got nothing. This is actually a question I've been incessantly asking professors and PIs but never received an answer on, as my interest lies specifically in electrode-nerve interfaces, and targeted growth factors could improve nerve growth towards the electrodes.
I just happened to understand the bio-physiology of this particular obstacle and the electrical workaround. I'm majoring in Electrical Engineering and Neurobiology, so it's no accident, but my knowledge base is not 'wide' yet.
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Well, I do appreciate the information you've been able to give! I love running into redditors that have such interesting backgrounds. If you have time to kill I'd be stoked to hear about your research area or even your dreams for the future of the field. How far can we push the limits of stimulating growth after sustained long-term atrophy - and/or how can we stave off the inevitable? I have heard that many desperate or inquisitive (depending on their relationship with their research subjects) scientists or research meddocs will attempt to stimulate the wasting nerves using different methods of electric stimulation protocols to no result. No pressure to respond, that sounds like a behemoth course load!
I wonder why your PIs are keeping it so close to the chest. This months issue of Scientific American takes a deep dive into the aspects of academia ripe for reform, using the real scenario of scientists attempting to obtain more detailed methods to replicate studies. Or, if they wish to try an older drug in a new context after small tweaking but cannot access any useful information on the compounds that failed in trials for a specific disease and subsequently buried under redtape to protect Company Interests.
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Context and a bit of simplifying for the layman's answer. Our legs carry 100s of pounds thousands of times per day. That kind of work simply cannot be replicated. You can use ems to slow the atrophy of muscle and with, progressive loading, maybe minimize it. It can even be a useful adjunct for athletes. However the answer is more complex than that. Things like neuromuscular tone and rhythm require an actual task to be developed. I've not heard of an EMS protocol that is able to replicate the stimulus of a gait cycle.
Long story short anyone who has been unable to walk for years will not be able to just stand up and do so even if you could perfectly provide innervation.
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I'm fried for the day, so I've abandoned any hope of making academic progress. I'm more than happy to talk about my passion, it is an unfortunate field for me in that most people quickly tap out when I build up steam talking about it.
Unfortunately I cannot answer your direct questions, my interests and limited experience do not lie in the field of stimulating growth, but in bypassing the damaged neurological systems altogether. I'm interested in the nerve-electrode interface, the analog-digital conversion. Right from the start both systems operate with different currencies, analog with positively charged ions (mostly Sodium, Potassium, Calcium), whereas electrical circuitry utilizes electrons. The interaction on that level of the interface alone fascinates me. Refining the interaction on that level could lead to solutions where the organic nervous system can send and receive information to a digital neuroprosthetic. (Of course there are many other avenues of progress to be investigated, my knowledge and time limited I'll stick to the one I'm most excited about.) To my knowledge we have seen limited success with sending signals, I am hoping to train up and contribute to the receiving, or input to the brain, of digital-analog signals, or, "is my super powerful robot hand about to crush this wineglass and cause a scene?" I've been pretty lucky, and managed to get into my local dream lab. They are working on peripheral nervous system stimulation and recording, and we are experimenting with new stabilization/neural growth techniques.
As to getting my questions answered I am beginning to think that it is less 'close to the chest' and more 'a young chaotic field'. I'm coming from a very different position than most of the researchers I interact with. While the field is quite a bit older than I knew before I got involved, it is very much experiencing rapid growth. As a result many of the researchers I encounter have stumbled into or found passion for the field later in life, and are bringing tangentially related skill sets. My PI is a surgeon, my lab manager an endocrinologist. I'm an Army veteran who worked with the bomb squad that, as a result, laser focused on Electrical Engineering and Neurobiology for the express purpose of this exact field. Not to knock my seniors, to the contrary, I have the advantage of tooling my skill set for this specialization while they are frequently having to step far out of their specialized knowledge.
If you have any questions please ask, it is good for me to practice relating my research passions for the inevitable upcoming grad school interviews, and it is fun to think about your prompts.
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NJEM: Supported by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, University of Louisville Hospital, and Medtronic.
NATURE: (Competing Interests) “V.R.E. and Y.G. are shareholders in NeuroRecovery Technologies and hold inventorship rights on intellectual property licensed by the regents of the University of California to NeuroRecovery Technologies and its subsidiaries. K.H.L. previously served as a consultant to Medtronic’s Department of Technology Development focused on deep brain stimulation.”
Could not get full article on mobile Rn for NATURE.
But looks like they both share Medtronics as a common source.
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Thanks. The way that I am looking on it, is that at least it isn't more serious health issue, I mean it doesn't really bother me and affect my day to day life. At this point I am already pain free and got used to the weak thumb (well but sadly I can't hit the gym until it is sorted out). But I will might need to have a surgery in the upcoming months to fix that.
And also after that injury I somehow got sensory nerve injury at the same area which is going to take months to heal, with no explanation of how it happened (no trauma, only had emg test before that, but I am pretty sure that they didn't even insert needle at that point, and even if they did, it shouldn't cause such damage)
But at this point it only causes very mild discomfort for brief periods, and getting better. So it doesn't affect my QOL a lot too.
So I assume your nerve injury already healed?
