Peter Pan

Why does British copyright law have a "Peter Pan clause"?
Chris Spargo?

I am mending from my recent hip surgery. I am done with the walker, I don't think I ever really needed it, but my wife, concerned as she is, insists that I use it. Given how much help she is, I try to follow her directions.

Strange things going on in my body. Doc gave me a bottle of (40) 5 mg tablets of Oxycodone, saying take one or two ever four hours. I've been taking one or two a day until yesterday. Yesterday evening I started feeling very cold and the pain in my hip was becoming more pronounced, so I went ahead and took one. Within an hour the coldness and the pain had lessened significantly. So the cold is my new indicator that maybe it's time for another oxy.

I think the reason I wasn't needing very many oxy early on was because the drugs they used during surgery had not completely worn off. I'm still not taking very many oxy, maybe 3 or 4 a day which is just a fraction of my maximum prescribed dose.

Methoxyflurane - AKA The Green Whistle

Have You Used the Green Whistle?
Doctor Ricky

Huh. I've never heard of this stuff, so I asked Google why the FDA banned methoxyflurane, which got me to this page in the Federal Register. After wading through paragraphs of bureaucratese I found this line:

FDA's review shows that methoxyflurane, a volatile anesthetic agent, is associated with serious, irreversible, and even fatal nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity in humans. 

Nephrotoxicity means damage to the kidneys and hepatotoxicity means damage to the liver, both can be serious problems, so maybe the FDA had a reason to ban it, and it was not just the Sacklers trying to protect their monopoly on pain medication.

Then I found a press release on OINDP news dated March 3, 2022 that contained this line:

According to Medical Developments International (MVP), the FDA has lifted a clinical hold on MVP's Penthrox methoxyflurane inhaler and, as a result, MVP is now preparing a Phase 3 trial of Penthrox for trauma pain that is expected to begin recruiting by the end of this year. 

So if the trials go well it might get approved in the USA.

 

Was there a chloroform equivalent in the 12th century?

Villain pouring a clear liquid on a rag just after the 31 minute mark of Episode 128

We were watching an episode of Ertugrul last night and the bad guys kidnap a woman by dosing her with what looked like chloroform. The show generally seems to be historically accurate, so I'm wondering if they could have had such a substance.

I'm posting this here because Quora doesn't allow long questions, but they do allow a link to provide context, so I'm providing context.

War On Drugs

Delflazacort Molecular Structure

Marcel posts a link to a story about the big price increase for deflazacort , which is some kind of drug for a semi-rare disease, which means that I don't know if anyone I know actually has it.

Anyway, these issues irritate me because, 1) the big drug companies are obviously evil, impoverishing zillions of honest people simply because they want to live a little longer, 2) these stories are designed to inflame people's passions, which we all know are best way to make a rational decision, and 3) what can I do about it? And aren't there people who are supposed to be watching out for this shit?

Anyway, it all got me stirred up enough to comment, and since it was such a great comment, I thought I would share:

There are three separate issues here. One is whether people who would benefit from this drug can get it. Two is whether the drug company is making so much money from the sale of this drug that they should be publicly flogged. And three is whether people taking this drug are getting any benefit from it. While we might like to think that these issues are all tied together, they are not. They are in fact completely independent. I suspect Marathon, like most everyone in the health care industry, is gaming the system in order to maximize their profits. All this fuss about the price of this drug is entirely a political tempest designed to stir up more s**t so nobody notices that what is actually happening, which is that the big monkeys are stealing all the monkey biscuits.

And yes, I'm on a three-points-make-an-argument kick this morning.

Wikipedia has an article about Deflazacort. You can follow the link, but be warned, this rabbit hole is deep.

