Oil Demand, the Climate and the Energy Ladder

Fuel 2000 & Beyond ".......The most important aspect of the factor which we have named the quantity C. C is a constant, the only true constant in the universe, because it is the pivotal point about which the natural laws become manifest. It is the factor for which many great physicists have spent years of search, even though they had it constantly in their possession. In short, the quantity C is the measure of the radius of curvature of natural law. It is the factor which will enable us to determine precisely the degree of change in the curvature of one law which will be brought about by a specified change in the application of the others. When we state that the quantity C is the radius of the curvature of natural law, we mean simply that if a differential of energy equal to this quantity exists between the observer and the point which he is observing, the natural laws will be suspended. If the energy differential is in excess of the quantity C, the laws will appear to operate in reverse at that point. While we have repeatedly referred to the quantity C as an energy differential, we have heretofore considered it only in terms of kinetic energy. Some may believe that it can be reached only when there is a rate of increase or decrease in the degree of spatial separation between the reference points, equal to 3x10*10th centimeters per second, or in simpler terms, a velocity equal to that of light. It is necessary therefore to point out the fact that an energy differential does not necessarily manifest itself as a velocity. It can also exist as a frequency. Our present laws of physics state that the energy level upon which an electron, a photon, or other particle exists is proportionate to its frequency. The mathematical rule is E equals Fh where E is the energy, F is the frequency and h is a factor called Planck's constant. We can now see that a frequency differential which by the above formula is equal to 9x10*20th ergs per gram also represents the quantity C. When such a frequency differential exists between the observer and the point which he is observing, we again find that the natural laws at the observed point reach zero value with respect to the observer. If the frequency differential exceeds this value, the action of the laws will become negative. We must clear our minds of the thought block produced by the assumption that the quantity C is a factor of absolute limit. We must realize that it is a limiting factor only with respect to two given reference points, and that it is perfectly possible to conceive of a series of consecutive reference points between each two of which a differential equal to the quantity C may exist..........
















Now back to big, big, CO2 bugs for carbon capture and sequestration, umbrellas for plant earth, 100 years more of fossil fuel with a bit of "corny" - pun intended - (corn/ethanol) alternatives


January 19, 2008 Saturday Interview
Oil Demand, the Climate and the Energy Ladder
By JAD MOUAWAD
Energy demand is expected to grow in coming decades. Jeroen van der Veer, 60, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, recently offered his views on the energy challenge facing the world and the challenge posed by global warming. He spoke of the need for governments to set limits on carbon emissions. He also lifted the veil on Shell’s latest long-term energy scenarios, titled Scramble and Blueprints, which he will make public next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Following are excerpts from the interview:
Q. What are the main findings of Shell’s two scenarios?
A. Scramble is where key actors, like governments, make it their primary focus to do a good job for their own country. So they look after their self-interest and try to optimize within their own boundaries what they try to do. Blueprints is basically all the international initiatives, like Kyoto, like Bali, or like a future Copenhagen. They start very slowly but before not too long they become relatively successful. This is a model of international cooperation.
Q. Your first scenario looks very similar to today’s world, with energy nationalism, competition for resources and little attention to consumption.
A. It depends where you live. I realize there are different opinions about Kyoto in the world. But if you think about Bali, Bali is a good outcome if people can agree how to have useful discussion in the coming two years and the United States, China and India are on board. The Blueprints world is maybe a world that starts slowly and is not that easily feasible, but you see some early indicators that it is a realistic possibility.
Q. The world seems to be at some form of inflection point with a big shift in demand.
A. The basic drivers are pretty easy and they are twofold. You go from six billion people to nine billion people basically in 2050. This combination of many more people climbing the energy ladder, which is basically welfare for a lot of people who live in poverty, creates that enormous demand for energy.
Q. How will the demand be fulfilled?
A. Many politicians think we have to make a choice between fossil fuels and renewables. We have to grow both fossil fuels and renewables. And that will be a huge effort for both.
Q. More energy means more carbon emissions. How do you deal with that?
A. That is absolutely the crux of the matter. The principal way we see is that in the very short term, man-made carbon emissions will increase. But over time people will figure out ways — and we work very hard on that — that while using fossil fuels you try to find carbon dioxide solutions. For instance, carbon sequestration. The problem is that many of the renewables, if you take the subsidies out, are still too expensive. That is the dilemma we face now.
Q. Fossil fuels are still going to represent the lion’s share of the energy mix in the next century?
A. First, there is no lack in itself of oil or gas, or coal for that matter. But the problem is that the easy-to-produce oil or easy-to-produce gas will be depleted or with difficult access. But if you look at difficult oil or difficult gas, which we in the industry call the unconventionals, such as oil sands or shales, they may be exploitable. But per barrel, you need a lot more technology and a lot more investments, and per barrel you need a lot more brain to produce it. It’s much more expensive.
Q. What kind of alternatives can compete?
A. The competition is partly true competition — markets, inventions — and part of it is governments. I think if you can price carbon dioxide, probably you can stimulate carbon capture and sequestration. If you tax a certain form of energy, over time it gets more expensive and you may use less of it.
Q. It still seems there is a gap that is hard to bridge.
A. If carbon is the real bottleneck, as a world it makes sense that we use our money where we get the biggest reduction for the lowest cost. You get more carbon reduction for less money by tackling the power sector and maybe the building sector.
Q. It is still hard to see that people are willing to pay more for greener energy.
A. I am a strong believer and strong advocate of free enterprise. If you would like to solve the carbon problem in the world, free enterprise has to work in close cooperation with governments to form the right framework. How you tackled the sulfur dioxide problem in the United States was the basic inspiration for the European trading system of carbon. So there are examples from the past we can apply to overcome that problem. But we can’t do it on our own as an industry. We need cooperation from governments.
Q. How close are we to an understanding globally that climate policy and energy policy are all interrelated issues?
A. Thanks to Al Gore, and many others, the awareness is there. There is a kind of sense of urgency. Secondly, there is a preparedness to do things. Thirdly, do we agree who has to take what action? I think that is still a huge problem.
Q. There was a lot of disagreement at the Bali climate conference.
A. That is correct. I realize that Bali is still very difficult. I am not a pessimist. I see it as a very difficult start-up. The crux of the matter is, if the people say, “Hang on, we are really concerned about the climate and we’d better do something on carbon emissions,” that is in the end the powerful force which politicians and companies cannot ignore. And I think we are past that point.

Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science

"....but progress in science is far less robust. Knowledge gaps persist between demographic groups, with European- and Asian-Americans scoring higher than other groups. Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said. Many are unable to answer correctly when asked whether Earth moves around the Sun (it does)." ............As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

January 16, 2008
Global Advances Challenge U.S. Dominance in Science
By CORNELIA DEAN
The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.
The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.
The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.
The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater “intellectual interchange” between researchers in academia and industry. The board also called for better efforts to track the globalization of high-tech manufacturing and services and their implications for the American economy.
Over all, the report said, surveys of science and mathematics education are “disappointing and encouraging.” Fourth- and eighth-grade students in all ethnic groups showed improvement in math, it said, but progress in science is far less robust.
Knowledge gaps persist between demographic groups, with European- and Asian-Americans scoring higher than other groups.
Many Americans remain ignorant about much of science, the board said. Many are unable to answer correctly when asked whether Earth moves around the Sun (it does).
They are not noticeably more ignorant than people in other developed countries except on two subjects, evolution and the Big Bang. Although these ideas are organizing principles underlying modern biology and physics, many Americans do not accept them.
“These differences probably indicate that many Americans hold religious beliefs that cause them to be skeptical of established scientific ideas,” the report said, “even when they have some basic familiarity with those ideas.”

Russia: Could Use Nuclear Weapons

Civilization marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Russia: Could Use Nuclear Weapons
Chief of Staff: Russia Could Use Nuclear Weapons in Preventive Attacks in Case of Major Threat
By STEVE GUTTERMAN
The Associated Press
MOSCOW
Russia's military chief of staff said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in preventive strikes to protect itself and its allies, the latest aggressive remarks from increasingly assertive Russian authorities.
Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky's comment did not mark a policy shift, military analysts said. Amid disputes with the West over security issues, it may have been meant as a warning that Russia is prepared to use its nuclear might.
"We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand ... that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons," Baluyevsky said at a military conference in a remark broadcast on state-run cable channel Vesti-24.
According to the state-run news agency RIA-Novosti, Baluyevsky added that Russia would use nuclear weapons and carry out preventive strikes only in accordance with Russia's military doctrine.
The military doctrine adopted in 2000 says Russia may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that poses a critical risk to Russia's security.
Retired Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, formerly a top arms control expert with the Russian Defense Ministry, said he saw "nothing new" in Baluyevsky's statement. "He was restating the doctrine in his own words," Dvorkin said.
Moscow-based military analyst Alexander Golts said that when Russia broke with stated Soviet-era policy in the 2000 doctrine and declared it could use nuclear weapons first against an aggressor, it reflected the decline of Russia's conventional forces in the decade following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
"Baluyevsky's statement means that, as before, we cannot count on our conventional forces to counter aggression," Golts told Ekho Moskvy radio. "It means that as before, the main factor in containing aggression against Russia is nuclear weapons."
Putin and other Russian officials have stressed the need to maintain a powerful nuclear deterrent and reserved the right to carry out preventive strikes. But in most of their public remarks on preventive strikes, Russian officials have not specifically mentioned nuclear weapons.
Baluyevsky spoke amid persistent disputes between Moscow and the West over issues including U.S. plans for missile defense facilities in former Soviet satellites, NATO members' refusal to ratify an updated European conventional arms treaty, and Kosovo's bid for independence from Serbia.
Like Golts, Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said Russia plays up its nuclear deterrent because of its weakness in terms of conventional arms. "We threaten the West that in any kind of serious conflict, we'll go nuclear almost immediately," he said.
But in the absence of a real threat from the West, he said, "It's just talk."

Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?