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Another fun fact: a woman named Eva Saxl who was trapped in Japan occupied China in WWII was able to make insulin out of water buffalo pancreases. There was strict rationing and there was no insulin coming in. She had exactly zero chemistry experience and got a chemist to lend her his lab. Ended up saving a couple hundred peoples lives.
No one should die from not having access to insulin. It’s idiotic.
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===8< cut and pasted from last time ======
Why doesn't someone crowdfund some opposition if it's so easy to make? Perhaps a bunch of people that have diabetes and will not put the company on the stockmarket or have a board of greedy corrupt directors? Perhaps it can have online orders so it can go nationwide immediately.
What am I missing? Is it just a case of people with the money to do it don't have any issues getting their insulin so they dont care?
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The pharmaceutical industry is very heavily regulated. It’s an extremely expensive, lengthy, and difficult process to get approval to produce these kinds of drugs and establish yourself as a competitor. Special interests work to keep these regulations in place. It would be great if people could come together and fund a competitor and it would certainly force companies to lower their prices, but it’s not as easy as it should be.
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I mean... from what I understand, if you REALLY WANTED TO anyone could probably make it. However... you’d need a lab, and materials and tools. There’s steps you’d have to learn that I don’t want to go into here. You’d have to figure out a way to ensure you’re getting the correct dosage. Eva Saxl tested hers on fluffy little bunnies for example.
Like... it would be difficult. But it’s not impossible, as evinced by Eva Saxl’s case. I wouldn’t do it unless civilization broke down.
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Right, it'd be really hard for /u/Elrox's idea to work (as much as I'd love for some more competition to occur). As I see it, if you want quick change in this area, you either start importing (or smuggling, if they won't let you import) in cheaper stuff from abroad, or straight-up robbing the pharma companies (like Robin Hood, but with drugs). While I'm not advocating for that, it seems like that's the point society is being pushed toward. Something has got to stop the madness.
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It's good to know but folks reading shouldn't think insulin is insulin. Head on over to r/diabetes to read how, while that insulin will _save your life_ it does not provide nearly the quality of life that the newer stuff does. Walmart insulin makes blood sugar very difficult to manage and makes an already _very difficult to control condition_ much more difficult.
Healthcare is a right. Especially when you live in the richest country the world has ever known.
Please vote.
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I'm a type 1 diabetic. Old school insulin vs what's made now is waaaaay different. First you have to know that insulin is what the FDA considers a "biologic":
https://www.fda.gov/aboutfda/centersoffices/officeofmedicalproductsandtobacco/cber/ucm133077.htm
Here is my best ELIA5:
Say you wanted to make aspirin, you have a chemical recipe to follow you add a little of this and that in a chemical process and them poof you made aspirin.
Insulin is made by using living things to produce the product either by using humans, animals, or microorganisms. Add a little this and that in a very specific process in concert with your very specific organic growing process.
So everything from the final composition to the process is patented. Insulins made now are better and work in different ways to help the individual.
We have fast acting insulins now that you take 15 minutes before you eat. 15 years ago you would have had to take it 30 min before you eat.
There are a variety of long acting insulins out there too. Take Soliqua it's a long acting that you take in the morning that has a GLP1 blocker in it. Means it helps you not be hungry. This insulin works for 24 ish hours and peaks its effectiveness at the 12 to 16 hour mark. Or take Tresiba, a different long acting insulin that slowly works over 3 days!
Different People need different insulins to suite their needs. That all being said man I wish it was cheaper.
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First off, the choice isn’t either heavily regulated or not regulated at all, I didn’t say that. But do we need to make it difficult for a company to produce a substance that’s already been well tested and used for almost a century like insulin? I don’t think we do. Also, pharmaceutical companies have enormous sums of money and have proven they can influence government regulatory bodies anyway.
If you want the laissez faire capitalist position: In a theoretical free market, several private companies would come about to provide testing for drugs. The entire value of their service would rest on their credibility, so they would have an enormous financial incentive to provide accurate testing. If one didn’t and people were hurt, they would likely fail. The same can’t be said about government-monopoly run testing. If people are harmed or they are found to be unethical, they would not be accountable to the market because companies are required to go through them.
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That isn’t necessarily true that Walmart offers long acting and fast acting. Walmart offers Regular and NPH, which are completely different insulin’s from the generally prescribed long acting and short actings. The Walmart insulins are not steady and require a completely different schedule in regards to eating that the newer, better insulin’s (that cost more) do not require. while an option if faced with huge bills, the Walmart insulin’s are vastly inferior and it is not fair that this “Walmart insulin” concept is perpetuated as an equal to the newer insulin’s that the majority of type one diabetics use.
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Diabetic in the US here.... extremely envious. Three vials even with GOOD insurance runs me between $200-270 since for some reason it fluctuates.
Also to clarify, it’s annoying to pay money for an Endo just to “see” me just to write a script. I had one Endo refuse to write because I wasn’t seeing him every 60 days; screw that guy and all his money grubbing. To add insult to injury, he would frequently be late (in excess of an hour) and not because he was seeing other patients.
People ask if being a diabetic is really a strain since I have comparably good insurance. Well between insulin and associated insulin pump supplies I easily spend an extra 2-3k a year and that’s out of pocket so..... YES.
