prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: How many brother does Njoroge have?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 1: Weep Not, Child is a 1964 novel by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o  It was his first novel, published in 1964 under the name James Ngugi  It was among the African Writers Series  It was the first English language|English novel to be published by an East African  Thiong'o's works deal with the relationship between Africans and white settlers in colonial Kenya, and are heavily critical of colonial rule  Specifically, Weep Not, Child deals with the Mau Mau Uprising, and "the bewildering dispossession of an entire people from their ancestral land " Ngũgĩ wrote the novel while he was a student at Makerere University 

The book is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters  Part one deals mostly with the education of Njoroge, while part two deals with the rising Mau Mau movement 

Plot summary

Njoroge, a little boy, is urged to attend school by his mother  He is the first one of his family able to go to school  His family lives on the land of Jacobo, an African made rich by his dealings with white settlers, namely Mr  Howlands, the most powerful land owner in the area  Njoroge's brother Kamau works as an apprentice to a carpenter, while Boro, the eldest living son, is troubled by his experiences while in forced service during World War II, including witnessing the death of his elder brother  Ngotho, Njoroge's father and a respected man in the surrounding area, tends Mr  Howlands' crops, but is motivated by his passion to preserve his ancestral land, rather than for any compensation or loyalty 

One day, black workers call for a strike to obtain higher wages  Ngotho is ambivalent about participating in the strike because he fears he will lose his job  However, he decides to go to the gathering, even though his two wives do not agree  At the demonstration, there are calls for higher wages  Suddenly, the white police inspector brings Jacobo to the gathering to pacify the native people  Jacobo tries to put an end to the strike  Ngotho attacks Jacobo, and the result is a riot where two people are killed  Jacobo survives and swears revenge  Ngotho loses his job and Njoroge’s family is forced to move  Njoroge’s brothers fund his education and seem to lose respect for their father 

Mwihaki, Jacobo's daughter and Njoroge's best friend, enters a girls' only boarding school, leaving Njoroge relatively alone  He reflects upon her leaving, and realizes that he was embarrassed by his father's actions towards Jacobo  For this reason, Njoroge is not upset by her exit and their separation  Njoroge switches to another school 

For a time, everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming trial of Jomo Kenyatta – a revered leader of the movement  Many blacks think that he is going to bring forth Kenya’s independence  But Jomo loses the trial and is imprisoned  This results in further protests and greater suppression of the black population 

Jacobo and a white landowner, Mr  Howlands, fight against the rising activities of the Mau Mau, an organization striving for Kenyan economic, political, and cultural independence  Jacobo accuses Ngotho of being the leader of the Mau Mau and tries to imprison the whole family  Meanwhile, the situation in the country is deteriorating  Six black men are taken out of their houses and executed in the woods 

One day Njoroge meets Mwihaki again, who has returned from boarding school  Although Njoroge had planned to avoid her due to the conflict between their fathers, their friendship is unaffected  Njoroge passes an important exam that allows him to advance to High School  His village is proud of him, and collects money to pay Njoroge's High School tuition 

Several months later, Jacobo is murdered in his office by a member of the Mau Mau  Mr  Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning  Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive  Although there doesn't seem to be a connection between Njoroge's family and the murder, it is eventually revealed that Njoroge's brothers are behind the assassination, and that Boro is the real leader of the Mau Mau  Ngotho soon dies from his injuries and Njoroge finds out that his father was protecting his brothers  Kamau has been imprisoned for life  Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free, and Njoroge is left as the sole provider of his two mothers  Njoroge fears that he cannot make ends meet; he gives up hope of continuing in school and loses faith in God 

Njoroge asks Mwihaki's for support, but she is angry because of her father’s death  When he finally pledges his love to her, she refuses to leave with him, realizing her obligation to Kenya and her mother  Njoroge decides to leave town and makes an attempt at suicide; however, he fails when his mothers find him before he is able to hang himself  The novel closes with Njoroge feeling hopeless, and ashamed of cowardice 

