A Southern California prosecutor says a jealous wife yelled “You deserve it” before severing her estranged husband’s penis with a 10-inch kitchen knife and throwing it in a garbage disposal.
The Orange County Register reports (http://bit.ly/10hqAby ) a jury heard opening statements Wednesday in the case of 50-year-old Catherine Kieu, who is accused of drugging her husband’s tofu with sleeping pills and tying him to a bed before the attack.
That’ll leave a mark!
I have a really hard time with this issue.
On one hand I find it really outrageous to patent naturally occurring things, like genes, hormones, or proteins. Still at the same time work done on these things are VERY labor intensive with very expensive tools needed, so the cost of isolating a gene, or identifying a protein (or lack thereof) in a disease is VERY expensive.
I will say that I fall SLIGHTLY into the free-market capitalist side of things. I know on a larger scale genetically modified organisms are patented, such as genetic models of lab animals, or hybrid plants for agriculture. You cook up these organisms in your lab, you have a right to a patent, as its your labor, and your intellectual property.
Further let’s say you have a disease which is a result of a lack of proteins being produced in your body. Well once this cause is discovered you’d naturally want a supply of these proteins as well as a bio-available delivery method to restore yourself to health. You’re GOING to need industry for that. The academic world doesn’t much care for patents, but they also don’t have the infrastructure to actually treat patients on any scale with their discoveries. Once a discovery is made its now time for industry to produce a viable product and create enough of it to treat the population. This is expensive, and they should indeed be paid for their labor, just like the people who built your car should be paid for their troubles.
Also another thing that gets me on the side of patents is that they aren’t invincible. I had a nasty headache the other day. I reached for some CVS brand ibuprofen, and it cleared right up. Notice I didn’t say Pfizer Advil brand pain killer!
Patents expire, and to further pick on Pfizer, that big company has been downsizing for about a decade now as its big blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor and Viagra have expiring patents and therefore generic drugs can be sold by other companies who did none of the research or development. They will still make SOME money on the sale of these drugs (I should see if my wife wants to do a post on generic drugs, as she is a strong believer that name-brand drugs are safer and better due to the fact that the generics are simply reverse engineered and contain different inactive ingredients meaning there will be subtle differences between how the drugs work in your body, and side-effects they produce) but the market share will take a serious hit from cheaper off-brand medications being sold.
So even if a gene or protein is patented it will be available to the entire US after a number of years.
Of course all of this is seen through my libertarian rose-colored glasses, as well as the fact that I have indeed worked in the pharmaceutical industry.
What do you all think on this?
To be pro-freedom means to stand up for the freedoms of people you may not like:
Great video!
Nothing like a guy who posts videos about guns I’ve never even heard of!
neat that somebody other than H&K (with the P7 series) attempted to use the gas delay system. Overall there’s a reason why EVERYBODY uses the Browning short-recoil system in pistols.
Never let a tragedy go to waste!
One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers….But a crucial piece of evidence called a taggant that could be used to trace the gunpowder used in the bombs to a buyer at a point of sale is not available to investigators.
“If you had a good taggant this would be a good thing for this kind of crime. It could help identify the point of manufacturer, and chain of custody,” Bob Morhard, an explosives consultant and chief executive officer of Zukovich, Morhard & Wade, LLC., in Pennsylvania, who has traced explosives and detonators in use in the United States and Saudi Arabia, told MSNBC.com. “The problem is nobody wants to know what the material is.”
The ATF has not yet released any information on the chemical composition of the Marathon Bombs yet, but something tells me they already know what was used. I fail to see how, even if gunpowder was used taggants would help. True Black powder is an explosive, but unless detonated in a very high oxygen environment leaves a LOT of residue, hence why complex black powder arms like semi or full-auto guns didn’t really arrive until smokeless powder was invented, and when smokeless hit the scene suddenly there were HUNDREDS of new ideas on how to operate a firearm. Black powder is dirty, and that “Dirt” can be easily analyzed.
Smokeless powder is much more efficient, still anybody who does a lot of shooting, especially shotgun shooting you know how much unburned powder is left inside your gun after a day at the range. That’s whole unburnt powder, showing its full composition AND the shape and size of the grains which is also unique to each brand.
But hell, even if the bombers did use smokeless in their bomb, what would the taggants tell them? It would indeed say it was X Brand of smokeless powder, made thin their factory. Or are the antis saying that there needs to be so many taggants that show not only where the powder was made, but where it was shipped to?
This little bit of hand waiving gets pretty ridiculous even before you get into the bit where additives effect load data, and put ammo makers, consumers, and handloaders in danger of cooking up an unsafe load because of formulation changes…and for WHAT?
Oh yeah, because even when there is a terrorist bombing, its the NRA’s fault!
Baltimore police say hundreds of women have called a hotline set up by Johns Hopkins hospital for patients of a gynecologist suspected of secretly recording exams and later killing himself.
Dr. Nikita Levy, 54, was found dead in his Maryland home on Monday. Police and Johns Hopkins have said he committed suicide. The Baltimore Sun reports he suffocated himself using helium gas.
Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Wednesday that investigators have found “a multitude of multimedia” as evidence.
Well I’m certainly glad he decided to off himself…still how’s he dead if he didn’t have a gun?
h/t Bob
He makes some great arguments. Reminds me of when Bush was pushing the Patriot act, I told Republicans I know “Do you know we’ll have a Democrat in office someday, right?”
Of course partisan hacks, Republican or Democrat don’t think that way, they just waive pom-poms and cheer for their team.
I have no team.
I don’t use RSS readers. I probably should, but overall I just randomly wander the net when I want something to read, and I never find time to read it all anyway.
Still somebody read one of my recent posts from this RSS reader.
If you’re an RSS user and want something to replace the old Google Reader give it a try and leave me a comment on what you think of it.
First Breda gives me a mix of Dubstep and Irish Dance:
Neat!
Also too much news of the wounded Boston fugitive put this classic song in my head:
Pulled on trouble’s braids he did!
We talked about this story in The Squirrel Report, video via ENDO
Not only are the cops being over-zealous and ignorant of the law.
Further watch how the officer muzzles him with his own .45.
One of my greatest fears as a lawful owner is being disarmed by an ignorant and over-zealous cop who’s only firearm experience is with his duty weapon, and who’s safe-handling skills are non-existant, and there I am on the wrong side of the “Thin Blue Line” with a gunshot wound from my own gun.
This is even more of a threat than that of an assault in my book.
