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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Amgen and Johnson & Johnson produce a lot of FDA-approved drugs, which are generally effective for their prescribed uses.

They also scam literally as much as they can get away with, and sometimes more, hence the lawsuits.

I wonder if the companies being ran by hedge fund sociopaths who got through college without collecting the eyes of sex workers instead of, you know, doctors, is a related condition?

It's literally that bad, Biden may be as much of a creepy assaulter as Trump and I don't care, he wouldn't have gotten tens of thousands of people killed by this point due to ignorance.

That depends on if you count dementia as ignorance, though if not he'd be getting hundreds of thousands killed on purpose through deprivation and war, as he did all throughout the Obama years.

He can say "I don't know, let's ask someone, who's an expert on this?" freely.

I believe it would be more along the lines of "you know, you know, the thing, come on fat?"

[ZBridges]

I agree that almost all these companies are run by scum, but that does not mean that they are necessarily incapable of producing effective drugs because of it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I didn't say they were literally incapable of producing drugs that don't just give you cancer. However, I would advise a certain caution towards such groundbreaking therapies as sun-tanning your lung tissue to beat covid. Gotta make that paper, and we don't know it doesn't work, you know what I mean?

Now, about those insulin prices-

[Trekkin]

They don't have any PhDs on that team, but they do have four MDs with extensive experience. I don't think that these doctors are simply "salespeople." In addition, Johnson & Johnson, one of the largest biomedical companies in the world, is also lead largely by laypeople.

Yes, in part because they're at a size where they can innovate primarily via acquisition. Aytu isn't, which means they're probably looking to go for the standard small biotech good end and get acquired. The lack of PhDs and surfeit of salespeople is concerning in this light because it means they aren't trying to appeal to scientists -- which they'd need to do even if their theory wasn't this shaky. See, shiny C-suite folks are great for pulling in venture capital and doctors can do a lot for public confidence, but if you actually want to reduce theory to practice you need credible labs to handle the development and testing end of things. Typically that's done through collaborations with established laboratories, which is the primary reason small biotechs trumpet their PhDs: they can talk to academia and the nonprofit sphere and make this happen, and having them around lends the whole effort some cachet. MDs and laypeople don't really get how to include incentives for us in the same way.

Therefore, that they don't have any to parade around suggests one of two things. Either no one wants to be a part of this -- and you can always scrape together a gaggle of mediocre emeritus professors to sit on Scientific Advisory Boards, much like you can pay decrepit doctors to endorse literally anything -- or Aytu doesn't care about actually making a thing and sticking it in people except as an end goal to sell folks. This looks like the biotech equivalent of vaporware.

[Iduno]

Yeah, but a legitimate medical company, funded by Cedars-Sinai, wants to use UV light to treat COVID-19 (presumably, without damaging the patient).

Yes, but if you read their own promotional material, they're trying to vaguely reduce viral load and maybe also secondary infections because UVA kills (edit: some*) pathogens and covid's a pathogen, even though UVA light isn't the germicidal kind.

The more I look into this company, the more I'm convinced it's more about buzz than anything else. You may notice, for example, the glaring lack of PhDs on the team, and how the team itself is led by laypeople with business rather than scientific experience. These are salespeople, not scientists.

Yeah, when I read the idea, it sounded like a scam to generate funding, then disappear. Your description of that team isn't changing my mind.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could definitely make bank selling people "bleach-purified water" right now. It's got all the hallmarks - technically true, can just sell people water for 20 dollars a bottle, synergizes with all the conspiratorial thoughts, and people drink full bleach anyway because of Miracle Mineral Solution so the FDA will probably leave you alone if you call it a water supplement (decoration purposes).

[SalmonGod]

I saw talk about sexual assault allegations with Biden and I'm like, show me a tape of him talking about "yeah I'm gonna grab that pussy bitch, now quit crying and bring your sister in here" and I still think he's better than Trump.

It's literally that bad, Biden may be as much of a creepy assaulter as Trump and I don't care, he wouldn't have gotten tens of thousands of people killed by this point due to ignorance.

He can say "I don't know, let's ask someone, who's an expert on this?" freely.