True FreeDumb in FreeDumb Land. Trust our lives to the ill defined corporate greedy guts model. Contempt for life? Science suppression spells disaster in countless arenas of our lives - Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

January 14, 2008

Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?
By ALEX BERENSON
Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.
But other doctors — including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind — say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
As diagnosed, fibromyalgia primarily affects middle-aged women and is characterized by chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin. Many of its sufferers are afflicted by other similarly nebulous conditions, like irritable bowel syndrome.
Because fibromyalgia patients typically do not respond to conventional painkillers like aspirin, drug makers are focusing on medicines like Lyrica that affect the brain and the perception of pain.
Advocacy groups and doctors who treat fibromyalgia estimate that 2 to 4 percent of adult Americans, as many as 10 million people, suffer from the disorder.
Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate. Further, they warn that Lyrica’s side effects, which include severe weight gain, dizziness and edema, are very real, even if fibromyalgia is not.
Despite the controversy, the American College of Rheumatology, the Food and Drug Administration and insurers recognize fibromyalgia as a diagnosable disease. And drug companies are aggressively pursuing fibromyalgia treatments, seeing the potential for a major new market.
Hoping to follow Pfizer’s lead, two other big drug companies, Eli Lilly and Forest Laboratories, have asked the F.D.A. to let them market drugs for fibromyalgia. Approval for both is likely later this year, analysts say.
Worldwide sales of Lyrica, which is also used to treat diabetic nerve pain and seizures and which received F.D.A. approval in June for fibromyalgia, reached $1.8 billion in 2007, up 50 percent from 2006. Analysts predict sales will rise an additional 30 percent this year, helped by consumer advertising.
In November, Pfizer began a television ad campaign for Lyrica that features a middle-aged woman who appears to be reading from her diary. “Today I struggled with my fibromyalgia; I had pain all over,” she says, before turning to the camera and adding, “Fibromyalgia is a real, widespread pain condition.”
Doctors who specialize in treating fibromyalgia say that the disorder is undertreated and that its sufferers have been stigmatized as chronic complainers. The new drugs will encourage doctors to treat fibromyalgia patients, said Dr. Dan Clauw, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan who has consulted with Pfizer, Lilly and Forest.
“What’s going to happen with fibromyalgia is going to be the exact thing that happened to depression with Prozac,” Dr. Clauw said. “These are legitimate problems that need treatments.”
Dr. Clauw said that brain scans of people who have fibromyalgia reveal differences in the way they process pain, although the doctors acknowledge that they cannot determine who will report having fibromyalgia by looking at a scan.
Lynne Matallana, president of the National Fibromyalgia Association, a patients’ advocacy group that receives some of its financing from drug companies, said the new drugs would help people accept the existence of fibromyalgia. “The day that the F.D.A. approved a drug and we had a public service announcement, my pain became real to people,” Ms. Matallana said.
Ms. Matallana said she had suffered from fibromyalgia since 1993. At one point, the pain kept her bedridden for two years, she said. Today she still has pain, but a mix of drug and nondrug treatments — as well as support from her family and her desire to run the National Fibromyalgia Association — has enabled her to improve her health, she said. She declined to say whether she takes Lyrica.
“I just got to a point where I felt, I have pain but I’m going to have to figure out how to live with it,” she said. “I absolutely still have fibromyalgia.”
But doctors who are skeptical of fibromyalgia say vague complaints of chronic pain do not add up to a disease. No biological tests exist to diagnose fibromyalgia, and the condition cannot be linked to any environmental or biological causes.
The diagnosis of fibromyalgia itself worsens the condition by encouraging people to think of themselves as sick and catalog their pain, said Dr. Nortin Hadler, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina who has written extensively about fibromyalgia.
“These people live under a cloud,” he said. “And the more they seem to be around the medical establishment, the sicker they get.”
Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.
“Some of us in those days thought that we had actually identified a disease, which this clearly is not,” Dr. Wolfe said. “To make people ill, to give them an illness, was the wrong thing.”
In general, fibromyalgia patients complain not just of chronic pain but of many other symptoms, Dr. Wolfe said. A survey of 2,500 fibromyalgia patients published in 2007 by the National Fibromyalgia Association indicated that 63 percent reported suffering from back pain, 40 percent from chronic fatigue syndrome, and 30 percent from ringing in the ears, among other conditions. Many also reported that fibromyalgia interfered with their daily lives, with activities like walking or climbing stairs.
Most people “manage to get through life with some vicissitudes, but we adapt,” said Dr. George Ehrlich, a rheumatologist and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “People with fibromyalgia do not adapt.”
Both sides agree that people who are identified as having fibromyalgia do not get much relief from traditional pain medicines, whether anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen — sold as Advil, among other brands — or prescription opiates like Vicodin. So drug companies have sought other ways to reduce pain.
Pfizer’s Lyrica, known generically as pregabalin, binds to receptors in the brain and spinal cord and seems to reduce activity in the central nervous system.
Exactly why and how Lyrica reduces pain is unclear. In clinical trials, patients taking the drug reported that their pain — whether from fibromyalgia, shingles or diabetic nerve damage — fell on average about 2 points on a 10-point scale, compared with 1 point for patients taking a placebo. About 30 percent of patients said their pain fell by at least half, compared with 15 percent taking placebos.
The F.D.A. reviewers who initially examined Pfizer’s application for Lyrica in 2004 for diabetic nerve pain found those results unimpressive, especially in comparison to Lyrica’s side effects. The reviewers recommended against approving the drug, citing its side effects.
In many patients, Lyrica causes weight gain and edema, or swelling, as well as dizziness and sleepiness. In 12-week trials, 9 percent of patients saw their weight rise more than 7 percent, and the weight gain appeared to continue over time. The potential for weight gain is a special concern because many fibromyalgia patients are already overweight: the average fibromyalgia patient in the 2007 survey reported weighing 180 pounds and standing 5 feet 4 inches.
But senior F.D.A. officials overruled the initial reviewers, noting that severe pain can be incapacitating. “While pregabalin does present a number of concerns related to its potential for toxicity, the overall risk-to-benefit ratio supports the approval of this product,” Dr. Bob Rappaport, the director of the F.D.A. division reviewing the drug, wrote in June 2004.
Pfizer began selling Lyrica in the United States in 2005. The next year the company asked for F.D.A. approval to market the drug as a fibromyalgia treatment. The F.D.A. granted that request in June 2007.
Pfizer has steadily ramped up consumer advertising of Lyrica. During the first nine months of 2007, it spent $46 million on ads, compared with $33 million in 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
Dr. Steve Romano, a psychiatrist and a Pfizer vice president who oversees Lyrica, says the company expects that Lyrica will be prescribed for fibromyalgia both by specialists like neurologists and by primary care doctors. As doctors see that the drug helps control pain, they will be more willing to use it, he said.
“When you help physicians to recognize the condition and you give them treatments that are well tolerated, you overcome their reluctance,” he said.
Both the Lilly and Forest drugs being proposed for fibromyalgia were originally developed as antidepressants, and both work by increasing levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, brain transmitters that affect mood. The Lilly drug, Cymbalta, is already available in the United States, while the Forest drug, milnacipran, is sold in many countries, though not the United States.
Dr. Amy Chappell, a medical fellow at Lilly, said that even though Cymbalta is an antidepressant, its effects on fibromyalgia pain are independent of its antidepressant effects. In clinical trials, she said, even fibromyalgia patients who are not depressed report relief from their pain on Cymbalta.
The overall efficacy of Cymbalta and milnacipran is similar to that of Lyrica. Analysts and the companies expect that the drugs will probably be used together.
“There’s definitely room for several drugs,” Dr. Chappell said.
But physicians who are opposed to the fibromyalgia diagnosis say the new drugs will probably do little for patients. Over time, fibromyalgia patients tend to cycle among many different painkillers, sleep medicines and antidepressants, using each for a while until its benefit fades, Dr. Wolfe said.
“The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained,” Dr. Wolfe said.
Still, Dr. Wolfe expects the drugs will be widely used. The companies, he said, are “going to make a fortune.”

