Senators Warren and Welch urged Pfizer to back down from "unseemly profiteering":
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senator-elect Peter Welch (D-Vt.) sent a scathing letter to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla this week over the company's plan to increase the price of its COVID-19 vaccines by 400 percent next year when it enters the commercial market.
"We urge you to back off from your proposed price increases and ensure COVID-19 vaccines are reasonably priced and accessible to people across the United States," they wrote, while also requesting information about the company's revenue and profits.
In October, Pfizer revealed plans to sell its COVID-19 vaccine from somewhere between $110 and $130 next year. Most recently, the US government paid only about $30 per dose.
The planned price hike is higher than the $50 price point that some financial analysts had expected Pfizer would set upon entry to the commercial market. It's a whopping 10,000 percent markup from the vaccine's estimated cost of manufacturing.
[...] In a news event last month, Bourla drew criticism for saying that the company's COVID-19 vaccine would remain "free to all Americans" despite the price hike, because health insurance companies would cover the vaccination, leading to no out-of-pocket costs. However, such cost increases to health care lead to increasing insurance premiums, which get taken out of workers' paychecks. Moreover, Bourla didn't address the cost for uninsured people, who currently have free access to the vaccines.
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In an effort to avoid being held in contempt of court, former pharmaceutical executive and convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli made an eyebrow-raising argument to a federal judge Friday, stating that his company Druglike, which he previously described as a "drug discovery software platform," was not engaged in drug discovery. As such, he argued he is not in violation of his sweeping lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission and seven states urged a federal judge in New York to hold Shkreli in contempt for allegedly failing to cooperate with an investigation into whether he violated the ban. The FTC said Shkreli failed to turn over requested documents related to Druglike and sit for an interview on the matter.
In the filing Friday, Shkreli claims that he responded to the FTC's requests "promptly and in good faith."
Previously:
FTC: Shkreli May Have Violated Lifetime Pharma Ban, Should be Held in Contempt
Martin Shkreli Launches Blockchain-Based Drug Discovery Platform
Shkreli Released From Prison to Halfway House After Serving <5 of 7 Years
Martin Shkreli Accused of Running Business From Prison With a Smuggled Smartphone
Sobbing Martin Shkreli Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison for Defrauding Investors
Martin Shkreli's $5 Million Bail Revoked for Facebook Post Seeking Hillary Clinton's Hair
Martin Shkreli Lists Unreleased Wu-Tang Clan Album on eBay
Martin Shkreli Convicted of Securities Fraud Charges, Optimistic About Sentencing
Martin Shkreli Points Fingers at Other Pharmaceutical Companies
Related:
"Pure and Deadly Greed": Lawmakers Slam Pfizer's 400% Price Hike on COVID Shots
U.S. Hospitals Band Together to Form Civica Rx, a Non-Profit Pharmaceutical Company
FDA Has Named Names of Pharma Companies Blocking Cheaper Generics [Updated]
EpiPen Maker is Facing Shareholder Backlash
Mylan Overcharged U.S. Government on EpiPens
Drug Firm Offers $1 Version of $750 Turing Pharmaceuticals Pill
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Monday pushed back on criticism of the company's plans to raise the price of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by 400 percent, arguing that the billions of dollars in federal funding the company received played little role in the vaccine's development.
Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Health Forum, Bancel suggested that the vaccine's development is thanks to private investors and that the federal funding merely hastened development that would have occurred regardless.
[...]
While the government most recently paid $26 per dose of Moderna's updated booster, the company is planning to raise the price of its shots to $110 to $130 per dose.
Related:
"Pure and Deadly Greed": Lawmakers Slam Pfizer's 400% Price Hike on COVID Shots
In congressional testimony Wednesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel unabashedly defended the company's plans to raise the US list price of its COVID-19 vaccines by more than 400 percent—despite creating the vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, receiving $1.7 billion in federal grant money for clinical development, and making roughly $36 billion from worldwide sales.
