From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med,soc.retirement,talk.politics.medicine,sci.med.cardiology
Subject: Re: the constant gardener: what the movie missed
Date: 3 Sep 2005 23:07:07 -0700
Message-ID: <1125814027.853624.72170@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>

fresh~horses@despammed.com wrote:

> > > > http://www.caut.ca/en/issues/academicfreedom/Olivieri_CPSO.pdf
> > > >
> > > > Nothing to do with Africa or lifestyle drugs, that's for sure.
>
>
> To do with a drug that affects a certain disadvantaged population, a
> researcher who put loyalty to her patients first.

COMMENT:

They're not all disadvantaged. Beta-thal major (the big one with the
transfusion iron overload) affects Africans, Mediterranians, and South
East Asians. It's one of these genes selected for by malarial areas,
you know, like sickle.

As for Olivieri putting loyalty to patients first, did she do them any
good thereby?  She's probabaly single handedly responsible for keeping
deferiprone off the market in Canada and the US. Okay. But most of the
people who need it are in Europe and Africa. Where it has been
approved, and is in use. The "disadvantaged" in Canada can't have it.

Riddle me that, Batman.  Where are the bad-guys in this tale?  The Dark
Side were we seeking. Clearly find it, we did not.

Y.

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med,talk.politics.medicine,sci.med.cardiology,soc.retirement
Subject: Re: the constant gardener: what the movie missed
Date: 4 Sep 2005 14:54:12 -0700
Message-ID: <1125870852.776444.207170@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

bae@cs.toronto.no-uce.edu wrote:
> In article <1125814946.575082.262530@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>  <fresh~horses@despammed.com> wrote:
> >
> >Steve Harris wrote:
> >>
> >> COMMENT:
> >>
> >> They're not all disadvantaged. Beta-thal major (the big one with the
> >> transfusion iron overload) affects Africans, Mediterranians, and South
> >> East Asians. It's one of these genes selected for by malarial areas,
> >> you know, like sickle.
> >
> >Yes. Malarial areas; like parts of Africa.
>
> Cripes.  Thalassemia research and treatment are important in Toronto
> because Toronto (and Ontario) has a large population of Italian, Greek
> and Portuguese origin.  At one point there were more people living in
> Toronto who were born in Italy than there were in Milan.
>
> These people came to Canada after WWII and mostly worked in the construction
> trades.  Their children and grandchildren are far from disadvantaged --
> they are ordinary middle class and professional people, like Dr. Olivieri.


COMMENT:

Exactly so. Duh. Dr. Olivieri is an Italian-Canadian working on a
common disease of Italian-Canadians.  It's middle-class Italians who
need iron overload treatment, because poor Africans who have
beta-thal-major don't get enough transfusions to worry about the
problem in the first place. Instead, they simply die. Those that do get
a few transfusions, get HIV with them, so they don't have to worry much
about long term effects like iron, either.


> >> As for Olivieri putting loyalty to patients first, did she do them any
> >> good thereby?  She's probabaly single handedly responsible for keeping
> >> deferiprone off the market in Canada and the US. Okay. But most of the
> >> people who need it are in Europe and Africa. Where it has been
> >> approved, and is in use. The "disadvantaged" in Canada can't have it.
> >
> >This is my opinion: The drug is harmful. Like statins. Like Vioxx. And
> >pharma has found ways and means to slip through. It's wrong. They've
> >gone where poverty and hunber move people to do things that may hurt
> >them. No doubt some similar drug is needed. Some "better" similar drug.
> >Olivieri can't stop them from what they've done now, although I think
> >she tried.

COMMENT:

Ah, the martyrdom of the lady doctor, risking her career at the
university (yeah right-- like they're going to fire a female physician
professor), for the sake of the disadvantaged of the world! Such opera!
And I see Zee has graced us with her medical opinion on this issue of
liver problems, which divides the European drug safety reviewers from
the reviewers in North America. She should write them a letter, like
she proposed I do: "(signed) Zee, from Usenet..."

Alas, as for "poverty and hunger" Zee talks about, I think you and I
have both touched on that, albeit not in a way that has penetrated
Zee's noggin. If you're getting regular transfusions for your
thal-major so that you need an iron chelator, you're not IN the
"poverty-and-hunger" class! So QED that's simply NOT the people the
(almost)martyred Dr. Olivieri was developing deferiprone FOR. Okay? Oh,
how shabby our fairytales look, when exposed to the light of reality.

