The dude on the top right is kinda pretty.

Don't bother coming to Ireland then. :)

I've got two interesting ones on the same subject

1: Is court-mandated attendance of Alcoholics Anonymous unconstitutional?
2: Constitutionality aside, what are your general thoughts on Alcoholics Anonymous and its methods?

I'll let a few of you guys post before I say my bit on it. You can probably guess which way I lean on this. *sips everclear from a toy teacup*

So are you basically asking if AA is just goofy Christian nonsense? I've seen the same Stanhope specials you have, bitch.

I've also been to AA before I even heard of Stanhope.

A topic that falls under the second question is whether or not mutual aid is an effective way to curb alcoholicism.

Well in that case, let's impose a draft and lock up the gays since we have the death penalty.

Absolutely.

Are there not already? My friends wife told me how a McDonalds in the UK used to give her really ****ed up schedules to where she would go home and sleep for an hour or two then have to get up and go back to work and she said it was highly illegal out there.

there's no scheduling restrictions where I live

I think our company has policies against that sort of thing, but they're not really enforced except by our managers not being dicks. They can be dicks.

If you can figure out a way to sue their asses. Get them fired. **** with them. Sabotage. Steal ****. Whatever.

I'm too lazy to do anything but steal food.

When I used to work alone overnight at a deli doing massive amounts of food prep I stole and ate SO much cheese and pastrami. So much gets thrown out anyway, so.

If you really want to **** over your bosses you have to have some honest hatred. You have to be willing to hurt yourself to do it.

Meh, my bosses can just be thoughtless twats. They're alright in general.

I've done some nasty **** to get revenge when I felt shafted because of work hierarchy. I hold grudges for decades, too.

You kidnapped them for 15 years, and then let them go and tricked them into ****ing their daughters?

Nah, he baked their kids into pies and tricked them into eating them, and then choked them with a spoon.

:laughing:

That's completely stupid and unrealistic. Occult can't bake! :laughing:

My friend hates that movie because of the fact that he spent so much time and effort just to get this revenge. He hates the idea of revenge.

It makes sense that he would hate the definitive revenge movie then.

Titus Andronicus!

Senate Passes "Right to Try" Bill to Help Terminally Ill Patients Get Experimental Drugs

The way this bill is being reported: a victory for individual rights. People are no longer restricted from trying potentially life saving medicine!

What this bill actually is: allowing snake oil salesmen to sell their products as medicine so long as it isn't found to be immediately toxic in phase one of testing. In the event that the treatment is found to be dangerous in the long term, the bill has measures to protect any companies responsible for those side effects.

Should have been called the "right to exploit the vulnerable" bill. There will obviously be some cases where legitimate medical companies with less funding can benefit from this bill, but mark my words that this will result in more harm than good.

Someone argue with me about this scam, I'm all pissed off about it.

I think it's a good thing. First off, the patient is already terminally ill, i.e., going to die.

If they have the means why not let them grasp at any straw available?

The Goldwater Institute and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network are on board - both non-profits. That's a sound endorsement in my mind.

And how many bills to do see get passed by unanimous consent? Not a single senator dissented.

Because people will knowingly put fake straws out there to make money off of those graspers. Appropriate straws for those people would be participating in clinical trials in the event that they don't have any other options. I see this bill as a means to weaken the FDA and protect unethical medicine/alternative mddicine practitioners. The way it's being framed as a way to help the terminally ill and not corporations is just sooooo disingenuous imo.

Also a little surprised that you support the Goldwater Institute (who wrote the bill) since they're quite firmly a conservative think tank. Nothing wrong with it, just surprised.

It's not like the straws won't already have undergone some scutiny. Big grey area between snake oil and FDA approved.

Where did I say I support the Goldwater Group? I just think them, as a non-profit, signing on doesn't hurt. And senator Ron Johnson wrote the bill. Yes, it does go along the lines of what the GG has been trying to do for years.