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I help numerous patients who are well-managed on NPH and insulin regular. Frankly, the cost and OTC status may well outweigh other factors for contributing to quality of life, and frankly diet and exercise outweigh insulin kinetics when it comes to managing diabetes (which is itself complicated and difficult).
I think it’s more individualized than you make it out to be, and many people get good results from affordable insulin products. If you’re diabetic, you shouldn’t write them off as “Walmart insulin”. Healthcare is a societal priority, but I would argue, not a right.
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Oh, right, I forgot you can't critique something that dramatically affects you daily unless you have a complete, kinks ironed out, fully functional plan ready to implement.
How about we can just all agree that shareholders and CEO's are allowed to manipulate the economy and therefore the whole of society unchecked. That seems like a basic starting point. Then we can voice our overwhelming condemnation to the politicians that have sworn to serve us by creating productive solutions.
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How the hell are people more happy to fund the military industrial complex because of a credit system instead of the gold standard? I'm dying to know. Legal tender is still legal tender. We are still paying similar taxes. I am so damn confused by your comment.
Like, "oh, I'm so fine to pour the majority of my taxes into the military. At least it's not tender for my gold! Oh and forget healthcare because we are on a credit system, but I'd pay for that if I had gold!" Is that how it goes?
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From what I hear, there's more empty homes than homeless people. More food gets thrown out than is needed to keep people from going hungry. More lifesaving drugs than people that need them to survive.
From what I hear, those in power of such resources are not interested in making the choice that would save so many from so much suffering and hardship... And I don't know if it's our place to make them.
What a world it would be if those in power and of extreme wealth would be much more into destroying these ancient societal ills that could be eradicated with proper changes in priorities... [What a single wealthy man did with 2 decades and $11 million for the socioeconomic welfare of a Florida neighborhood](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/us/tangelo-park-orlando-florida.html) is a small peek into a more ideal world where education, child care/tutoring, and proper use of economic/administration/political power is used with only the wellbeing of a community in mind... But ideals are hardly ever reached. And what he did is probably harder to replicate than I make it sound...
All in all. I think I'll be able to do a small part at reducing suffering and hardship. I will happy to.
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One of the interesting things from the Toronto discovery is that they started isolating insulin using an alcohol precipitation for purification of insulin. However, when they scaled it up it didn't work. They got nothing.
There were thousands of people clamoring for insulin, but the Toronto group suddenly couldn't make it.
When they partnered with Eli Lilly, a really smart engineer (George Walden) figured out the problem. pH was new then. Toronto wasn't controlling the pH. When they scaled up the purification process, the pH changed drastically.
The Eli Lilly group figured out that they could get a much more efficient purification of insulin using pH (isoelectric purification). Eli Lilly then made enough insulin for everyone.
There's a great book "The discovery of insulin" by Michael Bliss that tells the story.
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Dude? Voting *failed*. Voting is how we got here. Our system was rigged from the start to advantage the cruel and the vicious who held power in the slave states and were able to seize it out west. We've been fighting them since the end of the Civil War and by and large *we lost*.
If you're going to solve this by voting you need to register every single person in a one block radius and come election day go *door to door* and drag every single person in your neighborhood with a pulse to the ballot box. And because of GOP gerrymandering and voter purges and voter disenfranchisement that *might not be enough* because they're working really, really hard to rig the polls to make sure they can't lose.
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Well, also so people don't die. Most of the testing the FDA requires is there because it's been a problem in the past.
It's like how a new sign saying "yield to pedestrians" suddenly appeared at an intersection near my parents' house. I don't think the city or whatever just randomly decided to spend money putting a sign up just in case a pedestrian gets run over. I think a pedestrian got run over and then they put up the sign.
Drug companies have and continue to try to get away with whatever they can, amd sometimes that's harmful, so the FDA steps in and says *useless stuff* like "you have to prove that your drugs work," or "you have to identify what's actually in your pills before you give them to people." That's why it's expensive to make drugs. It's not busywork to create a barrier to entry for the most part.
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>do we need to make it difficult for a company to produce a substance that’s already been well tested and used for almost a century like insulin?
Yes. We do need strict controls on everything, including things that have been around for a while.
I worked on a bioequivalence study that *barely* passed acceptance. It was very borderline. Bioequivalence is an expensive study that tests if the exposure of drugs produced at two different facilities are close enough. You'd think that it would be pretty easy to produce the same thing at the second facility since the first one's been running for a while and the same company and same people were in charge of setting up both facilities. Well, turns out that it's not so easy to just repeat things like that, and I'm pretty sure corporations wouldn't do all this verification if the FDA didn't force them to.
Going back to the capitalism angle, I think the biggest problem is the lack of true markets in drug purchasing. No one is negotiating on behalf of the end user, who generally doesn't get much say in which insurance company they use but would pay anything to avoid dying.
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I agree. It totally skews the numbers by not including all the money spent on research and development. especially when you consider it could take a drug 7 years of research and development across several areas besides the chemical development, like toxicology and testing it in animals then humans and years all the fda trials not to mention the labor costs for salaries of very educated people, or even the research and development on marketing
edit* all before the drug hits the market.
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An ounce of gold is worth whatever the fuck people think gold is, which fluctuates to the point where advertising affects its value, before crashing. A dollar is a lot more stable than an oz. of gold relative to the averaged price of goods and services by design. Read a book here and there. You can peg a currency to a single metal, or you can peg it to the average value of goods and services.