I also see Zee has erased most of her messages in this thread, probably
out of embarrassment. And rightly so. I'd be embarrassed to have writen
them, too. For the reasons that you amply set out below, and which are
worth everybody reading one more time.


> Well, is this drug better or worse than other treatments?  Is it better
> than doing nothing?  How would you find out?  How would you find out if
> a "better similar drug" is better or worse, if it's not ethical to test it?
>
> It isn't ethical to enroll people in drug trials because the drugs
> might harm them.  It isn't ethical to put them in the placebo group,
> because the drugs might benefit them.  Is it ethical to tell people
> they'll just have to suffer and die because it isn't ethical to
> research and test new treatments?
>
> And sorry, poverty and hunger aren't driving Canadians to take their
> children to the Hospital for Sick Children to get the best care they
> can find for beta thalassemia.  It's a disease.  It causes harm.  The
> current treatments aren't ideal.  New treatments may be better.  You
> don't want new treatments to be tested, on poor people or non-poor
> people.  You don't want them to be used without testing.  So how do you
> propose we determine whether the new treatment is better than the
> current ones?  Is it better to just stick to current treatments, which
> also cause harm?  Or not treat at all, and let all the harm be natural?
>
> Statins have been tested, and as Steve says, they can cut stroke risk
> by 30% for some people at risk.  If I had a high risk of stroke, a 30%
> lowered risk would sound good to me, and I'd try them to see if i could
> tolerate the side effects.  If the side effects were hard to bear, I'd
> have to weigh that against the benefit, the reduced stroke risk.  I'd
> have to do that in absence of perfect knowledge, because nobody has
> done a double-blind controlled study on 100,000 clones of me.  Even
> that wouldn't give me perfect knowledge, because I'd have no way of
> determining which clones I'd most resemble in response to the drug.
>
> I'm in my mid-fifties, and I know I'm not as sharp mentally as I was in
> my prime.  I can't sustain intense intellectual effort for hour after
> hour as I could thirty years ago.  I get tired.  I get absent minded,
> and I miss or forget details, especially when there are a lot of
> details to keep in mind.  I have to count on experience and intuition
> developed from experience because I can no longer count on flashes of
> brilliance.  Why do you think people in technical professions go into
> management when they get older?  They can't keep up with those hotshot
> kids on the front line any more.
>
> Now, if I were taking statins, I'd be delighted to blame my cognitive
> deficits on drug damage.  However, I lucked out in the genetic lottery
> and have great blood lipid levels, so I have to admit that people at 55
> are not as sharp as they were at 25.  I wonder how many people are
> blaming the cognitive effects of aging on statin use?  It would be a
> lot more comforting to feel like a victim of Evil Venal Pharma or the
> Arrogant Greedy Misogynistic Medical Establishment than of the natural
> process of deterioration with age.  Righteous anger is a very enjoyable
> emotion, you know, much more pleasurable than resignation.

COMMENT:

You know, as an aside, I don't have those "out of the box" flashes as
often anymore, either. I, too, could blame them on statins (which I
have taken off and on, having borderline high lipids but no other risk
factors besides gender). However, I'm a geriatrician, and a realist
about brain-aging. As we age, we trade creativity for wisdom, at best.
The best teams are composed of young turks who don't know enough to
know what's supposedly not possible, and the old farts who know too
much (but can still spot the difference between a maybe-idea and
forget-it idea).

SBH

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med,soc.retirement,talk.politics.medicine,sci.med.cardiology
Subject: Re: the constant gardener: what the movie missed
Date: 3 Sep 2005 22:41:53 -0700
Message-ID: <1125812513.954839.298050@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

fresh~horses@despammed.com wrote:
> I have a different take. The stories involved highlight the
> difficulties and politics of medical research... . Yes.
>
> So far so good....but there we part company.
>
> In the Olivieri case, as I understand it, she found the medication was
> dangerous, moved to protect her patients, was told to shut-up, refused,
> her employers the university and university medical school turned their
> backs on her and co-operated with pharma, but not openly, and she and
> her associates were hounded, sued, and harrassed by the pharma.
>
> It's ongoing.
>
> The book and the movie are based on Olivieri.
>
>
> Zee


As I pointed out, the irony is the arguments used against Olivieri by
The Big Establishment are all the same ones you're using against
African drug research. (I guess Leftist rhetoric is all that CAN be
used in academic fights). She was in the drug company's pocket. She did
keep using the drug after beginning to suspect it had dangers (but not
using it had dangers too, since the disease itself had dangers). She
did subject her patients to biospies (not a zero risk thing) to look
for these drug dangers, even while continuing the drug. (First, do no
harm?  Did any patient fully understand what was happenning? Maybe,
maybe not). Eventually she stopped giving the drug. I didn't see
anything dreadfully wrong with anything she did, but then I'm
pro-research. Most of what she did was looking for truth.