Characters in Weep Not, Child
 Njoroge: the main character of the book whose main goal throughout the book is to become as educated as possible 
 Ngotho: Njoroge's father  He works for Mr Howlands and is respected by him until he attacks Jacobo at a workers strike  He is fired and the family is forced to move to another section of the country  Over the course of the book his position as the central power of the family weakened, to the point where his self-realization that he has spent his whole life waiting for the prophecy (that proclaims the blacks will be returned their land) to come true rather than fighting for Kenyan independence, leads to his depression 
 Nyokabi and Njeri: the two wives of Ngotho  Njeri is Ngotho's first wife, and mother of Boro, Kamau, and Kori  Nyokabi is his second wife, and the mother of Njoroge and Mwangi 
 Njoroge has four brothers: Boro, Kamau, Kori and Mwangi (who is Njoroge's only full brother, who died in World War II) 
 Boro: Son of Njeri who fights for the Allies in World War II  Upon returning his anger against the colonial government is compounded by their confiscation of the his land  Boro's anger and position as eldest son leads him to question and ridicule Ngotho, which eventually defeats their father's will (upon realizing his life was wasted waiting and not acting)  It is eventually revealed that Boro is the leader of the Mau Mau (earlier alluded to as "entering politics") and murders Mr Howlands  He is caught by police immediately after and is scheduled to be executed by the book's end  It is highly likely that it is also Boro who kills Jacobo 
 Mwihaki: Njoroge's best friend (and later develops into his love interest)  Daughter of Jacobo  When it is revealed that his family killed Jacobo (most likely Boro), Mwihaki distances herself from Njoroge, asking for time to mourn her father and care for her mother 
 Jacobo: Mwihaki's father and an important landowner  Chief of the village 
 Mr  Howlands: A white settler who emigrated to colonial Kenya and now owns a farm made up of land that originally belonged to Ngotho's ancestors  Has three children: Peter who died in World War II before the book's beginning, a daughter who becomes a missionary, and Stephen who met Njoroge while the two were in high school 

Themes and motifs
Weep Not, Child integrates Gikuyu mythology and the ideology of nationalism that serves as catalyst for much of the novel's action  The novel explores the negative aspects of colonial rule over Kenya  Njoroge's aspiration to attend university is frustrated by both the violence of the Mau Mau rebels and the violent response of the colonial government  This disappointment leads to his alienation from his family and ultimately his suicide attempt 

The novel also ponders the role of saviours and salvation  The author notes in his The River Between: "Salvation shall come from the hills  From the blood that flows in me, I say from the same tree, a son shall rise  And his duty shall be to lead and save the people " Jomo Kenyatta, the first prime minister of Kenya, is immortalised in Weep Not, Child  The author says, "Jomo had been his (Ngotho's) hope  Ngotho had come to think that it was Jomo who would drive away the white man  To him, Jomo stood for custom and traditions purified by grace of learning and much travel " Njoroge comes to view Jomo as a messiah who will win the struggle against the colonial government 
Context 2: Xpp-pdf support utility
Xpp-pdf support utility
PATENT, TRADEMARK
& COPYRIGHT !
Reproduced with permission from BNA’s Patent,Trademark 11/20/09, 11/20/2009  Copyright ஽ 2009 by The Bu-reau of National Affairs, Inc  (800-372-1033) http://www bna com As the patent community anticipates a decision by the U S  Supreme Court on subject matter patentability, recent rulings by the Federal Circuit and the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences suggest strategies for preparing method patent applications that will sur- vive the Federal Circuit’s ‘‘machine-or-transformation’’ test 
The Changing Landscape of Method Claims in the Wake of In re Bilski:What We Can Learn from Recent Decisions of Federal Courts and the Board ofPatent Appeals rulings on software-based and other business methodpatent applications 
On review before the high court is the en banc ruling ‘‘Pure’’ business methods are out  Algorithms by the U S  Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit1 are out  Machines and data transformations that, in order to be eligible for patent protection, an in- ventive method must either be tied to a machine or re- While the patent community waits for the Supreme cite a transformation of an article 2 This ‘‘machine-or- Court’s decision in Bilski v  Kappos, No  08-964 (U S 
