Fidel Castro Dies . . . Again! And this time it's for realz.

[WOTR]

How do you keep pharmaceutical industry incentivized to search for new cures if they have a ceiling on their profits?  I don't know the answers to these questions.

The pharmaceutical industry is it's own question (while Cuba may produce doctors, it does not produce lots of new cures or treatments...)  Right now, profits are curtailed to an extent by patent laws only allowing a monopoly for a set period of time (which, of course the companies are trying to extend.) 

part of what bothers me right now is how much research is done by public dollars and the allowed to be privatized income.  The various charities (for instance cancer charities) and universities do lots of the heavy lifting and then the drug manufacturers take it the final way (what drugs do universities or charities actually produce vs. how much $$$ is spent.)

[albrecht]

The pharmaceutical industry is it's own question (while Cuba may produce doctors, it does not produce lots of new cures or treatments...)  Right now, profits are curtailed to an extent by patent laws only allowing a monopoly for a set period of time (which, of course the companies are trying to extend.) 

part of what bothers me right now is how much research is done by public dollars and the allowed to be privatized income.  The various charities (for instance cancer charities) and universities do lots of the heavy lifting and then the drug manufacturers take it the final way (what drugs do universities or charities actually produce vs. how much $$$ is spent.)

Much of our "system" is based on this concept, at least partially- from medicine, infrastructure to crime and illegal immigration. "Socialize" the costs and "Privatize" the profits. Even our wars are profits for certain companies. I'm not against profits but there should be some cap or like a "cost-plus," so that the industries still want to exist, when taking public money especially for things in war-time. Building zillion dollar stadiums with public funds so that the multi-millionaire's sports team can generate profits is the most ridiculous thing to me.

[Yorkshire pud]

http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/head-and-neck-cancer/symptoms-and-signs

It's called a generalization you dumb fuck british queer.

Shouldn't you be on towel patrol while your wife enjoy's her muslim and afrikan bulls in the other room?

C'mon, own up. Who let the child into grown up talk?

[GuerrillaUnReal]

It's weird to have someone in power who's actually saying real things.

[SciFiAuthor]

As disturbing as that is, I've seen the other side of it with NIH-funded gene research, not pharma per se but the therapies were used on real patients.  The place where I used to work got most of its funding because the director was a scientist on the board that reviewed grant proposals.  Pure science funded on its merits, free from cronyism and influence, is a fantasy.  I like your proposal, but it'd have to be set up in a competitive, adversarial way.

Interesting. It's sad but true, anywhere you have money games are played. I can't claim to know the best way of setting up a pharm system where the R&D is fully public and the manufacturing private, but I suspect it would gut drug prices given that all companies would be essentially generic suppliers and competing in an actual free market as opposed to the patent game they play now.

Not that I'm against the idea of patenting, just the opposite, it's just that it gets abused by people like Martin Shkreli. Even then, I'm fine with questionable capitalism if it's just a bunch of hedge fund guys screwing the system, someone's always gonna find an angle no matter what you do, but when the end of the line are sick people then I have an ethics issue with it all.

[Uncle Duke]

Trump's statement, and Canadian BitchBoy Trudeau's statement.

Wow.  Trudeau's statement kind of makes Trump's comments about Putin seem tame.  Wonder if the Conservatives will dig up that tribute during the next PM election.  Would Canadians find such comments disturbing like some Americans found Trump's Putin comments?

[Dr. MD MD]

Wow.  Trudeau's statement kind of makes Trump's comments about Putin seem tame.  Wonder if the Conservatives will dig up that tribute during the next PM election.  Would Canadians find such comments disturbing like some Americans found Trump's Putin comments?

His dad was actually friends with Castro and would vacation down there with him.

[Uncle Duke]

His dad was actually friends with Castro and would vacation down there with him.

Yes, I remember Pierre and Fidel were chummy. I also remember Nixon calling Truedau "some asshole". 

[Humilia Lepus Foramen]

Yes, I remember Pierre and Fidel were chummy. I also remember Nixon calling Truedau "some asshole".