She got hounded. She kept her job. In academia, that's a yawner.
Meanwhile, the drug's been through a couple of other studies and looks
good. It's not exactly Thalidomide. As I said, time will tell. Liver
fibrosis is caused by iron overload, too, and that's what the drug is
given for. Perhaps some patients get fibrosis from it, and some never
do, as with alcohol. The world is complex. Drugs are neither wholely
good nor bad either, just like people.

My (admittedly quick) reading of the whole thing didn't really turn up
anything that smacked of gross incompetence by *anybody.* No patients
were killed. Nobody died. Nobody even got fired. Mainly, the biggest
mistake was a problem of people shooting off their mouths to the press
before all the thinking had been done. Witchhunting vs. Science with
Olivieri as this month's witch.

If you have a more cogent analysis, feel free. Again, the relevence of
all this to testing lifestyle drugs in Africa is just not there for me.
I don't care how La Carrie got started.

SBH

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.cardiology,sci.med,misc.health.alternative,can.politics,
	soc.culture.indian
Subject: Zee's Inability to Face How Drugs Development Works Re: scientists for 
	Olivieri
Date: 4 Sep 2005 18:15:43 -0700
Message-ID: <1125882943.865142.180120@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

fresh~horses@despammed.com wrote:

> Science Wars: Olivieri under media fire
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> by Professor Schafer, Director of the Centre for Professional and
> Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. scha...@cc.umanitoba.ca
>
> Dr. Nancy Olivieri was recently featured in a documentary, produced by
> CBC-TV's Undercurrents, apparently intended to undermine the public
> perception of her as an heroic underdog. The major theme of this
> programme was that Dr. Olivieri is a media-savvy "Goliath", well able to
> look after herself in the fierce battle with the combined forces of a
> powerful drug company Apotex and the top administration of The Hospital
> for Sick Children.
> 
> One week later, the CBC followed this effort with a full-edition
> documentary on the National News Magazine, artfully edited by Hana
> Gartner and colleagues to imply that Olivieri is not only an incompetent
> scientist but carries responsibility for the suffering and death of
> thousands of patients worldwide. That's a pretty impressive charge
> sheet, one that appears to be metastasizing faster than a cancer cell.
> 
> A serious issue of medical ethics is now glossed with an issue of
> journalistic ethics. I'll leave to others the task of figuring out the
> CBC's motives for joining forces with Apotex in their campaign to
> discredit Olivieri's scientific integrity. Those familiar with the
> scientific background of the battle between Olivieri and Apotex will
> know that it raises profound questions of physician ethics and research
> integrity.  The danger now is that the grave factual errors and innuendo
> of the CBC's documentary will obscure, for millions of viewers, the
> important underlying moral issues. The CBC's well-earned reputation for
> high journalistic standards enhances the danger.
>
> Throughout the documentary, Ms. Gartner states that Dr. Olivieri claims
> to have proven that the thalassemia drug [deferiprone, L1] is harmful.
> Those who read Dr. Olivieri's publications will know that this is a
> serious misrepresentation of her view. What she has stated, repeatedly,
> is that her preliminary data point in the direction of serious harm
> arising from use of the drug and that, therefore, patients have a right
> to be informed of this risk. Because Apotex cancelled the crucial
> experiment, it is now impossible to say conclusively that deferiprone
> will cause liver and heart damage to patients who use it.
> 
> Although Ms. Gartner interviewed the world's most distinguished
> thalassemia researcher, Sir David Weatherall of Oxford, who supports
> both Olivieri's science and her ethics, the clip used from his interview
> was so brief that, if you sneezed you would have missed it. By contrast,
> Gartner lavishes air-time on another physician, Dr. Beatrice Wonke, who
> claims that because of Olivieri''s campaign against deferiprone,
> thousands of patients worldwide are suffering and dying. Those children
> would be saved from pain and death, it was implied, if only nasty
> Olivieri had stifled her doubtful scientific opinions and Apotex were
> permitted to sell its pills to patients all over the world.
> 
> The CBC documentary relies heavily on the opinions of Wonke who, Gartner
> assures Canadians, is an "independent" researcher: "We went to see Dr.
> Wonke because she answers to no pharmaceutical company. Her research is
> independently funded." Independent? Wonke? The New England Journal of
> Medicine requires that scientists declare their conflicts-of-interest,
> so that readers are assisted in recognizing possible bias induced by
> divided loyalties. In their issue of December 3, 1998 Wonke acknowledged
> financial support of her research from Apotex, which funds a member of
> her research staff.
> 
> Later in the programme the CBC quotes another doctor critical of
> Olivieri's science, Geoffrey Dougherty and, again, fails to inform
> viewers of his financial ties to Apotex.
>
> Research conflicts of interest are a huge ethical issue for modern
> medical science. Evidence is accumulating that industry-sponsored
> research is far more likely to report favourably on new drugs than
> industry-independent research. The dangers for patients arising from