It's been repeated here multiple times how Biden's political history has been the ruination of millions of lives.  But I guess those things Biden did aren't as bad as what Trump has done, because he wasn't as personally unlikable while doing them.

Even if you want to restrict the conversation to just the pandemic crisis, I can put it in that framing. 

Prison populations are some of the most vulnerable to this pandemic.  Many people have already died in prison from it.  There are some prisons where it's spread through the majority of the inmate population, and those not yet infected are pleading for their lives writing cries for help on the windows of their cells.  These people are packed into facilities together by the thousands, and the private for-profit prison system fed by Biden's crime and surveillance bills is not doing anything to mitigate their endangerment.  Some inmates are even threatened with intentional infection by prison staff.  Biden played an essential role in the formation of the prison-industrial complex as it is today.  He put these people in this situation.  Trump has horribly mismanaged this crisis.  But I think it would be intellectually dishonest to assign full responsibility for the death toll to Trump.  The blood of those who die in prison is on Biden's hands as well, and that death toll is likely to be high.

I often see people talk about the ways Trump's presidency has been illuminating -- revealing the weakness of democracy, the depths of republican depravity, the prevalence of fascism, how many friends/family turned out to actually be terrible people, etc.

The most illuminating thing about Trump's presidency for me has been learning just how much politics is about aesthetics for the majority of people.  It feels like nobody cares to emotionally process the responsibility that politicians bear for the things that they do unless they're uncharismatic about it.  I fully expect that if Biden wins this year, that he will be almost as terrible, and no one will care simply because his demeanor will express an aesthetic of normalcy.

[RazielReaver]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122858/

[Max™]

I'll pass on bothsidesing, supreme court seats, downticket effects, and actually having the important things federal government is good at(pandemic response comes to mind) get done makes your argument moot even if it had any merit worth arguing.

[wierd]

@SalmonGod

I've been saying similar things for years. Obama had that great big hollywood smile that nobody could say no to. Oh, and his skin had lots of melanin in it.

Policy wise? Yeah-- record levels of drone strikes on ordinary people in the middle east, expansions of government wiretapping, and a bevy of other naughty.  But boy--- That smile!

We've been doing this shit since at least Ronald Reagan. Probably longer.


The presidency has been about being pretty and popular for a very very long time. We really DO need a "no, policy fucking matters!" president or two. But we wont get one.

[SalmonGod]

@SalmonGod

I've been saying similar things for years. Obama had that great big hollywood smile that nobody could say no to. Oh, and his skin had lots of melanin in it.

Policy wise? Yeah-- record levels of drone strikes on ordinary people in the middle east, expansions of government wiretapping, and a bevy of other naughty.  But boy--- That smile!

We've been doing this shit since at least Ronald Reagan. Probably longer.


The presidency has been about being pretty and popular for a very very long time. We really DO need a "no, policy fucking matters!" president or two. But we wont get one.

Yeah, I was aware that charisma had a huge effect on how people responded to Obama's presidency.  And it frustrated me immensely back then.

But it's just been incredible to me how Trump's lack of charisma has effected perception of his presidency as compared to his predecessors.

Even among those who fully acknowledge Bush as an out and out villain, whose administration was in effect every bit as fascist as Trump's, few speak of him with anywhere near the same tone of hatred as they do of Trump.  And the only reason for it I can see is Trump's just not charismatic about it.

And on the one hand it's great.  People should hate Trump.  I love that he is hated.  But on the other hand, I can't stand that it takes a character like Trump for people to feel the things they should have been feeling all along, and be appropriately energized.  It's like... where were all these fuckers for the 16 years prior?  Why do they only care about these things now, and are they still going to care about them when this is over?  I suspect not.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'll pass on bothsidesing, supreme court seats, downticket effects, and actually having the important things federal government is good at(pandemic response comes to mind) get done makes your argument moot even if it had any merit worth arguing.

Were you alive when Obama was President? He and Biden mismanaged the government so much that people decided Donald Trump would be a keen successor, and if not him then Hillary Clinton who has the charisma of a rock and the policy of a HR hatchetjob.

