Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mainiac]

EDIT: Also, I've asked multiple times now and I've yet to receive an answer

Because they do a job, namely, making bad candidates like Sanders have to prove themselves.

The reason that the democratic party isn't supporting Sanders is because THEY'RE A GODDAMN POLITICAL PARTY and he doesn't represent their views very well.  They're in the business of enacting policy.  It's not a beauty pageant; it's a job audition.  They dont owe him anything.  The man wasn't even a democrat until it was very recently advantageous for him.  If he wants them to support him then he should do things like release serious policy proposals or demonstrate that he will help them win elections.

[Sheb]

Mainiac, that doesn't answer his concern, which was that the political apparatus had, in his opinion, too much power. The point is not that the DNC is or isn't supporting Sanders, it's that the DNC has 400 superdelegates which Covenant think it is not entitled to.

Helgo, Rolan, I cannot recommend Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre enough. The real evil stuff isn't really the overcharging for some drugs (although the price reflect money spent on advertising and corrupting doctors rather than R&D, given that it's a much larger expense), it's the corruptions of scientific standards to push their medicine, the selling of "me-again" drugs to artificially expend copyright, the hiding of evidence that some drugs might be dangerous, the privacy violation of patients, the manufacturing of disease to sell remedy and the corruption of doctors. Pharma companies are corporation that exists to make money.

In a perfect word, the best way for them to make money would be to research better drugs. In the present world, it often make more sense to spend 1.000$ inviting a physician to a seminar in the Bahamas to convince him to prescribe your sub-par drug that to invest that money in a new compound that might or might not work. We need to realign the incentives, a good start for which would be to fix the loopholes big pharma use to hide evidence, ban drug advertising and establish good database of drug efficiency, so that the best way to sell a drug become once more "making a better drug".

[Helgoland]

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

[TheBiggerFish]

Hmm.
Probably, yes.

[mainiac]

it's that the DNC has 400 superdelegates which Covenant think it is not entitled to.

On the contrary, it's the most fundamental principle of our country.

The democratic party is an organization.  Because America is a free country, that organization is free to organize itself and make it's own rules.  You and I could decide right here and now to make the "Sheb and mainiac cool kids party for the legalization of recreational nuclear fission."  In the US, it's right there in the first ammendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So you and I are free to make the SaMckPftLRNF.  If people dont like recreational nuclear fission, they aren't allowed to shut down the SaMckPftLRNF unless we start committing crimes.  We can endorse laws and candidates peacefully to our hearts content.  And we can chose not to make endorsements to our hearts content.  And if we want to kick people out of our cool kids party, we are allowed to do that.  We can declare ourselves party presidents for life.  It's a free country.  If they dont like it they can go make the Bernie Bros Club for Equitable Plutonium Use.  But they cant come into our party and tell us they are in charge now.  If they do that, they are taking away our constitutionally given right to create a peaceful assembly to petition the government.  Your right to peaceful assembly isn't contingent on other people liking your message, it's inviolable.

Now the democratic party has a much broader and more complex constituency.  The democratic party has a lot of people interested in their nominating process.  It's very much in their interest to give those people a voice in the process because the democratic party rank and file has a pretty good idea of what the democratic party rank and file wants.  Old school Tammy Hall style smoke filled rooms aren't going to give them the results they want.  But the democratic party is completely, 100% free to decide on whatever process they want.  They decided that 85% of the votes go to the broad electorate, 5% to elected representatives (mostly present, some past) and 10% to party organizers.  That 10% exists to enact an agenda.  They dont feel that Bernie Sanders is a good candidate for the job of advancing their agenda.

If you think they're wrong there is a very simple solution.  Go start your Bernie Sanders with Blackjack and Hookers party.  But you aren't allowed to say that democrats dont have a right to support their agenda.  They made these rules, the rules are perfectly legal and it's the cornerstone of democratic society that they are allowed to do that.