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> Is it slave labor when a state appointed attourney defends someone convicted of a crime because they cannot afford to pay for an attourney (something which we all have a right to)?
Your example is of a contingent right and thus doesn't apply. An indigent defendant only has the right to demand the State provide an attorney when the State has chosen to exercise it's right to prosecute them. No prosecution, no right to a free attorney. The free attorney is a right - and a cost to the State - only because of the State's action.
On the other hand, the idea of a "right" to free health care is predicated on someone else paying not because of something the state (or anyone) did but on the desire of an individual to obtain access to goods and services s/he can't/won't pay for. When the State uses the threat of force to make the doctor or the nurse or pharma - or another taxpayer - pay for your care, it's not you exercising a right, it's an improper taking for your private benefit.
The definition stands: forcibly taking someone's labor for the benefit of another is called slavery.
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> What would you prefer? Tyranny? Should America become a monarchy?
Last time we revolted against the monarchy and installed an aristocracy. This time we need to revolt against the aristocracy and install a democracy.
Also; Congress doesn't do what voters want. Your vote has *no* influence on government policy. This has been demonstrated with evidence. We are not a democracy. We are an oligarchy and the oligarchs do what the oligarchs want without consideration for the plebians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy#United_States
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Money is just a medium of exchange and what allows people to tell the market what to produce and how much with limited resources. The issue with fiat currency is it completely overrides the people voting in the market with a loss of purchasing power. That leads to the misplace of capital and overconsumption of goods. Then it rise the question on how should benefit from the "printed money" 1st. Cause overtime that printed money loss value(higher prices) while it trickles down the market.
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Humalog which is a standard of care "new" insulin does not have any patents encumbering it, the last one expired in 2014.
Lantus (which is the less concentrated version of Toujeo, either of which could be considered standard of care for long acting insulins) had its last patent expire in 2015. Toujeo has a patent that doesn't expire until 2032 and many more for 2024 and everywhere between, but none of those patents affect the key differentiator between Lantus and Toujeo which is only a difference of 100u vs 300u concentrations respectively.
That's a long acting and fast acting Insulin which are both considered standard of care "new" insulins, and neither is patent encumbered for at least the last 3 years. There are still some patents out there for certain aspects of some of the newer so called "Biosimilars" of these drugs, but the fact remains that patent encumberment is not a concern if you want to make a standard of care insulin today in the USA.
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I'm type 1. One of my novolog pens used to last me about a week...give or take..depending on the week.
Started keto a few years ago now I'm at about a pen per month. Levemir handles the heavy work at this point. And even that, I've cut my usage of levemir to about 40% of what it was before because I'm just more insulin sensitive now.
It's possible to make a short amount last a very long time. You just have to have a very atypical lifestyle to make it work.
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Healthcare is not really a thing. There is a broad spectrum of things that are "healthcare" from soap and water to fluoridated water to penicillin to chemotherapy invented in 1980 to chemo from 2015 to Solvadi (Hep C cure).
Every country has to balance who gets what based on scarcity. If we made Solvdi free it would improve our Hep C situation, but if the company knew it would be free it wouldn't exist at all. I picked Sovaldi because it is a drug that still isn't provided by some EU health services, and also is a perfect example of a drug that would not exist without the US market. So, calling healthcare a right is kind of a misnomer. The state of the art of anything can never be a right.
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Which I find confusing since just about every American values The Declaration of Independence. Specifically, the statement of "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and that the government is endowed to protect these rights.
It should be an easy argument to make that Americans have a right to Life and therefore should have the right to Healthcare just by association. But instead, it's the hardest thing to convince the American Government to do.
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Water is a right. Doesn't mean your water can't be cut off. Food is a right, but you still have to pay for it. If emergency services is a right, what does that mean? That you have a right to be saved? At what cost? If you get stuck on Mars, do emergency services have to rescue you? If you're in a burning house, do they have to risk their lives to save you?
Police don't have to do shit, the courts already ruled on that. They don't *have* to protect and serve you.
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As a type 1 diabetic, I am *very* curious to know what the current hurdles are for transplanting stem cell grown beta cells. The main one I am aware of is to successfully encapsulate them so that the immune system does not kill them off again. Are there any other ones? And has the been any research on "remodulating" or "retraining" the immune system to no longer attack beta cells? I suppose that if this is successfully done, then stem-cell grown beta cells could be transplanted into the patient, who would no longer be insulin deficient as a result, and all of this without having to take immunosuppressive drugs.
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It is actually worse than that. It would be simple if there were a few bad guys that are responsible for all this. The reality is that this injustice is spread diffusely across society. The faults in the system that lead to this madness are not concentrated in one spot that can be easily made responsible. Instead, it is a "sum of all parts" situation. This is why it is so difficult to fix it.
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The Declaration enumerates rights that cannot be taken by governments or other individuals. The right to life, liberty, etc. Means that someone cannot deprive you of your life, not that they are obligated to save it. That would infringe on their liberty.
There is an idea that things like Healthcare is a human right. This idea cannot coexist with the right to liberty, as someone else's right to Healthcare would come into conflict with the right to liberty. If we had a right to Healthcare, then it would be necessary for all citizens to learn medical skills, because you not knowing cpr or first aid and being unable to render it would violate a person's right to Healthcare.
