It'll be interesting to see if the DOJ manages to confiscate the crypto this time around, and if so how.
American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
41–50 of 128 posts
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The real warning to heed here is that we allow some countries to arrest citizens of other countries who committed crimes outside of their borders. > I know what extradition is, but the concept of spending your whole life in country A, and having country B decide it's time to arrest you and charge you within their jurisdiction makes me uncomfortable. That's not a very accurate description of what was alleged to have…
Parent comment plays into the current narrative of Anti-American sentiments and bolstering their internal prejudices with twisted reasoning and siding with massive drug smuggling operations. What’s worrying about anti-American sentiments is that people are willing to advocate for the worst of atrocities just to satiate their emotional state exasperated by media. I saw similar opinions in countless other threads. Amer…
Not sure what internal prejudices or twisted reasoning I have about my own country. I certainly don't know what it has to do with Trump.
My concern is that countries will ship people to a country they've never been to for things like drug crimes. The standard for what's wrong is going to change in coming decades, and countries that thought it's normal to extradite people for things like drugs are going to find themselves opposing extradition for things like illegal speech, etc.
And there are various charities that send things like birth control or abortion pills to women who can't legally or safely access them. I think if we saw incidences of people being extradited for mailing birth control, most people would agree it's a huge overstep.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How did this man get so numb to selling products that he knew were causing so much pain and suffering to others? If I had to take a guess, his income as the vice president of sales probably helped with that.
Yeah, I can imagine he faced many money/moral tradeoffs in his career, as do many of us, and perhaps he became more and more numb over time as he kept choosing the money, the whole boiling frog theory (if I used that correctly). I guess I still see it as an issue of how connected he felt to himself and other people. I know plenty of people right now, who, if they were offered his salary to do the same job, would neve…
I very much appreciate the way you’ve discussed these topics in this thread. You definitely have a tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt and I don’t think that quality is inherently faulty. I do think we have to recognize that some actions may require a certain level of sociopathic behavior and that sociopathy is very real.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Johann Hari A man whose professional experience is journalist and has no science, medical, public health, or psychotherapy background... and he’s trying to sell a book. Is this too harsh a take? Is there a reason I should be taking his opinion seriously?
Also a known plagiarist[1] and someone who has had his book's presentation of mental health/healthcare challenged[2]. It's an interesting (albeit I think too sweeping) opinion, but using him as a source just makes me question it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Plagiarism [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/...
I didn't know about the plagiarism or the editing of his critics' Wikipedia pages to portray them in a more negative light. I find the plagiarism to be concerning for trusting what he has done, and yet I think in this case, I would find fabrication worse than quoting someone from another conversation. About the Wiki edits, I see it as petty and yet not detracting too much from what I quoted, but again, maybe I'm just sticking to it because I like the argument he made, unwilling to dig deeper.
On the second point, I think it would be hard to find a book talking about mental health/healthcare that weren't challenged, but I could be wildly wrong on this. I just get the impression that there are many many takes on mental health, especially coming from a variety of fields—psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, social work, sociology, criminology, etc.—and that I personally believe we still have a lot to learn in this space.
I agree the opinion is probably too sweeping, as I like to qualify most of my statements and some people, especially authors and politicians, often exaggerate theirs.
> Your comment reminds me of an episode of Joe Rogan with Johann Hari [1], talking about what really causes addiction and the failures of the "war on drugs."
I guess I'm a bit confused at such pushback on Hari, but maybe by putting "really" in my statement, with such confidence in the statement, I invited such a challenge.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opioids are among the best medications for treating severe pain. If we're focusing on patients I'd much rather focus on rehabilitative strategies since the current degree of increased scrutiny is already making accessing adequate medication more difficult for groups like the elderly or people with chronic pain. Even more increased oversight is just going to escalate hesitation among doctors.
I wonder where most of the harm is coming from with opioids. Do the opioids themselves cause more harm than society does by making them illegal? The cases I've mostly heard about seemed to be that people hot addicted to opioids and the only way to keep it going was to break the law. That eventually got them in trouble. For some drugs it does seem like the government trying to protect you from the drugs do more harm t…
It's very much a value judgement ultimately even if I've obviously been advocating in favor of not shying away from opioids when appropriate. With the judgement being a matter of resolving immediate problems vs. minimizing exposure to potential problems. How you view the probability is important because if you are cautious and wrong you have let your patient suffer unnecessarily, they (or their family) might even seek out street drugs if you are wrong enough about their pain. Most people who are prescribed opioids do not become addicts and even amongst those who develop an attachment to the drugs most who follow their prescription will simply go through an uncomfortable period of withdrawal before moving on (though patient abuse of their prescriptions is a real problem that happens). You also have some groups for whom addiction is a simply not a concern, many elderly deemed near the end of their life for example are provided with morphine if they express a desire to focus on quality of life treatments and people with severe spinal damage can be so debilitated by the pain they can hardly function.