transformation’’ test replaced the Freeman-Walter- argued Nov  9, 2009) (79 PTCJ 33, 11/13/09), patent ap- Abele3 test and the ‘‘useful, concrete and tangible plicants seeking to write patentable claims are stuckwith trying to conform to the lower courts’ most recent 1 In re Bilski, 545 F 3d 943, 88 USPQ2d 1385 (Fed  Cir 
2008) (en banc) (77 PTCJ 4, 11/7/08) 
2 ‘‘The machine-or-transformation test is a two-branched Adriana Suringa Luedke and Bridget M  Hay- inquiry; an applicant may show that a process claim satisfies den are lawyers at Dorsey & Whitney, Min- § 101 either by showing that his claim is tied to a particular neapolis  Luedke can be reached at machine, or by showing that his claim transforms an article ’’ leudke adriana@dorsey com  Hayden can be reached at hayden bridget@dorsey com  3 In re Freeman, 573 F 2d 1237, 197 USPQ 464 (C C P A 
1978); In re Walter, 618 F 2d 758, 205 USPQ 397 (C C P A 
COPYRIGHT ஽ 2009 BY THE BUREAU OF NATIONAL AFFAIRS, INC 
result’’ inquiry advocated in State Street,4 each of gregating, and selling real estate property and claims which had been applied by the Federal Circuit and its reciting a method of performing tax-deferred real estate predecessor court in various cases, and both of which property exchanges were not statutory under Section 101  Since no machine was recited, the only issue be- In this article, we examine the 2008 decision of the fore the court was whether the claims met the ‘‘trans- Federal Circuit, federal district court decisions, and de- formation’’ prong of the Bilski test 13 The court held cisions of Patent and Trademark Office’s Board of that the claims ‘‘involve[d] only the transformation or Patent Appeals and Interferences  Based upon the out- manipulation of legal obligations and relationships’’ comes in these cases, we offer guidance as to what is that did not qualify under Bilski 14 patent-eligible under 35 U S C  § 101, strategies for pre- Concerning the recitation of the ‘‘creation of deed- senting methods in patent applications and claiming shares’’ in some of the claims, the court found that the these methods, and possible ‘‘fixes’’ for applications deedshares themselves were not physical objects, but drafted pre-Bilski that must now withstand scrutiny un- only represented intangible legal ownership interests in der the new machine-or-transformation test 
property 15 Therefore, the creation of deedshares wasnot sufficient to establish patent eligibility under Bil- A number of recent federal court and board decisions have applied the patent eligibility test set forth in Bilski, implemented step to an otherwise obvious method was not sufficient to avoid invalidity of the claim  In KingPharmeuticals Inc  v  Eon Labs Inc ,17 the district court held invalid claims to a method of increasing the oral Several cases have addressed (and rejected) claims bioavailability of metaxalone because the claims were obvious over the prior art asserted by the accused in- In In re Ferguson,6 the Federal Circuit reviewed the board’s rejection of claims directed to a method of mar- Two dependent claims added a step of informing the keting a product and a ‘‘paradigm’’ for marketing soft- patient of certain results, which the patentee argued ware as nonstatutory subject matter under Section was not obvious  The court rejected this argument, con- 101 7 The appellate court affirmed the board’s rejection, cluding that ‘‘[b]ecause the food effect is an inherent concluding that the method claims were neither tied to property of the prior art and, therefore, unpatentable, a particular machine or apparatus nor did they trans- then informing a patient of that inherent property is form a particular article into a different state or thing 8 The court defined a machine broadly as ‘‘a concrete The court also commented that the added step of in- thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices or com- forming the patient did not meet the patent eligibility binations of devices,’’ which did not include the ‘‘shared standard set forth in Bilski because the step did not re- marketing force’’ to which the method claims were quire use of a machine or transform the metaxalone into a different state or thing 19 Notably, this conclusion The claims directed to a ‘‘paradigm’’ were non- runs counter to the Supreme Court’s instruction that statutory because the claims did not fall within any of claims are to be examined ‘‘as a whole’’ and not dis- the four statutory categories (machines, manufactures, sected into old and new elements and that are evaluated compositions of matter and processes)  Concerning the two closest possible categories, the court concluded Recent board decisions have been consistent with the that the claimed paradigm was not a process, because holdings of the federal courts  For example, in Ex parte no act or series