Cholesterol Drug Has No Benefit in Trial, Makers Say

Trust our lives to the ill defined corporate greedy guts model. Contempt for life? Science suppression spells disaster in countless arenas of our lives - Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

More Problems For Vytorin Makers
NEW YORK, Jan. 16, 2008
(CBS) You've heard the commercial: "Cholesterol comes from two sources." And it looks like Vytorin's problems are coming from two sources as well, CBS News correspondent Susan Koeppen reports. First, from Capitol Hill, where Congress wants to know why it took the drug-makers Schering-Plough and Merck almost two years to reveal results of a study showing that Vytorin, which combines Zocor with Zetia, is no more effective than Zocor alone. "The drug from a health point of view, is not what it's advertised," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Stupak signed and sent letters today to both drugmakers requesting documentation about what they knew and when they knew it - and whether they withheld information to protect their profits. Vytorin is more expensive than Zocor, which is available generically. "Schering-Plough and Merck were supposed to provide information by 5 p.m. last night. At 4:50 they dropped off very incomplete files," Stupak said. "We need the information." The letter also expresses concern about Vytorin's direct-to-consumer advertising campaign. "It's just a fraud," Stupak said." The second source of problems comes from inside Shering-Plough itself. Turns out President Carrie Smith Cox sold 900,000 shares of stock worth $28 million last spring. That's after the study was completed, but well before the findings were made public this week. Both Schering-Plough and Merck told CBS News that they did not find out the results of the study done by outside researchers until two weeks ago. But the drug-makers had plenty of reasons not to want that information made public - almost half a million prescriptions for Vytorin are written every week.


