Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 9:41 am  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Harassment? I invite you to provide any evidence of harassment. Either publically on here, or in a PM if you prefer.

An abusive post that was designed specifically to insult/offend.

A tactic used quite widely in an attempt to silence people – hence harassment.

You know entirely well which post I mean (I have retained a screen grab for reference). So I suggest again that you consider for yourself how much you want to retain posting rights to this site.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 9:47 am  

SmokeyTA wrote:

There is a reason why The Wellcome foundation does the research it does ... <snip>

Additionally, it could be noted that Big Pharma currently stands accused of not revealing trial results – not least because it doesn't want any less-than-brilliant results to damage profits. Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma is just one meticulously-researched and detailed examination of this.

Specifically, one could also consider the question of when and how cholesterol became a disease, and who has benefitted from this. And the relationships between big businesses with a vested interested in promoting/maintaining certain views on health even when they're challenged directly by research. I'm thinking specifically of the British Heart Foundation here, and Unilever, which owns the Flora brand, which has a link with the BHF.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 9:50 am  

He seems to enjoy being personal with regards peoples looks and even hints of weightism today...

I challenge him to put a picture up of himself?
I'll grant him an apology if he's half as handsome as me?

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 9:51 am  

WIZEB wrote:

He seems to enjoy being personal with regards peoples looks and even hints of weightism today...

I challenge him to put a picture up of himself?
I'll grant him an apology if he's half as handsome as me?

I suggest that nobody gets caught up in it.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 11:00 am  

WIZEB wrote:

He seems to enjoy being personal with regards peoples looks and even hints of weightism today...

I challenge him to put a picture up of himself?
I'll grant him an apology if he's half as handsome as me?

I think you' ll find that it was Codpiece who was the guilty party who posted in another thread..."Allslop is correct in one respect though, there are millions who subsist on little electricity, there are also millions who subsist on a low-calorie food intake too, maybe if she followed their lead she could shift some of that blubber she's carrying".

And in all honesty, who could be as handsome as you? Is not GOD both compassionate and generous? What he takes away with one hand....he recompenses with the other......wit and intelligence for an outstanding physique and George Clooney looks.

Oh, and I've absolutely no problem with sticking a photo of myself on here for folk to stick pins in if they so desire. All it needs is for someone to say it doesn't break an AUP regulations.....

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 11:08 am  

Mintball wrote:

An abusive post that was designed specifically to insult/offend.

A tactic used quite widely in an attempt to silence people – hence harassment.

You know entirely well which post I mean (I have retained a screen grab for reference). So I suggest again that you consider for yourself how much you want to retain posting rights to this site.

I know the one you mean Amanda, and can I honestly say it was put up simply as a piece of childish humour, hopefully to raise a smile as much as to annoy you. I apologise if it did cross a line, as there was no intention to cause any real offence, certainly no more than what is usual on Sin Bin.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 11:27 am  

rumpelstiltskin wrote:

I know the one you mean Amanda, and can I honestly say it was put up simply as a piece of childish humour, hopefully to raise a smile as much as to annoy you. I apologise if it did cross a line, as there was no intention to cause any real offence, certainly no more than what is usual on Sin Bin.

It didn't specifically annoy me – heat, kitchens etc – but it did cross a line for the reason I outlined earlier: ie, that's it's a familiar tactic on social media etc.

Apology accepted.


Let's all try to use the new year as a chance to keep a tad calmer than on occasions.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 12:15 pm  

Mintball wrote:

Additionally, it could be noted that Big Pharma currently stands accused of not revealing trial results – not least because it doesn't want any less-than-brilliant results to damage profits. Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma is just one meticulously-researched and detailed examination of this.

Specifically, one could also consider the question of when and how cholesterol became a disease, and who has benefitted from this. And the relationships between big businesses with a vested interested in promoting/maintaining certain views on health even when they're challenged directly by research. I'm thinking specifically of the British Heart Foundation here, and Unilever, which owns the Flora brand, which has a link with the BHF.