My rule of thumb for figuring out human rights is, if you are alone on a deserted island, do you still have those rights? In the case of life liberty, freedom of speech, expression, etc. all of those are a yes. In the case of Healthcare, no.
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I concur, 1 vial of the insulin I used to use which was a brand "Apidra" is $300 without insurance, and it was covered by insurance for years. One day, they stopped covering it...Had to switch to generic insulin and the transition wasn't the best..It's taken me a few years to control, but with the help of the CGM and change of lifestyle, insulin intake has gone down. I just wish insulin was more widely accessible at a lower cost, people's lives depend on it.
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First, I looked at a peer reviewed double blind study of mnemonic creation and propagation, published in N4TUR3 magazine, then I made a hypothesis. I then checked The Internet Reference Book to see if someone had already created a similar hypothesis. Luckily, no one had, so I gathered my data. After controlling for variables, I sent it to my friends, who agreed my methodology was sound and the conclusions I drew were accurate. After that I published it.
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The original discovery used dogs. I know porcine insulin was a thing at one point too. These days, animal insulin’s have mostly been phased out in favor of bacteria grown insulin.
Which they do by inserting the gene for human insulin into E.coli bacteria and letting it proliferate in a tank.
I don’t know the full range of animals that have been used in insulin production, or the side effects of the different kinds, but in a world wide catastrophe situation, you don’t NEED water buffalo in specific.
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Because that's what the US was designed for- the entire federalization of American under Madison was to fix the horrible philosophy behind free and open economics. While laborers labor, the aristocratic elites prefer to value themselves in terms of property, so which ever economy that replaced "listen to what the king says," would have to have room for both.
The idea is that by having a monopoly on money, and anchoring that money by democracy, you'd allow the Aristocrats to run their system via capitalism and have private property be maintained, and you'd allow the work force/commoners input in the governing process to keep them consenting to that government process.
The money has value because it has a scarce production stabilized by the might and power of a state with a monopoly over it's production. In this sense, as long as America continues the circular flow of Let Money Out to supply the work force, work force spends money on products that leads to the aristocrats getting that money for their corporations, for those aristocrats to give that money back in taxes to let the cycle continue. Otherwise, a lack in taxes or government programs will stall out the market and cause the whole cycle to collapse.
Now, I don't trust 3rd generation aristocrats to have more cunning than would be needed from a privileged upbringing, so they usually just decide the "Taxation" part is unfair and see about damming up that leak, which causes a doom spiral for the country, usually resulting in a lot of working class and minority deaths. It's happened about 3-5 times in American history, and will likely continue while we continue to use capitalism as our main economic system.
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The modern synthetic "rapid-acting" insulins, Novolog (insulin aspart) and Humalog (insulin lispro), are no longer covered by patents.
The reason why there aren't generics is because both drugs are biologics which can't have generics in the traditional sense, they can only have biosimilars which require FDA approval and trials.
Humalog has a "generic" (biosimilars) that was approved and launched in the U.S. earlier this year called Admelog (insulin lispro). There isn't a **huge** savings in price, but it is a little cheaper. At Walgreens, a 10mL vial of Humalog is $300; a 10mL vial of Admelog is $250. Now, $50 is $50 and that could add up to $300-$600 savings over the course of a year for a T1 diabetic however, as an American, I can buy mail order Humalog from Canada for as low as $46/vial **shipped** and if I actually go to Canada I can get it even cheaper. So that means I can get 6.5 months of insulin shipped from Canada shipped to my house for the price of the a single months insulin in the U.S. That has nothing to do with patents and generics and everything to do with price gouging and greed.
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>Special interests work to keep these regulations in place.
>but it’s not as easy as it should be.
I strenuously disagree, I'm generally anti regulation, but there are certain spaces where it's nessecary and there's no real room to cut corners.
Small molecule chemistry tends to be pretty easy in terms of recreating a generic in your own lab. The structures of the molecules themselves are relatively simple and generics are usually a perfect copy.
Large molecule Biologic drugs are on the order of 100,000x larger than their small molecule brethren, and far more complex. It's not enough to slap x amino acids in a series, the chains wrap and fold on themselves to form complex 3 dimensional structures that dictate function.
The product is the process, and even for the patent owner there's a larger burden to track lot to lot variability and ensure that the final Biologic remains in-spec compared to the original. It's an order of magnitude harder to reverse engineering it and make an Biosimilar which is functionally the same, but not exactly. (Note how it's in the name, because perfect reproduction is functionally impossible)
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You have a right to keep and bear arms (2nd am), and a right to defend yourself (general human right), but not a right to be provided a weapon. Healthcare is something you consume, and unlike other things we consider rights, you then have to ask “how much”?
How much insulin is it your right to consume? How much ER time? How many doctors visits per year, how many consultations can you demand? And if you refuse to change your lifestyle on the advice of your doctor, are your fellow citizens on the hook?
The answer is that you don’t have right to as much medicine as you can consume, just as much as you can buy. We should work towards a more equitable society together where medicine is affordable and safe, and that has some characteristics of a right. But it’s not a right.
