Help cure my libertarian ideals

[Inanna]

Maybe. The makers are now cashing in before their patent expires, so laissez-faire always finds a way around.

[Frelga]

I guess it's the government that guarantees patent protection, but isn't it in the same sense that "the government" that protects all private property? The alternative would be a lot more thuggery and assassination, I suspect.

Privilege, which just means 'private law.'
Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[yovargas]

I guess it's the government that guarantees patent protection, but isn't it in the same sense that "the government" that protects all private property?

I mean, that's the idea, intellectual property is treated much as private property. But perhaps that's a silly idea.

[Frelga]

And we are back to trying to define "justly acquired property."

[yovargas]

Indeeeeed.

[Maria]

I'm going to get my husband to ask for an epinephrine prescription at his next check up, and we'll just keep a vial and a syringe on hand instead of the epi-pen. MUCH cheaper, I've read. And less scary, really. I've always wondered about the mechanism involved and been slightly worried about a malfunction. A manual injection ought to be more reliable.

[River]

The purpose of the EpiPen is to enable allergy sufferers to dose themselves while they're sliding into anaphylactic shock. Loading a syringe takes fine motor control and steady hands. People in respiratory distress tend to be rather panicked and shaky, so expecting someone who's anaphylacting to load their own syringe and inject themselves might be a bit of a stretch. I'm sure some patients could make it work, just like some people manage to walk for miles on broken bones, but none of the allergy patients I saw in my ambulance days were going to pull that one off.

[Frelga]

The pen also allows an untrained bystander to administer the drug.

[Maria]

Good points.

[Primula Baggins]

The few times it happened to me, I was certainly glad there were nurses handy. I would probably have been too panicked and shaky to manage even a pen well.

[yovargas]

The pen also allows an untrained bystander to administer the drug.

Most notably children.

[Maria]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine_autoinjector

Hah! I thought the epipen had to be closely related to the nerve gas antidote gizmo we trained with in the Army 30 years ago.

One autoinjector, the EpiPen, is derived from the Mark I NAAK ComboPen, which was developed for the US military for treating exposure to nerve agents in the course of chemical warfare.[1]

I didn't know it was the exact same gadget, though!

It always kind of freaked me out during simulated nerve gas attacks. They said you hadn't really been dosed with nerve agent, then the antidote would kill you.

[yovargas]

They said you hadn't really been dosed with nerve agent, then the antidote would kill you.

[Inanna]

They said you hadn't really been dosed with nerve agent, then the antidote would kill you.

Bloody scarey.

[Maria]

I left the "if" out of that sentence!
I guess it still made sense.

I imagine that little factoid explains my heebie jeebies at the thought of using an auto injector at all. A simple syringe doesn't have all the negative connotations in my mind.

A couple of months ago, my husband got stung by a wasp and he didn't go into anaphylactic shock. We've been taking taking supplements that increase our methylation over the previous two months, and I'd read that proper methylation decreases allergic response. So, he took an antihistamine, and we sat down and watched TV with the (expired) epi-pen close by.

He was fine. It just lumped up and hurt like a normal sting reaction. Whew! As long as we don't skip the supplements, maybe bee stings won't be so life threatening for him now.

[River]

Allergies can also change over time. They are weird like that.

[Maria]

A couple of weeks later my arm started breaking out with poison ivy. Itchy red dots formed. This usually goes to oozing blister stage with me, for weeks. I doubled the amount of supplements that provide methyl groups and the dots faded within a couple of hours. I'd forget a couple of days later and they'd flare back up again. Rinse and repeat. It was a very graphic example of how my allergic reactions are tied to methyl status.

Not everyone is going to react like that, but it was very plain on me. Not a definitive answer on my husband, because he only gets stung once a decade or so.... but I usually get poison ivy multiple times in the summer. The dogs get it on their coats and then it transfers to me. I've only had the one almost incident so far and summer is almost over.

Having adequate levels of methyl groups on hand is very good for several kinds of genetic defects. My husband and I have different problems, but the solution is the same and also seems to affect allergic response. I've seen the effect mentioned several times as if it was a well known scientific fact on a couple of websites, but no one ever lists a source.

[Frelga]

Someone commented on Twitter that libertarianism is Dunning-Kruger effect applied to politics.

[yovargas]

I genuinely have no idea what that's supposed to mean. If it's intended as a weirdly roundabout way of calling libertarians dumb...meh.

[Sunsilver]

Care to expand on that, Frelga? I'm not sure what you're saying either. Do libertarians not understand government well enough to fully realize what would happen if there were minimal government influence in our lives? E.g., no social services, no police or emergency services.

I hope even extreme libertarians would realize how essential THOSE services are!