DL Open Thread: Thursday, August 22, 2024
Missed the proceedings last night. Did Bill Clinton bite his lower lip?
The Case Of The Missing Pancreata: At least 7000 have vanished without a trace:
There are some mysteries that I fear I’ll never see resolved. Who was DB Cooper and what happened to him? Who robbed the Gardner Museum of its Vermeer and Rembrandts in 1990? And, most pressingly: where are the thousands of pancreases taken out of Americans’ dead bodies in 2021, 2022, and 2023 that were never transplanted into anybody?
Let me back up. Pancreata (the correct plural form of “pancreas”) are one of those organs you can’t live without. Without one, you don’t have insulin to regulate blood sugar or enzymes necessary to digest food. So all donated pancreata come from dead people who register as organ donors. In the US, we outsource the job of collecting organs from dead bodies to private groups called organ procurement organizations, or OPOs. Each OPO has a monopoly on organs in a particular geographic area; there are 56 groups total, some of which only cover part of a state and some of which cover multiple states.
The Federal government (even Trump!) tried to make these private groups more accountable. However, in a way that BHL’s numerous campaign treasurers would envy:
The rule had the potential to force OPOs to collect more organs and save thousands more lives every year. But the OPOs quickly figured out a new loophole. (AKA ‘The Pancreas Loophole).
But while OPOs couldn’t muck with the denominator anymore, they could still muck with the numerators. Being a donor generally means that your organs are used in a transplant, but there’s a carve-out for one organ: the pancreas.
A narrow 2004 law allows researchers running clinical trials to conduct transplants of islet cells (the parts of the pancreas that produce insulin) as a potential cure for diabetes. Because of that law, OPOs could “recover” pancreases for islet cell transplant research, and get credit for recovering more organs under the new rule. But the federal government never asked for any proof that these organs were part of any FDA-approved research.
Sure enough, the total number of pancreata that OPOs labeled as for “research” grew from 513 in 2020 to a whopping 3,238 in 2023. The number of donors whose only recovered organ was a pancreas designated for research grew from 25 to 429, according to the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network. That’s an over tenfold increase in three years.
Come to think of it, the Feds really should hire Dana Long. They need someone who thinks like a criminal to ferret out the criminals.
But I digress. Nations around the world have sent fleets of planes to scour the far-flung Isles Of Langerhans in search of the missing pancreata. Been told that the livers and kidneys are on a slow boat to Sydney. Hmmm, has anyone been in contact with Peru? Portugal? Pakistan, Palau, Palestine, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico? Where the hell are my goddamn meds??!!
Deep cleansing breaths. Regardless of what ‘they’ do with my other organs, I’m Saving My Heart For You.
Quite the impressive 500-word vamp, if I say so myself. (Pauses to admire work, eschews humility.) Now, where was I?
“The Highly-Overrated Jewish Governor Of The Great Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania”. Trump’s not winning any Jewish voters with this one. Miriam Adelson might be one-and-done:
The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for President, yet she hates Israel…
Yet Shapiro, for political purposes, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had.
He goes on, you can read the whole thing if you have brain cells that need killing.
The senator’s speech was given at the launch of a “counterrevolutionary” book – praised by the now Republican vice-presidential candidate as “great” – which was edited and mostly written by employees of the far-right Claremont Institute.
In the book, Up from Conservatism, the authors advocate for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act, for politicians to conduct “deep investigations into what the gay lifestyle actually does to people”, that college and childcare be defunded and that rightwing governments “promote male-dominated industries” in order to discourage female participation in the workplace.
‘Kamala Harris Is Right About Price-Gouging’. The economists are wrong, according to this piece:
Last week, the economics commentariat and much of the mainstream media erupted with contempt toward Kamala Harris’s proposed federal price-gouging law. Op-eds, social-media posts, and straight news reports mocked Harris for economically illiterate pandering and warned of Soviet-style “price controls” that would lead to shortages and runaway inflation.
The strange thing about these complaints is that what Harris actually proposed was neither radical nor new—and it certainly wasn’t price controls. In fact, almost every state already has a law restricting at least some forms of price gouging. Although Harris has not specified the exact design of her proposal, one hopes that it would follow the basic outline of state-level bans: forbidding unwarranted price hikes for necessary goods during emergencies.
Price gouging in the popular imagination has a “know it when you see it” quality, but it is actually a well-developed body of law. A typical price-gouging claim has four elements. First, a triggering event, sometimes called an “abnormal market disruption,” such as a natural disaster or power outage, must have occurred. Second, in most states, the claim must concern essential goods and services. (No one cares if you overcharge for Louis Vuitton handbags during a hurricane.) Third, a price increase must be “excessive” or “unconscionable,” which most states define as exceeding a certain percentage, typically 10 to 25 percent. Finally, the elevated price must be in excess of the seller’s increased cost. This is crucial: Even during emergencies, sellers are allowed to maintain their existing profit margins. They just can’t increase those margins excessively.
Better quit now. Don’t want to be accused of being someone who ‘can’t find their pancreas using both hands’. Although, come to think of it, I can’t.
What do you want to talk about?
Nice George Carlin reference, but it was the lungs and the kidney for the summer to Sydney, and the liver to Peru. 🙂
It was a parody of the old Dristan commercial.
Here’s the original commercial, for those of us old enough to remember it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quKcG0cXXpI
Trump is a moron and we all know that but i think he is a useful idiot for the producers of project 2025. they know he’s an idiot and has 50 million people who will vote for him no matter what he does and says. even in 2016 he didnt pick the worst possible vp candidate but this time he did, someone who is knee deep in project 2025. he didnt pick him the backers did.
“forbidding unwarranted price hikes for necessary goods during emergencies.”
That’s fine if that’s all it is. I don’t think that’s what voters disgruntled about inflation are looking for though. Waiting for details.
So, it’s give me pancreata or give me death then? Is there no low to which said OPO’s will not stoop? Nope, as such I find that they are likely to be owned and run by Republicans.