The turd doesn't fall far from the asshole.

[albrecht]

Yes, I remember Pierre and Fidel were chummy. I also remember Nixon calling Truedau "some asshole".

What is so great about Nixon is that, especially from the tapes, he was an equal-offender and hated and ranted/made statements about every ethnic, religious, sexual or socially deviant (in term of statistics, I'm not making a moral judgement,) or racial group and even bitched about rich, white Republican people (like the kind who attend Bohemian Grove.*)

*"But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time . . . It is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."

[136 or 142]

Poor little Colin will be devastated.

http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/11/25/colin-kaepernick-praises-castro-lashes-nfl-fans/

To say that Colin Kaepernick praised Castro is at best maybe half true.  He praised Castro for spending more money on health and education than on prisons as a way to criticize U.S government policy on those things.

The sports reporter who confronted Kaepernick was clearly searching for a way to be offended and, no surprise, he found it.

I don't know if the Cuban government actually spends all that much on these things as I'm sure their government reports on these things are purely for propaganda purposes.

The point being that I suspect Kaepernick barely knows who Castro is.  The reporter wrote that he wore a "Castro shirt with pride" and Kaepernick pointed out that it was a shirt with a picture of Malcolm X meeting with Castro.  To claim solely on that basis that Kaepernick was a supporter of Castro's" as the reporter did is a logical fallacy known as 'hasty generalization.'

[136 or 142]

are you saying that noory murdered castro???     

Only partly.  Castro, for his first time, listened to an episode of Coast to Coast (they even get that on delay in Cuba) and committed suicide half way through the program.  Castro was heard to yell "I can't take any more of this annoying random laughter!" right before shots were heard.

[136 or 142]

Can't be too great if people have been risking their lives to leave that island ever since he took over.

People don't defect to Cuba either.

In the 1960s and 70s a handful of people hijacked planes and ordered them to be flown to Cuba.

[136 or 142]

My Dad wrote a pro-Castro paper when he was at the University of Tennessee in the late 50's.  Everybody thought Castro would be so much better than the evil Batista.  It turned out he just replaced one kind of totalitarianism with another kind of totalitarianism.  My Dad would laugh about the paper later and say he was dead wrong.  As for their health care system,  all I've heard are Michael Moore's claims that it is a better system and I don't believe anything that fat prick says.  I bet Mikey is devastated right now or will be in the morning.

That's what Woody Allen's movie "Bananas" is based on.  My favorite line from that movie is when the kindly revolutionary general turns into the insane dictator and Woody Allen's character brings him a present.  After leaving, the dictator complains "He brings cake.  He doesn't even bring an assortment!"

[ItsOver]

...The point being that I suspect Kaepernick barely knows who Castro is...

That I would believe.  It's like the ass-wipes who wear Che shirts to be "cool."

[136 or 142]

His dad was actually friends with Castro and would vacation down there with him.

I don't think that's true.  The only thing that's ever been reported is that they met once in Havana and had a long conversation and Pierre Trudeau praised him highly after the meeting.  They likely had phone conversations after that as Castro was a pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral, but I don't believe they ever vacationed together.

[136 or 142]

Maybe so.  I'll make a confession now.  I don't like what Castro stood for but when I saw him interviewed in the 70's and 80's, I kind of liked him.  He was affable and had a love for baseball which I shared. So I have very mixed feelings about the man on a personal level.  I don't like what he brought to Cuba though.

Castro was horrible. In justifying his dictatorship, he said something like "The Cuban people are like children.  They need a strongman to be their leader."

[Uncle Duke]

In the 1960s and 70s a handful of people hijacked planes and ordered them to be flown to Cuba.

And put into Cuban prisons. Morons.

[Dr. MD MD]

I don't think that's true.  The only thing that's ever been reported is that they met once in Havana and had a long conversation and Pierre Trudeau praised him highly after the meeting.  They likely had phone conversations after that as Castro was a pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral, but I don't believe they ever vacationed together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWBB26SVrwo

[136 or 142]

I don't know about their health care system in Cuba first hand, but from Forbes "Cuba treats healthcare as a human right, specifically stipulated in its constitution. Cuban nationals receive care for free, and have a neighborhood primary care physician who often knows them by name and sees them regularly."  I seem to recall reading that they have roughly twice the number of doctors per capita in Cuba as the US does...