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The drawing of the molecular structure of delflazacort (top) includes some marks that I just came across this week while assisting my daughter with her chemistry class. First, let's cover the basics. The capital letters indicate atoms of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen. The single lines indicate single covalent bonds and the double lines indicate double bonds (imagine that!). The vertices where there are no letters are Carbon. The pointy arrow marks are bonds to atoms that are above the page, and the dash marks indicate a pointy arrow that goes to an atom below the page. All the other atoms must therefor lie in a plane. Molecular shape has a great deal to do with how a molecule works in the body.

While looking for a picture to accompany this post (drugs are always tough), I found a bunch of 3D renderings, but they were all water-marked which kind of detracts from their appearance. In diabolical daughter's chemistry class, there are plenty of 3D models to mess with (meaning you can twist and turn them on the screen so you can get a real 'feel' for their shape, but they are all simple, molecules with fewer than a dozen atoms, so no deflazacort.

---

The 3D feature on Google Earth can do the same with land forms. Pick an area with some hills, click on the 3D button, press the Control key, and now you can use the mouse to pan (turn) and tilt your view. It can really make the hills come alive. You do need a relatively current processor (something from the last five or ten years), plenty of memory and a high speed internet connection, but it's really quite spectacular.

Good News and Bad News

Thompson Reuters Open Calais is an online service that reads text and extracts information from it. It picks up things like names, numbers and dates, and probably does some more complex analysis as well. The good news is that it is free.
    When you feed it some text, it returns an RDF file which contains all of the extracted information in some special RDF format. I imagine this RDF file is good for something, but I haven't figured that part out yet. It is part of the Resource Description Framework.
    They also offer a paid subscription service for lawyers and stock brokers. This is where it gets interesting.

Open Calais Features 
I cut off the financial features checklist so the chart would fit on this page. 
We didn't lose any information: all the features are checked green for the premium package.

The financial package gets you green check marks on all of the features. Most of the features are self explanatory, but there were a couple of bits of jargon in there I didn't recognize.

• IPTC Categories - These are metadata codes used by news organizations.
• RCS Categories - I suspect these are metadata codes used by the RCS Media Group, who are based in Milan Italy.
• TRBC Industry Mapping - Thomson Reuters Business Classification

Okay, so Open Calais picks information out of your story and generates all the metadata codes in the world, but look at the next couple of items:

• Pharmaceutical Drugs
• Financial Deals

Think news of FDA approval of a new drug might be of interest to Wall Street types? Well, yeah, but I didn't think it would so important that it would rate it's own line in the features list.

All of which make me think that the recent extraordinary price hikes on some drugs (Epi-pen springs to mind) might be related to the way Obama-care is being administered. In other words, I think someone is gaming the system.

Via Detroit Steve

Theory of Fat #4862

The Human Endocannabinoid System
Click the pic to embiggentate

Washington Post has the story: Study finds sleep deprivation can give you the ‘marijuana munchies’
That sure matches my experience. Wikipedia has a long article about the Endocannabinoid system, which seems to be at the crux of this. Every wonder why smoking dope gets you high? It's because your body is already making and using the very same stuff as the active ingredients in pot.

Hip Joint

Iaman had surgery a couple of weeks ago to replace one of his hip joints with an artificial one. The surgery went well and he went home the next day.
    Hip joint surgery is a big deal. It's major surgery. Any time you go in for surgery there is a risk that you are not going to come out of it. Doctors have a pretty good idea of what they are doing, but people are complicated and it's entirely possible that something weird will happen and they won't be able to cope with it. The odds of something bad happening are pretty low, but they are not zero.
    My father had trouble with his artificial hip. He went in the hospital and spent the next six months in there or in rehab before he passed away. He was old.
    My father-in-law went in for surgery to replace one of his hip joints a couple of years ago. He survived the surgery fine, but then he lapsed into a coma for a week or so. They suspect he had a small stroke. He woke up and seems to be mostly there, but he has trouble walking, so he's in rehab. He's about the same age as my father was.
    All this is to show that Iaman's going in for surgery was fraught with terror, kind of like taking your first flight in a plane. Everyone tells you it's safe but there was that news report last week about the plane that fell out of the sky and everyone on board died. What if the same thing happens to your flight? I mean it might.