Bancel appeared this morning before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long railed at the pharmaceutical price gouging in the US and pushed for policy reforms. After thanking Bancel for agreeing to testify, Sanders didn't pull any punches. He accused Moderna of "profiteering" and sharing in the "unprecedented level of corporate greed" seen in the pharmaceutical industry generally.
[...]
Early doses were priced between $15 to $16, while the government paid a little over $26 for the updated booster shots. When federal supplies run out later this year and the vaccines move to the commercial market, Moderna will set the list price of its vaccine at $130."This vaccine would not exist without NIH's partnership and expertise, and the substantial investment of the taxpayers of this country," Sanders summarized. "And here is the thank you that the taxpayers of this country received from Moderna for that huge investment: They are thanking the taxpayers of the United States by proposing to quadruple the price of the COVID vaccine."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday December 15, @04:40AM (21 children)
the pharma industry is just like all the other companies: completely psychopathic and putting profits over the lives of their customer [nypost.com]...
I've always said it: drugs R&D and manufacture need to be nationalized and done on public money the world over. Firstly, it would make drugs accessible to everybody at cost. Secondly, the researchers would be free to research drugs to cure diseases that traditionally bring obscene profits, like diabetes or kidney failure, that for-profits have no interest in curing.
The business of health is a special kind of business. It touches on people's well-being and ability to survive, and by definition is a business about caring. Therefore, it should be excluded and shielded from the ruthless and callous world of capitalism.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @05:12AM (1 child)
And it's not like Pfizer can claim they need to recoup their R&D costs...since R&D was paid for by US Gov't. I've not seen any accounting of how those monies were spent, but I'll bet a good portion went straight to the C-suite.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @09:38AM
Absolutely. They responded to the crisis and delivered the product. And now you want to see how the sausage is made? Son, the sausage is made of fucking over other people less well off than you. Sorry your dad never explained it to you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Thursday December 15, @06:29AM (12 children)
I totally agree with you.
Back to shots in question, I just had my first COVID illness. There is no way I had any immunity whatsoever even though I had 4 shots - two original Moderna's and two Pfizer's boosters. It felt like my child years infections when the body met something the first time. No fucking way I take this crap ever again.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday December 15, @06:50AM (10 children)
More than two and a half years in, you had your first covid illness? Sounds like it's working. And how many months between that last booster and your infection?
As to the alleged better immunity from picking up covid, I ran into someone who had covid three times since the beginning. Repeated infection is a lousy way to maintain some degree of temporary immunity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Thursday December 15, @07:20AM (9 children)
As someone - like most of us - who had dozens of infections over the years I know how a fresh one feels compared to the one I have - albeit slight - an immunity for. You'd too if you just watch your body reactions.
Anyway, it is, obviously, a personal choice I base on my personal observations. Being a trained scientist, I have to believe what I see; propaganda be damned.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday December 15, @07:51AM (6 children)
Being a trained scientist, you'd know that anecdote is not data.
Regardless of individual variability of response, the hospital statistics show that vaccinating the population significantly decreased the percentage of deaths and severe illness in the population caused by SARS-CoV-2 in the infected.
I'm sorry you had a worse infection than you expected. On average, people didn't: and that saved lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @10:50AM (5 children)
Millions of anecdotes are indeed data. And, despite the widespread use of the vax, people are still getting sick. Oh, sure, it's slowed down, but people are still getting sick. The slow down can easily be attributed to that "herd immunity" heard so much about in the early days, can it not?
(Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday December 15, @11:26AM
Yes, people are still getting sick.
No, this does not mean that the vaccine is useless. Recent work on malaria vaccines has resulted in Malawi going ahead with rolling out a malaria vaccine that has 'only' been 30% effective in trials [voanews.com]. It will still save lives. The same is true for SARS-CoV-2 vaccines: they do not need to be 100% effective to save lives on a population basis, and the hospital statistics show the reduction in deaths and serious illness when comparing the vaccinated against the unvaccinated admissions.