January 14, 2008
Cholesterol Drug Has No Benefit in Trial, Makers Say
By ALEX BERENSON
A clinical trial of Zetia, a cholesterol-lowering drug prescribed to about 1 million people a week, failed to show that the drug has any medical benefits, Merck and Schering-Plough said on Monday.
The results will add to the growing concern over Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that combines Zetia with another cholesterol medicine in a single pill. About 60 percent of patients who take Zetia do so in the form of Vytorin, which combines Zetia with the cholesterol drug Zocor.
While Zetia lowers cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent in most patients, no trial has ever shown that it can reduce heart attacks and strokes — or even that it reduces the growth of the fatty plaques in arteries that can cause heart problems.
This trial was designed to show that Zetia could reduce the growth of those plaques. Instead, the plaques actually grew almost twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor than in those taking Zocor alone.
Patients in the trial who took the combination of Zetia and Zocor were receiving it in the form of Vytorin pills. The trial, called Enhance, lasted two years and covered about 720 patients with extremely high cholesterol, mostly in the Netherlands.
Dr. Steven Nissen, the chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, said the results were “shocking.” Patients should not be prescribed Zetia unless all other cholesterol drugs have failed, he said.
“This is as bad a result for the drug as anybody could have feared,” Dr. Nissen said. Millions of patients may be taking a drug that has no benefits for them, raising their risk of heart attacks and exposing them to potential side effects, he said.
Still, patients who are taking Vytorin or Zetia should talk to their doctors if they are concerned and not discontinue taking the medicines on their own, Dr. Nissen said.
Dr. Howard Hodis, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California, also said he was concerned by the trial’s results. Growth in fatty plaques — called atherosclerosis — is highly correlated with heart attacks and strokes, Dr. Hodis said.
“Clearly, progression of atherosclerosis is the only way you get events,” Dr. Hodis said. “If you don’t treat progression, then you get events.”
The results of the trial “necessitate further investigation — that just can’t be ignored,” Dr. Hodis said.
Both companies’ stocks fell on Monday, with Merck’s share price down a bit more than 1 percent. Shares of Schering-Plough, whose profits are much more dependent on the drugs, were down nearly 8 percent.
The results will also add to the controversy surrounding a long delay in releasing the results of the trial. Merck and Schering-Plough completed the trial in April 2006 and had initially planned to release the findings no later than March 2007. But the companies then missed several self-imposed deadlines, citing the complexity of the data analysis from the study and saying they did not know when or if the data would be ready for publication.
Last month, after several news articles highlighted the delay, they finally agreed to release the results soon.
For Merck and Schering-Plough, which jointly market Zetia and Vytorin and share profits from the drugs, the trial’s results are a serious setback. Zetia and Vytorin are important contributors to both companies’ profits, especially to Schering, which is smaller and less profitable than Merck.
Analysts estimate that about 70 percent of Schering’s earnings depend on the drugs. The controversy over the trial is also a problem for Merck, which is trying to repair its reputation after withdrawing the painkiller Vioxx from the market in September 2004.
In the United States, Zetia and Vytorin combined account for about 20 percent of the overall cholesterol-lowering market. More than 100 million prescriptions have been filled in the United States for Zetia and Vytorin since the Food and Drug Administration approved them in November 2002 and August 2004 respectively. Both drugs cost about $3 a day.
Because Zetia reduces cholesterol differently from statins like Lipitor and Zocor, doctors often prescribed it as an additional therapy for patients whose cholesterol remains high even after they are already taking statins. But even before Zetia was introduced in 2002, some cardiologists argued that statins had positive cardiovascular effects that go beyond their ability to reduce cholesterol, and that Zetia lacks those effects.
The Enhance trial covered patients with a gene that causes them to produce very high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, commonly called L.D.L., or bad cholesterol. Patients in the trial had L.D.L. levels of about 320 milligrams per deciliter at the beginning of the trial, about three times the level cardiologists recommend.
Over the two years of the trial, patients who took Zocor alone reduced their L.D.L. by 41 percent on average, while patients who took Vytorin reduced their cholesterol by 58 percent. Yet despite the larger cholesterol reduction, patients taking Vytorin actually had more growth in fatty plaques in their carotid arteries than those on Zocor. The carotid artery runs through the neck and delivers oxygenated blood to the brain.

France is healthcare leader, US comes dead last: study

With the lethal consequences of global warming intensifying and the threat of nuclear resource wars accelerating toward us, mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, while they stagnated in unmovable traffic, and their government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

When a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today, future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history: "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" Freedom is not to be disconnected from responsibility.

France is healthcare leader, US comes dead last: study
Yahoo News: Tue Jan 8, 4:45 PM ET
France is tops, and the United States dead last, in providing timely and effective healthcare to its citizens, according to a survey Tuesday of preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries.
The study by the Commonwealth Fund and published in the January/February issue of the journal Health Affairs measured developed countries' effectiveness at providing timely and effective healthcare.
The study, entitled "Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis," was written by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It looked at death rates in subjects younger than 75 that could have been prevented by timely and effective medical care.
The researchers found that while most countries surveyed saw preventable deaths decline by an average of 16 percent, the United States saw only a four percent dip.
The non-profit Commonwealth Fund, which financed the study, expressed alarm at the findings.
"It is startling to see the US falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance," said Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen, who noted that "other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less."
The 19 countries, in order of best to worst, were: France, Japan, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Some countries showed dramatic improvement in the periods studied -- 1997 and 1998 and again between 2002 and 2003 -- outpacing the United States, which showed only slight improvement.
White the United States ranked 15th of 19 between 1997-98, by 2002-03 it had fallen to last place.
"It is notable that all countries have improved substantially except the US," said Ellen Nolte, lead author of the study.
Had the United States performed as well as any of the top three industrialized countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year, the researchers said.

Scientists: We've Entered a New Epoch, the Anthropocene

Trouble With Physics: Fuel 2000 & Beyond

*Nuclear Energies are on standby and far more readily accessible than through fission or fusion

*The conversion factor between matter and energy is precisely equal to the quantity C, velocity of light

*The quantity C is the pivotal point about which the natural laws become manifest

*An energy differential equal to C between two reference points suspends the natural laws

*An energy differential in excess of C between two reference points, the laws appear to operate in reverse

*The natural laws are Relative: that is, the value of one can be altered between any two reference points by altering the value or relationship of the other. This last fact should always be borne in mind when we hear some dogmatist solemnly declare that we are forever barred from reaching the stars by the hopelessly great degree of separation which exists between us, or that the gravity field is disabled with only one pole.