of acts was required, and was not a Roberts,21 the board found ineligible under Section 101 manufacture, because it was not a tangible article re- a ‘‘method of creating a real estate investment instru- sulting from a process of manufacture 10 Concerning ment adapted for performing tax-deferred exchanges’’ the recitation of a ‘‘marketing company’’ in the para- because the claim did not satisfy either the machine or digm claims, the court concluded that the patent appli- cants did ‘‘no more than provide an abstract idea—a Similarly, in Ex parte Haworth,23 a method for ‘‘at- business model for an intangible marketing com- tempting to collect payments from customers having delinquent accounts concurrently with a partner that In Fort Properties Inc  v  American Master Lease owns the delinquent accounts’’ was found to be patent LLC,12 the California district court held that claims re- ineligible because the claim wording was ‘‘broad in that citing a series of transactions involving acquiring, ag- 1980); In re Abele, 684 F 2d 902, 214 USPQ 682 (C C P A 
4 State Street Bank & Trust Co  v  Signature Financial 16 See Ex parte Roberts , 2009-004444 at 4-5 (B P A I  June Group, 149 F 3d 1368, 1370, 47 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed  Cir  1998) 19, 2009) (holding a ‘‘method of creating a real estate invest- ment instrument adapted for performing tax-deferred ex- changes’’ patent ineligible as not passing the machine-or- 7 The court accepted the board’s definition of ‘‘paradigm’’ 17 593 F  Supp 2d 501 (E D N Y  2009) 
to mean ‘‘a pattern, example or model ’’ Id  at 1362 
20 See Diamond v  Diehr, 450 U S  175, 188 (1981) 
21 No  2009-004444 (B P A I  June 19, 2009) 
12 2009 WL 249205, *5 (C D  Cal  Jan  22, 2009) 
23 No  2009-000350 (B P A I  July 30, 2009) 
it refers generally to extending an offer, receiving an machine  Accordingly, the process claims       are not acceptance, and paying a commission’’ and did not in- voke, recite or limit the method of implementation us-ing any particular machine or apparatus 24 The court also evaluated similar claims that recited the use of a ‘‘comparator’’ to perform the recited pixel- B  Software Claims Not Expressly Tied to a ‘Particular by-pixel comparison and held that this recitation also did not mandate a machine 29 While the court acknowl-edged that software was offered as one ‘‘option,’’ the Other cases have addressed software methods where court concluded that the claimed function of the com- the claim language was either not expressly tied to com- parator could also be performed in one’s mind or on pa- puter hardware components or the ties to computer per such that a machine was not required  The court components were somewhat ambiguous  In several further noted that, even though the ‘‘comparator’’ was cases, courts have rejected the recitation of generic defined as a ‘‘device,’’ ‘‘the use of the term ‘device’ is computer components as sufficient to satisfy the ‘‘ma- not synonymous with machine ’’30 As a result, none of chine’’ prong of the Bilski test  A number of these deci- the claims at issue met the ‘‘machine’’ prong of the Bil- sions also addressed the ‘‘transformation’’ prong of the Concerning the ‘‘transformation’’ prong, the court re- In Research Corporation Technology Inc  v  Mi- lied in particular upon the Abele decision in expanding crosoft Corp ,25 the district court considered the patent the requirements of this test by requiring that the eligibility of method claims in six patents directed to claimed transformation process be both ‘‘(1) limited to methods of halftoning of gray scale images by using a transformation of specific data, and 2) limited to a vi- pixel-by-pixel comparison of the image against a blue sual depiction representing specific objects or sub- noise mask  Relying on the Federal Circuit’s Bilski stances ’’31 It then concluded that a number of the analysis as well as a decision of its predecessor court, patent claims did not meet the second prong of this ex- In re Abele,26 the judge concluded that a number of the panded test because the claims did not ‘‘require any vi- sual depiction or subsequent display’’ even though the transformation test set forth in Bilski 27 claimed method did transform specific image data 32 Concerning the ‘‘machine’’ prong, the district court The district court also found other claims patent- found that the pixel-by-pixel comparison recited in the eligible under Section 101 because these claims recited claims did not require the use of a machine, but could the use of the comparison data ‘‘to produce a halftoned ‘‘dictate[d] a transformation of specific data, and [were] be done on a sheet of paper using a pen  The com- further limited to a visual depiction which represents parison uses formulas and numbers to generate a bi- specific objects ’’33 Thus, the patent eligibility of the nary value to determine the placement of a dot at a claims turned on whether the claims recited the use of location  Formulas and numbers not tied to a particu- the transformed data to generate a display 