So no, a slow down can't simply be attributed to increasing 'herd immunity'.
So vaccines save lives. It might not save your life: but when you compare the death rates from SARS-CoV-2 infection between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups of people, the death rate is far higher for the unvaccinated. You might be lucky if you are unvaccinated, but I wouldn't like to rely on luck when an effective (even if not 100% effective) vaccine is available.
To put it in stark terms: imagine the death rate from catching SARS-CoV-2 is 50%. It's like being given a six-shooter with half the chambers filled, spinning the cylinder, and firing it at your own head. 50% of the people die.
A vaccine that is 33% effective in this case is like removing one of the three bullets from the cylinder. Instead of a 50% risk of dying, you now have a 33% risk of dying (2 bullets in six chambers, instead of 3 bullets). Would you take the vaccine, or rely on luck?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday December 15, @12:25PM (1 child)
People are still getting sick in France too - but far fewer are requiring such intensive medical support as was initially the case and very few are now dying from it. Of those that are still having problems a very high percentage are unvaccinated.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday December 16, @12:08PM
Not an anti-vaxxer, but just to play devils advocate that's the normal course for a disease. It simultaneously evolves to be less deadly, while at the same time those most vulnerable to the disease, for either genetic or somatic reasons, are eliminated in the early rounds.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @05:23PM
> Millions of anecdotes are indeed data.
Maybe but I've seen anecdotes that weren't data. You can't ignore those.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 16, @05:37AM
This shows you are doing it wrong [xkcd.com]. Maybe some public figure way back when spun vaccines as perfect tools for preventing people from getting sick ever, but that's not vaccination's actual effect and thus, not a genuine criticism of the approach. They help in two ways by 1) reducing the severity of the infection, and 2) reducing the infectiousness of the disease meaning covid progresses slower through the population. The covid vaccine does both. We would expect people to still get sick - especially with the widespread refusal to vaccinate. It makes no sense to criticize vaccination for the people who aren't vaccinated.
Vaccination provides said herd immunity too. I imagine that if we had just vaccinated instead of making a terrible and irresponsible political stand, we would have much less of a problem with covid infections. In a lot of the developing world, there would be low vaccination rates, so there would still need to be some future ongoing vaccination, but it wouldn't be established in the general population like it is now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @08:25AM
Plenty of data that the vaccines work in countries that have them. Death rates down by a magnitude or even more.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 15, @03:04PM
You just said that you experienced a covid infection for the first way into the pandemic. That's a sign of successful vaccination, should you choose to see that.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @07:04AM
Now imagine just how bad it would've felt without having had the shots. This shit kills people. Still.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday December 15, @09:03AM (1 child)
Well, academia is free to research drugs as they wish today. Academia does so to an extend. "Nationalization" has repeatedly failed in the past and I would expect it to fail spectacularly for drugs. Academia is a corrupt system itself (or whatever institution would be in charge) and would not put "patient before profit" (what does that mean anyhow?). What is needed is the separation of research and production. There should be a company for every drug/disease effort (they would most likely be spin-offs of larger entities and fold back after the project). Everybody who sees a benefit can take a stake and also influence the licensing conditions. The state could absolutely play a role here but should never be in charge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @09:49AM
+1 for Academia as a corrupt system.
It has no special advantage, it's douchebags too. It seems a law of nature that any system that can be corrupted by MBA thinking, becomes corrupted by MBA thinking. Next up is the meaning of life - will you choose (a) condo in Florida, (b) cabin in the Rockies, (c) parking garage in hip San Francisco.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 15, @02:22PM (3 children)
It's more complicated than that. The problem is that nationalized industries don't take chances, and the pharmaceutical industry is, and currently MUST be, full of folks taking small chances in the hope of a big payoff.