And the really, hilariously silly thing about all this is that people are bitching about the DNC party leaders having votes when the DNC party leaders are the superdelegates most sympathetic to Sanders right now.  Right now here is the breakdown of the votes:

Superdelegates
5.3% democratic elected officials for Clinton
0.1% democratic elected officials for Sanders
1.2% democratic elected officials undecided
5.3% DNC delegates for Clinton
0.3% DNC delegates for Sanders
4.7% DNC delegates undecided

Pledged Delegates
1.4% pledged delegates for Sanders
1.4% pledged delegates for Clinton
83.4% pledged delegates to be assigned in future contests

The DNC delegates are about 50/50 split between supporting Clinton and uncommitted.  If Sanders were to prove his viability like Obama did, he would pick up a huge amount of support in that group.  Where Sanders is in trouble is with the fact that 80% of the people democrats have elected to high office think that Clinton is the better nominee.  That is where Sanders is at the disadvantage.

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

We've already split the process into two parts.  One is called "the government" and they develop medicines which save lives in the US and around the world.  The other is called "the pharma industry" and they collect profits on the work the government does.

[Sheb]

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

Actually something very much like that already exists: most innovative drug research is done by smaller start-up that are willing to take risks, and whick then sells their IP/are bought by pharma giants who have the financial muscle to put a drug through large-scale trials and the know-how to bring it to market. I don't really see how that would solve the issues though. If anything, the system might rise the incentive to make your drug look good at all costs, because many of these smaller start-up have litterally a single drug in development. It's succeed of bust.

[Playergamer]

maniac...don't see what kind of point you're making there. Yes, the Democratic party is allowed to set it's own rules...but that doesn't mean people can't think the rules are stupid, and try to fix them.

[Willfor]

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

Actually something very much like that already exists: most innovative drug research is done by smaller start-up that are willing to take risks, and whick then sells their IP/are bought by pharma giants who have the financial muscle to put a drug through large-scale trials and the know-how to bring it to market. I don't really see how that would solve the issues though. If anything, the system might rise the incentive to make your drug look good at all costs, because many of these smaller start-up have litterally a single drug in development. It's succeed of bust.

The large companies maniac has talked about are on record iirc as saying its not worth their while to be innovative at all, and shrinking R&D budgets overall prove that more or less. Then you have CEOs who see "life-saving medicine" and then jack the price until its nearly unaffordable, and have that be perfectly legal.

[Zangi]

@Pharma: Cures are unprofitable.  Little pills that need to be taken for the rest of your life(or at least a significant portion) is where the money is at.

[Shadowlord]

On another subject:

Some three years ago, the Iraq war was estimated to have cost us $2 trillion dollars. Researchers have suggested that amount could rapidly increase over coming years, never mind the rise of ISIS and the deployment of American forces anew. As a comparison, free public college for all Americans would cost $70 billion a year. Not only is that much cheaper, but the latter is an investment that would pay dividends for years to come. The Iraq war didn’t make America safer and, if we’re really lucky, the war will be wound down and ISIS defeated and the region returns back to the status quo. And all the while, many other countries, like China, invested in their own economies. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia has been making huge investments in energy, public transportation and green initiatives. You’d think, after a decade of this, that we would have caught on. Instead Islamophobia is still used to score cheap points, and avoid real problems.

Jeb Bush was one of the rare Republican candidates who wasn’t an anti-Muslim bigot, but he still described ISIS as an “existential threat.” Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, maybe, and in any case, Jeb’s out. But I hardly think Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi can destroy the world’s most powerful nation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who tweeted that “Islam pure” (sic) leads to “mass murder,” has a position at Harvard—indicating that her insights are taken seriously. While Ali was warning of the non-existent threat of “Shari’ah” in Michigan, actual Michiganders were literally being poisoned by their water supply.

When we continue to conflate mainstream Islam with radicals, vastly exaggerating the threat we face, we make it harder to make good choices. All of the things our global peers are preparing for–climate change, for example—go by the wayside. While it might be important to tackle income inequality, crumbling infrastructure, student debt, childhood poverty, systemic and structural racism, the idea that our greatest threat is Islamic extremism, and that Muslims everywhere are all potential or possible terrorists, makes it harder to address these problems. Though Trump now questions the Iraq war, he continues to indulge in the kind of language that enabled the Iraq war.

