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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (20467)	12/19/2003 7:36:59 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793742

I used to catch more hell about being in favor of getting whatever drugs I wanted than just about any Libertarian idea. "Why, that means five year old Timmy will be buying Heroin at the 7-11!" The Internet is solving the problem. Proscribing Online Prescribing Why isn't a digital doctor's note enough? Ronald Bailey Everyone who has an email account gets perhaps a score or more spams every day offering great online deals for prescriptions for Viagra, Xenical, Zyrtec, and a host of other medicines. Online purchasers obtain a prescription generally by filling out an electronic questionnaire about their symptoms which is reviewed by doctors hired by the online pharmacies. The Washington Post today is running a front page article about the efforts by state medical boards to stop one such doctor, Miles J. Jones, from prescribing for online customers. Jones, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, has written more than 35,000 prescriptions for the online service netdr.com. His medical license has been suspended in 13 states for online prescribing. The American Medical Association is considering a resolution against online prescribing. Of course, Jones is far from alone. First a bit of history. How did doctors get prescribing power anyway? Doctors became drug gatekeepers as a result of Federal efforts to control the sale of opiates in the early 20th century. One milestone in this evolving process is the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, which established that large quantities of opiates must be prescribed by doctors. On the face of it, it doesn't seem unreasonable that doctors should be the gatekeepers to medicines since they are, after all, trained in properly diagnosing and treating diseases. Not so fast. The fact is that many of us can and do diagnose ourselves. If we have heartburn, we go to the grocery store and load up on Tagamet, Pepcid or Prilosec. But not so long ago those three drugs were available by prescription only and we could get access to them by only means of an expensive visit to the doctor. Of course, there is the benefit that the doctor could rule out the remote possibility that our heartburn was the result of stomach cancer. However, the chances of having heartburn from stomach cancer are not lower and the drugs are no safer than they were before they were approved for over-the-counter (OTC) sales. If they are safe now for purchase OTC, then they were just as safe when only doctors could prescribe them. Similarly, a guy is pretty good at diagnosing when he is experiencing "erectile dysfunction" and when he's not. Of course, his condition might be caused by high blood pressure or a tumor, and since he can obtain Viagra over the internet that might cause him to delay visiting his urologist, but why shouldn't he be allowed to run that risk? Besides what medicines do most people want to buy over the internet anyway? Chiefly "lifestyle" drugs that firm their erections, help them lose weight, control allergies or keep their hair. I suspect in the fullness of time, that most of these drugs will one day be deemed safe enough to be offered over the counter. Of course, even Jones is a still a gatekeeper, albeit a somewhat less bothersome one. There are other ways to arrange for dispensing at least some medicines. For example, when I lived in Central America, one could simply go to a pharmacist, describe one's symptoms and he or she would dispense whatever medicines he or she thought appropriate. On a recent trip to the British Virgin Islands, one could find OTC pain relievers containing mixtures of aspirin and codeine or Tylenol and codeine, neither of which can be obtained without a prescription in the U.S. There may be problems with this relatively easy access to medicines in other countries, but they are not immediately apparent. It is very likely that some people have indeed been hurt by purchasing medicines online. They failed to go to the doctor when they had a life-threatening problem or they experienced rare side effects. But it is far from evident that there are hordes of people dying from drugs prescribed online. "[I]f someone can show me in a scientific study that what I am doing is dangerous, I will stop tomorrow. That's the way to convince me," says Jones in The Washington Post. In fact, an article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research looking at the costs and benefits of online prescribing notes, "FDA evidence for the alleged risks of online prescribing to date merely consists of a few anecdotal cases... This scarcity of reports of adverse events is surprising, given that millions of pills are prescribed on the Web each year." Perhaps not so surprising, if the drugs are in fact generally as safe as medications already available over the counter. Perhaps that should be the standard—that drugs can be prescribed online if they are no more harmful than current over-the-counter medications. Of course that raises another question—if they are no more harmful, why do we need any doctor's, even an online doctor's, permission to use them in the first place? But that's an issue for another time. reason.com