lar machine cannot be patented, under the machine In DealerTrack Inc  v  Huber,34 the district court prong, even with a field-of-use limitation because granted a summary judgment of invalidity under § 101 they represent fundamental principles, and to do so of patent claims directed to ‘‘a computer aided method’’ would preempt the entire field  The patent claims      
of managing a credit application reciting the following do not mandate the use of a machine to achieve their algorithmic and algebraic ends  Simply because adigital apparatus such as a computer, calculator, or [A] receiving credit application data from a remote the like could assist with this comparison does not render it patent eligible material  RCT’s argument [B] selectively forwarding the credit application data that a pixel by its nature is electronic and therefore to remote funding source terminal devices; necessitates a machine is a post solution argumentand the Court rejects it  The claim construction specifies that the comparison is of a value to a mask 29 The term ‘‘comparator’’ was construed by the court to be (or set of values) to determine whether the dot is a ‘‘device (or collection of operations, as in software) that com- turned on at a specific location  This process does pares an input number (called the operand) to a number pre- not require a particular machine  The Bilski test is stored in the comparator (called the threshold) and produces clear: the process claims must be tied to a particular as output a binary value (such as ‘‘0,’’ zero) if the input is alge-braically less than the threshold [the result of comparing anoperand against a fixed threshold and setting an operand less 24 Id  at 9-10  See also, e g , Ex parte Farnes, 2009-002770 than the threshold to one value and an operand greater than (B P A I  June 2, 2009) (rejecting a method claim for develop- or equal to the threshold to another value], and produces the ing a solution to a customer experience issue including steps opposite binary value (such as ‘‘1,’’ one) if the input is algebra- of: ‘‘identifying a target customer,’’ ‘‘defining a current cus- ically greater than or equal to the threshold ’’ Id  at *17 (em- tomer experience,’’ ‘‘summarizing values and benefits’’ to pro- vide to the customer, and ‘‘identifying metrics for measuring success’’); Ex parte Salinkas, 2009-002768 (B P A I  May 18, 31 Id  at *9  Notably, Bilski concluded that the Abele visual 2009) (finding patent ineligible a method of launching a depiction was ‘‘sufficient’’ to establish transformation (545 knowledge network involving ‘‘selecting an executive spon- F 3d at 963), while the Research Corporation court went fur- sor,’’ ‘‘forming a core team of experts,’’ and ‘‘providing pre- ther by making visual depiction ‘‘required’’ to establish trans- 25 2009 WL 2413623 (D  Ariz  July 28, 2009) (78 PTCJ 432, 26 684 F 2d 902, 214 USPQ 682 (C C P A  1982) 
34 2009 WL 2020761 (C D  Cal  July 7, 2009) (78 PTCJ 341, PATENT, TRADEMARK & COPYRIGHT JOURNAL [C] forwarding funding decision data from at least tation of ‘over the Internet’ suffices to tie a process one of the remote funding source terminal de- claim to a particular machine’’ and concluded that it vices to the remote application entry and display The internet continues to exist despite the addition [D] wherein the selectively forwarding the credit ap- or subtraction of any particular piece of hardware  It may be supposed that the internet itself, rather than [E] sending at least a portion of a credit application any underlying computer or set of computers, is the to more than one of said remote funding sources ‘‘machine’’ to which plaintiff refers  Yet the internet is an abstraction  If every computer user in the world [F] sending at least a portion of a credit application unplugged from the internet, the internet would to more than one of said remote funding sources cease to exist, although every molecule of every ma- sequentially until a finding [sic ] source returns a chine remained in place  One can touch a computer or a network cable, but one cannot touch ‘‘the inter- [G] sending       a credit application       after a prede- Additionally, the court found that the recitation of the [H] sending the credit application from a first remote internet in this case merely constituted ‘‘insignificant funding source to a second remote funding extra-solution activity’’ and therefore did not qualify as a ‘‘particular machine’’ under Bilski 41 ‘‘[T]ossing in In concluding that the claim did not satisfy the Bilski references to internet commerce’’ was not sufficient to machine-or-transformation test, the court held that the render ‘‘a