Panel Recommends Ban on 2 Popular Painkillers

Now wait a minute. Because people build up a tolerance to opiates, we should ban the Percocet and Vicodin because the acetaminophen in them is the dangerous part? Apparently opiates are fine.

A federal advisory panel voted narrowly on Tuesday to recommend a ban on Percocet and Vicodin, two of the most popular prescription painkillers in the world, because of their effects on the liver.

The two drugs combine a narcotic with acetaminophen, the ingredient found in popular over-the-counter products like Tylenol and Excedrin. High doses of acetaminophen are a leading cause of liver damage, and the panel noted that patients who take Percocet and Vicodin for long periods often need higher and higher doses to achieve the same effect.

And then they also suggested lowering the strength of Tylenol per pill in the standard over the counter offering.

the committee voted 24 to 13 to recommend that the F.D.A. reduce the highest allowed dose of acetaminophen in over-the-counter pills like Tylenol to 325 milligrams, from 500.

Do you  think that people who already engage in risky high dosage behavior are going to discontinue this behavior? No, the warnings are there to help people who pay attention. Anyone who neglects the instructions today is still going to neglect the instructions tomorrow.

It does say clearly on the bottle

Do not take more than 8 tablets, caplets, gelcaps or tablespoons in 24 hours.

You are ingesting a chemical designed to alter you body chemistry. RTFM!

My decision? Nope, its their decision.

When you hand over the checkbook to your healthcare, you also hand over the ultimate decision making as well. Remember when Nancy Pelosi said that birth control will stimulate the economy? This is the same line of thinking and it all leads to the same ugly term that no one likes to talk about. Eugenics.

From his own words

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

So if I have 6-12 months to live, I have to spend it in bed because it will save you some money? I don’t think that’s your decision!

Defining “don’t stand to gain” is dangerous game when the bureaucrats doing the defining are motivated by fiscal policy of “the greater good.”

Betraying the Planet?

Crisis.Crisis.Crisis. In today’s fast food you-tube attention span world, that seems to be the only way to get anything done. Declare a crisis.

I think Paul Krugman is jockeying to be Al Gore’s right hand man now.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

My favorite bit is that he compares this “crisis” to the Bush administration’s “existential threat” to America because of terrorism – except his crisis is real and the Bush one was not. The real difference Paul? We actually have bodies to back up the terrorism threat.

Cleaner, costlier climate bill slips past House

Cap and trade passed the House as a squeaker at 219-212.  This is what Rahm Emmanuel meant by “never letting a crisis go to waste.” You get into power, declare an emergency, and start passing items carte blanche regardless of their connection to the crisis. The Republicans were guilty of that as well, but the Democrats went and upped the game adding a whole new set of zeroes onto the cost of everything that they jam into the “crisis”.

Climate change tide turning?

When an Op-Ed is published to more than one of the blogs you follow, you have to read it. Both Voxopoli and John Stossel’s Take pointed out Kim Strassel’s long list of people changing their minds and standing up to the Green Gestapo. Not afraid to be called “deniers”. And more acceptance that the science is not settled.

Steve Fielding is an Australian Senator, and when trying to decide on whether to support some carbon emission legislation in his Senate he decided to get some info from the guys who proclaim it the loudest.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

You’ld think that they would consider this such a big deal – and they need global cooperation to solve the “problem” – that they would have come up with something to help convince him. Or could they?

Strange bedfellows

What will the L.A. gangbangers say when they find out that the web site that sells them

some of the hardest authentic jail house threads for the streets.

is run by same cop who kicked a gangbanger in the head on camera last month after the suspect laid down with his arms spread to allow himself to be arrested.

Some expansion of student privacy

Good news for privacy advocates - mostly. Government schools cannot strip search their students unless they really think its necessary. From the SCOTUS opinion

what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.

So, if the untrained school’s administrator’s assistant suspected that there was (1) something dangerous and (2) had reason to believe it was in her underwear, then they could strip search a minor?

If she is carrying something imminently dangerous, it most likely wouldn’t be stored in her underwear. If its not an imminent danger and you know its in her underwear – detain her and call the authorities who actually are trained to deal with this!

Also, they did give us this nugget. The government can’t abuse your rights if they just turn their head away

but a strip search and its Fourth Amendment consequences are not defined by who was looking and how much was seen.

I wonder how that logic applies to “But I just read it for the articles!”