Sunday, February 17, 2013

Varsity Team's Point Guard Isn't Short For His Age, He's In 5th Grade

ORLANDO, Fla. â€" The Downey Christian School varsity basketball team bursts from the locker room in single file, led by a boy 14 inches shorter than the next smallest player, four years younger than the next youngest.

His jersey straps are twisted and bound with plastic ties to prevent them from slipping down his bony 4-foot-5, 70-pound frame. Tricolor socks with pastel waves cover his size 4 feet, conveying the notion that he might be a stylish student manager.

At road games, the boy, point guard Julian Newman, is asked, “Are you on the team?” Here, in the Patriots’ gymnasium, there is no doubt.

The grand marshal of the player parade, Julian, an 11-year-old fifth grader, guides his team into warm-ups, bouncing two balls at once. He glides into a pregame routine that shuffles through jab steps, hesitation moves and effortless dribbles â€" between his pipestem legs, behind his back, rapid crossovers. The scene is incongruous enough to seem computer-animated.

Not long ago, Newman was a mere curio in the compact circle of sports programs at small Christian schools in Central Florida. But his age, his size and the wild contrast of his stature on the court with relative giants have brought global attention through Internet videos. The most-watched clip of Julian has generated more than 1.27 million views on YouTube. It has prompted a visit from “Inside Edition,” an appearance on “Steve Harvey,” comments on Twitter by Baltimore Ravens players, coverage by news agencies from as far as China and a performance at an Orlando Magic game. ScoutsFocus of Greenville, N.C., which evaluates and ranks high school players, helped put together the viral video that was filmed by a Patriots assistant.

“He’s a very talented kid and comes from a great family,” Joe Davis, the national recruiting coordinator for ScoutsFocus, said of Julian. “He’s smaller, so that’s going to be his main obstacle, but he has a great future once he hits a growth spurt or two.”

Two nights before his N.B.A. halftime performance, Julian said between bites of chicken tenders ordered from a children’s menu that he was working on a routine involving three basketballs. Despite his fame, he has maintained the same degree of obsession. There is little, if any, room for it to grow.

Julian fills his days by spending time in a gym or at the hoop in his front yard, where his father, Jamie, the Downey Christian coach, has painted lines to approximate a college court. Julian sinks 100 free throws, 200 floaters and 200 jump shots every day. On 3-point attempts, he leans into the shots slightly, as if to guide the ball telepathically.

The process, on a good day, requires three hours, not that he is in a hurry. The neighbors have complained, Jamie said, that the thwonk of the ball has awakened them as late as 1 a.m.

Nor does bedtime necessarily close the book on his regimen. Lying on his bed, with 13 N.B.A. jerseys along with posters of Magic Johnson and LeBron James decorating the walls, with basketballs worn out within weeks scattered about, Julian soft-tosses a ball toward the ceiling, always perfecting his form, until nodding off.

By Julian’s reckoning, he has never taken off longer than two straight days, and then only to mend a sprained ankle. Before the Newmans go on vacations, he insists that a park or recreation center with a rim be nearby.

His mother, Vivian, was almost asked to leave a department store because Julian could not resist fetching a ball from sporting goods and dribbling it down the aisle. His wish lists for gifts are basketball-centric.

His scarce time on a computer is usually spent on the YouTube channel Superhandles. Operated by a former college player whose father exposed him at an early age to footage of Pete Maravich, as Julian was by his father, Superhandles features videos of dribbling drills and masterly moves. Julian commits them to memory, then goes to the closest court and mimics them.

The Newmans portray him as self-driven, a prodigy of sorts, eager to meet their basic requirements in order to pursue his. He earns straight A’s, they say, motivated by a policy effective enough to be every parent’s dream: homework before hoops. That explains why Julian used to knock out assignments during recess so he could start knocking down shots immediately after school.

His parents decline to impose time restrictions on basketball during weekends, holidays and summers. “People say don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Jamie said. “But it helps you.”

Soon after Julian showed his inclination at age 3, his father placed him on an accelerated course. He supplied regulation-size balls, not the more age-appropriate miniatures. In recreation leagues, Julian played against older boys.

For Julian, genes have proved a mixed blessing. Jamie and Vivian were point guards at rival Orlando high schools â€" the backdrop for their initial meeting. But Jamie is 5-6 and Vivian 5 feet, which suggests that Julian, who is a couple of inches shorter than the average 11-year-old, might be looking up at teammates and foes forever.

