Freudian posted:

I'm actually glad to see Hunny Bunny and I could not tell you why.

420 Gank Mid posted:

Pants Donkey posted:

I feel like we need to split the term “Big Pharma”: a term for people who mean an industry that brutally exploits the necessary nature of its product, and a term for conspiracy theorists who seriously think a megacorp wouldn’t take a cancer cure all the way to the bank.

InsertPotPun posted:

Wait...so Tinsley is comparing two instances of a business refusing service, but taking the side of one but not the other AND calling Cuomo a hypocrite...for taking the side of one but not the other?
Like he's specifically saying "he supports this instance but not this one, I'm the opposite: he's a hypocrite"?

I'm having trouble with this.

Pants Donkey posted:

I feel like we need to split the term “Big Pharma”: a term for people who mean an industry that brutally exploits the necessary nature of its product, and a term for conspiracy theorists who seriously think a megacorp wouldn’t take a cancer cure all the way to the bank.

seiferguy posted:

Where do the antivaxxers fall?

Feinne posted:

Part of the problem is that Rallston often feels like a straight Rall self-insert half the time so it's really hard to be sure if it's just 'this is how a lovely person from this lovely society would think' and not 'tee hee I get to share my real feelings about those ingrate blacks though this mouthpiece I've separated myself slightly from in spite of agreeing with him 100%'.

Clever Spambot posted:

The protagonist has problems but none of them are directly related to the society he is living in and could just as easily have been happening to a person in 2001.

Technowolf posted:

seiferguy posted:

Where do the antivaxxers fall?

seiferguy posted:

Where do the antivaxxers fall?

Technowolf posted:

betaraywil posted:

HOT TAKE INCOMING

I think we're being a little hard on Rall? Obviously this book is garbage, and his decades of unrefined and outright bad opinions on sex, race, and society speak for themselves.

But there are definitely two kinds of gross and regressive tropes that come out, and I'm having a hard time differentiating between them. Some of them are obviously because Ted Rall feels persecuted that people have more sympathy for the plight of The Blacks than they do for Ted Rall, but others would seem to be showing up because this is a dystopia and Rallston is habituated to the evils of that dystopia. The use of "wilding" in particular looks to me like the latter--that was a term of art among the Tough on Crime crowd, and 2001 Rall was definitely aligned against them. (Was he aligned against them in a thoughtful way because he was mindful of marginalized people and their voices? Absolutely not. But he's perfectly capable of calling out what, say, the Times would unambiguously identify as racism.)

The whole framing that black people exist for white people to buy spices and music from is the former. And you kind of need critical race theory to argue about that in a satisfying way, so I get why that's not what people jump right to. But what we have here is a terrible, disjointed, mess of a representation of typical Clinton-era white liberal attitudes toward race.

betaraywil posted:

Yeah, like, good for Rall for trying to use typography to convey information, a fundamental technique of the medium in which he's operating. It's just a shame that he sucks at it. That said

HOT TAKE INCOMING

I think we're being a little hard on Rall? Obviously this book is garbage, and his decades of unrefined and outright bad opinions on sex, race, and society speak for themselves.

But there are definitely two kinds of gross and regressive tropes that come out, and I'm having a hard time differentiating between them. Some of them are obviously because Ted Rall feels persecuted that people have more sympathy for the plight of The Blacks than they do for Ted Rall, but others would seem to be showing up because this is a dystopia and Rallston is habituated to the evils of that dystopia. The use of "wilding" in particular looks to me like the latter--that was a term of art among the Tough on Crime crowd, and 2001 Rall was definitely aligned against them. (Was he aligned against them in a thoughtful way because he was mindful of marginalized people and their voices? Absolutely not. But he's perfectly capable of calling out what, say, the Times would unambiguously identify as racism.)

The whole framing that black people exist for white people to buy spices and music from is the former. And you kind of need critical race theory to argue about that in a satisfying way, so I get why that's not what people jump right to. But what we have here is a terrible, disjointed, mess of a representation of typical Clinton-era white liberal attitudes toward race.

betaraywil posted:

Yeah, exactly: The incompetence makes it harder to parse. Like "I watch too much porn. Maybe I'm gay now" has virtually no connection to a consumerist paradise and must therefore be a window into Rall's weird psyche. "Wilding" meanwhile is a direct reference to a contemporary attitude he's (very plausibly) trying to attack with the decision to include RSA-level segregation in his dystopia.

In the middle, you have "I experience sexual attraction in the form of wanting to rape and murder strangers" which really was what Catholic Schools in the 90s said would happen to you if you watched too much porn (source: Me. A priest told me that watching porn would lead to gay porn would lead to bestiality porn would lead to snuff films). It's impossible to discern from this terrible book whether he's taking that sex-panic straight and labeling murder-rape fantasies as a likely outcome of Third Wave Feminism, or whether he's making fun of Those Catholics and he integrated that critique in an incoherent way, or whether that's how Ted Rall thinks about sex.

I feel completely adrift every time Somfin posts one of these horrible spreads because I can't trust Rall to write competently, and so I can't trust myself to call him an rear end in a top hat for the right reasons.

I dont know posted:

There is another possibility in that Rall is just throwing poo poo at a wall with no larger concerns than being edgy and vaguely following the structure of 1984.

I dont know posted:

Ironically, I think Rall is unwittingly embodying one of Orwell's arguments. That muddled, incoherent writing is often the direct result of muddled, incoherent thinking. If a person sets out to write something without a clear idea of what they want to say specifically, as oppose to a general approval or disapproval, than they end up with incomprehensible gibberish. Rall vaguely disproves of modern consumerism and is trying to satirize it, but completely fails because he didn't identify any particular points of society that he disapproves of specifically and why.