As a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today (fundamental Trouble With Physics), future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history of the 'rise & fall of civilizations': "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" When the concept of Freedom disconnects from responsibility, it magically transforms to FreeDumb, the killer of civilizations.

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

Scientists: We've Entered a New Epoch, the Anthropocene
Researchers Believe an Era of Overwhelming Human-Caused Change in Earth Needs New Name
COLUMN by LEE DYE Jan. 2, 2008 —
We humans are having such a dramatic impact on our planet that some leading scientists think the current era needs a new name. We're no longer in the Holocene epoch, they say. We're now well into what they are calling the Anthropocene.
This planet is being changed by human activities in ways that will continue to alter Earth for millions of years. The most obvious example is global climate change precipitated by the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, but there are many more, some so obvious it's hard to think of them as insidious threats to our environment.
But they are indeed, according to the leader of the Anthropocene movement, Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen, who is said to have coined the word during a science meeting in 2000. Crutzen, former chief of atmospheric chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institute in Germany and now a part-time professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, is out with a new paper that leads off with a provocative question: "Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?"
The paper, published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the current issue of the journal Ambio, begins with this warning:
"Global warming and many other human-driven changes to the environment are raising concerns about the future of Earth's environment and it's ability to provide the services required to maintain viable human civilizations. The consequences of this unintended experiment of humankind on its own life support system are hotly debated, but worst-case scenarios paint a gloomy picture for the future of contemporary societies."
Pretty scary stuff, but Crutzen and his co-authors have done their homework. In fact, they argue that about the only thing that might head off a global human catastrophe is some other catastrophe, like "a meteorite impact, a world war or a pandemic." Here are just a few of their points, in their own words:
· Earth is rapidly moving into a less biologically diverse, less forested, much warmer and probably wetter and stormier state.
· Between 1800 and 2000 population grew more than sixfold, the global economy about 50-fold, and energy use about 40-fold. (Population is expected to reach 10 billion in this century.)
· Energy use grew 16-fold just during the 20th century, causing 160 million tons of atmospheric sulphur dioxide emissions per year. The number of motor vehicles increased dramatically from about 40 million at the end of World War II to nearly 700 million by 1996. (And according to other studies, all those vehicles are owned by just 15 percent of the world's population.)
· About 30 percent to 50 percent of the planet's land surface is exploited by humans. Tropical rain forests are disappearing at a fast pace, releasing carbon dioxide and strongly increasing species extinction.
· So far, these effects have largely been caused by only 25 percent of the world population.
A sticking point on labeling this a new epoch is disagreement over when the Anthropocene actually began. Some argue it began when our ancestors abandoned hunting and gathering and took up farming. Huge swaths of land were cleared and the trees burned, launching the rise in greenhouse gases.
A forester once told me that many years ago it would have been possible to walk from the California coast to the Mississippi River and only occasionally be forced to step out of the shade of an oak forest. Nearly all of that is gone now.
Crutzen and his colleagues  Will Steffen of the Australian National University, Canberra, and John R. McNeill of Georgetown University  concede that those early folks had a significant impact, but they argue that the real turning point began in the late 18th century with the industrial revolution, and it reached a new level at the end of the Second World War. They call the modern period the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene, when humans began to overwhelm their planet.
In their own words:
"The Great Acceleration is reaching criticality. Enormous, immediate challenges confront humanity over the next few decades as it attempts to pass through a bottleneck of continued population growth, excessive resources use, and environmental deterioration. In most parts of the world the demand for fossil fuels overwhelms the desire to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"About 60 percent of ecosystem services are already degraded and will continue to degrade further unless significant social changes in values and management occur. There is also evidence for radically different directions built around innovative, knowledge-based solutions. Whatever unfolds, the next few decades will surely be a tipping point in the evolution of the Anthropocene."
Those last couple of sentences are among the few encouraging words in their paper. Maybe we don't have to stumble down this path forever. But given the vast gaps between the haves and the have-nots, the relentless reach for a higher standard of living, the exploding need for more energy at seemingly any cost, it's hard to be optimistic.
As they note in their paper, "To develop a universally accepted strategy to ensure the sustainability of Earth's life support system against human-induced stresses is one of the greatest research and policy challenges ever to confront humanity. Can humanity meet this challenge?"
Lee Dye is a former science writer for the Los Angeles Times. He now lives in Juneau, Alaska.

Working Yourself to Death

Trouble With Physics: Fuel 2000 & Beyond
*Nuclear Energies are on standby and far more readily accessible than through fission or fusion
*The conversion factor between matter and energy is precisely equal to the quantity C, velocity of light
*The quantity C is the pivotal point about which the natural laws become manifest
*An energy differential equal to C between two reference points suspends the natural laws
*An energy differential in excess of C between two reference points, the laws appear to operate in reverse
*The natural laws are Relative: that is, the value of one can be altered between any two reference points by altering the value or relationship of the other. This last fact should always be borne in mind when we hear some dogmatist solemnly declare that we are forever barred from reaching the stars by the hopelessly great degree of separation which exists between us, or that the gravity field is disabled with only one pole.

