Here is a new twist on an old appendage! wo men whose company sold a device known as the Whizzinator that helped men cheat on drug tests have pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh.
George Wills and Robert Catalano each pleaded guilty Monday to two conspiracy counts.
They owned the California-based Internet company Puck Technology.
The Whizzinator is a prosthetic penis that comes with a heating element and fake urine.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan’s office says the goal of it and another device called Number 1 was to help people pass drug tests. The devices were sold from 2005 to 2008.
The California men are scheduled to be sentenced in February and face up to eight years in prison, a half-million-dollar fine or both. I would rename this product as the pee-pee machine.
November 25th, 2008
Daphne is 78 years old, a widow, a grandmother, doesn’t have a car, doesn’t have a doctor after hers of 20 years suddenly closed his practice three weeks ago for personal reasons, and Daphne decided, why not?
She took out the following personal ad Jan. 5 in the Perth Courier newspaper to attempt to resolve this situation:
78-year-old lady looking for a medical doctor in Perth. Blood pressure and RLS under control. Last major illness in 1958, an appendectomy. Not planning any major illness for the next 10 years. I make muffins to share!! Help! Phone 613-267-4408 and leave a message.
There are 14 doctors listed in Perth, population 6,000. None has answered her ad offering to take her on as a patient. Not even with her offer of muffins.
“I bake muffins,” she says. “Blueberry and apricot. I took some into a doctor’s office because someone told me he had taken on a new patient. I got up at 5:30 a.m. to start making my muffins. I didn’t get to see him. His secretary said he wasn’t taking any more patients. It was the same with two other doctors’ offices I phoned. I knew one of them quite well, and the other by reputation.”
Daphne, who before she and her late aeronautical-engineer husband moved to Perth 20 years ago, was mortgage manager for a bank in Ottawa, knows doctors are overburdened and often stressed out, and she sympathizes. “I guess doctors worry about taking on older patients because they think they’ll be a big burden.” She adds: “But, I’m very low maintenance. I haven’t had what you’d call a real illness for about nine years.”
She visited her past doctor four times in the past year, but only to get her prescriptions filled, and although she’s on medications for her high blood pressure and Restless Leg Syndrome, and has enough pills to last her a little while longer, and her overall health is good, and she’s physically active in the Kiwanis Club, and as a volunteer at the Salvation Army thrift shop, and goes for a vigorous two-kilometre walk every day, she is 78 and no one that age should be without a doctor.
This story makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where Ellain was getting bad remarks placed in her medical history.
January 12th, 2007