> corporate-induced bias cannot be overstated. Olivieri was exceptional in
> blowing the whistle on her own drug and on the drug company that was
> funding her deferiprone research. By falsely denying (in the case of
> Wonke) or misleadingly concealing (in the case of Dougherty) their
> financial ties to Apotex, the CBC does a profound disservice to its
> viewers.
> 
> The CBC documentary also failed to inform its viewers that every
> published study using the direct measurements of investigation (liver
> biopsies to measure iron concentration) has confirmed Olivieri's
> concerns. Even Dr. Wonke has admitted in print (though not in the
> broadcast interview) that her data are consistent with Olivieri's fear
> that deferiprone may cause liver iron build-up to dangerous levels. The
> key scientific point here is that no study other than Olivieri's has
> examined serial liver biopsies over a sufficient duration to assure
> patients of the absence of liver damage. The research that could have
> settled this crucially important question was terminated by Apotex
> before it could provide a conclusive answer.
> 
> Is this "don't look, don't find" approach good enough when human lives
> are at stake?  These are important scientific issues, but the worst sin
> committed by the CBC's documentary is that it obfuscates the fundamental
> moral issues.  It is of transcendent importance that doctors, to whom
> very sick patients entrust their lives, should live by the basic rule of
> physician ethics: first, do no harm. Related to this principle is
> another, the precautionary principle, which states that where doubt
> exists, and where human lives and health may be at stake, those in
> authority ought not to proceed without a reasonable assurance that it is
> safe to do so.
> 
> Alas, in the current climate of government deregulation, the rules
> governing drug safety have changed. It is no longer necessary in Canada
> or in the European Community to demonstrate that a drug is effective in
> order to get it to market. Recent policy changes allow drug companies to
> sell first and do research later.
>
> Gartner's documentary sneers at Olivieri's efforts to block licensing of
> deferiprone in Europe, and portrays her as pursuing an irrational
> obsession. But, given the fact that Olivieri's preliminary data point to
> the drug being dangerously ineffective in 50% of patients, does she have
> any moral choice but to oppose licensing of this drug until research is
> done which proves it safe and effective? Keep in mind that the standard
> therapy for thalassemia works well for the vast majority of patients,
> albeit at the cost of regular painful needle injections and hours
> attached to an over-night portable pump.
> 
> If media journalists had some historical memory, then patients and the
> public could be reminded of some important hard-learned lessons. A
> controversy similar to that surrounding deferiprone emerged in the early
> 1990s, with the famous CAST trials. These involved several
> widely-marketed drugs intended to stop fatal heart rhythm disturbances..
> The fact that these drugs indeed increased the rate of death four-fold
> was not detected in short-term trials, or in everyday use by doctors:
> the deaths that resulted were wrongly assumed to occur from heart
> disease alone. It was only a long-term study that eventually proved
> these particular drugs to be toxic.
> 
> Olivieri and her many supportive colleagues have merely been asking that
> a similar large trial - to replace the ones stopped prematurely by
> Apotex - be conducted before the drug is sold for profit. Apotex wants
> it sold now. It shouldn't be this difficult to protect patients.
> 
> When Olivieri's colleagues across Canada observe what has happened to
> her and to her supporters at Sick Kids Hospital - repeated legal threats
> from Apotex, attempted dismissals from the Hospital, demotions,
> harassment, and gag orders from senior hospital officials, aggravated by
> a steady stream of hate mail - not many will be encouraged to express
> legitimate doubts about the safety of new drugs, in a country where
> deregulation permits their incautious licensing. Shouldn't this concern
> all Canadians?
> 
> It should! The precautionary principle exists to protect all of us.
> Where there is doubt and uncertainty, ethics dictates that we err on the
> side of caution.
> ===========================================================================
>
> We sent the following letter, with copy to U of T administration ... to
>
> Dr. Nancy Olivieri, Department of
> Medicine, University of Toronto
>
> Dear Dr. Olivieri:
> We of Science for Peace are jolted out of our too-long silence by Arthur
> Shafer's article copied below) in the Toronto Star of April 10th. It
> seemed for a time that the stream of misrepresentation had been stemmed,
> and reparations were under way.  Why the CBC - or some improperly
> supervised subcluster thereof - has renewed the smear attack on you, one
> cannot know.  But the CBC's "reputation for high journalistic standards"
> has been dealt a severe blow by its own folly.
>
> Science for Peace has the ethical practice of science at its core, and
> we have watched you with admiration as your saga unfolded.  We wish you
> enduring strength in upholding the standards that must continue to
> guide
> us all."
>
>         Sincerely,
>
>         Phyllis Creighton and Eric Fawcett
>         Co-Chairs, Science and Ethics Working Group
>
>         and Prof Terrell Gardner, Board Member
>
> -------------------------------------------------------