    Iaman survived and went home and he's flying high until the anesthetic wears off a couple of days later. By now he's started taking morphine so he's feeling no pain. A few days later he steps down to Oxycodone. He lives in a retirement community and he knows several people there who have had the same operation and they tell him things like the recovery was no big deal. They quit the Oxy after a couple of days and were just taking Tylenol. They're big fat liars. That might be the way the remember it, but that's because they were high on Oxy.
    After a few days of Oxy, Iaman tries cutting back. It doesn't work so well. He's supposed to take a pill every six hours. If he skips one, 30 mintues later everyone knows he's skpped his pill. Grimacing, he relents and takes his medicine.
    This surgery has about the same impact on your body as if somebody broke your leg with an ax. It's gonna hurt, and it's gonna hurt bad for a while. That's why the doc gave him a case of narcotics the week before. He's gonna need them.

Big Pharma

Pill me

I'm down here in Vail, Arizona, just south of Tucson, and I've been watching some broadcast TV. Lots of ads aimed at older people with all their medical problems. Some of them are promoting drugs, some are from law firms offering to sue the bejeezus out of the drug companies. No surprise there, there are a lot of retired people down here. I think half of Iaman's neighbors are retired government employees of one flavor or another. Most ads from law firms are full of sympathy (oh dear, you've been hurt), righteous indignation and offers to help you exact your revenge. This one was different.
     One ad from a law firm stuck out because of the way they phrased their message. It was missing most of emotional claptrap found in other ads. This one laid it out very simply.

• Drug companies make a great deal of money from drugs that help people.
• Some people who take that drug, a small minority we hope, are injured by that drug.
• The drug companies know this is likely to happen, so they set aside funds to pay for those claims / lawsuits.
• So if you have been injured by a drug, step up the plate and say your piece. You will collect.

Which reminds me of an opening scene in Fight Club where (Ed Norton) is explaining how the automobile companies decide whether to include a safety feature in their cars or not.


Zero I will be watching for that TV ad. I hope I can find it.

Guaifenesin

Iowa Andy reports on an alternate use for cough syrup:

Amazingly my chronic hip/leg pain/stiffness is relieved with:
Guaifenesin
Found this out when taking guay for a cold,  felt like crap from my cold, but my hip pain was gone.. Ha!

How do you pronounce Guaifenesin anyway? Goo-A-fen-es-in? Even the experts can't agree, Merriam-Webster has two different pronunciations.

Seems this stuff has been around for a long time and has been used for a number of ailments. This is the only thing in the Wikipedia article that correlates with Andy's story:

The 1955 edition of the Textbook of Pharmacognosy states: "Guaiacum has a local stimulant action which is sometimes useful in sore throat. The resin is used in chronic gout and rheumatism, whilst the wood is an ingredient in the compound concentrated solution of sarsaparilla, which was formerly much used as an alternative in syphilis."[3]

Andy's hip pain is from arthritis, previously known as the rheumatiz. And who knew there was a field called Pharmacognosy? Pharmacology I have heard of, but this is the first time I've heard of Pharmacognosy, and no, I don't know how to pronounce it either.

War On Drugs

Real old stuff: I think drugs should be legal. I don't think the government had any business making them illegal in the first place. If they were legal, we probably wouldn't have as much trouble with addicts stealing money to support their habits because drugs would be a lot cheaper. It might be that the number of people who are destroyed physically or mentally because of easy access to drugs might go up, but I doubt that the increase would be significant, at least compared to the number of people's whose lives are being destroyed by our system of justice.

Medium old stuff: I don't think drugs are going to be legalized. Too many people are making too much money off them the way things are. Too many people have a vested interest in the status quo, and I'm not just talking about drug dealers. There are all the people who benefit from drugs being illegal: all the people in the business of supplying drugs that are legal, like cigarettes and alcohol, and all the people in all the various police departments and prisons who make a living off of catching and imprisoning people who were caught up in this War.

