20 March 2013

Spring in Seattle

The first day of spring in Seattle. Gloomy, gray, drippy, chilly — pretty much like the last day of winter. I was about to give up on getting any snow at all this year (Scarecrow said we got a little, once, but I didn't see it), and now they're talking about snow tonight, maybe. wtf? It's even supposed to be windy, which we don't get much around here. I'm listening for the Thump that means a black cottonwood branch has landed on the roof, probably made a hole, which will probably leak. We really need to do something about the roof.

I can see a little bit of green on the trees in the park across the street. I know it's just moss.

But it's light enough to see it in the morning, so that's something.

Browsing around the news, I found this, which has nothing much to do with the first day of spring:

Biogen Idec advances blockbuster MS franchise on two key fronts

Now, I know nobody would be developing new drugs if there weren't money to be made. But holy crap. This is all so clearly about the buckets of money Biogen Idec is going to make in this incredibly lucrative market, and it's so great that a higher dosage works better, because they'll sell more of the drug and make even more money! In the final line they finally get around to mentioning the effect this might have on the lucky people who have the disease the drugs are meant to treat. This really makes me cranky.

But hey. It's the first day of spring, so that's something.

3 comments:

  1. It's so dang hot around here. We went from winter in the 60's to summer at 100 with no transtion.. ugh. Although today we had a "cold" front and the high was only 79... but tomorrow back up to 98. I sure missed the cooler weather. Such is life.

    The whole medicine world just plain pisses me off. It's certainly not about what people need to care for their health... it's not for the greater good anymore. It's all about lining somebody's pockets....

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  2. I noticed no mention of the fact (I would think) that increasing the dose of this possibly brain lethal drug might increase that horrible side effect...36%, doesn't that mean that in almost 2/3rds of MS patients it didn't work any better than a placebo? Oh well, I've never been good at math. It was sunny quite a bit over my way---hang in there.

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  3. We still have little bumps of snow sitting around in shady areas from our last shoveable snow on Mar 18th. Bumps of snow I have learned through the years are perfect for putting in Patti's lap for push and rolls, best of both worlds.

    Caregivingly Yours, Patrick

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