His family tree â€" with Jewish, black and Hispanic roots â€" includes one relative who barely pushed past 6 feet. Jamie hopes Julian will grow to 5-10.

For now, his being low to the ground is an asset. In Julian’s hands, the ball, a virtual yo-yo, becomes nearly impossible to steal. His lickety-split crossovers defy his age, if not belief.

“You see more of him dribbling the ball than you’ll see watching an N.B.A. game,” Jamie said, allowing parental pride to get the better of him.

Invoking two of Julian’s favorite players, Jamie added, “He can do stuff that Chris Paul and Derrick Rose can’t.”

Jamie, who also runs basketball camps and clinics, sent Julian and his sister Jaden, 8, to Downey Christian after being hired to coach and to teach history. Enrollment is so small â€" 340 students, from preschool through 12th grade â€" that the Patriots play six-man football.

Julian and Jaden began this season on their middle school teams. Tired of taking friendly ribbing from Jaden, who scored 63 points in a game, he hit for 69, then 91, earning a promotion to the varsity.

Vivian’s reaction to the upgrade? “At first, I felt no, as a mother,” she said. “I was scared he would get squished.”

Julian came off the bench, but not for long.

“If we wanted to win games, we’d have to play him right away,” Jamie said.

The Patriots’ upperclassmen were skeptical.

“But he definitely proved us wrong,” the junior Jonathan Ferrell said. “I look up to him now because he’s so much better than me.”

Downey, a longtime doormat of its low-level league, now dominates with an 18-5 record. The role reversal has not sat well with some schools, Jamie said. Five have forfeited games. For some, he said, “the real reason is, they don’t want to lose.”

The pattern of forfeits has strengthened Jamie’s resolve to shift next year into the mainstream Florida High School Athletic Association for the second of what will be Julian’s eight varsity seasons.

Any resentment toward Julian has stayed hidden. Opponents have refrained from digging an elbow or a forearm into him or nudging him into the wall on drives to the rim.

“It’s amazing to me that he hasn’t been hit harder,” Jamie said, hinting at a strategy he would use against his son.

If the play becomes too physical for Julian, Ferrell said, “We’d have his back.”

On a recent evening, the Patriots loosened up for nearly an hour until Jamie reached the visitors by cellphone to discover that they were not coming. (They later made up the game.) The Patriots resorted to an intrasquad scrimmage. During timeouts, Jaden, who at 4-1 has joined the girls’ varsity, dribbled and drilled short jumpers, free throws and, induced by a family acquaintance’s $1 reward, a 3-pointer.

Jamie, sounding more like a father than a neutral observer, said, “They are the next Cheryl and Reggie Miller.”

Miles and years separate Julian and the warehouselike Downey gym â€" with its scuffed tile floor, seven short rows of metal bleachers, two opened ladders on one sideline and file cabinets in a corner â€" from a spacious college or professional arena.

To the longtime recruiting expert Dave Telep, now with ESPN, trying to project a fifth grader’s development is fruitless. “The best kid in my baseball Little League didn’t make the majors,” he said.

Jamie has no plans to leave Downey Christian, saying he intends to build its program with Julian aboard. He said he had received inquiries from youngsters elsewhere about transferring to play for his team.

“From a basketball standpoint, it may not be the best situation, but that’s O.K.,” Telep said of Julian’s growth. “If you can play, you can play. If it’s right for you academically and socially, by all means, stay there.

“Somewhere along the line, you’ll have to step out of that bubble and prove you can play.”

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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Samsung Challenges Apple’s Cool Factor

Apple, for the first time in years, is hearing footsteps.

The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger able to make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet â€" not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry â€" until Samsung Electronics.

The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales. Armed with other Galaxy phones and tablets, Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to Apple, the top consumer electronics maker. The two companies are the only ones turning profits in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, with Apple taking 72 percent of the earnings and Samsung the rest.

Yet these two rivals, who have battled in the marketplace and in the courts worldwide, could not be more different. Samsung Electronics, a major part of South Korea’s expansive Samsung Group, makes computer chips and flat-panel displays as well as a wide range of consumer products including refrigerators, washers and dryers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, PCs, printers and TVs.

