aftermath
Stayed up all night to finish the story, which is now done, and I don't have to think about it until Tuesday, when it might get ripped apart, but I'm trying to think that this would actually be good for me and do something about my failure complex etc. After the story was finished I was encouraged to smoke cigars and drink whiskey, plus NyQuil as a sleep aid, after which I was spirited home and slept for 17 hours.
Look at the world's smallest robot. It's cute!
Who Would Buy That? collects oddities from eBay and suchlike sites. Currently, S&M Barbie:
"Both Barbie's and Ken's clothes are non-removeable except Ken's Gimp Mask. I could not find barbie sized zippers so Ken's mask has glass beads where the zippers would be. His back is scarred from the whipping."
Oh good, more disease in British livestock. This one only rarely transmits to humans, though, and isn't fatal. This article features an appetizing slaughterhouse pic.
U.S. based Discovery Laboratories wants to use premature Latin American babies as test cases for its new version of Sufraxin.
Internal Food and Drug Administration documents say comparing Surfaxin to a placebo in U.S. babies with RDS would be unethical, but that the agency is considering whether to approve a placebo-controlled study in parts of Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador... The participating Latin American hospitals cannot afford today's $2,200 surfactant treatment, so their preemies get nothing but ventilator care. The proposed study would give hundreds of infants either Surfaxin, the proven competitor Survanta or the "placebo" of standard supportive care. Capetola said cutting out that third comparison would cost an extra year in telling whether Surfaxin works and then selling it for needy babies -- and he pledged to sell Surfaxin at a reduced cost in Latin America.
But then, the study will cause the preventable deaths of at least a dozen infants. It's the old needs of the many/needs of the few dilemma, and I have a headache to beat the band.