To: greenspirit who wrote (20467)	12/19/2003 9:03:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793742

Two bad court decisions. The 9th Circuit decision was a real bad one. If the Democrats are smart, they will run away from this decision just as fast as - or they will live to regret it. COURTS VS. THE TERROR WAR John Podhoretz - NY Post December 19, 2003 -- A NEW York-based appeals court ruled yesterday that the Bush administration did not have the right to detain U.S. citizen Jose Padilla as an "enemy combatant" for his association with al Qaeda. The ruling is an undeniable black eye for the administration, which may well have overreached in its handling of this very peculiar case. A few hours later, a California-based appeals court ruled that the entire system whereby al Qaeda "enemy combatants" have been detained at Guantanamo Bay is unconstitutional. This ruling is also an undeniable black eye - but not for the administration. Rather, the black eye belongs to the court that overreached itself in a most egregious way. But then, that's what this court - the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals - does routinely. In the case of the Gitmo prisoners, the Ninth Circuit has effectively determined that their detentions were arrests and that therefore the prisoners should be treated like conventional arrestees. "We cannot simply accept the government's position," the Ninth Circuit majority ruled, "that the Executive Branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel, regardless of the length or manner of their confinement." The Ninth Circuit wants the Gitmo terrorists to benefit from the freedoms and rights they reviled and attempted to destroy - to be able to use our own system to protect themselves and their interests. Let's get one thing straight: These men were not arrested. They were taken prisoner in the middle of a war in Afghanistan - some considerable number of them after engaging U.S. forces in battle. They were foreign fighters imported to terrorist training camps who had sworn fealty not to a nation-state but to a murderous ideology. They were detained in the way they were detained for several reasons. * It was too dangerous to repatriate them to their countries of origin, where they might be broken out of prison and returned to the al Qaeda fold. * They could provide valuable information that could lead to the destruction of al Qaeda from within. * Their detention would serve as a symbol and warning to al Qaeda recruits that the United States would not only stop them, but by keeping them alive and in prison would not acquiesce in their martyrdom. There has never been a situation like the one that greeted the United States and its al Qaeda prisoners. And there has never been a situation like the Jose Padilla detention either. What happened to Padilla was this: After his arrest in May 2002, he was transferred to the military-justice system, where he was held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer. Padilla is a very, very bad guy. A Chicago gang-banger and thug, he ended up in a Florida prison, where he converted to Islam and changed his name to Abdullah Al Mujahir. He later traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to seek out al Qaeda. He met with al Qaeda officials. The administration claims he was recruited by al Qaeda in a plot to detonate a so-called dirty bomb here in the United States. He was detained as an "enemy combatant" so that he could be kept in isolation and not do anything to further a dirty-bomb plot from prison. Still, al Qaeda recruit or not, Padilla is Brooklyn-born and a U.S. citizen. And in a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said yesterday that the rules governing his arrest and detention must be designed by Congress, not by the executive branch. When "the president's power as commander in chief of the armed forces and the domestic rule of law intersect," the majority wrote, "we conclude that clear Congressional authorization is required for detentions of American citizens on American soil." This careful and qualified language is hardly the ringing denunciation of the administration that critics are already claiming. "Historic," screeches the American Civil Liberties Union. "This ruling," bleats Ralph Neas of People for the American Way, "is an impressive rebuke to the president's astonishing claim that he can . . . suspend the constitutional rights of American citizens in the name of the 'war on Terror.'" The hysteria of Neas' language is not borne out by the facts. Out of 291 million people in America, only one - one out of 291 million - has been detained as Padilla was detained. (One other U.S.-born person, an al Qaeda fighter seized after a shootout with U.S. forces in the Afghan war, is being held at Gitmo.) It was probably the wrong thing to do, as even many conservative legal scholars have long believed. But it's worth noting that yesterday's decision was not unanimous and that the singular circumstances of the Padilla case make it a difficult one to draw any larger conclusions from. In days to come, President Bush's ideological enemies will surely instead try to use the rulings to continue their assault on the USA Patriot Act - the key piece of anti-terror legislation passed after 9/11 that is opposed by nearly all the Democrats in the presidential race. The American people don't really know this about the Democrats, but you can be sure that George W. Bush will be bringing it up next year. And do the Democrats really want to side with the Ninth Circuit in its attack on the Guantanamo Bay policy? Do they really believe the American people will share the feeling that the al Qaeda monsters now in U.S. custody haven't been treated nicely enough? Two years ago, when the Ninth Circuit ruled that the language of the Pledge of Allegiance was a violation of the wall between church and state, practically every Democratic politician in the country denounced it. If the Democrats are smart, they will run away from this decision just as fast as - or they will live to regret it. E-mail: podhoretz@nypost.com

