Archive for February, 2010

#diabetes

FDA Gives Novo the Go-Ahead to Market Victoza® in the U.S.
by Patrick Totty

Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has received Food and Drug Administration permission to begin marketing its type 2 drug Victoza® in the United States.

Victoza, the brand name for liraglutide, is a GLP-1* analog that is taken one a day by injection to help control blood sugar-and in some cases, help with weight loss-in patients with type 2 diabetes.

The drug, which has already been marketed in Europe, is being offered as both a monotherapy and as an adjunct to other diabetes drugs that are taken orally.

More >

This is from an email I received.

Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez, 23, and Enrico Garza, 26, probably believed they would easily overpower home-alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two-story home.

It seems  the two crooks never learned two things: they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine.

Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father’s room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buckshot from the 11-year-old’s knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals.

When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen .45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. That victim, 50-year-old David 0′Burien, was not so lucky. He died from stab wounds to the chest.

Ever wonder why good stuff never makes NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, or ABC news…….. an 11 year old girl, properly trained, defended her home, and herself…… against two murderous, illegal immigrants…… and she wins, She is still alive.

Now that is Gun Control!

Thought  for the day:
Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented immigrant’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist’

I like this kind of e-mail.  American citizens defending themselves and their homes.

Wellmark executives say Iowa’s aging population is to blame for rising insurance premiums; not greed or mismanagement. Representatives from the state’s largest insurance carrier testified at the statehouse Thursday at the request of lawmakers. Legislators want to know why 80,000 Iowans face premium increases averaging 18%.

Wellmark vice President Laura Jackson says it’s largely due to Iowans age and increasingly unhealthy lifestyles. “We can talk all day about health insurance reform, and there’s some great things that need to happen there, but if we do not address the underlying drivers we continue to have this rate of increase,” Jackson says. She says 60% of Iowans are overweight, which leads to higher incidence of diabetes and knee and hip replacements.

Jackson says in 2009, the company actually paid out more than it took in, forcing them to raise rates. She says 94 cents of every dollar they collected in premiums was spent on healthcare services, with less than ten cents allocated for administrative expense.

“So we take very good care of the dollars we do have and take very little for ourselves. In fact if you really compare it to a lot of not for profits, I think you would find that not even those amount of dollars go towards overhead, so as you think about that we really try to take good care of those dollars,” Jackson says. She urged lawmakers to create an environment that would promote healthier living and bring down costs.

But Representative Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines, says she remains unconvinced. “I left the table feeling the same way I felt last week that were not doing enough to regulate them and understand what the cost drivers are and what we can do to have an impact on the bottom line of what the rates are going to be for Iowans,” Petersen said. Petersen says she’s heard from many older Iowans whose rates have gone up regardless of health.

Petersen says, “I can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t be outraged. I mean Iowans are not going to be able to continue to afford it. It’s really affecting all aspects of our economy.” Petersen wants legislation that requires the state’s insurance commissioner to provide more detail when premium increases are approved.

Commissioner Susan Voss says one of the reasons rates are going up is because doctors and hospitals are turning to private payers as government reimbursements for Medicaid and Medicare decline.

Microsoft this week won a court order allowing it to shut down a so-called botnet that was distributing malicious software and spam. The botnet, called Waledac, is essentially a collection of tens of thousands of PCs from around the world that have been remotely taken over by hackers and organized into a cohesive network of malware-spewing hosts.

“At Microsoft, we don’t accept the idea that botnets are a fact of life,” says Microsoft Associate Counsel Tim Cranton. “Given the recent spread of botnets, we are getting even more creative and aggressive in the fight against botnets and all forms of cybercrime. That’s why I’m proud to announce that through legal action and technical cooperation with industry partners, we have executed a major botnet takedown of Waledac, a large and well-known ‘spambot’.”

Microsoft’s takedown of Waledac, known internally as “Operation b49,” began months ago with an investigation and consultation with law enforcement. According to the software giant, Waledac is one of the 10 biggest botnets in the world, and prior to the takedown, it was spewing out over 1.5 million spam emails per day, including over 650 million spam emails to Hotmail accounts during a three week period in December 2009 alone.

More >

By Ryan J. Foley

Inmate Kenneth Shong (Wisconsin Department of Corrections)

MADISON, Wis. — A lifelong con man imprisoned in Wisconsin worked with associates outside the walls to operate a suspected diploma mill that was recruiting students for at least two years until authorities uncovered the scheme.

Kenneth Shong, 44, helped to run “Carlingford University” while he was behind bars, according to interviews and documents obtained through the state open records law. Prison authorities uncovered the scheme in late 2008, but Carlingford’s Web site was taken down only this month.

The school was apparently just a phony moneymaking venture, according to state regulators. Its Web site claimed Carlingford had an office in Mobile, Ala., and a “regional training center” in Green Bay, but both were merely post office boxes.

More >