There are some questionable things in the article, I think*, but it does appear to make some good points, particularly in the stuff that I quoted. (I didn't check the numbers, though)

* One questionable thing was "But Islamophobia was also the vehicle by which the Bush administration was able to sell its policies." Bush said that Islam was a religion of peace, and Saddam's Iraq was a secular state - and I don't recall anyone in the Bush administration ever trying to sell the Iraq war using islamophobia. Nuclear weapons? Yes. Bringing democracy? Yes. Saddam supporting terrorists? Yes. None of which were true.

[mainiac]

maniac...don't see what kind of point you're making there. Yes, the Democratic party is allowed to set it's own rules...but that doesn't mean people can't think the rules are stupid, and try to fix them.

Sure and if someone wanted to advocate for that they are free to do so.  But this isn't an abstract argument over what is the best set of rules to advance the democratic agenda.  This is a specific objection to the idea the democratic party is advocating it's agenda and not endorsing the agenda of Bernie Sanders.  People are objecting that a voluntary democratic organization designed to endorse a legislative agenda is endorsing a different agenda then theirs.  They discovered a sudden desire for a principle they never wanted before in an incredibly tactical set of circumstances.

[Helgoland]

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

Actually something very much like that already exists: most innovative drug research is done by smaller start-up that are willing to take risks, and whick then sells their IP/are bought by pharma giants who have the financial muscle to put a drug through large-scale trials and the know-how to bring it to market. I don't really see how that would solve the issues though. If anything, the system might rise the incentive to make your drug look good at all costs, because many of these smaller start-up have litterally a single drug in development. It's succeed of bust.

I was imagining big, big research heavyweights who also do the clinical trials etc. It's just production and marketing that would be split off. Admittedly many issues would carry over to the new system - first and foremost the perversion of scientific standards -, but I guess it would be easier to zero in on problems and design regulations to eradicate them if you're not dealing with monolothic entities like the current pharma giants. And most importantly it would lead to every profitable drug being produced by several companies at once, driving down prices of the final product - and thus, by invisible hand magic, also the prices for production licenses.

[Rolepgeek]

In banking, there's the concept of splitting up banks into investment banks and commercial banks - that's what Glass-Steagall was all about. Do you reckon that enforcing a similar split in the pharma industry - separating drug development and drug manufacturing, with the drug developers' sole source of income being the patents they sell - would be a good idea?

Actually something very much like that already exists: most innovative drug research is done by smaller start-up that are willing to take risks, and whick then sells their IP/are bought by pharma giants who have the financial muscle to put a drug through large-scale trials and the know-how to bring it to market. I don't really see how that would solve the issues though. If anything, the system might rise the incentive to make your drug look good at all costs, because many of these smaller start-up have litterally a single drug in development. It's succeed of bust.

The large companies maniac has talked about are on record iirc as saying its not worth their while to be innovative at all, and shrinking R&D budgets overall prove that more or less. Then you have CEOs who see "life-saving medicine" and then jack the price until its nearly unaffordable, and have that be perfectly legal.

Doesn't help that most of the easy to research drugs are already, well, researched. All the low-hanging fruit of medicine is taken. Everything that's left is difficult to research or unlikely to pan out, and all of it's expensive as hell given the regulations they have to go through. Those regulations aren't a bad thing, but paying several million dollars for the requisite trials and clinical studies for a drug means that to make any profit (and thus to have the incentive to make these drugs at all), they have to charge a hefty sum. And most of them aren't as effective as the old generic types that are still in use, because of selection bias trimming down the old ones that weren't useful, plus as I said, low-hanging fruit. Don't get me wrong, there's ways to fix it and I think we should try to go through with them, but it's not just "Evil Big Pharma". Some, certainly. Not all.

[RedKing]

Thanks to mainiac for urging a good 30% of the Democratic Party to find another party, because "The Party DGAF bout your issues, we've got an election to win!"

The majority telling the minority to shut up and keep taking it in the ass is, in fact, a hallmark of democracy. Of course, so is the minority finding their leverage, pushing back, and saying "no more".

@Shadowlord: I distinctly remember the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda being implied by some because " well, they're all Muslims. Of course he's helping them."

[Helgoland]

Thanks to mainiac for urging a good 30% of the Democratic Party to find another party, because "The Party DGAF bout your issues, we've got an election to win!"

Well, to be honest most of the pro-election reform crows has this as its main argument. Mainiac's just stating it rather bluntly.