Where Apple stakes its success on creating new markets and dominating them, as it did with the iPhone and iPad, Samsung invests heavily in studying existing markets and innovating inside them.

“We get most of our ideas from the market,” said Kim Hyun-suk, an executive vice president at Samsung, in a conversation about the future of mobile devices and television. “The market is a driver, so we don’t intend to drive the market in a certain direction,” he said.

That’s in stark contrast to the philosophy of Apple’s founder Steven P. Jobs, who rejected the notion of relying on market research. He memorably said that consumers don’t know what they want.

Nearly everything at Samsung, from the way it does research to its manufacturing, is unlike Apple. It taunts Apple in its cheeky advertisements while Apple stays above the fray.

And the Korean manufacturer may even be putting some pressure on Apple’s world-class designers. Before Apple released the iPhone 5, which had a larger screen than earlier models, Samsung had already been selling phones with even bigger displays, like the 5.3-inch screen Galaxy Note, a smartphone so wide that gadget blogs call it a phablet.

Samsung outspends Apple on research and development: $10.5 billion, or 5.7 percent of revenue, compared with $3.4 billion, or 2.2 percent. (Samsung Electronics is slightly bigger than Apple in terms of revenue â€" $183.5 billion compared with $156.5 billion â€" but Apple is larger in terms of stock market value.)

Samsung has 60,000 staff members working in 34 research centers across the globe, including, Russia, Britain, India, Japan, Israel, China and Silicon Valley. It polls consumers and buys third-party research reports, but it also embeds employees in countries to study trends or merely to find inspiration for ideas.

Designers of the Galaxy S III say they drew inspiration from trips to Cambodia and Helsinki, a Salvador Dalí art exhibit and even a balloon ride in an African forest. (It employs 1,000 designers with different backgrounds like psychology, sociology, economy management and engineering.)

“The research process is unimaginable,” said Donghoon Chang, an executive vice president of Samsung who leads the company’s design efforts. “We go through all avenues to make sure we read the trends correctly.” He says that when the company researches markets for any particular product, it is also looking at trends in fashion, automobiles and interior design.

Hangil Song, a Samsung product designer, described a visit to the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore, where he said he was amazed by the views of the sky, the cityscape and the water. He wanted to create an effect where water was overflowing from the screen. As a result, taps and swipes on the Galaxy S III’s phone screen create a unique ripple effect.

The genesis of the wide Galaxy Note phone reflects that same kind of consumer research. From focus groups and surveys, Samsung found that many respondents wanted a device that was good for handwriting, drawing and sharing notes. Asian-language speakers, in particular, found it easier to write characters on a device using a pen than typing. Those insights led to the Note, a smartphone that comes with a digital pen.

In courts, jury members have said some of Samsung’s research appears to comes closer to copying. Apple sued Samsung in Federal District Court last year for patent infringement and won a $1 billion judgment. One of the most explosive pieces of evidence was a detailed report breaking down each hardware and software feature of the iPhone and how each compared to Samsung phone features. Samsung is fighting the decision in court.

Roy Furchgott contributed reporting.

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Monday, February 11, 2013

It's Surprisingly Hard To Name A Mountain After Ronald Reagan

By Molly Ball Comment

If this activist gets his way, there will be a Mount Reagan in Nevada, possibly as soon as next year. But it hasn't been easy.

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Chuck Muth imagines a world where Las Vegas tourists could take a patriotic break from gambling and Cirque du Soleil for a side trip to Mount Reagan.

Muth, a Nevada activist and former executive director of the American Conservative Union, is spearheading the effort to get a Las Vegas-area peak named after the late president and right-wing hero. The initiative is part of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, a push to memorialize the former president as widely as possible that's backed by anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who is an old friend of Muth's. The sometimes-controversial effort has gotten more than 3,000 landmarks named for the Gipper, including highways, buildings, and schools -- but never a mountain. While 12 other presidents have U.S. mountains named for them, and FDR has a peak in Canada, getting approval for Mount Reagan has proved unexpectedly difficult.

Muth has been working on the proposal for more than a decade, and now he believes it is finally close to succeeding. In an interview, Muth and I discussed whether this mountain is grand enough for Reagan, why the "Mount Reagan" in New Hampshire doesn't count, and how Mark Twain ran afoul of Smokey Bear. This is an edited transcript of our conversation.


