If it's Tuesday, this must be...

I may wish it was Belgium, but it's still SE Texas. I just heard a long rumble that I thought must be a plane flying over until I notice the color of the light and the darkness to the west. That caused me to pull up the radar loop (how did we live before instant access to weather radar?) and what it is showing is I am going to get very wet on the drive to work.
That's me just to the left of Galveston Bay and to the right of the dark red rain clouds.

While I have been aware of, and disapproving of, the marketing of the drug companies, this story from the Washington Post today is extremely troubling. Tied to the stories floating around about the payments doctors are given for prescribing certain drugs, it paints a picture that I find inconsistent with our ideals here in America. It also explains the reason more of our per capita income goes to pay for, what turns out to be, second rate health care.

Many doctors object to drugmakers' common practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians prescribe and in what quantities -- information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their efforts. The industry defends the practice as a way of better educating physicians about new drugs.

This sounds like the same justification they use for the marketing prescription drugs, educating the public so they know what to question their physicians. If this is the case...Why do they never educate the public about the drugs that aren't protected by patents? It would seem to me that the education excuse would only work if we weren't being educated just about the most profitable drugs in their portfolios.

Since at least the early 1990s, drug companies have used the data to identify doctors who write the most prescriptions and go after them the way publishers court people who subscribe to lots of magazines. They zero in on physicians who prescribe a competitors' drug and target them with campaigns touting their own products. Salespeople chart the changes in a doctor's prescribing patterns to see whether their visits and offers of free meals and gifts are having the desired effect.

You would think, that with all of the data they are tracking, the law of averages would tend to trend in my favor so that every drug my multiple doctors prescribe would not be at the top of my insurance company's drug co-pay list. Not...

Source: Doctors, Legislators Resist Drugmakers' Prying Eyes - washingtonpost.com

Gotta run get wet...Have a great day.

Monday Muses

Seems like every year brings more good news for the folks out there who think the world is too cool. To my way of thinking, mind you I am no scientist and claim no special knowledge, but folks this seems to be a trend line. Now I am not claiming I know (or at this point care) what is causing this climate change, but climate change it is, and our actions are contributing to the outcome.

Global Highlights:

• Based on preliminary data, globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the warmest on record for January-April year-to-date period and third warmest for April.

• Global land surface temperature was warmest on record in April. Temperatures were above average in Europe, Alaska, western U.S., eastern Brazil, northwestern Africa, and most of Asia. Cooler-than-average conditions occurred in the Middle East Region and the eastern half of the contiguous U.S.

• Precipitation during April 2007 was above average in the Northeast region of the contiguous U.S. and most of South America. Drier than average conditions were observed in Japan, southeastern U.S., southeastern China and most of Europe.

• ENSO conditions remained in a neutral phase during April.

Source: NCDC: Climate of 2007- April Global analysis