First of all, the engine compression will only work on the driven wheels. Which, as Jim rightly points out elsewhere, is often much fewer than all the wheels. Worse, it's an unbalanced force, due to the vagaries of differentials. Worst is the fact that it's an almost completely unmodulated force.
In all respects, the standard braking apparatus of a car is superior for applying braking force in slippery conditions. It works on all four wheels, does so evenly, and can be finely-modulated by even those with basic driving skills.
Are you sure? Engine braking is dynamically stable and thus won't lock your wheels, and can provide a pretty convenient "moderate level of braking" without requiring any driver attention at all. It also lets you do the frequently-valuable operation of "apply braking force to all wheels not being used for steering" in a rear-wheel drive vehicle. In really bad conditions you can easily get into a situation where letting off the brakes isn't enough to get the front wheels turning again and you need to straighten the steering wheel; using engine braking makes this less likely to happen.
Isn't this also true in the UK? The OSA prevents government workers from revealing classified information (if it is not demonstrably in the public interest to do so), but AFAIR it doesn't make it easier to classify things in the first place.
As I understand it, the OSA makes it a crime for anyone to publish classified information, while in the US it's only a crime for someone who agreed not to disseminate it as a condition of receiving it (i.e. has a security clearance) to do so. Hence there's been no suggestion of prosecuting Bob Novak for telling people that Valerie Wilson was a secret agent, even if he should have known that it was classified. Or, the New York Times didn't get in trouble for publishing the Pentagon Papers. Under the OSA, both of those are criminal acts.
(Note: the US claims that information about making nuclear weapons is "born classified" and you can't publish it even if you come up with it on your own, but it's not, and the fact that they government always drops the cases when it looks like it might make it to the Supreme Court indicates that they know this.)
The ban happened October 24th, as you can see from the triumphant press release here. What happened earlier was that Abbott stopped selling it, but the generic manufacturers continued. I suppose that it's some consolation that Public Citizen didn't succeed in getting the stocks that were out there recalled.
And Clifton - off-label usage is directly relevant to why this drug got pulled, and understanding the subtleties of it will be directly relevant to the success or failure of any effort to get it reinstated. No value judgements are being made, and there's no shortage of sympathy.
The fun part, my neurologist told me, was that they weren't sure why it did any of those things.
Welcome behind the scenes of CNS pharmaceuticals. To a first approximation, no one really knows why any of them work. Taking one to market is generally a matter of giving it to a bunch of people, seeing what it does, and looking for a disorder that it mostly fixes and nothing else seems to, then counting on doctors handing it out off-label for everything under the sun. Because hey, it might work, and you won't know until you try.
It's a hell of a system, but it's not clear what's better and it is clear that there are a lot of things that are worse.
Regarding the prescription drug vs. banning, a) the clinical data wasn't fully in yet, b) the regulatory continuum is not very smooth (what do you do with a CNS depressant that is neither an approved drug, illegal, or alcohol?) and c) there's a lot of political hay to be made as a drug warrior (or "protecting the public" in general).
don't see any reason to believe it would be the magic bullet that pemoline is
CNS drugs are weird. Look at pemoline - not only is it not a magic bullet for all narcoleptics, but the RAF examined it (and found it suitable!) for use as a stimulant for flight crews. So just because Xyrem is commonly prescribed for cataplexy doesn't mean it won't work for whatever is going on with Theresa, just because Adderall is a mixture of amphetamines likewise. Of course, it doesn't mean that it WILL...
It also shows the kind of trouble you'll likely have trying to find alternative sources for these things, since Xyrem is just the trade name for GHB. Which was banned a few years back due to fears of use as a party and/or date-rape drug, although I think that was the Drug Warriors instead of the Naderites.
Best of luck. Perhaps the FDA can be brought around.
Nader founded Public Citizen. It's his baby. And this type of stuff (beating up on drug companies for their "unsafe" products) is one of the primary reasons for its existence. There's good money in it. Venom directed his way is richly deserved.
Oh, I think that liberalism is a good thing. And I also think that requiring drugs to be safe and effective is a good thing, and requiring them to be demonstrated as such rather than just taking the manufacturer's word on it is too. After all, fen-phen for weight loss was an off-label use...
How to resolve this desire with someone who may literally have her life ruined is... difficult. And attempts at said resolution should probably wait until after Theresa lines up an alternative supply of meds.
Oh, I think that liberalism is a good thing. And I also think that requiring drugs to be safe and effective is a good thing, and requiring them to be demonstrated as such rather than just taking the manufacturer's word on it is too.
How to resolve this desire with someone who may literally have her life ruined is... difficult. And said resolution should probably wait until after Theresa lines up an alternative supply of meds.
I fail to see how this problem was caused by "liberalism," or why liberalism isn't among the solutions.
Because, even after you ignore all of the tort reform bullshit being thrown around, the reason that Theresa got well and truly shafted is that if you want to sell a drug in the US, it has to be shown to be safe and effective, and it has to be shown to be effective through a clinical trial rather than by finding people who will say "it works for me." Isn't that a liberal idea?
Keep in mind that as far as the FDA is concerned, pemoline does nothing against narcolepsy, and if you want the marketing ban lifted, the best bet is to find people for whom pemoline is the only thing that works for their ADHD.
The more I think about this, the less I can imagine what it must be like. I'm really sorry to hear it, and hope that even if the FDA doesn't change their mind that Public Citizen sees some negative fallout from this.
Subsequent trials to relabel drugs for conditions other than the ones they were initially approved for are pretty uncommon - they cost a lot of money and don't really buy you anything other than more marketing freedom. And if it's only 10k people taking the drug, and the liver problems came up well into the patent lifetime, it's pretty understandable why Abbott didn't go through the trouble.
Still sucks mightily, and I hope you can find some discount mexican pharmacy or whatnot.
Doesn't WWII end in 1945 or 1946 anyway, when the US starts producing nuclear weapons in quantity? Probably with many more millions of dead Japanese civilians, and maybe with the Japanese still in possession of a few islands here and there?
The Japanese could have made life hugely more difficult by taking ASW seriously, but I still don't see how they manage to win.
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