Alaric Briana Diary

Pensions aren’t exactly the hippest thing out there, I know. But please give me a minute to explain why you having a pension could be the magic pill that convinces drug company Novartis to drop its court case challenging India’s patent law.

To make real change we need to know the Achilles heel(s) of the people we’re trying to influence. Both governments and companies care about what people think - that’s why we ask you to use your voice to campaign against poverty. But it is also important to realise that in the same way as politicians are more likely to listen to their own constituency, companies also see some people as more important than others. For Starbucks, for example, I think coffee drinkers’ opinions are important. But there is one group of people that matter to every company, including Novartis: the shareholders. And that’s where you and your pension come in.

UK pension holders own as much as £250 billion in companies’ stock. That’s a lot of money worth of voice! All pension funds invest in pharmaceutical companies and most of them invest in Novartis, because it is such a profitable company. This means that it is very likely that you are in fact a Novartis shareholder through your membership in a pension scheme.

That’s why we’ve now made it possible for you to use your investor power by e-mailing your pension fund directly, urging them to pick up the phone to Novartis and raise your concerns about how poor people’s access to medicines is under threat by the company’s law suit in India.

So in essence - to paraphrase an old exhausted expression - I guess we’re asking you, through your pension fund, to “put your mouth were your money is!”

Are you convinced that pensions can be a cool tool for change?

There is only one drug in the world so well known that it’s called “the Pill.” For more than forty years, more people have taken the Pill than any other prescribed medicine in the world.

Sex, pregnancy, and contraception have been hot topics for millennia. It wasn’t until the U.S. government approved the birth control pill in 1960 that possibilities for contraception changed dramatically. The majority of women — and plenty of men — welcomed the Pill .

The birth control pill was the first medication ever designed for purely social, rather than therapeutic purposes. At the height of the drugs popularity, U.S. Senate hearings focused the nations attention on potentially deadly health risks posed by the high-dose Pill. As a result of the hearings, pharmaceutical companies lowered the dosages and doctors advised women who were obese, smoked, had high blood pressure or a family history of blood clots against taking the Pill.

In the 1980s, the high dosage 10-milligram pill was removed from the market and biphasic and triphasic oral contraceptives were introduced. Today, women can get a prescription for a Pill containing 1 milligram of progestins, one tenth of the original dose, and containing as little as 20 micrograms of estrogen.

From the very beginning, a significant number of women complained of discomfort from the Pill and switched to other methods. When women wanted to discuss the side effects with their doctors, they often met with frustration. It was common for their complaints to be dismissed as exaggerated. In other cases their ailments were just considered the price that women had to pay in return for such an effective contraceptive. The problem was compounded by that fact that female patients were not always informed about the potential for strokes, heart attacks or blood clots while on the Pill. For the most part sharing the Pills risk has become a part of the information provided by health care practitioners who prescribe the Pill.

Today, the safety of the Pill is assumed. However, it is important to remember that the pill contains identical hormones to those found in Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). HRT has come under question because of the Women s Health Initiative Study showing an increase in breast cancer and heart disease for those women who were on HRT.

In October 20, 2004 headlines read Birth Control Pill Cuts Cancer, Heart Disease Risk: Study - A new study, yet to be published, suggests women who use oral contraceptives have lower risks of heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

This study has now been denied as accurate by the WHI. Analyses by the WHI have made it clear that the recent findings were not correct

The low dose pill today although deemed to be safe has never undergone a large government-funded study similar to the WHI study on HRT. According to Dr. John R. Lee in his book What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer women up to age 21 who use the Pill increase their lifetime risk of Breast Cancer by 600%. Caution when considering the use of Birth Control Pill should still be used.

This Article Is Copyright 2007 Jackie L. Harvey & http://www.SalivaTesting.com

Jackie Harvey is a nutritional speaker who shares her interest and information on hormonal health and women’s saliva hormone testing throughout North America in her popular “Let’s Talk About Hormones” seminar. Visit Jackie’s informative website http://www.SalivaTesting.com for a schedule of events in your area and for more information about her Best Selling 1-hour DVD “Let’s Talk About Hormones with Jackie Harvey”.

In Part 1 of this entry, I introduced the website Zillow.com and discussed the significant functionality provided at the website for free and without registration. Next, I’d like to explain how the Zestimator (market price estimation tool) algorithm works. The Zestimator algorithm uses property tax records developed by the local tax assessor as its primary information source. While this information source offers broad-based and consistent home valuations, there are also weaknesses found in this method. For example, tax assessor records often don’t consider improvements made on older properties. Also, by lumping all home prices into one algorithm, you’re bound to skew some of the pricing outputs and generate inaccuracies. Fortunately, the nice people at Zillow.com have taken these potential inaccuracies into account, and they have provided tools for you to tailor your Zestimate to incorporate your personal knowledge about the property and neighborhood. When I researched the Zestimate for my own home, I made several changes to my Zestimate in order to more accurately calculate my home’s likely market value. First, I noted that my house had a 700 sq ft improvement added on after it was initially built which was not reflected in the tax assessors database. Square footage is the single biggest factor in pricing your home relative to others in the neighborhood and adding 700 sq ft to my Zestimate made a big change in its projected value.

Second, my property has nice horse facilities which are not included in the tax assessors records and which have a specific resale value in the marketplace. The Zestimator update tools allows you to add specific home improvements into your estimate. This is especially useful when an improvement is not specifically reflected in the calculation of square footage inside the home, such as swimming pools, outdoor entertainment facilities, sports courts, etc.

The third factor I elected to update provided the most interesting and useful feedback to me. The Zestimator uses comparable home sales which are closest in distance to your property in order to estimate the “comps” part of your Zestimate. In most cases, this makes sense as equally sized homes within a neighborhood are often more similar in value than equally sized homes found in other neighborhoods. However, in my case, I have a two-acre property whereas most of my neighbors have 3/4 to 1 acre properties. This extra acre has significant value in a suburban setting (such as my area) and was not being given enough credit in my baseline Zestimate. By using the update tools for your Zestimate, you can choose your own “comps” in lieu of the “comps” chosen for you by the Zestimator. The software will show you twenty to thirty “comps” within a several mile radius of your property, and you can pick ten properties which best match the characteristics of your property.

In my case, when selecting my own “comps,” I choose ten properties with a minimum of 1.5 acres of land and which were close to my home’s square footage. It was very eye-opening to see how the dollars /sq ft average price went way up when additional acreage was included in my home’s Zestimate. You see, realtors view all property from the perspective of dollars /sq ft — for example, a $500,000 home with 2500 square feet has a value of $200 per sq ft. When realtors prepare “comps” for you to consider in setting a price for your home, they often go no further than this calculation. In my case, using this metric without considering the additional value of the land would have seriously undervalued my property!

In summary, when using the Zestimator to estimate the market value of a home, you should definitely consider whether accurate underlying factors have been used in calculating your estimate. These factors may include previous additions of square footage that are not on the tax assessor’s records, other property improvements that may exist on the property and whether the Zestimator-generated “comps” are good comparables for your property.

In the third and final part of this entry (Part 3), I’ll review how Zillow.com can help you as a home buyer, and I’ll also discuss a few of the limitations of the Zillow.com model. Until then, don’t hesitate to visit Zillow.com at the link provided above to check it out for yourself!

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