Big Pharma is a massive showing of the failings of capitalism. It shows that money trumps progress and the benefits of R&D done through the state and academia. Capitalism makes things cheaper, there is clearly and obviously a place for it. It brings this to the masses and market efficiencies do work in some areas. However market efficiencies also fail in a lot of areas. It drives what is profitable not what is the best option, it drives what makes the most money, not what helps the most people. There is a need for the Eli Lilly company to mass produce cheaply and efficiently vaccines. But the fact is that it took government money and academic research, and the genius of an academic in Jonas Salk to create the vaccine.

In other areas too, for example Monsanto make a fortune and are hugely controversial, It needed the Mexican State, Charity, and Norman Borlaug to reject Du Ponts money to save billions of lives. Redirecting the money from the Monsanto’s and Eli Lillys to the Jonas Salk and Norman Borlaugs to research for the greater sum of human knowledge will not only push forward human progress and make all our lives better, give us better access to the unfettered truth rather than the lies and lies of omission companies often rely on to protect their market position (is there any Big Pharma company which hasn’t introduced a fairly damaging drug, then hidden behind biased research before being found out?) but also give the capitalists more doodahs and whatsits to make cheaply and sell on. A virtuous cycle if any ever existed.

Re: Scargill was right! : Wed Jan 08, 2014 11:43 pm  

Smokey - that's a tad OTT about big pharma.

The argument for big pharma has always been about their ability to fund speculative development. This is hugely expensive, especially when you consider we're not just talking about a few drugs, or just coming up with an idea but going through complex and expensive development and testing through to human trials and large-scale production for many drugs at the same time.

The current model is based on the funding of the above being in turn protected by the ability to earn abnormal profits from developed products for a period via patent protection.

I'm not arguing that the current model isn't flawed - it is. Genuine groundbreaking research nearly always comes from outside of big corporates, partly because they focus a lot of effort on developing new versions of existing drugs, or new drugs to treat the same disease. Corporates will also focus on diseases where the potential payoffs from a cure promise to be significant - i.e. they'll focus far more time on common ailments than uncommon ones.

But like many things, you can't "fix" the system that exists by tampering with just part of it - e.g. remove patent protection entirely and there's zero incentive for anyone to commercially develop any new drug. The problem then becomes who funds the research and how (and a lot of academics in R&D are directly or indirectly supported in part by big pharma).

Re: Scargill was right! : Thu Jan 09, 2014 12:54 am  

My own experience of big Pharma centres around Astrazeneca. They have a huge R&D centre near Macclesfield - a site so big and developed it's almost a town in itself. Approx 2,000 R&D staff iirc - a huge expense to the company. Most of it is relocating to Cambridge in a few years, but that's another story.

They have several dozen key staff travelling internationally mainly to other AZ locations every week, and up until around 2010 they all travelled Business Class, no questions asked. They were buying so many seats most of the airlines they used offered corporate preferred deals to capture the maximum number of travellers possible and retain the business. This had been the status quo for many, many years, the reasoning being they wanted their staff fresh and ready to work when they arrived - many, many companies cite this reason for buying premium seats, and fair enough.

Then, around 2010, a (cancer?) drug they had spend many hundreds of millions and many years developing was denied certification in the States. All that money down the drain. Tens of thousands of salaried R&D hours wasted, leading directly and indirectly to several thousand AZ jobs being lost globally over the past few years.

Another consequence was that their international travel dipped drastically. Many staff stopped travelling, others travelled Economy Class. This may seem trivial but I know for a fact when the move to Cambridge happens and AZ stop flying out of Manchester, the revenue loss means at least one airline will almost certainly cut a route, which can mean the loss of jobs across a number of companies such as ground handlers, caterers, security, airline staff, etc.

Pharma drug pipelines are often years long and can cost hundreds of millions in R&D, testing, trials, etc, a huge investment and a huge risk. Despite the myths, they're not simply milking state and academia, they're making enormous investment and bearing enormous cost themselves. They do so because their competitors are racing them to get these drugs developed and to market where the profits need to cover that investment and then some.