To: greenspirit who wrote (20467)	12/19/2003 10:44:13 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793742

This is really going to be hated by the major media. They can't claim "censorship" because they have access to the same news. The locals quoted here are taking the edited feed from the majors now. The majors just don't want their "filter" bypassed. That is why they are uncomfortable with the blogs. Too much is getting by them that way now. Iraq news feed draws criticism Local broadcasters slam Pentagon plan By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 12/19/2003 News executives of most Boston television stations are decidedly unenthusiastic about a Bush administration plan to transmit news footage from Iraq for local TV outlets in an attempt to supplement media coverage from that war-torn country. The satellite link, dubbed "C-SPAN Baghdad," is designed to put a more positive spin on events and circumvent the major networks by making it possible for press conferences, interviews with troops and dignitaries, and even footage from the field to be transmitted from Iraq for use by regional and local media outlets, according to news accounts. "I'm kind of appalled by it. I think it's very troubling," said Charles Kravetz, vice president of news at the regional cable news outlet NECN. "I think the government has no business being in the news business." "We have no interest in this," said WBZ-TV (Channel 4) news director Peter Brown. "The Fourth Estate is independent and should remain so. As news providers, we should go there and see for ourselves." In Globe interviews, government officials downplayed the suggestion that this is an attempt to manage the news. Dorrance Smith, a former ABC newsman now working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said the satellite link, which has functioned for the past several weeks, is "an expansion of our ability to communicate. . . . Basically, this provides us with the ability to feed back briefing materials and the substance of what is happening in Baghdad to the Pentagon . . . on a real-time basis. It's for one or for all as opposed to the very few media who are here in Baghdad." Department of Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman stressed the project's function to provide live briefings back to the Pentagon, but said he "wouldn't want to rule out anything in the future." The enhanced communications system comes amid White House concern that coverage of Iraq had focused disproportionately on the casualty count while giving short shrift to efforts to rebuild the country. Kravetz acknowledged the reconstruction of Iraq has not generated the same media interest that the ongoing violence has, but considers that to be a legitimate news judgment. "I think the administration looks at this and feels there's some sort of agenda on the part of the media here," he added. "I don't." WHDH-TV (Channel 7) news director Ed Kosowski characterized the new Iraq feed as "part of a very concerted effort on the part of the Bush administration to get its message out unfiltered." In recent months, the White House has increasingly used local television as a vehicle for countering negative images and stories coming out of Iraq. Last month, WHDH aired interviews with key officials who had been made available to a select group of television stations via satellite hookup. In mid-October, the Hearst-Argyle owned Boston station, WCVB-TV (Channel 5), broadcast an interview with President Bush that he granted to regional television groups. But news directors at those stations rejected the idea of picking up Pentagon material right from Iraq. WCVB-TV news director Coleen Marren said the station is well served by the reporting resources of CNN and ABC and expressed concern at what she called "a government-sponsored television station." boston.com