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Poor choice of words on my part. I'm not correct by saying Healthcare is a self-evident human right.
My argument/stance is that Healthcare protects your right to Life. Maybe protects is a poor word choice too. But, the right to Life and Healthcare can be correlated as an argument. That was the association I should have clearly made. In the same way that local police services helps prevent someone from depriving your life. Not, that Healthcare itself is necessarily a human right. It's a service the state/federal government should be providing to its society. But, that's my opinion.
So, essentially, I believe if you can argue that you have a human right to life, as it's known/agreed by most United States citizens in The Declaration of the Independence, than it should be easily argued that the state/federal government should be providing the healthcare to protect it. In the same way towns/cities/state have police or any other services that are reasonably expected such as road work.
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I can take my kid to a hospital and they'll do their best to help out with whatever might be wrong and not won't have to pay anything.
I can do the same for myself and pay 30 euros for eligibility to visit the entire year or 15 euros for just that one visit.
No other costs. Fuck your system americans, it's inhumane, greedy and cruel. Vote and fight for a better tomorrow, don't give up.
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Just for some background: Your body makes insulin naturally throughout the day at a small rate. When you eat, your body will create more insulin to handle the increase in blood glucose from the amount of carbohydrates that you eat. An ideal form of insulin replacement mimics this pattern of basal production through the day and enough bolus insulin to cover meals.
This chart (scroll a bit down) shows the activity profile of different types of insulin: https://dtc.ucsf.edu/types-of-diabetes/type2/treatment-of-type-2-diabetes/medications-and-therapies/type-2-insulin-rx/types-of-insulin/
Walmart brand insulin is called Relion and is just a brand of Novolin (it's not off patent, just branded as a Walmart insulin by Novolin through a deal with Walmart). Walmart does not manufacture it's own insulin. The insulin is called 70/30 which is usually given twice daily. It's called 70/30 because it contains 70 percent NPH (an intermediate acting insulin used for basal coverage) and 30 percent regular insulin (a quick acting insulin used for meals)
It is not really different from the 70/30 insulin made by Novalin.
The problem with using 70/30 strategy is that there is a theoretical higher risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). Why? because the insulin activity profile has "peaks" and hangs out longer in the body then needed which can cause someone to become dizzy or faint.
I say theoretical risk of hypoglycemia because recent studies are showing that basal insulin with NPH doesn't cause more hospitalizations or ED visits for hypoglycemia compared to more flatter activity profile basal insulins (insulin glargine or insulin degludec)
The strategy now most clinicians are comfortable using is putting people on a basal insulin (Lantus, Tresiba, Tujeo, Levamir) + a rapid acting insulin (Novolog, Humalog, Apidra) because it's easy to titrate the individual doses to the patient's carb intake. They are also usually in pen delivery devices which is pretty easy for people to take compared to vial and syringes.
Here is a good argument that states that these older insulin products are just as effective and cost less, especially for type 2 diabetes (it's behind a paywall, but you get the idea in the first page posted):
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2632299
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As a hypothetical, imagine that all the doctors on earth just went poof, except for one. Now, if healthcare is a human right, and if this this doctor does not do everything they can to provide Healthcare to people, then they are violating their human rights.
Okay, so what happens if there are not enough doctors or Healthcare professionals? What if the doctors don't like the wage they are paid and strike?
The issue is that the doctors have the right to decide to render care. The right to Healthcare cannot coexist with individual rights.
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No, of course you as a person isn't richer than a whole country. But you as a person is probably richer than the average Nigerian, the same way that an average person from Luxembourg is way richer than an average person from China.
So based on that, US also isn't the richest country in the world. And I feel that claiming it is is deliberately misleading, especially in this context.
The argument was that US should have free healthcare, because it's the richest country in the world. So if there's proportionality between this definition of richest and healthcare, then you must also think that it'd be more reasonable for China to have free healthcare than Luxembourg, because "China is richer".
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So there is something called biosimilars for insulin. You can't technically create generics for biological hormones via FDA regulations, but you can create similar products. Google biosimilars if you want to learn more because it's a complicated topic.
Examples for insulin (the product on the right is usually cheaper by 10-20%).
Lantus (brand insulin glargine) - Basaglar (Different brand insulin gargine allowed to be made by a different company which technically makes it not technically a biosimilar but effectively it is)
Humalog (Brand insulin lispro) - Admelog (insulin lispro biosimilar)
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Bullshit. Yet another pharma talking point that attempts to spin the issue. Drug development is only arguably expensive due to the rate of failure and the fact that Pharma companies desire to cover losses in their R&D budget. However, current Pharma profits are obscenely well and above beyond that. That's like a cocaine dealer saying he sells crack rocks because he needs to pay his mortgage and his kids' expenses while buying himself a brand new car and a bunch of jewelry. Don't even try that goddamned, shit-for-brained argument that "profits drive innovation in the form of new drugs." That's not how it works. Researchers in underfunded labs attempting to claw their way into grant money and a chance at a patent drive innovation in new drugs - all in order to keep their lab afloat.
The ideal socialized health care system gives a big, fat, fucking finger to Pharma and nationalizes the entire clinical trial process (through nationalization of the hospital system) while putting price ceilings on drugs.
