Because a bunch of other dimwits voted for him and then another group of dimwits have no scruples and are too scared to stand-up to him and then these other dimwits… you get the point.
I just started taking Wegovy. Went the regulated route through my doctor, getting a prescription. She’s been monitoring loads of patients and noted that some of her patients going the ‘compound’ route had, in fact, had allergic reactions to their shots, or experienced their shots being less effective, after months of no problems. Nothing life threatening. But the fact is there is no oversight to what the GLP-1 is compounded with.
People report this with HPLC tested stuff that is proven to be of the same purity/concentration too, "feels" reports are notoriously unreliable in medicine.
Yes, they can 'prove' what is in something to the limits of the physics.
However, the human in the loop is quite frail for most operators. In that, these very fancy and very expensive instruments are mostly run by high school grads and serviced by field engineers with a huge backlog.
For a first time one off test of something's composition, I'd go for at least 3 companies and preferably you have a history with them. This stuff is terribly complicated and misinterpretation is shockingly common. If the tech hasn't used the standards before then your at the mercy of fate.
Like, we have 5 (!) places on the home screen that do the exact same function of ending a run because when we try to consolidate it to just 1, our customers freak out and can't find where the button went to. Granted they pay $100k+ per instrument plus service plan, so we add it back in no question ( and this is life critical equipment in many cases), but I hope that shows how embedded to routine these operators get.
Janoshik is the primary company people use here, and their business is basically entirely peptides and anabolic steroids, and the GLP-1 stuff exploded their business from gym bros to soccer moms everywhere. https://janoshik.com/
But they basically test the same 12ish compounds day in and day out, with another couple of dozen making up the remainder. They don't have most of the worries that you are referring to - first time for a tech running a specific set of standards, limited experience interpreting them, etc., and when people head to head their results against different labs, they are consistent.
What she presented to me was that more than one of her patients taking unregulated GLP-1s simply stopped losing weight, and in an unexpected way. I have no idea how many patients this was. My doctor is rad and very much pro-GLP-1s and pro-preventative-care. This is ultimately an anecdote.
There's a well known plateau effect with GLP-1s where the body adjusts to the changes in caloric intake and the medication itself so that weight loss levels off and stops after a period of time. It could be that but it's hard to tell with 2nd hand info.
Personally I feel the hims etc of this world need to go away. They give a false sense of security and they mask an incredibly shady industry.
I also think people should be able to source from the grey market if they can figure it out. This means they understand the risks and likely take measures like ensuring their compounds are properly tested before injecting them.
I’d feel differently if I didn’t understand how the average medspa gets their product and the corners they cut. I honestly trust some outright black market dealers better than most of those shops. They actually do testing on their product before shipping it. Likely sourced from exactly the same manufacturer as the guy in the locker room buys from.
So long as the choices are informed I agree. The issue is hims/hers puts a fancy veneer of “sanctioned medical system” on top of what amounts to a black market. They are laundering and obscuring the risk and many patients simply do not understand this fact.
It’s the difference between buying Xanax from a legit pharmacy vs a street dealer. The street dealer transaction you understand the risks involved and are making an informed decision. If you thought you were buying from a legit pharmaceutical company but they ended up just rebranding the same shit the street dealer is selling from his wholesaler - that is not informed consent even a little bit.
There is something in the middle here but some HLPC testing I’ve seen of supposed legit compounding pharmacies hasn’t been great for these drugs.
Their industry is only shady because lots of fairly harmless drugs require a prescription. Viagra, the GLPs, and minoxidi+finasteride come to mind.
For a long time in this country, a flesh-eating bacteria infection required an amputation. In Russia and Eastern Europe, it was easily treatable with bacteriophages and people normally kept their limbs. There's still no process for approving a bacteriophage treatment in this country for general use.
Our system is ossified to protect big pharma and doctors. Liberalization is needed; hims and their like need to be regulated, but with a lighter touch than the current requirements.
Can you quote from the five sentences I wrote where I said anything about telling people what to do? I simply noted that my medical provider has first-hand experience with people getting questionable results from unregulated GLP-1s.