And Obama was in charge during all of this, able to override Biden if he really wanted, and it still got us: The annihilation of the Democratic Party in local seats for a generation, massive losses in state seats, and the Federal scenario that has stuck with us all this time in spite of how hated the GOP is because they now outright just count the votes however they feel like. The loss of multiple SCOTUS seats even after trying to offer a moderate conservative replacement for Scalia and getting spat on my Mitch for the trouble. The total lack of a working class recovery from the 08 financial crisis, who's fruits we continue to ripen. And the dissolution of the one major policy the Dems bothered to try and pass right at the beginning, but making sure to piss all over it for the sake of the insurance moguls and continue to deride any kind of real public healthcare.

Yeah, I can certainly see how you wouldn't want to get in an argument about all that, it's indefensible! Nothing happened during the Obama years that the GOP didn't approve of behind closed doors, even Obamacare is just one of their old policies repackaged in blue. We're still well at all the wars, the police state is worse than ever, and there's zero action taken against the ecocide.

And then there's everything that's even worse about Joe Biden than Obama - that stupid ploy with Garland was Biden's idea to appease Mitch, and if you want to step back a little further in history Biden's idea of an ideal SCOTUS judge is Clarence "Incinerate The Poor" Thomas.

There is no escape. None of us are getting out of this one, so get ready to ride that flaming rollercoaster straight into the ground. Just don't say I didn't tell you so in 2030 when there's global famine and President Cotton is drafting all able-bodied adults to invade wherever's on the CIA chopping block this time around. But hey, maybe he'll "get shit done" and have an upside? A real man's man, Tom Cotton.


EDIT: POST-MIDNIGHT PURE HORROR AMERICA ROBOT GOD COMMUNISM, LET US DANCE IN THE FLAME

[Max™]

I've been paying attention to the unsubtle message of hatred from the GOP since Reagan was running around, when Challenger blew up I went from excited about NASA to pissed off at all the bullshit and mismanagement at NASA plus the financial bullshit involved in it being at the whim of the latest asshole senator or president who felt like holding it hostage.

I remember being baffled at people thinking Clinton running a surplus was a good thing when it meant everybody had less money in their pockets.

I was utterly unsurprised when goofy fuck dubya and his puppeteers turned 9/11 into two bonus wars for no good reason.

Similarly I was only disappointed but not surprised when the Tea Party fucknuts got swept into office because we can't let that black guy get away with thinkin' he might be better'n us!

I had a hearty chuckle at the GOP spending the entirety of Obama's presidency standing there with their arms crossed and shaking their heads, only to get all three branches of government on their side or in their control, and when they were getting ready to start up their evil bullshit they couldn't stop disagreeing and nope-ing everything on top of Trump being a colossal fuckup who is amazingly talented at squandering amazing opportunities.

I'm out of hope, ran out of that shit before I could even remember having any, the only thing I expect from a Biden presidency vs another term of shitbaby is a seat or two on the supreme court being more liberal, and maybe some work started at undoing the damage done during the last four years.

It's a shitty but obvious choice: let dumbfuck keep murdering people and take a good shot at shit like overturning roe v wade, or literally anybody who won't do that?

[SalmonGod]

It's a shitty but obvious choice: let dumbfuck keep murdering people and take a good shot at shit like overturning roe v wade, or literally anybody who won't do that?

I'll vote for anyone who doesn't have a history of murdering people and attacking civil liberties, too.

[Iduno]

I'll pass on bothsidesing, supreme court seats, downticket effects, and actually having the important things federal government is good at(pandemic response comes to mind) get done makes your argument moot even if it had any merit worth arguing.

Psst, the Democrats have shown they don't care about supreme court seats, and Biden has said he'd put more conservative judges on the court. You're arguing the wrong side.

It's a shitty but obvious choice: let dumbfuck keep murdering people and take a good shot at shit like overturning roe v wade, or literally anybody who won't do that?

No, Trump has some interest in murdering people, too. He hasn't moved on Roe v Wade, but Biden has promised to get it overturned. Trump is the asshole who makes us look bad, Biden is the one who is more racist and hates women more.