I'm not going to claim that they're more ethical than other groups that take lots of wild chances, but you only get money behind such things when there's the promise of a big payoff. Government run programs tend to be highly risk adverse.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday December 15, @09:58PM
A hybrid system may be of use. There is no risk in producing well tested generic drugs. There could be a lot of benefit to being able to get antibiotics, pain meds, insulin, epi pens, etc at or near cost to manufacture. Also most of the vaccines out there. There's not much chance that vaccines required to start school, COVID vaccines, tetanus, shingles, pneumonia, etc vaccines will suddenly fall out of demand. And of course, the many blood pressure meds, many of the 1st line cancer drugs, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16, @12:12PM (1 child)
You are full of big corp propaganda (aka bullshit). You want to see government funded cience research done right, check out the CSIRO.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 16, @01:55PM
Well, my example of a government program that wasn't too excessively risk-adverse would be NASA. But they are risk adverse compared to SpaceX, and most government programs are less willing to take risks that NASA is. Another exception is the military, which has been known to take rather large risks, though they try to do that only when there's no acceptable alternative.
I don't know enough about CSIRO to form opinions based around it, and in any case that would signify the way the Australian government acts, not the way the US acts.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday December 15, @09:54AM (3 children)
Presumably, Pfizer are confident they won't be undercut by competition.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 15, @10:56AM (2 children)
Judging from what I've read, Pfizer is the most effective vax. All others trail behind in effectiveness. That includes the various vaxxes developed overseas. So, yeah, the competition will have to price themselves below Pfizer from the get-go. And, yes, you can be sure that Pfizer is going to publish every metric that shows them to be the most effective.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @01:04PM (1 child)
Odd, from what I remember reading the Moderna is slightly more effective than the Pfizer...but the important takeaway was that either are very good.
Personal experience: I started with the two dose Moderna, reaction to the second dose was several days of fever/chills, annoyance.
Last year about this time there was some discussion that switching brands for the booster was marginally better, so I tried Pfizer's booster (12/2021)--a week of bad reactions (compounded by a dental infection, the timing seemed suspect according to my good dentist).
Waited until 10/2022 and had the Moderna bivalent booster, another few days of fever & chills.
Covid came through our house (source unknown) in mid 11/2022, all vaxed & boosted (three boosters for the other two). Two of three living here home-tested positive. One who is taking immuno compromising meds for an unrelated problem had a month of Covid problems (taste/smell), another had a miserable week of cold symptoms. I tested several times, spaced out, including swabbing my throat and always tested negative--but the slight sore throat I had was nothing like any other infection I remember, so I believe I've also had a very mild case.
Were the side effects from the vax worth it? Yes. I'll be back for another booster if and when recommended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16, @12:17PM
He may be a good dentist but he's a bad epidemiologist. Dental infections are universally bacterial, the only possible correlation would be that having COVID made you too sick to clean your teeth.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sonamchauhan on Thursday December 15, @12:50PM
Years back, I was diagnosed with mild case of kidney disease (IgA nephropathy or IgAN). My employer made COVID vaccination a condition of employment, unless exempted. But COVID vaccines in the market are commonly accepted to (sometimes) trigger and worsen the condition of my disease. With my condition, the risk/reward ratio of hospitalisation with kidney damage seemed orders of magnitude worse than hospitalisation from COVID.
My concern was that mRNA vaccines have increased risk of reactivation/exacerbation of glomerular disease. I obtained opinion from GPs and an immunologist on whether an alternate vaccine is more appropriate. This is because literature in the last year or two disclosed an apparently high rate of COVID-19 vaccine-associated glomerular disease reactivation in patients with existing disease, in particular with mRNA vaccination. This literature is referenced below.
1. COVID-19 vaccination followed by activation of glomerular diseases: does association equal causation?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8437826/ [nih.gov]
"Nonetheless, considering these cases in aggregate, it appears that the COVID-19 vaccines can (re)activate autoantibody-mediated kidney disease."