That being said, there is still a chance of a severe addiction developing and even if it doesn't many other addicts become addicts because prescriptions often erred on the side of oversupply rather than undersupply (better to have it and not need it as the gun folks say). So for example, a person might ask a partner in their workout group who went to the hospital if they can have a couple of their spare tablets to help with muscle recovery and things then spiral from there.
If there were universally acceptable substitutes it would be less of an issue but at present opioids are usually among the most effective treatments for pain even if they carry risks. I do agree that some amount of oversight is important and better methods for evaluating patient pain would be helpful too (see the recent controversey over evaluating pain in black patients) but because it's become a talking point many doctors are being much more conservative not because they think opioids wouldn't be beneficial but simply because they don't want to get caught in the shade if hammers are falling.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opioids are among the best medications for treating severe pain. If we're focusing on patients I'd much rather focus on rehabilitative strategies since the current degree of increased scrutiny is already making accessing adequate medication more difficult for groups like the elderly or people with chronic pain. Even more increased oversight is just going to escalate hesitation among doctors.
I wonder where most of the harm is coming from with opioids. Do the opioids themselves cause more harm than society does by making them illegal? The cases I've mostly heard about seemed to be that people hot addicted to opioids and the only way to keep it going was to break the law. That eventually got them in trouble. For some drugs it does seem like the government trying to protect you from the drugs do more harm t…
They need to let people take whatever they want to take and then educate everyone about how addictive some opiates are.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Johann Hari A man whose professional experience is journalist and has no science, medical, public health, or psychotherapy background... and he’s trying to sell a book. Is this too harsh a take? Is there a reason I should be taking his opinion seriously?
Because it's a novel opinion, and novel opinions are what a good scientist needs to make major breakthroughs. I sure people were saying the same things about Galileo as there were of the women from Alexandria before him, etc.
> novel opinions are what a good scientist needs to make major breakthroughs
I wonder how frequently those opinions come from journalists trying to hawk books on fairly facile premisses tho
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I can imagine he faced many money/moral tradeoffs in his career, as do many of us, and perhaps he became more and more numb over time as he kept choosing the money, the whole boiling frog theory (if I used that correctly). I guess I still see it as an issue of how connected he felt to himself and other people. I know plenty of people right now, who, if they were offered his salary to do the same job, would neve…
I very much appreciate the way you’ve discussed these topics in this thread. You definitely have a tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt and I don’t think that quality is inherently faulty. I do think we have to recognize that some actions may require a certain level of sociopathic behavior and that sociopathy is very real.
And I appreciate you saying this! I sometimes feel guilty for how I communicate on HN, being maybe a bit more emotional or colorful than other comments, but perhaps that's just me being self-conscious. So thank you.
I guess with sociopathy, even if they are behaviors that are very difficult or impossible for a person to change (something I strongly doubt in most cases), I'm still curious as to what brought a person to that stage.
This reminds me of one of the speeches that has touched my heart the most—"Love Your Enemies" by Martin Luther King, Jr.[1]—where he discusses how he strives to love a person, even if he doesn't like how they behave. I see sociopathy similarly—if the person can't change, I may remove myself as much as I can from their behaviors, but still wish them well. I don't know if it will help them change, but it sure helps me feel better :-)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=522wcqUlS0Y
edit added link
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#49Justice is such a poor way to describe what is happening here. I have full empathy with those who have struggled with opioid addiction or lost loved ones to the disease. But the fact is that opioid prescriptions are still being written with too little oversight, too few safeguards, and not enough support for patients. Withstanding such contradiction in treatment of opioid suppliers, the federal government cannot keep…
Opioids are among the best medications for treating severe pain. If we're focusing on patients I'd much rather focus on rehabilitative strategies since the current degree of increased scrutiny is already making accessing adequate medication more difficult for groups like the elderly or people with chronic pain. Even more increased oversight is just going to escalate hesitation among doctors.
Do you feel like chronic pain patients outside the US don't get adequate treatment? Because where I live opioids are prescribed much less frequently, but I don't think chronic pain patients suffer more than in the US.
Re: American darknet vendor and Costa Rican pharmacist charged
#50A victimless crime - unless you think we should be locking up all of the alcohol sellers? Alcohol addiction is a sad, sad affair. I would rather someone be addicted to pharmaceutical grade opioids than street heroin laced with fentanyl and other junk.
> A victimless crime
One should note that addicts do commit all sorts of crimes to continue their addiction. There probably needs to be some form of back attribution of said acts to those who leech off of addictions
IMO $277M (the value of the bitcoin) should be confiscated as possible and redirected to help victims of such crimes ...