COMMENT:

Why are you posting this outdated stuff?  Upheaval and witchhuntery,
but where is the science?  What has happened since?

You post >5 year-old letters from people urging deferiprone not be
released until further safety studies have been done. Well, it's now
2005. Hello? By now, such studies have been done and deferiprone is
licensed in 43 countries. Though still not in Canada or the US. Here in
North America, we are approaching drug bigotry against the stuff.

In any case, the drug never was for the impoverished, hungery and poor.
It is for a side effect of too many transfusions, a problem which only
people with good access to good medical care in the first place, will
ever get.  Get with the idea, Zee. Deferiprone is not a drug for
idealists to champion either for or against.

Dr. Olivieri might have been right to take the stand she did with the
info she had, with what she knew at the time, in 1998. Good for her.
But it's a quite separate question of whether or not she has turned out
to have been actually objectively right. Deferiprone is being used. Its
dangers are known. It has passed through the classical phases of
Panacea, to Pandora Plague, and is now well on the way to being another
Perfectly Pedestrian Pharmaceutical. LEARN something from this.  I've
only tried to teach you this lesson half a dozen times, now. Somehow
you cannot comprehend the idea, no matter how many times it's
demonstrated.


Best Pract Res Clin Haematol. 2005 Jun;18(2):299-317.
Deferiprone therapy for transfusional iron overload.

Victor Hoffbrand A.

Department of Haematology, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, London NW3
5QG, UK. v.hoffbrand@rfc.ucl.ac.uk

Iron chelation is needed to prevent damage to the heart, liver and
endocrine glands from iron overload in patients with refractory anaemias
who receive regular blood transfusions. Desferrioxamine is still the
first-line drug, but because of its expense in many countries, and lack
of compliance because of difficulty with administration, there is a major
need for an orally active (and cheaper) chelating drug. Seventeen years
after the first clinical trials deferiprone, which is orally active, has
emerged as suitable for patients for whom desferrioxamine is, for one
reason or another, inadequate. Many patients are successfully chelated at
a dose of deferiprone 75 mg/kg/day. Some patients may need higher doses
(up to 100 mg/kg), or combination therapy of deferiprone every day and
desferrioxamine on several days each week. Recent data suggest that
deferiprone may be superior to desferrioxamine at protecting the heart
from iron overload. The side-effects of deferiprone--agranulocytosis,
neutropenia, gastrointestinal symptoms, arthropathy, transient changes in
liver enzymes, and zinc deficiency--are now well recognized; they result
in discontinuation of the drug in only 5-10% of patients. Deferiprone is
now licensed in 43 countries for thalassaemia major patients for whom
desferrioxamine is inadequate. If results of current trials confirm its
superiority at reducing cardiac damage, it may well become the first-line
drug for many patients.

Publication Types:
    Review
    Review, Tutorial

PMID: 15737892 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

====================================================


Acta Haematol. 2004;112(4):179-83.

Five-year trial of deferiprone chelation therapy in thalassaemia major
patients.

Taher A, Aoun E, Sharara AI, Mourad F, Gharzuddine W, Koussa S, Inati
A, Dhillon AP, Hoffbrand AV.

Department of Internal Medicine, American University of Beirut, Medical
Center, Beirut, Lebanon.