2. De Novo and Relapsing Glomerular Diseases After COVID-19 Vaccination: What Do We Know So Far?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8230841// [nih.gov]
"At the same time, nephrologists are faced with a small but growing literature of case reports linking COVID-19 vaccines with heightened off-target immune responses leading to the sudden development of de novo or relapsing glomerular diseases."
3. COVID-19 Vaccination and Glomerulonephritis
https://www.kireports.org/article/S2468-0249(21)01448-0/fulltext#%20 [kireports.org]
"In this case series, we report 13 cases of newly diagnosed or flares of GN post–COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and provide a literature review of all the reported GN cases thus far."
Doing some guesswork and number crunching, it seemed reactivation/exacerbations of glomerular disease was worse with mRNA vaccines compared to the AztraZeneca vaccine.
Based on this, I decided to go with the AztraZeneca vaccine (Vaxzevria) that use the older viral vector vaccine technology, instead of the Pfizer that uses the newer mRNA vaccine technology. Doctors were hesitant to put anything on the record - the choice was mine.
When I got the shot, the nurse remarked that kidney patients at their health center seemed to have worse flareups with the Pfizer vaccine. That was a confirmation of sorts.
Anyway I had a couple of days of shivers, and no kidney flareups. I got Covid recently -- very bad for several days - but not life -threatening.
So: I'm not a fan of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine (Comirnaty) for myself based on the information above. Also, a friend also lost a family member to myocarditis soon after a Pfizer booster.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Rich on Thursday December 15, @12:55PM (5 children)
The whole development reeks fishy.
BNT16b2 was developed by BioNTech in Mainz, Germany (fitting road address: "An der Goldgrube" (At the gold pit)...). Biontech is mostly owned by the guys who made their fortune with the "Hexal" generic medication brand. Their boss, Ugur Sahin has a background as experimental oncologist and was researching mRNA cancer therapy before the pandemic. There was an arte (French/German public TV) documentary about the development. When the pandemic broke loose, Biontech quickly switched their process to produce CoV spike proteins, and one of the candidates is what became the Comirnaty vaccine in the end.
In the documentary, Sahin told how the Pfizer connection came to be. He said he rung up an old university mate who now works for Pfizer and his mate said "nah, thanks". And then some time went by, and they got into contact again and the Pfizer guy now said "ok, we'll distribute it".
Yeah, right. There's the largest pandemic in a century, you've got something that could be the sole treatment for 8 billion people on the planet, with a potential revenue of 100 billion, your company is owned by guys who have 300M of their own money in, and you give the distribution rights, including naming rights, to the first old uni pal you can think of? And, see TFA, the right for future antisocial price hikes? (That the government of a country that prided itself on being "the pharmarcy of the world" didn't intervene or do anything doesn't surprise me much however, they are grossly incompetent.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ox0000 on Thursday December 15, @02:16PM (3 children)
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you're a small-ish shop, selling things that are useful but at low volume and using limited distribution. You are small after all - compared to the big players. Suddenly everyone on the entire planet wants Giga-fucktons of what you have. You need to scale up _everything_ not tomorrow, but now. Sales, production, distribution, ... you name it, you have to scale it up... and fast. So what do you do? You call a connection that has that scale because while you may have the product, the one you call has something you need, and that do not have. What BioNTech had/has was both invaluable, but it was also worthless at the same time in the absence of the scaling needed when it was needed to make their product successful.
This is why they did what they did. Because not doing it would have meant that another vaccine would have won that race.
Thinking that any entity exists in isolation is a mistake, we all rely on others. Calling a connection (or a friend) to do you a solid is how the world works. You may think you got here all by yourself, but you relied on the visible and invisible help of others.
I am somewhat disappointed in your lack of understanding of this, son...
