Real estate can be deadly: British tycoon kills stubborn tenant
Sep 8, 2009 Object
Filed under: People
Businesses, insurers, and other analysts have often sought to put a price tag on the value of a human life. In the health-care debate, for example, the magic number is $129,000; by comparison, when Ford designed the Pinto, its number-crunchers determined that the company’s customers (or at least the lawsuits that they were likely to generate) were worth $200,000 apiece. Meanwhile, as people sell kidneys for as little as $6,000, it seems like a life might be worth even less if it is sold a la carte.
In 2000, faced with an inconvenient tenant who stood in the way of a $3.8 million deal, British businessman Thanos Papalexis determined that a human life was worth approximately $500,000. That was the amount that he stood to make on a real estate deal. This assumed, however, that he was able to get rid of Charalambos Christodoulides, the shy, quiet man who lived near a London warehouse that Papalexis was trying to sell.
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Real estate can be deadly: British tycoon kills stubborn tenant originally appeared on DailyFinance on Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Real estate can be deadly: British tycoon kills stubborn tenant
Tags: a-friend-via, a-price-tag, health, paris-hilton, parishilton, people, stubborn-tenant, the-health-care
Heartburn drug illuminates growing mistrust of pharmaceuticals
Sep 8, 2009 Object
Filed under: Healthcare
This week, a study reported that heartburn medications can exacerbate existing conditions instead of alleviating them. The study, which said that Prilosec and similar drugs can cause more — and more painful — heartburn, reminded me of a realization made at a marketing focus group. The goal of the session was to review taglines for a local teaching hospital and medical center, but our disparate group was unable to come to even the most minor consensus. The group’s designers had done their job too well and we represented both ends of every conceivable opinion spectrum.
We were, however, united in one thing: our universal, even hostile, mistrust of pharmaceutical companies. And the way this study was designed is destined to reinforce that mistrust. Copenhagen University scientists recruited 120 healthy adults with no stomach problems and put half of them on a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) drug, and half on a placebo. The study participants took the pills daily for three months. At the end of the period, the researchers stopped the treatment and measured heartburn, acid reflux and indigestion. Of the group with the PPIs, 44 percent had developed symptoms of some stomach problem, compared to nine percent of the placebo group; a very significant outcome.
Continue reading Heartburn drug illuminates growing mistrust of pharmaceuticals
Heartburn drug illuminates growing mistrust of pharmaceuticals originally appeared on DailyFinance on Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Heartburn drug illuminates growing mistrust of pharmaceuticals
Tags: a-friend-via, disparate-group, drugs, even-the-most, heartburn, people, pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical companies, ppi, researchers, stubborn-tenant, study-reported, the-researchers, treatment, universal
