huthuthike

I think you are looking at the cost of generic prescription drugs vs their generic OTC counterpart. When a drug is first invented it is patented, not generic. The drug company has to look at whether to apply for FDA approval as a prescription or OTC. Most often drug companies look to get approval as prescription, because that is more profitable for patented drugs.

Once the drugs move out of patent, that doesn't mean it is automatically approved for OTC sale. A drug maker can look at getting FDA approval for making it OTC. But it costs time and money to do so, with no guarantee of success. In the case of Norgestrel it took until now before any drug maker thought it would be worth pursuing.

More like no one bothered to apply to make it OTC until a year ago. In the US there is more money to be made from selling prescription medication.

They are a self-spreading phenomenon like fire in the sense that they aren't alive. But what's different about them is they can develop varying characteristics that pass onto their progeny. The characteristics that are more successful at propagation result in more prions of that type existing, which over time results in the prion's evolution. It's well-documented in the literature, but it is interesting to observe that evolution can occur without DNA or RNA. That said, their evolution is probably slower and more confined than things using DNA and RNA because there is only so much variability a particular protein can have.

Even prions undergo evolution and they are just molecules bumping around into stuff. They clearly don't have feelings about whether or not they propagate, they just do.

That was a rumor that the mother has debunked. She has come out and said that she was supposed to go with her husband, but gave up her seat to her son because he really wanted to go. I'm not sure this makes it better for the mother, but at least he was willing.

It had one bullet left. You should consider that if you don't know these details you might not have solid footing for your opinion of the ending.

The boy offers to give the man his pistol but the man tells him to keep it. That indicates the man is not trying to trick him.

Talking about odds in a fictional story is misguided. The odds are 100% whatever the writer intended.

I disagree with your interpretation of the ending. It felt to me that the family that takes in the boy are not bad people.

My favorite of his is As I Lay Dying. I find it much more readable than The Sound and the Fury. The latter is his most famous, and McCarthy's favorite work by Faulkner. But Faulkner himself said As I Lay Dying was his magnum opus.