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Entrepreneurial relief for migraine sufferers I missed this story last week, and so, I’m guessing, did most of you.
A bricklayer plagued by migraines has turned his torment into a brainwave.
Hywel Edwards, 28, from Merthyr Tydfil in the south Wales Valleys, has invented a cap which allows a migraine sufferer to block out the light as well as surround their head with a cold press.
And the idea – thought up after two days’ agony when tablets and lying in a darkened room was not working – is set be a business winner.
The interesting thing about this invention is that Mr Edwards didn’t need any specialised scientific knowledge to think of it, and make it work. He just needed to know what already worked for him, but in a much less user friendly form. He knew that he needed cold applied to his head, and that he wanted the light to his eyes blocked out. It wasn’t rocket science. He just made it work.
Good for him. I hope Mr Edwards gets rich, and gives lots of others the idea that they too could strike it rich, simply by applying common sense and by applying, well, application.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Perhaps I’m just unusually pessemistic today (one of my family members is having some serious personal problems, so that may be affecting my usual optimistic nature.) Be that as it may, I actually pity Mr. Edwards if he tries to market his device in the USA. Who wouldn’t bet that the FDA would classify his invention as a “medical device”? No problem–millions and millions of dollars, and months and months of time (if not years), and then he’s free to go ahead and sell it hear.
I just can’t stand to think of the disillusion he’s going to experience. 🙁
People who have been trying to get rid of wrinkles between the eyebrows were having the muscle there cut.
Those who had migraines either had less severe ones or none.
People with medical conditions that don’t yield to the usual remedies often have the insight- and the stimulus- to come up with really unique remedies.
And, to K. Parker, the FDA is finally on the defensive about its interpretation of “safety and efficacy”. Check out the constant pounding that the FDA’s stall-and-then-stall-some-more attitude has been taking from The Wall Street Journal over the last few years.
The FDA lets the people of Europe and Japan be the guinea pigs for new drugs; if too many people there don’t get sick and die from the new drug, FDA approval is given for the drug’s sale in the US.
The FDA has actually acknowledged that it has to become knowledgeable and efficient about drugs and devices. But, it’s such a political agency, don’t hold your breath.
And when it’s banned in the US for whatever stupid reason they dream up, one of you will send me one, right?
Brian*** note to you. Fine piece.
Saw a nice FT article by a John Micklethwait, extolling the virtues of the corporation as the foundation of Western prosperity (he and co-author wrote a book). Related?
Can’t find your direct email!!!
GreyT@ca-ib.com; tom.grey@stonline.sk
Kiss Adriana Cronin (on the cheeks) for me!
Tom