Why do this?

In 1997, Grover Norquist started the Reagan Legacy Project with the intention of having something named after Ronald Reagan in all 50 states. I moved back to Nevada in 1999 and discovered there was nothing named for Reagan in Nevada. Talking to [other activists], one beer led to another, and we thought, we've got plenty of mountains here -- why don't we try to name a mountain after Reagan?

That was 14 years ago. What happened?

What we didn't know was all the bureaucratic speed bumps we would encounter along the way. There is a Board on Geographic Names that has to agree to any naming of natural features -- first the Nevada board, then the national board has to approve it. First we thought about renaming Boundary Peak, on the California border. It's the tallest peak in the state, it's got a totally generic name -- who could possibly object? But it turned out there was an objection. The county commissioners in Esmeralda County said, "It's always been named Boundary Peak." They weren't willing to change it.

So we went to the Mount Charleston area [in the Spring Mountains northwest of Las Vegas] and tried to find a significant, appropriate peak that wasn't already named, but we couldn't. And then we found out you can't name something new in a wilderness area. So the project kind of died off. We let it slide.

When did you restart the project?

One day recently, I was driving home with my daughter to our house near Sunrise Mountain, and she said, "You know, actually, it's not Sunrise Mountain. It's Frenchman Mountain." Everyone in Las Vegas calls it Sunrise Mountain, but technically that's not the name. That sparked an idea -- this one's already misnamed; let's just unofficially start calling it Mount Reagan on our own and not worry about getting the federal government's permission.

Last August, I mentioned to [local conservative radio host] Alan Stock that we ought to start informally calling it Mount Reagan. But then we found out the peak of Sunrise Mountain was actually unnamed -- not the whole mountain, just the summit portion. So we might be able to officially name the peak, and then we would have the only official Mount Reagan in the country.

It seems like quite an ordeal to get a mountain named.

Yeah, they'll let you name something that's not already named, but they don't tend to change the names of things unless they're offensive, like Jewfish Creek or Negro Mountain.

Wait, are those real? Is the government actively policing our geographical features for political correctness?

Oh, yeah. Jewfish Creek is in Florida, Negro Mountain is in Pennsylvania. There are active efforts to change those. I guess we could have tried to make the argument that Frenchman Mountain is offensive, but we didn't want to go there.

Frenchman Mountain, by the way, is actually named after a scam artist -- a guy named Paul Watelet who fleeced settlers by filing false mining claims. And he wasn't even French, he was Belgian.

We learned all kinds of interesting history researching this project. For example, Ronald Reagan was a marquee performer on the Las Vegas Strip for two weeks in 1954. He owed back taxes to the IRS and needed the money. He also filmed a World War II propaganda film with Burgess Meredith at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada [The Rear Gunner, 1943]. Now, if you want to commemorate a natural feature for someone with a national or international reputation, they do not have to have a direct connection to that feature. Reagan clearly fits that bill, so we didn't have to establish that he had a connection to the Las Vegas area. But since the connection was there, we figured it couldn't hurt to document it.

What does the process entail?

We had to fill out an application -- naturally, no federal bureaucracy operates without lots of forms to fill out. We submitted it [Wednesday, the 102nd anniversary of Reagan's birth] to the Nevada Board on Geographic Names. They will have a hearing in Reno on March 14. In the meantime, they'll reach out to other agencies -- the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Clark County Commission -- to find out if there are any legitimate objections to the proposal. If there's no substantial opposition, they could vote as early as September to approve it, and then it would be sent the the federal Board on Geographic Names.

Usually, if the state board approves something, the federal board will approve it, but you never know what will come up. Two years ago, the state board approved naming a cove in Lake Tahoe after Mark Twain. But it was rejected at the national level because the Forest Service discovered that when Twain went camping at Lake Tahoe, at one point he left a campfire burning and apparently set off a forest fire. The Nevada board is not happy they were overruled; they've found new evidence that it may not have happened, and they're appealing the decision. But we don't know what objections could come up.

We think we've met all the criteria. In 2003, the New Hampshire legislature created a Mount Reagan in New Hampshire by renaming Mount Clay. But one of the [federal board's] rules is you can't officially name something after someone until they've been deceased for five years. In 2003, Reagan was still alive. In 2010, New Hampshire applied to make the name official, and it was rejected. Their main reason was that it already had a name. But in their discussions they also noted they'd received 160 emails opposing the change for various reasons. That's why we're collecting individually signed petitions at the local level. We want to bring thousands of signed petitions demonstrating local support for this to help overcome whatever objections there are.