Twelve thalassaemia major patients have been given deferiprone 75 mg/kg
body weight daily as iron chelation therapy for 5 years. Their ages
ranged from 18 to 34 years (mean 24.2) at the end of the study. Two
patients were hepatitis C virus (HCV) mRNA positive and a further 5 were
positive for HCV antibody. The mean serum ferritin level fell
significantly from 4,302 +/- 2,245 microg/l SD at baseline to 3,032 +/-
1,155 microg/l at 2 years (p = 0.037) and 2,229 +/- 1,070 microg/l (p =
0.007) at 5 years. At the end of the study, liver iron ranged from 3.59
to 23.7 mg/g dry weight (mean 11.9 +/- 5.4), 3 patients having levels >15
mg/g. There was no significant change in serum AST levels, but ALT levels
fell significantly at 2 years (p = 0.019) and 5 years (p = 0.001). Liver
biopsy at the end of the study showed no evidence of hepatic fibrosis
caused by deferiprone. Cardiac studies showed no overall change in left
ventricular ejection fraction but a significant improvement in isovolumic
relaxation time (p = 0.045). We conclude that in this albeit small group
of thalassaemia major patients, deferiprone was a safe long-term method
of iron chelation. In a minority, higher doses of deferiprone or a
combination with desferrioxamine would be needed to lower liver iron
below 15 mg/g.

2004 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Publication Types:
    Clinical Trial

PMID: 15564727 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.cardiology,sci.med,misc.health.alternative,can.politics,
	soc.culture.indian
Subject: Re: Zee's Inability to Face How Drugs Development Works Re: scientists 
	for Olivieri
Date: 4 Sep 2005 20:43:05 -0700
Message-ID: <1125891785.886652.307090@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>

zwalanga@yahoo.com wrote:

[Harris COMMENT]:
> > In any case, the drug never was for the impoverished, hungery and poor.
>
> I never said it was, but you have misquoted me as such. I have no
> problem with you disagreeing with what I have said, but when you start
> making things up you discredit yourself, not me.

COMMENT:
First of all, I wasn't quoting you (do you see any quotation marks?),
but stating what I believed to be your position. I wasn't "quoting you"
so I can't "misquote you".

Second, you've erased your own messages, and that makes restatment of
your positions a lot more likely, since I don't have anything to
reference. Making things up? How so? I managed to recover the exact
exchange from somebody else's message:

Harris:
>> As for Olivieri putting loyalty to patients first, did she do them any
>> good thereby?  She's probabaly single handedly responsible for keeping
>> deferiprone off the market in Canada and the US. Okay. But most of the
>> people who need it are in Europe and Africa. Where it has been
>> approved, and is in use. The "disadvantaged" in Canada can't have it.
Zee:
>This is my opinion: The drug is harmful. Like statins. Like Vioxx. And
>pharma has found ways and means to slip through. It's wrong. They've
>gone where poverty and hun[g]er move people to do things that may hurt
>them. No doubt some similar drug is needed. Some "better" similar drug.
>Olivieri can't stop them from what they've done now, although I think
>she tried.

COMMENT:

Okay, let's look at it. You previously had said Olivieri was developing
drugs for the "disadvantaged." (that IS a quote: you used the term
first in describing her work with this drug; you've since erased that
one also). Your words above state that Olivieri can't stop pharma from
what they're doing now, which is to go where "poverty and hunger move
people to do things that may hurt them." With this "harmful" drug.

Now, how is your statement above to be understood except 1) that you
think Olivieri developed the drug for the disadvantaged and 2) that
pharma has gone where poverty and hunger make people use it, even after
Olivieri found it's harmful and bad for them?  Do I have your position
wrong, still? Then what other reasonable position can a reader draw
from the paragraph above, eh?

Soo.... tell me then just why am I wrong to point out that the drug
NEVER WAS intended for the disadvantaged, and it's extremely unlikely
ever to be used anyplace "where poverty and hunger move people to use
it?"  And isn't being used in those places now? You did say that, and
mean that, did you not?

What drug WERE you talking about, when you said "the drug is harmful"?
In fact, what the devil WERE you talking about in that entire last
paragraph, except some fiction in your mind of a drug developed by
Olivieri that is being given to impoverished and hungry people who have
no choice but to take it, and which she cannot stop?  These
impoverished and hungry people who've had 100 blood transfusions
someplace (the local Voodoo doc?) and are now iron overloaded.

Do explain. Erasing your errors doesn't give you cart blanche to
blithely deny them. If you post and erase, you do run the risk of being
more likely to be mis-represented. But this case isn't one of them.

SBH