It’s a common HN practice. I’ve done it once or twice. Mods will do it often, especially with highly active topics. I imagine it started as a method to avoid duplicate posting thereby consolidating conversation and, also, so that karma attribution goes to whoever the original poster was.
I imagine automation would be difficult because the same topics come from different sources and occasionally there is additional/novel information in similarly titled postings.
Also important to note there is a time eventually that something is no longer a dupe, and people will still add previous discussions about it (often dang himself), because the previous conversations about the topic may be of interest. But unless some earth shattering research just came out in the last three days showing that lead is good for us, actually, it hasn’t been long enough for that to apply here.
Do you have a citation for voting by mail being demonstrable problematic? None of the things you describe are even true. We’ve been voting by mail in Oregon for decades and the demonstrated instances of voter fraud are effectively zero. The Heritage Foundation, which is opposed to vote by mail, has a great list here: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search?state=OR.
I encourage you to click the ‘Read’ tab to see the actual circumstances resulting in the convictions as most are for trying to game ballot signatures and have nothing to do with votes being cast. It just doesn’t happen because the system is secure.
Never once has anyone, outside of their expansive imagination, proven that voting by mail is not secure and effective.
I have EXCELLENT, current news for you, comrade. Since then, I can point you to six States in the USA that have implemented mail-in voting that is demonstrable secure and gives far more people the ability to vote than mandatory in-person voting. Isn’t that simply wonderful to hear? And, to boot, lest you worry about volume, one of those States alone (sunny California) is nearly the same population as France was in 1975! So even having large populations vote entirely by mail is proven to be a non-issue! Phew, I’m glad we can stop trotting out fear mongering and speculative arguments of unproven inevitable doom to stupidly disenfranchise voters!
There are open accusations of mail-in fraud in California, not a settled issue. France is an interesting example because there was fraud, settled issue.
France isn’t that interesting of an example given the exponential changes to how mail-in ballots work that have been implemented in the last 50 years. Using France as your lone example is like citing to the Challenger launch and ignoring every subsequent success in deciding if you’re going to launch a rocket. It’s almost delusional.
Apropos of nothing, Oregon has over 800,000 inactive voters [0] on the voter roll that should have been removed but weren't. So there's room for improvement.
Citations aren’t necessary when the incentives for fraud are so great and the means of executing fraud so easy. It’s not demonstrably problematic, it’s inevitably problematic.
Citations are needed when I can point you to six States that have vote-by-mail systems and there’s no evidence of meaningful fraud in those systems. And citations are especially needed when the very think tanks that are spending millions of dollars trying to disenfranchise voters by banning mail-in voting are unable to find meaningful cases of fraud to bolster their argument and instead rely on nonsense like ‘it’s inevitable that something bad will happen, trust me bro!’
Sonicare Electric Toothbrush. My grandmother bought me my first one in the 90s. I’m on my third, and that’s only because I take them backpacking. It’s my 1 luxury item on the trail. I know much of it is genetics, but a morning and evening cleaning make my teeth feel amazing and have helped me stay cavity free.
Yeah, I lost the tooth genetics race. Brush twice a day, floss 3-4 times a day, still have cavities every visit to the dentist, and need a full on root canal and crown every few years.
Both of my parents have lost half of their adult teeth even though they take care of them, abstain from sugar and processed and/or acidic foods/drinks.
Also related and worth a read, I think, is the Supreme Court case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952). The content of the dispute is different, as it involves the President seizing private property, but it is (one of?) the seminal cases regarding the scope of presidential powers. Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion is, at least for now, considered the best articulation of when the President may take unilateral action.
Though less critical to our lives, PE has ruined loads of retail and restaurant options as well - Sears, Toy ‘R’ Us, Red Lobster, and Shari’s come to mind.
sears had a ceo who was obsessed with competition and pitted his units against each other. they could have created an online portal and then crushed amazon in the crib -- but didn't.
toys r us had a cto who pushed for internet stuff... and said no.
The medical community realized early in the pandemic that blood clotting was an “extremely rare” side effect of Covid vaccines. Nobody tried to hide that. Also, monoclonal antibody treatments were limited because 99% of Covid infections were of the Omicron variant and it was clinically demonstrated that monoclonal antibodies were entirely ineffective against that variant.
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