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19.5 yr type 1 diabetic here. Walmart generic insulin saved my life for 18 years due to not being able to afford insurance because I have a preexisting chronic illness. Since I found out I was pregnant in April I've had access to Medicaid and the insulin I'm on now is MUCH better. Yes, the Walmart generic will serve the purpose, but it will not stabilize your blood sugars as well as newer forms. Over time the constant ups and downs on the dated insulins can do significant damage. Thank you for pointing this out. Yes, there is one place I'm aware of to get affordable insulin, but it's years behind compared to what's out there now. IF you have insurance or can afford $1200+ a month out of pocket not including endocrinologist visits to get the required prescription in the first place.
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Capitalism only decides where money goes, it isn't the only system that can deal with money.. I could decide to spend many times the resources on something that Capitalism could ignore and the progress could be huge as a result changing society for the better in the process. The whole risk vs reward of investment and how that determines our standards of living is ridiculous. We can and should determine where our resources are used by the people.. Not by profit.
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Just in case you aren’t joking, no one needs an iPhone to live
I, and many like me, either pay whatever it costs for insulin or we die.
I’ll acknowledge that there is cheaper (I.e. less effective) insulin available to people just like there’s budget smartphones. The contrast is that life saving medication for a fairly common condition shouldn’t be considered a luxury where your income or access to good health insurance acts as a gatekeeper to living a healthy life.
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>Just in case you aren’t joking, no one needs an iPhone to live
One would argue that decent living without a smartphone is not possible e anymore.
Moreover wallmart sell 25$ insulin. Annoying part is that you have to plan your intakes like a dietetician instead of the effortless fast action pumped one. Expensive fast insulin is a comfort drug, hence the prices.
Regulation for health insurance are the key to this emerging behavior.
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How much is much lower? AAPL nets a 20% margin after all is said and done. [https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/profit\_margin](https://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/profit_margin)
For comparison, the total average profit margin of all industries is about 7%. [http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/\~adamodar/New\_Home\_Page/datafile/margin.html](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/margin.html)
This means that AAPL could cut the cost of a $1,000 phone to just under $900 to keep in step with the average or they could sell their $1,000 phone for $800 and make no money at all!
&#x200B;
A 13% price cut is not insignificant but is it really much lower, and is 7% really a healthy profit?
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I think you touched on something important that a lot of people ignore in these threads about insulin costs when folks say “nuh uh, you can get insulin from Walmart for $20!”
What that is true and I’m sure many people feel fortunate it’s available, the level of effort that goes into safely managing your diabetes that way on top of the more difficult requirements to transport it compared to the pens or ideally a pump would make an already challenging condition even worse to manage.
I’ll be getting a pump this year thanks to my boss’s extremely generous increase to my medical benefits as well as his financial contribution. I’m excited, but can’t help but feel badly that a friend of mine has had type 1 for over 40 years and is unable to afford a pump due to his low income and his employer’s poor health insurance. I’ve considered a fundraiser among our friends to help him afford his pump because it’ll break my heart to manage my diabetes with an artificial pancreas while he carries around vials and syringes. He’s too proud to let me just give him the money he needs, which I certainly respect. Does anyone have any experience with these situations? I’d love some advice
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It’s sad but low income people do need a “iPhone” to survive. The idea of a “paperless” world is increasing the divide between the well off and poor. People with the luxury of technology don’t seem to understand this. The increase of efficiency in the market is parallel to the technology innovation. My personal experience is someone on the street asking me if I had spare change, I didn’t have any physical money but my bank account sure did. This isn’t just on a personal level. As medical technology and hospitals keep updating their systems not only is a huge population left out because of innovation but is making them poorer. Yes an iPhone is a luxury but the majority of median and high income earners possess this meanwhile leaving a whole class of people behind. Now imagine that most political debates are online and a huge population is left out because of it. People don’t need an iPhone to live but the way things are going if you don’t have one or even access to one you will get left behind struggling against a system designed for those well off.
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>You are able to browse reddit because of capitalism.
The very fact that life saving drugs exist in the first place despite the prices is due to capitalism.
This is tired nonsense. Capitalism holds us back so much. The problem is that profit comes at the cost of lives. Private health companies are immoral and should not exist in any form. Capitalism and the government are the same, that's why it won't work.
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Can you name some life saving drugs invented and commercialized by non-capitalist countries?
Even China knows capitalism moves countries forward and slowly shifted from a full communist nation to being more capitalistic.
It isn't tired nonsense. All the products you use today like smart phones, video game consoles, drugs, consumer products,...all product of capitalism.
SpaceX? Capitalism
EV/Tesla? Capitalism
How exactly is capitalism holding is back?
Capitalism and government aren't the same. You can have capitalism with government keeping an eye on any particular industry to protect the consumers
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Hmm I'm not sure how to explain this to you. Bit too early for me haha, but basically capitalism holds central power. It is the government. Yes we have shiny toys while we plunge into extinction. Wonderful. The people who got us hooked on opiates are happy to sell us a cure as well. It is tired nonsense. Technology and capitalism are not the same. Because of the inherent contradiction of the capitalist mode of production we lose out on advancement. It's hard to explain to someone who is deeply seated in capitalist ideology. Seems to me pretty obvious that capitalism has failed. Our future has been canceled.
