I worked for the pharmaceutical industry for 10 years as a research chemist, and I've heard all the speeches about how "we're not looking to cut costs by moving to China, we just want to target the Chinese market". But it's just not true. Of course pharmaceutical companies want to sell in China, but most of their profits come from the US and Europe. Most people in China can't afford to pay the higher prices for drugs that will justify the hundreds of millions it takes to develop a new drug. The research they do in China will end up in drugs sold here - and they'll save on research costs by paying a lot less for scientists.

A few top scientists may find jobs in China. But how do you become a top scientist? By working and studying at lower levels. If the lower level jobs are all gone, there will be no path for younger scientists to become "top scientists". University research depends on a large pool of graduate students to actually do the work at the bench, but if there are no jobs at the end of road, why would students go to graduate school? We're cutting off our pipeline, and eventually our supply of "top scientists" will run out.

I don't blame China for this. They're building up their scientific infrastructure, the same way the US did 50 years ago. Right now, they're bringing in scientists from the US for the top position, but they're thinking long term. It's just a stop gap until their own scientists gain the knowledge and experience to fill those top jobs. In the meantime, we're thinking short term, cutting jobs and research here in the US because it boosts next quarter's stock price. A few of those displaced scientists will find jobs in China, but most of them will just leave science altogether. In 10-20 years, we'll look around and say "what happened to American science?" And journalists will write stories about how Americans are too lazy to study science, and miss the real story.

I rolled my eyes a little at the "new age" stuff in Crazy Sexy Cancer. But still, as a fairly young woman with cancer, it was encouraging to see something directed at me and my experience. After I was diagnosed with cancer, I went to the bookstores and found most of the cancer advice books were geared toward people of retirement age. I went to a lot of cancer support groups and I was the only person there under the age of 60. It was nice to read something that said "you can have cancer and still be young and still enjoy living", even if I skipped over some of the more new age-y aspects of the book. It looks like the author has tried to move beyond cancer to general "new age woo-woo" but her original books are still on the shelves.

(Everything Changes is a more practical book for younger cancer patients, but it wasn't released until after I was done with my treatments.)

Thanks for posting about this series. It sounds fantastic! And this is the first place I've heard about it - it's easy to overlook shows like this, that aren't glamorous or flashy. Unfortunately, I don't have Showtime (another thing I can't afford) but hopefully it will be released on DVD and I can get it from Netflix or the library.

I would guess that a large number of people use IE for work, even if they use Firefox at home. A lot of companies won't allow anything but IE. So that probably skews the numbers.

Unfortunately, 22% interest is not that unusual. I've never missed a payment, but after two periods of unemployment and almost a year of being too sick to work, I ran up some debt. I have two credit cards, and they pushed my rates up to 31.99%, which I believe is the legal limit. (Or it was before the credit card bill passed.) And this is for someone who has never missed a payment and has a pretty good credit rating! I couldn't complain because I couldn't work and my savings had run out.

Now that I have a job, I'm sure I'll be able to get the interest rate lowered or just get another card. (I was able to get a special offer on the debt so it's only at 5% until I can pay it off. And I don't use the cards now that I have some money in the bank.) But it's when you have an emergency, like a serious illness and/or unmployment, that you end up being stuck with the highest interest rate.