Now: We have a minor shooting war going on in Mexico because the President there has decided to wage war on the cartels.

Where is this going? I do not believe they will ever be able to suppress the drug trade, shoot, I don't think they are even going to be able to put a dent in it. Everytime they bust someone, someone else will step in to take their place. Doesn't matter if it's a low level delivery man, or the head of a major cartel. Taking out the head of the cartel might slow that organization down for a while, may even put them out of business, but there are other cartels out there just looking for a chance to expand.

There was a big bust in Queretaro this summer. Soldiers found a warehouse full of chemicals that could have been used to make meth. This warehouse operation was undoubtedly owned by one of the cartels. I suspect a competing cartel got wind of it and tipped off the government. I would not be surprised if the chemicals were now in the hands of the tipsters. Maybe I'm being too cynical, maybe the government actually destroyed them. Seems a pity since they were probably worth a couple of million bucks.

Are things going to change? Well, yes they are, as we all know, change is the one constant in life. But are we going to have a dramatic change? Or are things just going to muddle along getting progressively worse? I'm thinking it's the later. The drug cartels are going to start increasing their security, which is going to mean more guns and bigger guns, which in turn is going to mean more jobs for gunslingers, and we know there is nothing a kid wants more than to be a gunslinger. All you have to tell him is he is working for the good guys. And pay him.

Drug cartels are run by the rule of man, as opposed to the rule of law, so more people's lives are going to be subject to whim. I suspect the cartels are going to increase in power and influence. I wonder if they will ever start paving streets, or supplying clean water to people's homes. Somehow I doubt it.

Afghanistan Bananastan

Just read a story in the paper about finding 500,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Afghanistan (couldn't find the story on my paper's website, or the Times either, whence it supposedly came). They busted a couple of dozen people. It looks like they were using this stuff to make bombs. But then I thought: it could all be a put up job. Any countries biggest business is agriculture (big in volume of material and land area, not in money), and fertilizer has legitimate uses, like being used as fertilizer. So secret bomb material cache -or- legitimate fertilizer warehouse? Of course, having a bunch of other bomb making material on hand (like timers, wires, diesel fuel) does make it look a little suspicious. Of course, those items also have legitimate uses in agriculture. Farm equipment runs on diesel, irrigation needs timers, and timers need wires, and a dry place like Afghanistan could use some irrigation. So if it's not just the good ol' boys havin' a little fun, then we may have put a real crimp in bomb making in Afghanistan .

This whole Afghanistan thing has been percolating in the back of my mind lately, and I am beginning to wonder just why we are there. Our avowed purpose is to wipe out Al-Queda and terrorism in general, but we don't seem to be making any real progress there. I mean we are trying to stop the beaters from beating other people, and at the same time we are trying to teach them to be civilized, and all the while we are trying to pull the wagon train out of swamp where it has been mired for the last 500 years. I am beginning to think it is just all too much.

Then there is the conspiracy theory that says we want control of Afghanistan so we can build a pipeline to India. That one has to be really convoluted because the Russians would be using it to sell the oil to India. Okay, we could have some Russians and Indians in cahoots with some people in Washington to get this done, but man, the payoff time is in years, and iffy to boot. It's a stretch to believe something like that.

But then we have heroin. Whenever TV show detectives get some screwed up case that makes no sense, they fall back on the adage of "follow the money", and the only money in Afghanistan is in poppies. But then we still don't know who is benefiting from the US being there. Are we trying to make Afghanistan safe for heroin producers? Or are we trying to gain control so we can suppress it, because Afghan heroin is competing with SE Asian heroin, and somebody doesn't like that.

Title comes from a line in the movie The Hot Rock. It seems to be a popular title for articles this week.