Jurgan posted:

Also, Rallston is (or at least was) hoping for a revolution of blacks to destroy society, but knowing what we know about Ted Rall he would put his own white avatar as the leader of that revolution. He's going the full Charles Manson with that one.

VitalSigns posted:

If militant black nationalists actually did rise up in revolt against the US government, Rall would absolutely scream "OH NO NOT MY STUFF!" the second the revolution stopped being an edgy opinion and became a reality.

KillerJunglist posted:

Guess I just won't vote play at all, then!

I dont know posted:

That old hallmark of good writing, when your protagonists motivations swing wildly from moment to moment for literally no reason. One of the most basic problems with this whole ordeal and why no one can figure out what the gently caress Rall really wants to say with this is that Rallston can't decide whether or not he likes the system. Sometimes he loves it more than anything, other times he wants it to burn to the ground. This could work if the book examined the protagonist's conflicting feelings and had even a hint of nuance, instead it doesn't even seem to be aware that Rallston's personality changes entirely from one panel to the next.

VitalSigns posted:

If militant black nationalists actually did rise up in revolt against the US government, Rall would absolutely scream "OH NO NOT MY STUFF!" the second the revolution stopped being an edgy opinion and became a reality.

I dont know posted:

Rall is just throwing poo poo at a wall with no larger concerns than being edgy and vaguely following the structure of 1984... I don't think the commentary runs any deeper than this.

Somfin posted:

2024 read-along: Holy loving poo poo, Rall.

I dont know posted:

There is another possibility in that Rall is just throwing poo poo at a wall with no larger concerns than being edgy and vaguely following the structure of 1984.

Freudian posted:

I'm actually glad to see Hunny Bunny and I could not tell you why.

Pants Donkey posted:

I feel like we need to split the term “Big Pharma”: a term for people who mean an industry that brutally exploits the necessary nature of its product, and a term for conspiracy theorists who seriously think a megacorp wouldn’t take a cancer cure all the way to the bank.

Jedit posted:

If pharmaceutical companies could choose between a total cure for cancer and a perfect - or even imperfect but long lasting - palliative treatment, they would never in this life take the cure. Evidence: Type 1 diabetes. We have all the technology and knowledge to develop a cure, but it's not as profitable as a lifetime of insulin therapy.

Jedit posted:

Evidence: Type 1 diabetes. We have all the technology and knowledge to develop a cure, but it's not as profitable as a lifetime of insulin therapy.

Jedit posted:

If pharmaceutical companies could choose between a total cure for cancer and a perfect - or even imperfect but long lasting - palliative treatment, they would never in this life take the cure. Evidence: Type 1 diabetes. We have all the technology and knowledge to develop a cure, but it's not as profitable as a lifetime of insulin therapy.

fool_of_sound posted:

This is still a conspiracy theory unless you have evidence that Big Pharma is maliciously inhibiting testing of immunotherapy.

Katt posted:

I think the idea that companies are actively holding back a cure is a myth. Insulin in western countries outside the US often cost something like $1.50 a day.

If someone came upon a fungus that cured diabetes they would go "Holy poo poo we found it!" and publish the poo poo out of that.

felch me daddy jr. posted:

Katt posted:

I think the idea that companies are actively holding back a cure is a myth. Insulin in western countries outside the US often cost something like $1.50 a day.

If someone came upon a fungus that cured diabetes they would go "Holy poo poo we found it!" and publish the poo poo out of that.

quote:

It's called Glybera, and it can treat a painful and potentially deadly genetic disorder with a single dose — a genuine made-in-Canada medical breakthrough.

But most Canadians have never heard of it.
Glybera was never sold in North America and was available in Europe for just two years, beginning in 2015. During that time, only one patient received the drug. Then it was abandoned by the company that held its European licensing rights.

The problem was the price.

The world's first gene therapy, a remarkable discovery by a dedicated team of scientists who came together in a Vancouver lab, had earned a second, more dubious distinction:

The world's most expensive drug.

When Glybera finally went on sale in Europe in 2015, it made international headlines for its price: approximately $1 million US for a single dose.

Because Glybera is a one-time treatment that can last at least 10 years (according to patient data collected so far), the $1-million price seemed reasonable, van Deventer said.

"It's not a crazy price," he said. "People say it's the most expensive drug in the world and what have you, but in the end, all of these products, even priced at $1 million, are going to be generally cheaper than replacement therapy."

he world’s first gene therapy had only one customer: a German woman with LPLD who suffered such debilitating pancreatitis she had been hospitalized in intensive care more than 40 times.

Her doctor, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, is also an expert in LPLD and had to fight to get an insurance company to pay for the dose.

It was worth it, she said.

"Everything went fine. She's back at work. And she's happy."

The woman has never had another pancreatitis attack.

In April 2017, just two years after it first went on the market, Chiesi announced it was abandoning Glybera. The company allowed the European marketing licence to expire.

Three doses left on the shelf were basically given away. A patient in Italy was treated for 1 euro, and two German patients also received doses for 1 euro each after Dr. Steinhagen-Thiessen asked Chiesi for the leftover product.

She said it worked for both her patients.

"The man we treated, I talked to him on the phone two weeks ago and he always says to me he feels like he’s newborn," she said.

Somfin posted:

And to the goon who mentioned feminism... Oh you sweet summer child. We will get to feminism.

Katt posted:

I think the idea that companies are actively holding back a cure is a myth. Insulin in western countries outside the US often cost something like $1.50 a day.

If someone came upon a fungus that cured diabetes they would go "Holy poo poo we found it!" and publish the poo poo out of that.