A Reminder

A Real Pilot Passes

Col. Kenneth L. Reusser, USMC Retired, known as the most decorated aviator in history has died. He was shot down in three wars.

In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair fighter and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at a high altidude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane, hacking off its tail with his propeller.

In 1950 in Korea led an attack on a North Korean tank-repair facility at Inchon, then destroyed an oil tanker almost blowing himself out of the sky.

In Vietnam he flew helicopters and was leading a rescue mission when his Huey was shot down. He needed skin grafts over 35 percent of his badly burned body.

Whatever the Right Stuff is, Reusser had it.

Snorting Zinc

The Zicam stink.

The moral? If you’re going to sell homeopathic medicine – and boy, is it a lucrative business – make sure that you don’t put anything in there except sterile water. That’ll cut down on your expenses, too, since most ingredients cost more than water, anyway. Stick with that strategy, and you can be absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to your customers. Nothing good will happen to them either, but they won’t know that. When their cold/headache/whatever goes away of its own accord, they’ll ascribe it to your miracle product. Sit back and profit! Be sure to thank Senator Hatch while you count your money, though – it’s only proper.

Orrin Hatch has done a lot of stupid things, but his part in exempting “dietary supplements” from FDA approval is one of the stupidest. He has damaged the health of who knows how many Americans just so his buddies could sell snake oil.

His argument sounds libertarian:

So Hatch fired back at the IOC, saying that athletes could not blame their bad drug tests on him, or on the supplement industry, which he claimed was properly regulated in the U.S. “I am tired of this childish finger-pointing,” Hatch said. “The last time I checked, neither the prince nor the athletes were experts in food and drug law.”

I’d argue that policing the science behind medicine is part of the “referee” function of government. The FDA doesn’t ban anything, it simply provides a gating function for what claims people can make for their products. You want to claim a drug cures a specific disease? Fine. Just follow the steps needed to show efficacy and safety. The claims for “dietary supplements” range from useless and vague to outright lies, usually tending toward the latter. Confusion will naturally result when quack pills are placed on shelves next to FDA-approved medicines. Every customer can’t be an expert in food and drugs, either.

Actions have consequences.

Thanks to Hatch, the U.S. now has standards as low as those in many Third World countries for the sale of many products with serious, pharmacological effects. The results have been deadly. Between 1993 and 1998, the FDA linked at least 184 deaths to dietary supplements, which are now suspected of contributing to the sudden deaths of three football players in August.

I can’t believe

I’m sitting next to a Republican!

The fact is, conservatives living and working among the liberals, among them but not of them, are not unlike field reporters for “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”; we know them better than they know themselves. Since there is an approved left-of-center position on every subject — just check out The New York Times or NPR — We know in advance how they’ll react to every controversy, every utterance by a public figure; we anticipate, politically and public policy-wise, their sighs, their frowns, their ups, their downs.

This is a lot what it’s like at work, except that most people I work with are much nicer. While I don’t care what others think, and don’t make my libertarian/conservative views a secret, I know of many conservatives who keep their heads down. I get private emails all the time saying, “I”m glad you said that.”

It’s really sad that Liberals are really the most intolerant people on the planet. Well, next to Islamists, I guess. Maybe that’s why He gets along with them so well.