I think we have a very good chance of making this happen. We've complied with all the requirements. Our biggest concern has always been that people of the opposite political persuasion will object simply because they don't like Reagan's politics. We accept that that's the case, but it shouldn't be a criteria. The board has assured us that purely political objections will not be taken into account.

What's your connection to Reagan?

I'm a Reagan kind of guy. He shaped my political philosophy when I was in my 20s. One of my greatest regrets is that I was invited to the inaugural ball in 1984 but didn't go because I couldn't afford to rent a tux. When he passed away in 2004, I was living in Baltimore and my kids were 3 and 4. My wife and I took the family, got in the car at 10 at night, parked at Union Station and walked to the rotunda to pay our respects. The line stretched all the way to the Mall. We waited for 12 hours. Nobody was complaining -- we were all just standing there reminiscing about the president. I have a big picture on my wall of him lying in state.

What's the mountain like?

It's on the east side of Las Vegas. The elevation is 4,052 feet. It's not part of a larger mountain range. There is a hiking trail that goes all the way to the top. You can hike up it, but it's a very strenuous, steep hike that takes about four hours. There's also a service road for four-wheelers to get to the top to service the radio towers that are up there. The view from the top is supposedly just fantastic -- you see the wilderness, the barren desert, and Lake Mead to the east, and then on the west side you see Las Vegas and the bright lights of the city and the Strip. You can see Boulder City and Nellis Air Force Base. I've never been to the top. I tried walking it with my kids, but we only got about a quarter of the way up before we got tired.

President McKinley's namesake mountain in Alaska is 20,000 feet. Do you really think a 4,000-foot peak is sufficiently grand to honor the greatness of President Reagan?

I've had a couple of people say, "You need to find a better mountain." There are, I'm sure, higher mountain peaks. The problem is, are they unnamed? You're just not going to get the board to unname something that already has a name. This is a peak that can be seen from anywhere in Las Vegas. It can be hiked. It's easy to get to, unlike Mount Rushmore. People all over the world have great respect for Ronald Reagan, and a lot of them come to Las Vegas. It would be a great tourist attraction for the millions of people who come here to go and see. I'm not saying it's the most majestic mountain in the world, but as far as an unnamed mountain that's easy to get to, I think it's certainly appropriate for honoring a great president.

What do you think Reagan would make of this effort?

He was a very humble man. I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted a lot of to-do over him. But I think he would have had a lot less objection to a mountain named after him than a federal government building.

It does seem like your struggles with the bureaucracy to get this named are an ironic tribute to Reagan's small-government philosophy.

Believe me, that was the first thing I thought about. Immediately, when I found out there's a whole federal department for naming mountains, valleys, and rivers, I thought, "This is something Reagan definitely wouldn't have approved of." I've had a little change of heart, though. After getting into it, when I started reading about the conflicts over names, and the problems it creates when there are different maps with different, conflicting names, or when states decide to change the names of things without federal approval. And the process really hasn't been that onerous -- it's nowhere near as bad as the IRS.

It's right near your house, right?

The base is about a block from my doorstep. I'm looking at it out of my window right now. The other day, at sunrise, I took a beautiful picture of the sun peeking over the top of the mountain. It was morning in America.

More at The Atlantic

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Romania's Underground Cancer Drug Networks

By Liliana Ciobanu Comment

When the market keeps chemotherapy out reach, sick people turn to friends and the Internet to import medications from countries where they are still available.

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Bucharest [Vadim Ghirda / AP]

Gabriela Stratulat lost both her breasts after she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, her oncologist at the Sfanta Maria Hospital in Bucharest said they didn't have all the cancer drugs she needed to fight the disease. She had to start radiation therapy anyway.

"When I started the treatment, the hospital gave me all the drugs I need except for 5-Fluorouracil, because they didn't have it," she says. Ms. Stratulat, 57, checked with dozens of pharmacies in Bucharest but could only find the drug twice. "I was feeling helpless and became desperate. I was saved by one of my son's friends, who bought the drug from Belgium and sent it to me. It's frustrating. I have been paying taxes and contributing to the state budget all my life," she explains. "I don't think it is fair to be treated in such a miserable way." 