If you pay attention to international news you will find that Cuba almost always sends more medical staff than other countries (including the US.) during a crisis.  When the US was actively discouraging doctors from going abroad to treat Ebola victims (quarantine, job loss etc), Cuba sent hundreds of doctors to work on the front lines (I seem to recall that dozens contracted ebola.)

To get you started, here is an article with the headline "Cuban medics in Hati put the world to shame." http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cuban-medics-in-haiti-put-the-world-to-shame-2169415.html

Say what you want about Castro or the system, in general- but they do produce world renowned doctors by the thousands, and have tens of thousands abroad (some being paid, some for aid work, some for humanitarian work.)

Yes, This is true. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of the subsidy from them, the Cuban government helped a number of Cuban medical researchers develop a world class pharmaceutical industry.  It seems even Castro could be an extremely capable capitalist.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/cuba-s-cutting-edge-pharmaceuticals-1.3622481

http://blog.ihs.com/revolutionary-medicine:-eye-on-cuba%E2%80%99s-pharma-industry-development-following-plans-to-normalise-us-cuba-diplomatic-relations

[136 or 142]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWBB26SVrwo

I wasn't aware that they also went out to the beach together, but, other than that that video backs up what I wrote.  That was from the one meeting they had together in Havana in 1976.  There is nothing in that video that says that they regularly vacationed together.

I should have written in my first post that your part about them being friends was likely accurate, but I didn't notice you wrote that at the time and it's implicit in my comment anyway as I wrote that Castro was a pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral.

[Uncle Duke]

I do know Cuban field hospitals are highly respected by UN and other international aid agencies who respond to disaster scenes.  I have a former colleague who saw the Cubans medicos in action in Haiti, he said they were outstanding.  They also offered to send medical teams to the US after Katrina and 9/11, but the offers were declined.

[norland2424]

[Jackstar]

[Jackstar]

Castro himself survived over 500 CIA assassination attempts â€" more than any leader in recent human history.

[21st Century Man]

That's what Woody Allen's movie "Bananas" is based on.  My favorite line from that movie is when the kindly revolutionary general turns into the insane dictator and Woody Allen's character brings him a present.  After leaving, the dictator complains "He brings cake.  He doesn't even bring an assortment!"

I love Woody's zany movies up through Love and Death.  While many of his later movies are great,  his early films will always be my favorites.

[21st Century Man]

Castro was horrible. In justifying his dictatorship, he said something like "The Cuban people are like children.  They need a strongman to be their leader."

I know.  I know.  I'm not excusing the guy but he would be an interesting guy to hang out with for a few days.  I feel the same way about Bill Clinton.  I don't like their politics but they both could be charming when they wanted to be.

[WOTR]

I don't think that's true.  The only thing that's ever been reported is that they met once in Havana and had a long conversation and Pierre Trudeau praised him highly after the meeting.  They likely had phone conversations after that as Castro was a pall bearer at Trudeau's funeral, but I don't believe they ever vacationed together.

The CBC was interviewing a man who used to be Canada's ambassador to Cuba this evening.  Trudeau's visits as a private citizen did come up.  I don't think it was "vacationing together"... More that Trudeau vacationed in Cuba and met Castro while on vacation as a private citizen.

***Edit: Mark Entwistle (the ambassador) around 8:20 in claiming to have been present at the meetings with Trudeau and Castro when Trudeau was a private citizen.


http://podcast.cbc.ca/twtw/saturday.mp3

[Lt.Uhura]

I turned on my Grundig SW tonight and came upon Radio Havana Cuba.  They were reading condolences "pouring in" from around the world, many from the U.S.  Everybody extolling what a "great leader" he was. He was a man who evoked extremes, was either loved or hated.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Havana_Cuba

[Jackstar]

He was a man who evoked extremes