"You have to cool down in the right place."
Funny Animal Photos by Ty Buchanan
Drug Companies and Pharmacists Want More Regulation
It is always a worry when drug manufacturers and pharmacists force themselves on decision-making bodies. Self interest rules both groups. Drug manufacturers want to increase sells and raise prices by "hook or by crook". Pharmacists want to hold onto their monopoly provided first by a piece of paper provided by a college and secondly by the government paymaster.
Pharmacists are like real estate agents - there is one on every street corner. In a competitive market this shouldn't be the case. Skills learned at university in chemistry is never used. Everything today is prepackaged. An unskilled person could do the job. They even want to do the work of doctors extending prescription repeats.
The Victorian Pharmaceutical Misuse Summit includes the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. They want to bring in a medication monitoring system to reduce the number of drug overdoses. Being cynical, confiscation would be an ideal tact to increase sales. But aren't overdoses mainly taken by those intending to take their own lives? Surely, they are "barking up the wrong tree". More treatment facilities for mental illness are what is needed not medication controls.
We do not need another level of costly bureaucracy that clearly will not have any benefits. Obstructing patients from getting morphine based pain killers will only drive them into the illegal market. More regulation and policing of this "industry" has had not impact whatsoever over the years. In the US they have arrested so many drug dealing people it has become a nation of prisons, Do we want that here?
In Australia, GPs make a joke to patients when they have to phone up with the patient's details and get a prescription number in order to prescribe strong painkillers. Even doctors see it as an unwanted bureaucratic process. A doctor decides to write the prescription before he makes the phone call and the request is never turned down.
Health by Ty Buchanan
Climate Change is Inevitable
Australia is one the world's major producers of wheat. If climate change reduces national output there will be widespread consequences. The economy will suffer with the need to import wheat. Internationally, a wheat shortage will put prices up and many poor people will have to go without.
On the positive side some regions of Australia will get more rain. People will still be able to "fatten up" on sugar and rice, despite research showing that sugar contains no nourishment whatsoever for the human body. Two centuries ago a group of British sailors was shipwrecked on the west coast of Africa. The ship was beached. Even though the ship had a full load of West Indian sugar they all died of malnutrition.
Getting back to the main point. There will be competition for arable land pushing land prices up. There is also a link between the land and sea. Climate change will reduce the fish catch. Living in the bush will become impossible with farming failing to prop up local economies.
Potential for farmers to move up into higher areas is limited because Australia is a flat continent. Of course, we could all choose to move south. This would create the need for massive new investment in infrastructure.
These problems will affect the generation of children living today. By 2050, the food bowls in South Australia for sheep and beef will be no more. Man had little impact on the environment in the past, so we do not have the "genes" to change our ways. Pollution will inevitably continue until all the damaging changes above come to fruition. People working today will for the most part be dead. "It isn't our worry is it mate?"
Agriculture by Ty Buchanan
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