As a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today (fundamental Trouble With Physics), future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history of the 'rise & fall of civilizations': "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" When the concept of Freedom disconnects from responsibility, it magically transforms to FreeDumb, the killer of civilizations.

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

Working Yourself to Death
Which Nation Works Harder Than the Rest? You Might Be Surprised
By BOB ROSNER Dec. 28, 2007 —

But the Japanese are slackers compared to another industrialized nation -- it's us, as in the USA. If you thought the Japanese worked longer hours, you are so last decade. In the mid-1990s we passed them to become the hardest-working country on the planet.

Dear Readers: It's time to look back on the year to identify the Working Wounded person of the year. We search worldwide for nominees, and some years it can be a very tough call. But not this year.
Meet our person of the year, Kenichi Uchino.
Unfortunately, Uchino can't accept the award because he died five years ago. But the result of his death changed the dialogue about work throughout Japan and in many other countries.
If you've ever seen a World War II movie, chances are that you've heard of hari-kari and kamikaze. You've probably not heard of "karoshi," which is the Japanese term for death from overwork.
We're not quoting Uchino's personal physician or union. No, this case of karoshi was acknowledged by a court in central Japan. It awarded his widow worker's compensation benefits. Furthermore, the Japanese government admits 147 cases of death from overwork last year, with some experts placing the number in the thousands.
The Japanese workers are some of the hardest working in the world, totaling 1,842 hours a year. That's the equivalent of sitting through 3,684 episodes of "Barney" or 921 corporate safety lectures.
Uchino routinely put in 80 hours of overtime per month for at least six months before his death. He was a middle manager in charge of quality control when he collapsed and died at work at age 30. My heart goes out to his young family for their loss.
But the Japanese are slackers compared to another industrialized nation -- it's us, as in the USA. If you thought the Japanese worked longer hours, you are so last decade. In the mid-1990s we passed them to become the hardest-working country on the planet.
We worked 1,979 hours. That is three and a half more weeks than the Japanese. We're talking almost a month more of work each year. Almost a year more at work each decade.
The sheer number of hours worked doesn't capture the problem. Stress, heart attacks, strokes and infertility. Yes, infertility. The problem has gotten so bad in Japan that the government is considering decreasing working hours for public servants in order to coax workers into having more babies. Overwork costs all of us.
In the United States we have terms for working long hours -- burned out, slammed and overwhelmed. We also have federal and state departments of labor, human resources departments and lawyers for workplace injuries. Thousands and thousands of employment lawyers are ready to lunge on those claims like a hungry dog on a piece of raw meat.
But we haven't reached the place where U.S. courts have declared karoshi. Yet.
But the clues were always right under our noses. Have you ever thought about how much of the language about work revolves around death -- deadline, dying to get a job, killing time, drop-dead date, etc. The time is right for a revolt against ridiculous overwork. It's hoped that Uchino's death will bring to life a movement toward more reasonable hours at work.

The Two Faces of Money - More Layers Unveiled

"How did the "money powers" amass enough power to control the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court, thereby subverting the Constitution - all in order to create a legal and monetary system that can be used to serve their own interests?

The Two Faces of Money

http://www.thetwofacesofmoney.com/index.php/Main/HomePage

*How is it that America - the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen - is also some 9 trillion dollars in debt?

*How is it that America's own citizens collectively have a negative savings rate, meaning most Americans are in debt?

*How did the "money powers" and the "invisible government" create our current monetary system, a system which has brought recurring periods of inflation, deflation and depression, not to mention the current financial crisis?

*How did the "money powers" amass enough power to control the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court, thereby subverting the Constitution - all in order to create a legal and monetary system that can be used to serve their own interests?

*How does the "invisible government" create wars for their financial benefit, leaving less and less money to maintain our critical infrastructure?

*Is there a better monetary system that can lead us out of inflation and away from the ultimate financial breakdown now facing us?
_________________________________

More on How: The Two Faces of Money

Revisit The Nature of Power

A Choice Not an Echo: The inside story of how American Presidents are chosen (Paperback)

Still Continuing, see post

"..this process has become to a great extent about money, Mr. Vilsack said, lamenting the fact that today’s presidential campaigns are “simply about a money primary.”
'08 Campaign Cash Race Claims First Casualty




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More on How: The Two Faces of Money

Revisit The Nature of Power

Dr. Stanley Milgram's Study

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More on How: The Two Faces of Money

Revisit The Nature of Power

Over 60 Years "Trouble With Physics": Fuel 2000 & Beyond
*Nuclear Energies are on standby and far more readily accessible than through fission or fusion
*The conversion factor between matter and energy is precisely equal to the quantity C, velocity of light
*The quantity C is the pivotal point about which the natural laws become manifest*An energy differential equal to C between two reference points suspends the natural laws
*An energy differential in excess of C between two reference points, the laws appear to operate in reverse
*The natural laws are Relative: that is, the value of one can be altered between any two reference points by altering the value or relationship of the other. This last fact should always be borne in mind when we hear some dogmatist solemnly declare that we are forever barred from reaching the stars by the hopelessly great degree of separation which exists between us, or that the gravity field is disabled with only one pole.