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Private schools funded by a private entity that has a known and vested interest in hiding child molesters, and a bank account that could buy several small countries.
You say they are the best schools. I say they are just well funded.
It's insane to me that religious schools aren't like orphanages. I.e left-overs for when you have nowhere left to go.
In a sane world people would place a priority on public schooling and the futures of their children.
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I would be ok with it for the reasons the central population has very poor hygiene and has a hard time dealing with MERS and other communicable disease, not to mention not as well educated and skills to be fit for the American workforce. You Can't just let people into the country without having something to contribute. No developing country does that either but the USA has the most lax laws for immigration for people with less skills and education allowed in.
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now i am really critical of the US's stance on environmental policies, healthcare, and so on. But you can't just say we're complete garbage...
We're the world's center when it comes to military strength and more importantly, economics. We have an incredibly high GDP and many countries aspire to have a GDP like ours, as a high GDP means so much more for our country.
Does our capitalist system also lead to crazy poverty levels, a huge wealth inequality, and a failure to lead the world to an eco-friendly planet? yes, and those problems should be fixed... but we can't discredit what we've done so far.
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> now i am really critical of the US's stance on environmental policies, healthcare, and so on. But you can't just say **we're complete garbage**...
*Your* words, not mine.
> We're the world's center when it comes to military strength and more importantly, economics. We have an incredibly high GDP and many countries aspire to have a GDP like ours, as a high GDP means so much more for our country.
You did see me mention military in the short list of things you excel at right?
As for GDP, historically sure. But your sitting government is actively sabotaging your economy.
seriously think the rest of the world is just going to forget do you?
Every nation is currently working towards separating itself from any america reliance, because it's clear now that you aren't reliable. All it takes is 1 bad election, and you're back to raving lunatics being in charge, and you know it.
> Does our capitalist system also lead to crazy poverty levels, a huge wealth inequality, and a failure to lead the world to an eco-friendly planet? yes, and those problems should be fixed... but we can't discredit what we've done so far.
Yes, you/we can.
You know what they say... You fuck *one* goat...
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See this is the issue, you’re looking at the US as if it’s a business that has stock holders, and hooray we’re rich and make them happy at the expense of the employees. While your opposition would rather see the benefits go to the people.
While other counties teach their children multiple languages and have high expectations, provide universal healthcare, have child care, give the ability for everyone to get a higher education, the us is sitting here dumb, sick, and soaked with undeserved pride, manipulated by the rich that our neighbor deserves nothing and they’re all criminals, while the rich take that money for themselves and are the real crooks.
But yeah, let’s keep thinking we’re on top.
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Different person, but:
I’ve not read the original BMJ article, but this summary seems to make no reference to morbid obesity or ridiculously high BMI; just increased BMI. It’s simply factual that in different societies, increased BMI to the extent that some would refer to it as “fat” is perceived differently: in poorer societies or those with limited access to fattening foods, it is/was a status symbol; it meant that you were wealthier and could afford it. They’re not looking in the mirror and thinking “I’m ugly and I hate it”; they’re thinking “look at me; I’m a status symbol!”. Whereas at present in the west, fattening foods are abundant and easier to access than a well-balanced diet, so the situation is reversed.
I guess it’s vaguely similar to how in the west, a tan is attractive (perhaps because it gives a certain air of status; “I’ve been able to go on holiday to a sunny place”), whereas in nations like India, skin-lightening treatments are a big industry. In some places that’s because it means you’re rich enough to stay inside and not tan from performing manual labour, while in others it’s probably because there’s a history of light-skinned individuals being of higher status for more controversial reasons.
So the perception of fat as ugly and undesirable definitely isn’t intrinsic; various aspects of appearance that are at best unnatural and at worst unhealthy have been considered attractive throughout different times and cultures. It’s surely a contributing factor towards mental health that being fat is presently stigmatised rather than envied.
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As it stands no person’s behaviour is unique. If it was then we wouldn’t have Psychology as a science in the first place.
So that means people’s behaviour is usually typical of a certain scenario or mindset.
I would say in this situation it’s the mindset of being a victim of society and thus blaming all your problems on society. While being critical of oneself is something that every human is, simply because it’s an impulse to improve your life and limit suffering.
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yes it is. Look at paintings from the Renaissance times. Wide hips and slightly chubby was the way to be. I have now a healthy BMI and look about the same as these women and yet I'd still call myself too heavy. I am not being called that. I judge myself to be too heavy because I see all around me that that is expected of me. It wasn't taught to me per se but it is what you learn anyway.
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Well science teaches us that being fat is unhealthy in many ways. Just because people realistically painted rich women to be fat in the renaissance, doesn't mean they found it attractive.
Of course having a little extra doesn't make you fat necessarily, and a lot of men like their women FULL, (not fat though).
Let me put it this way, I'm not fat but I am unhealthy because I don't eat enough healthy things, and have an injury which limits my movement. I feel so much worse than when I used to be able to sport intensively on a regular basis. Too much fat is simply an indication of the fact you take in more than your body needs, OR that you're sitting on your behind too much.
Of course if you have a healthy BMI and a little extra fullness that doesn't make you unhealthy or fat. It's your own insecurity, which I'm sure will be taken away if you read the studies on what men actually find attractive looking.
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