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Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:01:29 -0800

Here is some interesting information about Big Pharma, your prescriptions and what a "little" company called Costco is doing to put a crimp in their rackett. Big Pharma's excuse is the R&D costs are so much they have to BLOW UP the prices. I guess a 200,000 % (look at the prozac) markup can barely put food on their tables.

Let's hear it for Costco!! (This is just mind-boggling!) Make sure you read all the way past the list of the drugs. The woman that signed below is a Budget Analyst out of federal Washington , DC offices.� Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries. In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America .

The data below speaks for itself.

Celebrex: 100 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $ 0.60
Percent markup: 21,712%
Claritin: 10 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
Percent markup: 30,306%
Lipitor: 20 mg
Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
Percent markup: 4,696%
Norvasc: 10 mg
CONSUMER price (100 tablets): $188.29
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
Percent markup: 134,493%
Paxil: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
Percent markup: 2,898%
Prevacid: 30 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
Percent markup: 34,136%
Prozac: 20 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $247.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
Percent markup: 224,973%
Tenormin: 50 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
Percent markup: 80,362%
Xanax: 1 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $136.79
Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
Percent markup: 569,958%
Zithromax: 600 mg
Consumer price (100 tablets): $1, 482.19
Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
Percent markup: 7,892%

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on. It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen's on every corner. On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit , did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more.. Yes, that's not a typo. three thousand percent! So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are "saving" $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10! At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs. I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just togive you one example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08. I would like to mention, that although Costco is a "membership" type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in (this is true). I am asking each of you to please help me by cocopying this letter, and passing it onto your own e-mail list, and send it to everyone you know with an e-mail address.

Sharon L. Davis, Budget Analyst, U.S . Department of Commerce. Room 6839, Office Ph: 202-482-4458, Office Fax: 202-482-5480, E-mail Address: sdavis@doc.gov

http://DarklingLuna.stumbleupon.com/review/14162402/

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:56:18 -0800

Becoming a Freethinker and a Scientist
By Albert Einstein

Taken from:
Albert Einstein's Autobiographical Notes
Open Court Publishing Company,
LaSalle and Chicago, Illinois, 1979. pp 3-5.

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.

As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.

It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.

http://DarklingLuna.stumbleupon.com/review/12716670/

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:48:30 -0700

China slaps ban on reincarnation
Tibetan monks must seek permission for rebirth
By Lester Haines →
Published Wednesday 29th August 2007 14:04 GMT

China has rather brilliantly declared that, from next month, Tibetan Buddhist monks must have official permission to reincarnate, Newsweek reports.

The new legislation lays down strict guidelines for making a reappearance and is, according to a statement from the State Administration for Religious Affairs, "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation".The penalty for illicit reincarnation is not noted (100 consecutive life sentences without parole?), but there is method in the Chinese authorities' madness.

As Newsweek points out, the law will effectively prevent any Buddhist monk living outside Tibet* from seeking reincarnation. Accordingly, it also "effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama".

The exiled 72-year-old Dalai Lama is currently in India pondering his successor. Since he's refused to reincarnate in Tibet while it's under Chinese control, there is the provocative possibility of a Chinese-sponsored Dalai Lama going head-to-head with a new young chum for Richard Gere.

Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford, explained: "It will be a very hot issue. The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others."

Harison and other Buddhism scholars are agreed the next Dalai Lama's Dalai Lama will "will likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread throughout India, Europe and North America", while China is evidently preparing the ground for a Tibetan resident rival. �