mental process for collecting data and weigh- claimed central processor, remote application and dis- ing values’’ patent-eligible 42 Additionally, ‘‘limiting’’ play device, and remote funding source terminal device the claim to use over the Internet was not a meaningful could be ‘‘any device’’ and did not constitute a ‘‘’par- limitation, such that the claims ‘‘broadly preempt the ticular machine’ within the meaning of Bilski ’’35 The fundamental mental process of fraud detection using court relied upon several board decisions to support its associations between credit cards ’’43 premise that ‘‘claims reciting the use of general purpose processors or computers do not satisfy the test ’’36 claim,44 notwithstanding the Federal Circuit’s holding In Cybersource Corp  v  Retail Decisions Inc ,37 the in In re Beauregard,45 the district court concluded that district court held claims for ‘‘a method for verifying the ‘‘there is at present no legal doctrine creating a special validity of a credit card transaction over the Internet’’ ‘‘Beauregard claim’’ that would exempt the claim from and ‘‘a computer readable medium containing program the analysis of Bilski ’’ Moreover, ‘‘[s]imply appending instructions for detecting fraud in a credit card transac- ‘A computer readable media including program instruc- tion       over the Internet’’ invalid under § 101 based tions’ to an otherwise non-statutory process claim is in- upon the court’s interpretation of Bilski 
sufficient to make it statutory ’’46 Consequently, this Concerning the method claim, the court considered claim also failed the Bilski test 
both the ‘‘transformation’’ and ‘‘machine’’ prongs of the In at least one instance, the U S  International Trade Bilski test  In concluding that there was no transforma- Commission has interpreted the ‘‘machine’’ prong of tion, the court focused on the intangibility of the ma- Bilski less stringently than did the district courts in the nipulated data  According to the court, transformation cases discussed above  In In the Matter of Certain Video is limited to transformation of a physical article or sub- Game Machines and Related Three-Dimensional Point- stance  Accordingly, the method claim did not qualify ing Devices,47 the accused infringer filed a motion for because the data representing credit cards did not rep- summary judgment alleging that the asserted claims resent tangible articles but instead an intangible series impermissibly sought to patent a mathematical algo- of rights and obligations existing between the account rithm  According to the movant, the recitations of a ‘‘3D pointing device,’’ ‘‘handheld device,’’ or ‘‘free space Concerning whether the claimed method was tied to pointing device’’ were not sufficient to tie the claims to a particular machine, the court assessed whether ‘‘reci- a particular machine, but served ‘‘only to limit the field-of-use of the claimed mathematical algorithm and [did] not otherwise impart patentability on the claimed math- Id  at *3  The court relied upon the holdings in Ex parte Gutta, No  2008-3000 at 5-6 (B P A I  Jan  15, 2009) (stating In denying the motion for summary judgment, the ‘‘[t]he recitation in the preamble of ‘[a] computerized method ITC first noted that, ‘‘[w]hile the ultimate determination performed by a data processor’ adds nothing more than a gen- of whether the asserted claims are patentable under eral purpose computer that is associated with the steps of the § 101 is a question of law, the Federal Circuit has ac- process in an unspecified manner ’’); Ex parte Nawathe, No 
2007-3360, 2009 WL 327520, *4 (B P A I  Feb  9, 2009) (finding‘‘the computerized recitation purports to a general purpose processor [], as opposed to a particular computer specifically programmed for executing the steps of the claimed method ’’); and Ex parte Cornea-Hasegan, No  2008-4742 at 9-10 (B P A I 
Jan  13, 2009) (indicating the appellant does not dispute ‘‘the recitation of a processor does not limit the process steps to any 44 Claims having this format are called ‘‘Beauregard’’ specific machine or apparatus ’’)  The court also cited Cyber- claims and were found to not be barred by the traditional source Corp  v  Retail Decisions Inc , (discussed below), in sup- printed matter rule in In re Beauregard, 53 F 3d 1583, 1584, 35 port of its interpretation of the required ‘‘particular machine ’’ 37 620 F  Supp  2d 1068, 92 USPQ2d 1011 (N D  Cal  2009) 47 2009 WL 1070801 (U S I T C  2009) 