Fluouracil, also known as 5-FU, is one of the most frequently used components in chemotherapy for breast and bowel cancer around the world. Around 20 other cancer drugs (such as Asparaginasum, Decarbazinum, Vinblastinum, Methotrexatum, Etoposid, Vindesine) have also been very difficult to obtain, or could not be found at all, in Romania in the last two years.

Cezar Irimia, who runs the Romanian Federation of Cancer Patients Associations, says Romania's lack of coherent strategy created a major cytostatic crisis. "The health-care system is severely underfunded, and those in power are not taking responsibility," he said.

Cancer patients have the right to receive free medication, according to Romanian law. In reality, though, many of them must find other ways to purchase the drugs they need, many times through friends or relatives who are travelling abroad. There is even a website called "Missing Drugs" where Romanian patients can find volunteers to send them the drugs they need. Anyone can register and give a hand. Most of the volunteers are Romanians who frequently travel to Western Europe or are already based there. However, this is a solution only for patients who can afford to pay for the drugs, because the state cannot cover the expenses when they are purchased this way. Very poor patients have no choice but to hope the shortage will end as soon as possible.

At the Institute of Oncology in Bucharest, for example, cancer patients who should be treated with 5-FU, Bleomycin, or Cisplatin must find a way to purchase the drugs on their own because the hospital doesn't have them. The shortage is even worse at the Regional Institute of Oncology in Iasi, a city 400 km away from Bucharest. The hospital reports constant difficulties purchasing seven cancer drugs.

When asked about the drug shortage last week, Romania's Prime Minister Victor Ponta admitted the country has to deal with a lot of bureaucracy and bad legislation. "I saw a case of a person who needed [cancer] drugs and went to Fundeni [a hospital in Bucharest] where he didn't receive the cancer medicines, although it was revealed that the doctor just didn't want to give him the drugs. I immediately asked: Can we do something about it? No, because the law does not allow such thing," he explained.

His statement comes two days after the government announced its budget for 2013, which didn't include any particular fund to solve the shortage crisis. 

After 48 hours of subsequent incessant public pressure, Ponta said he found a solution: The country's Treasury will lend 800,000 Euros to Unifarm, the state company in charge of purchasing and distributing the drugs to hospitals around the country. This measure was necessary to help the state distributor purchase from the external market the drugs that are currently missing in Romania.

"In March, the ministry will start rethinking the national health programs and will elaborate health policies and strategies that could meet the current needs," explained Eugen Nicolăescu, Romania's health minister. "We are taking into consideration the possibility of introducing a centralized acquisition process for some products, in order to manage the situation not only from an economic level," he added.

Offering Unifarm a supplementary fund is only a temporary measure -- it doesn't address all the systemic problems, which, apart from underfunding, involve a need for drug regulation. When a hospital holds an auction to find a drug distributor, some of these private companies offer a very small price in order to win the contract. After a few months, though, some of them are incapable of providing the drugs, usually for financial reasons, and they block the supply. The lack of regulation makes it difficult for authorities to hold such companies accountable.

As an oncologist in Bucharest (who preferred not to be named) also explained to me, "There is another problem, in that the pharmaceutical companies need to pay a license fee before importing their products to Romania. For cheap drugs that make small profits, if the manufacturer has to pay a high fee, he will not be tempted to come. This is a problem in many European countries, not just Romania."

Current pricing arrangements in Romania create incentives for parallel exports, and it may account for diversion of as much as 20 percent of product volumes. Clara Popescu, the vice-president of the Romanian College of Pharmacists, says the number of exports has been increasing since 2009, when Romania became the EU country with the cheapest drugs. "The fact that drugs here are cheaper than in other European countries is an advantage for patients who can afford them, but this was also speculated by other jackals in the system who used this great opportunity to export the drugs in other countries where the prices are higher," she explains.

Romania has the lowest prices for drugs in the EU, which also chases away pharmaceutical companies. Accused by some of being morally responsible for the drug shortage, they face pressures to continue the drug production. Many cancer drugs involve small profit margins to begin with, leading many drug makers stop producing them. And for the drug industry, like any other type of industry in a free market, profit comes first.

More at The Atlantic

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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Pictures From Historic Northeast Blizzard

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