Friday, November 19, 2004
This rant is about lawyers. All of the ones I know are nice people, but a good portion them are total scumbags. At this point you're thinking, no shit, what in particular is currently raising your ire? A matter of days after the drug Vioxx was pulled from the market, the NYC subway is plastered with legal advertisements telling people that they are going to die if they took the drug and need to contact a lawyer immediately. The lawyers see a deep pocketed defendant (Merck) and a huge pool of possible clients.
Now I don't have a problem with people who are actually injured getting compensated if the perpetrator was negligent, but far worse damage is being done to our society by the legal establishment than by any ill they purport to address. And of course there is some whistleblower asshole who is tripping over himself to tell the teacher that she forgot to assign homework. The whole thing is sickening. I also think it's worth noting that:
1) Those taking the drug (for 18 months, every day) had an increased risk of a cardiac event. The risk increased from .1% to .1% (rounded to the nearest .1%).
2) If you're taking Vioxx, you probably have arthritis, which means you are probably old, which means you will probably die soon anyway.
3) By at least an order of magnitude higher, is the risk of dying from stomach bleeding by using earlier medicines.
4) A lot of people who can't get Vioxx will switch to these earlier medicines.
5) Every legal imbroglio increases prices on the rest of us, and/or decreases the incentives for these companies to create new medicines. And we all know there's not much new stuff coming out of Canada to take their place.
Jeez, this post is boring even me. I think I'll stop here. Ok, one last thing. Doctors, you are not Jesus. You don't have to continue to treat lawyers while they repeatedly bend you over and pound you in the ass. Go on strike (from treating lawyers), and the good lawyers will tear John Edwards (with his dead baby channeling closing arguments) a new one.
Now I don't have a problem with people who are actually injured getting compensated if the perpetrator was negligent, but far worse damage is being done to our society by the legal establishment than by any ill they purport to address. And of course there is some whistleblower asshole who is tripping over himself to tell the teacher that she forgot to assign homework. The whole thing is sickening. I also think it's worth noting that:
1) Those taking the drug (for 18 months, every day) had an increased risk of a cardiac event. The risk increased from .1% to .1% (rounded to the nearest .1%).
2) If you're taking Vioxx, you probably have arthritis, which means you are probably old, which means you will probably die soon anyway.
3) By at least an order of magnitude higher, is the risk of dying from stomach bleeding by using earlier medicines.
4) A lot of people who can't get Vioxx will switch to these earlier medicines.
5) Every legal imbroglio increases prices on the rest of us, and/or decreases the incentives for these companies to create new medicines. And we all know there's not much new stuff coming out of Canada to take their place.
Jeez, this post is boring even me. I think I'll stop here. Ok, one last thing. Doctors, you are not Jesus. You don't have to continue to treat lawyers while they repeatedly bend you over and pound you in the ass. Go on strike (from treating lawyers), and the good lawyers will tear John Edwards (with his dead baby channeling closing arguments) a new one.