knowledged that ‘there may be cases in which the legal given a dataset of feature vectors associated with the question as to patentable subject matter may turn on subsidiary factual issues’ ’’ (citation omitted)  In con- for each binary partition under consideration, rank- struing the claims, the tribunal found that there was a ing features using two-category feature ranking; and genuine dispute as to whether the claimed ‘‘devices’’represented a ‘‘particular machine’’ under the Bilski while the predetermined number of features has not test and whether the claimed ‘‘two-dimensional rota- yet been selected: picking a binary partition p; tional transform’’ was merely a mathematical calcula- selecting a feature based on the ranking for binary tion or instead meant ‘‘changing the mathematical rep- resentation of a two-dimensional quantity from oneframe of reference to a differently-oriented frame of ref- adding the selected feature to an output list if not al- erence’’ as asserted by the patentee  Additionally, the ready present in the output list and removing the se- dispute over the meaning of the claimed ‘‘two- lected feature from further consideration for the bi- dimensional rotational transform’’ also raised a dis- puted issue as to whether this element recited a trans- Notably, while the independent claim failed the formation that would qualify under the ‘‘transforma- machine-or-transformation test, its dependent claim tion’’ prong of Bilski  Given these disputed issues, the was eligible because it recited, ‘‘further comprising us- ITC concluded that it was inappropriate to grant sum- ing the selected features in training a classifier for clas- mary judgment as to the patent eligibility of the claims 
sifying data into categories ’’ In view of the specifica- A similar conclusion was reached in Versata Soft- tion, the board indicated that the ‘‘classifier’’ was a par- ware Inc  v  Sun Microsystems Inc ,48 in which the dis- ticular machine ‘‘in that it performs a particular data trict court denied the defendant’s motion for summary classification function that is beyond mere general pur- judgment of invalidity under Section 101 based upon pose computing ’’53 The board also concluded that the the Bilski court’s refusal ‘‘to adopt a broad exclusion claim ‘‘transforms a particular article into a different over software or any other such category of subject state or thing, namely by transforming an untrained matter beyond the exclusion of claims drawn to funda- classifier into a trained classifier ’’54 In Ex parte Casati,55 the board reversed the examin- Less stringent ‘‘machine’’ prong analyses are also er’s Section 101 rejection of a method claim reciting: found at the board level  For example, in Ex parteSchrader,50 the board held patent-eligible under Bilski A method of analyzing data and making predictions, reading process execution data from logs for a busi- A method for obtaining feedback from consumers re- ceiving an advertisement from an ad provided by anad provider through an interactive channel, the collecting the process execution data and storing the process execution data in a memory defining a ware-house; creating a feedback panel including at least one feed-back response concerning said advertisement; and analyzing the process execution data; generatingprediction models in response to the analyzing; and providing said feedback panel to said consumers, using the prediction models to predict an occurrence said feedback panel being activated by a consumer to of an exception in the business process 
provide said feedback response concerning said ad-vertisement to said ad provider through said interac- In this case, giving consideration to the specification, which ‘‘unequivocally describes the data warehouse aspart of the overall system apparatus, and subsequent Here, the board found ‘‘interactive channel’’ to be descriptions describe the memory/warehouse device in part of an ‘‘overall patent eligible system of appara- terms of machine executable functions,’’ the board con- tuses’’ when viewed in the context of the specification, cluded that ‘‘one of ordinary skill in the art would un- which included ‘‘the Internet and World Wide Web, In- derstand that the claimed storing of process execution teractive Television, and self service devices, such as In- data in a memory defining a warehouse constitutes formation Kiosks and Automated Teller Machines ’’51 patent-eligible subject matter under § 101 because the In another recent decision, Ex parte Forman,52 the memory/warehouse element ties the claims to a particu- board found a ‘‘computer-implemented feature selec- tion method’’ including a ‘‘classifier’’ eligible under Other recent board decisions have reached the oppo- Section 101 because it satisfied both the machine and transformation prong  Here, the ‘‘classifier’’ was recitedin a dependent claim, in which its independent claim re-cited: 53 Id  at 13 
54 Id  See also Ex parte Busche, No  2008-004750 (B P A I 
A computer-implemented feature selection method May 28, 2009) (holding a process claim and a computer pro- for selecting a predetermined number of features for gram product claim, each reciting training a machine, ‘‘are di- a set of binary partitions over a set of categories rected to machines that have such structure as may be adaptedby training