In this extreme partisan era, that fact that no democrats or independents opposed the bill counts for a bit more in my book than your typical cynical opinion of things.

Spot on Chula.

It would have to pass the first phase of clinical trials, yes. That first phase is testing the medicine on healthy humans to see if it is toxic in the short term. The second level of testing is on the efficacy of the drug, which is infinitely more important. The legislation opens the doors for snake oil because you can pass phase 1 and never pursue subsequent trials while still profiting off of your product.

They're a non-profit organization with crazy strong lobbying powers, placing them amongst organizations such as the NRA and Greenpeace. But who endorses it is not important to me, I'm discussing the actual content of the bill.

The last close to unanimous vote I remember was the Iraq war approval.

And even though I came to my own conclusions when I read about the legislation and what it did, I am far from alone in my views.

“This bill is inherently deceptive,” Alison Bateman-House, a medical ethicist at New York University who led the charge against Johnson’s bills, wrote in an email. “What [patients] have a right to (and did long before this bill) is to ask drug companies for permission to use their experimental drugs outside of clinical trials. If the drug company says no, both before and after this legislation, that's the final word: neither the FDA nor the courts have to power to make companies provide access to their experimental drugs-in-development.”

The Senate vote on the Iraq war was 77 to 23.

Listen, this person is going to die in a short while. They've exhausted every possible option. There's no hope left. At that point do whatever you want to do. If it's an experimental drug, go for it. Don't restrict them from trying.

If nothing else, it might speed up some FDA approvals.

I'm not saying that we should restrict them from trying, I'm saying that there options that should not present themselves as medicine that can do just that because of this bill without repurcussion. The terminally ill can already exhaust their options by being a part of clinical trials for legitimate experimental medicine. There might be a few underfunded companies who can benefit from this and streamline their funding process with money from the terminally ill as opposed to paying the terminally ill to participate in their trials, but this is a window for creators of ineffective and potentially unsafe medicines to exploit the desparate.

And how often are people barred to begin with?

What makes you say this? From where I'm sitting this is an attempt to move away from the FDA.

Might also create a secret pharmaceutical side business of deliberately developing bogus medicine that they know will never pass the FDA. Since there'll be no massive time and money commitment then they can just sprinkle as much as of both as they absolutely need to, jack up the prices anyway (as usual), and have themselves a quick buck whenever they need it. That's just off the top of my head.

Exactly. All they have to do is establish that it's not toxic and they can start selling it.

Any terminally ill cancer patients want to try out my magic cinnamon?

The unanimous vote is entirely political btw. Imagine explaining the nuance of why you voted against FREEDOM to your constituents.

Your assumptions conclusions. And a very cynical one - as usual.

Ineffective - how do you know this? Again, snake oil salesmen are not going to be included in this.

Potentially unsafe - duh. The person is already slated to die. Roll the dice.

Re: FDA

It normally takes about 10 years to get FDA approval. If a bunch of people try a drug that's on the waiting list and it hurts them, then that drug takes a bunch of steps backwards.

If a bunch of people try a drug that's on the waiting list and they show some positive results, the FDA will pay attention.

Dude. It takes up to ten years to get FULL FDA approval. The bill allows for unapproved drugs to hit the market so long as they pass preliminary safety tests. Snake oil can absolutely get involved with this. There is a massive difference between passing phase one and being FDA approved. They have not tested for efficacy. They have not tested for safety on the sick. They have only established that it is not immediately toxic for entirely healthy people.

Someone who knows what they're talking about take over for Chula.

Extremely naive statements. This bill doesn't just bust the doors wide open for every Tom, Dick, and Harry pharmaceutical company to dump junk into the market.

Stop posting with your hair on fire.

What exactly is the incentive for bogus pharmaceutical products to be made for and sold to terminally ill people that will be tested and proven to not work, leading to whatever punishment that entails?

Let people decide what they want to do with their lives. We don't need the government deciding if your dying father should be able to try an experimental treatment under the premise that it might not "pass the snake oil test".