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

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More on How: The Two Faces of Money

Revisit The Nature of Power

"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
http://www.countercurrents.org/glo-reiner11503.htm - Huge corporations now control America's body politic by reason of their bald-faced purchases of the three branches of the American government and America's major media. by Ken Reiner: kreiner@earthlink.net
05/09/03: I view the continuing growth of corporate power and its despotic control of governments throughout the world, including our own, as a socio-economic disease. While Mussolini and others named it "Fascism," I call it "Corporism" because that name better reveals its underlying institutional structure. I would define Corporism as the domination of government and society by the emergence and power of the giant publicly-traded multinational corporations and financial institutions, organized in totalitarian hierarchies, which singly and in combinations buy or destroy their competitors, corrupt the politics of nations, and seize, hoard, and wield for themselves most of the wealth of the human race.
We must recognize that we do have this cancerous disease, what it is doing to us and the world we live in, how it came about historically, and how and why it continues to be generated and sustained now in our society. Just as computer viruses find their ways into the software of our computers and destroy their operation, Corporism, promulgating itself by financial, legal, and technological means, has infected society in ways that lead to the hoarding of human resources, increasing insecurity and misery for the bulk of the world's population, perhaps even to worldwide holocaust. We must conquer this disease if we are to survive.

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More on How: The Two Faces of Money
Revisit The Nature of Power

By William Rivers Pitt > t r u t h o u t Perspective > Friday 21 February 2003
OF GODS AND MORTALS AND EMPIRE

".........No mere citizen could do what these men in one moment can do with the crooking of a little finger. With a word, they can erase cities, deprive an entire populace of water and light, unleash disease and famine, annihilate the economies of dozens of nations, and imprison forever anyone who dares dissent. These men bleed, they sicken, they die, but in their time of life they can punch holes in the sky large enough to make Zeus wince with envy. Like the millions who marched, the gathering of such fearful powers into the hands of so few is also without precedent in all of human history. "

The Two Faces of Money

Trouble With Physics: Fuel 2000 & Beyond

*Nuclear Energies are on standby and far more readily accessible than through fission or fusion

*The conversion factor between matter and energy is precisely equal to the quantity C, velocity of light

*The quantity C is the pivotal point about which the natural laws become manifest*An energy differential equal to C between two reference points suspends the natural laws

*An energy differential in excess of C between two reference points, the laws appear to operate in reverse

*The natural laws are Relative: that is, the value of one can be altered between any two reference points by altering the value or relationship of the other. This last fact should always be borne in mind when we hear some dogmatist solemnly declare that we are forever barred from reaching the stars by the hopelessly great degree of separation which exists between us, or that the gravity field is disabled with only one pole.

As a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today (fundamental Trouble With Physics), future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history of the 'rise & fall of civilizations': "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" When the concept of Freedom disconnects from responsibility, it magically transforms to FreeDumb, the killer of civilizations.

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

The Two Faces of Money

http://www.thetwofacesofmoney.com/index.php/Main/HomePage

*How is it that America - the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen - is also some 9 trillion dollars in debt?

*How is it that America's own citizens collectively have a negative savings rate, meaning most Americans are in debt?

*How did the "money powers" and the "invisible government" create our current monetary system, a system which has brought recurring periods of inflation, deflation and depression, not to mention the current financial crisis?

*How did the "money powers" amass enough power to control the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court, thereby subverting the Constitution - all in order to create a legal and monetary system that can be used to serve their own interests?

*How does the "invisible government" create wars for their financial benefit, leaving less and less money to maintain our critical infrastructure?

*Is there a better monetary system that can lead us out of inflation and away from the ultimate financial breakdown now facing us?
The Two Faces of Money
By tracing our modern money system all the way back to the man-made god of ancient Babylonia, this book unfolds many of the misconceptions we have about money and the role government plays. With her Constitutional promise of a true, “democratic” money, America at her birth offered real hope to the world that mankind could at last break free of the heavy yoke of “false” money and its worship of mammon. Yet, with the exception of one brief twenty month period, America has never fulfilled that promise.
Instead, and through a long series of behind-the-scenes manipulations and legal maneuvers, a “new legal regime” was established by the invisible government of the money powers, taking America from a Constitutional Republic to the brink of an unconstitutional dictatorship. America truly stands on the precipice of her demise. But there is an honorable way out when we look for, and clearly see, the true and constitutionally mandated face of money.
Reader comments:
I have been studying this stuff for over thirty years, and I have never seen it presented like this. Being a 'gold bug' I never questioned how gold has been used to manipulate our money, our country - and our lives. But what is presented here is so thought-provoking, well-argued and compelling that I know I must share it with others. Eugene, Oregon
This book goes beyond blaming individual politicians for our failings by exposing the underlying causes that contribute to decision-making – ours and theirs. It should be read and re-read again and again, until you are able to carry its message to your own family, friends and neighbors. If you care about America, DO IT NOW! Woodridge, Il.
This book empowers each and every one of us with an amazingly easy-to-understand solution to our political, social and economic woes. San Fransisco, California