This is why I don’t feel any pain when american corporations bitch about copying of their drugs by Indian companies.

and the stakes are much more serious. Can’t find a link right now, but there’s a book by a Cal polisci Prof called the success of open source that notes the immense potential to apply the opensource model/Nonprofit to pharmaceuticals.

/end sarcasm

And the “baldy in the front, squirrel-tail in the back” hairdo isn’t helping him look any less creepy.

Maybe he jacks up the heat to subliminally promote a nudist agenda…?

Also imagine my puzzlement when I’d hear ‘alternative health practitioners’ (aka hippies) talk about Gotu Kola as a stimulant. Took me ages to figure out what they meant, because we ate gotu kola (and that’s what it’s called in Sinhalese) for cardiovascular, neurological, etc. health. Finally realized that they’d confused it with Kola Nuts. idiots.

That Bikram yoga guy is an opportunistic freak. And from what I understand, the problems with his ‘hot yoga’ methods are that: 1. people become really, unhealthily, dehydrated 2. the heat allows for a deeper stretch, which isn’t bad in itself…but some people end up stretching past what their bodies are ready to do (in a normal temp room) and they hurt themselves without knowing it.

As for his pose sequence…he says his “scientifically” patented sequence is the ‘optimal order’ for a whole bunch of things that basically mean hooey. Also, amusingly (depending on your sense of shadenfreude) the FAQ section on his site lists many variations on the question “I’m in pain after Bikram yoga. Is this normal?”

Anyway, speaking of men I’d like to slap until the brown comes off…publishing rumor has it that Deepak Chopra is writing his “interpretation” of the kama sutra. Just so you know I ain’t making this up, see here.

that’s part of the story.
the indian patents are awarded on the process. companies like cipla and ranbaxy are very good at developing new processes for back-engineering established drugs. the multinationals cry foul because they say that the r&d effort was spent proving the drug worked in the first place and in all the clinical trials.
at last call, the one drug that the indian pharma companies had produced with an international patent was some laxative, isabgol .

I wonder how many degrees away from 110 would eliminate the infringement?

US Pharma cried bloody murder at the thought of Indians selling this innovative life saver to desperate places like Africa when they should be getting rightfully more wealthy by selling mountains of pills to health organizations, NGOs and countries that can barely afford them even if they could get people to take 50 different pills a day. Big pharma is using patent law to protect their profits I.P.

My first thought was that the hypocrisy of some of these patent laws might give India some leverage to provide cheap and effective medicines to its own population and other countries without interference from the pharmas and our gov’t which will bend over and take it at the snap of their fingers.

Yeah Right, like hypocrisy ever stopped these corporations from making an extra dime at the expense of someone else’s life.