my husband and I have in common is our sense of humor. Neither of us, for example, thinks fart jokes (or plain old farts, for that matter) are the funniest! thing! ever! (Maybe we don't drink enough?) Anyway, we have sat up many an evening together reading The Funny Times and laughing until we cried, fearing we would wake up our kids. So I guess I don't really give a damn if other people think I'm funny. I'm not a standup comedian, but my husband and I laugh together every day - at each other's jokes and other people's. Maybe Hitchens hasn't read any Jane Austen. Or maybe he's just too dumb to understand why it's funny. In any case, he's definitely missing out. And thanks for the link back to that Onion piece. DAMN, those people are funny. Did you notice, Chris, that some of them are FEMALE?

Laurel writes, "I have noticed that when such lesbian couples split up, the biological parent all of a sudden takes a right hand turn, and decides that the "partner" is not entitled to any shared custody -- biology ends up trumping Political Correctness. (I haven't yet seen this in gay male couples, perhaps because in most of those cases the child is not biologically related to either partner.)"

Just exactly how many split-up gay couples with children do you KNOW? Hardly enough to constitute a scientific sample is my guess. I know one broken-up lesbian couple with a child, and they share custody. Gay couples are categorically neither more nor less mature than straight couples, so I expect with some people it doesn't work out amicably. All the more reason to get legal parental rights for BOTH of the child's parents so that the non-biological parent has legal recourse if her partner turns out to be a psycho when they break up.

Carol Lloyd didn't even write the piece about Hitchens. And you're in the comments section for big pharma, not comedy. These facts don't give me alot of faith in the allegedly logical foundations of your opinion.

I am so sick of my blogs being invaded by right-wingers in liberals' clothing! There are people who actually get PAID to come to places like this and pretend to be liberals, all disheartened and disappointed with other liberals. You would think they would have to do a better job at it in order to continue getting paid. But who am I kidding? George Bush himself is still in office....

when there is already a known standard treatment. The whole point of the article cited in this piece is that the ethical standard is to compare known standard treatments against new ones, not placebos against experimental drugs. People are getting away with a different standard by conducting trials in the developing world (or, in this case, on poor women in Texas - which might as well be the developing world, depending on who you are/where you live). Their consent to receive a placebo is not the issue; the issue is that they should have been given either the standard treatment or the experimental one - not a placebo at all.

We are living during a frightening media crisis. I believe in supporting independent journalism with something more than my "two cents." I don't like people who abuse their free sample by spewing idiocy and hatred all over this publication - and yes, I do feel some ownership, since I find so many like-minded writers here, and that makes me feel just a tiny bit more secure about being a crazy, open-minded liberal.

I guess some people consider me dumb for being a premium member. And I consider them self-centered, libertarian louts.

It has become a really annoying habit to say that in order to be a liberal you have to tolerate intolerable, intolerant garbage. I can be open to trying a lot of new foods - but if I say I don't want to eat shit does that make me "conservative"?

No, I don't have to read the letters, but they do sometimes include intelligent comments from writers I admire - just like the articles themselves do.

Come on, guys. It's not 2008 yet! To paraphrase the recently embraced Mr. Frist (EW!) let's get some work done in the next two years instead of just focusing on elections.

It all sounds very speculative, so it seems a little premature to blame the epidural. I had a homebirth transfer after 24 hours of labor with my first, and had the epidural and the antibiotics and the pitocin. Everything but the C-section (which I almost ended up with too). My first baby was not any sleepier than my second, who was born naturally at a birth center 14 months later. I was extremely shocked, though, when they read me the list of epidural risks while I was waiting for the anesthesiologist. I think if they handed out that list at the first OB appointment, fewer people would be asking for the mythical "epidural in the hospital parking lot."

However, while I was hauled to the hospital for the meds kicking and screaming, after I got them, it was SOOOOOOOOO nice. You can see why people want them! OTOH, my two natural labors were far more satisfying and empowering experiences.

Is it possible to do a study like this one that controls for the lifestyle choices of the mother - did she expect a natural birth and end up with an epidural? expect to breastfeed and not succeed, or was she not particularly committed to nursing to begin with? My experience of newborns is that they're all pretty darn sleepy, so even though I am a natural birth and extended breastfeeding advocate for people who have the luxury to commit to those things, I'm not sure we can put much faith in these speculations about epidurals and breastfeeding success. It is certainly very likely that people who choose natural birth will also be deeply committed to natural feeding.