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday December 15, @07:52PM (2 children)
Well, they did the scale-up by acquiring a Novartis/GSK plant in Marburg, Germany. This was part of former Behringwerke, which had been a massive player in vaccines. The distributed production ramp-up went from there. I would have assumed GSK to be the distribution partner if one had to be chosen by suitability, both regarding size and familiarity of the workforce. Then, I think, giving up the naming was a massive hit on goodwill of the BioNTech name. Also, on an econo-political scale, keeping that would have signaled that Germany is still able to bring up a world leading company (but then, the Gov't didn't even intervene when Kuka was sold off to China).
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Friday December 16, @12:40AM (1 child)
I'm not sure how to read this (maybe intonation got lost in translation?) but if by this you mean that it was dumb of them to do so then I think you are mistaken (and how much of this naming right did they really give up, since both you and I are clearly aware of their name). As much as I loathe marketing and advertising, sadly it works. Name-recognition is a thing and has value. I was also not privy to the discussion that BioNTech may or may not have had with other big names in the pharma industry. Maybe the terms of cooperation with Pfizer were the most favorable ones that BioNTech had available, maybe the others wanted more than what BioNTech was willing to give up?
By hoisting themselves on a big name (Pfizer), BioNTech gained credibility (by brand recognition, by logistics, by reach, by competency/knowing the cracking of the whip of the industry, etc...). That too is worth something. Imagine how much worse the conspiracies would be if they hadn't cooperated with a bigger player... that would have been madness!
It's fine to be skeptical, it's even fine to be somewhat paranoid, but you are probably veering off into fantasy territory there.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday December 16, @03:45PM
I meant "goodwill" primarily as in "nontangible asset as part of market capitalization".
As we see from the post (#1282510) right above my TP the stuff is, outside Germany, universally regarded as "Pfizer vaccine", and we're in a bit of a minority bubble here. Anyway, Pfizer might have made the Strüngmann brothers (who ultimately had to nod off the decision) a convincing offer, and they seemed inclined to go that path anyway. There has been a Handelsblatt article from 2019 where they are quoted (deepl Translation): "However, the biotech company would not be able to make the necessary investments without U.S. investors and alliances with international pharmaceutical companies. In Strüngmann's view, one problem with Germany as a business location is that "there is a widespread lack of interest in and understanding of biotech.". It's probably coincedence that Sahin knew his Pfizer buddy from university and that the investors considered Pfizers offer as the best, but there has been going on a lot more consideration behind the scenes than what was told in the arte documentary.
And it might have been that Pfizer indeed was the only option, because other large distributors were trying to compete, and with the loss of what was Behring, there was no local choice available anymore. I had originally missed out on the fact that Novartis (who got the former Chiron Behring facilties that BioNTech bought) had sold out to GSK, which already were in the boat with Sanofi for their (mostly failed) go at a vaccine. (German politicians probably would have loved to cheaply sell out to Sanofi, like they did with Hoechst, but Sanofi plainly had no interest, because they were doing their own shot)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 15, @02:31PM
What's the problem here? People who can organized groups to produce vaccines quickly don't magically appear fully formed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 15, @01:16PM (1 child)
A strongly worded letter from 2 senators who are going to be unable to do anything substantial about this (because they won't get a law through before the Republicans take over the House) isn't going to do a whole lot when you're talking about a company poised to make $billions with this move.
I guess it's better than not sending the letter, but let's not pretend it will accomplish anything.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 15, @03:15PM
This is what I was thinking. Better than nothing, but even if the letter is heeded, which is doubtful, that won't fix the fundamental problem that the US healthcare system is a racket. Holding cures hostage, prioritizing symptomatic treatments over cures. Using afflictions and diseases as the threat that forces the victims to pay and pay and pay. Germs do the dirty work for them. That's a nice body you have there, be a shame if something happened to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @05:14PM
Dude! You get what you pay for. I never buy the cheap rotgut. If I _had_ to, I would just die!