ground_truth: Four.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What did the court in In re Ferguson conclude about the transformation prong of the Bilski test?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 2: ’’) 55 No  2009-005786 (B P A I  July 31, 2009) 
48 2009 WL 1084412, *1 (E D  Tex  March 31, 2009) 
56 Id  at 7  See also Ex parte Dickerson, No  2009-001172 at 49 Citing Bilski, 545 F 3d at 959 n  23 
16 (B P A I  July 9, 2009) (holding claims that ‘‘recite a comput- 50 No  2009-009098 (B P A I  Aug  31, 2009) 
erized method which includes a step of outputting information from a computer       are tied to a particular machine or appa- 52 No  2008-005348 (B P A I  Aug  17, 2009) 
PATENT, TRADEMARK & COPYRIGHT JOURNAL implemented methods ineligible under the Bilski test transformation test applied to this type of claim 63 because the claims failed to tie the method steps to any Then, applying the Bilski test, the board concluded that concrete parts, devices, or combinations of devices  For the claim did not qualify  According to the board, the example, in Ex parte Holtz,57 the board found ineligible under Section 101 a ‘‘method for comparing file tree de-scriptions’’ because the claim ‘‘obtains data (a file struc- does not transform physical subject matter and is not ture), compares data (file structures), generates a tied to a particular machine        Limiting the claims change log, and optimizes the change log without tying to computer readable media does not add any practi- these steps to any concrete parts, devices, or combina- cal limitation to the scope of the claim  Such a field- tions of devices’’ and the ‘‘file structures’’ did not repre- of-use limitation is insufficient to render an other- Similarly, in Ex parte Gutta,58 the board held ineli- gible under § 101 a ‘‘method for identifying one or moremean items for a plurality of items       having a sym- II  The Current Scope of Patent Eligibility bolic value of a symbolic attribute,’’ concluding that the These recent cases establish that some types of meth- claim ‘‘computes a variance and selects a mean item ods are clearly patent-eligible under Section 101, others without tying these steps to any concrete parts, devices, clearly are not eligible, and yet others may be depend- or combinations of devices’’ and ‘‘symbolic values are ing on how they are described and claimed 
neither physical objects nor do they represent physicalobjects ’’ First, the eligibility of system and apparatus claims is largely unaffected by the Bilski decision, with the ca- In contrast to the district court’s decision in Cyber- veat that such claims may be more closely scrutinized source Corp , discussed supra, in a recent board deci- for compliance with Diamond v  Diehr and Gottschalk sion, Ex parte Bodin,59 ‘‘a computer program product’’ v  Benson, which prohibit patenting of a claim directed was found to be patent-eligible subject matter as being to ‘‘laws of nature, natural phenomena, [or] abstract embodied in a ‘‘computer readable medium ’’ Here, the board considered whether the phrase ‘‘recorded on the Also, methods that are performed at least in part by a recording medium’’ as it is recited in the body of the machine qualify for patent eligibility under Section 101 
claims was the same as ‘‘recorded on a computer- Thus, for example, some computer-implemented and readable medium ’’ Acknowledging the differences be- software-related inventions remain patentable as long tween a statutory claim to a data structure stored on a as they are properly described and claimed as being computer readable medium compared to a nonstatutory performed by a computer or computer components 
claim to a data structure that referred to ideas reflected The tie to a machine, however, cannot merely be im- in nonstatutory processes, the board stated: ‘‘[w]hen plicit based upon the description and context of the ap- functional descriptive material is recorded on some plication or general language in the preamble of the computer-readable medium, it becomes structurally claim  Instead, the use of a machine to perform one or and functionally interrelated to the medium and will be more of the claimed functions must be expressly de- statutory in most cases since use of technology permits scribed in the body of the claim so as to be a meaning- the function of the descriptive material to be real- ful limitation on the claim  If a method claim can be read in such a way that all functions can be performed Similarly, in Ex parte Azuma,61 a claim to a ‘‘com- by a human, it will likely not pass the machine prong of puter program product       comprising: a computer us- able medium’’ was found to be directed to statutory The ‘‘Interim Examination Instructions for Evaluat- subject matter under § 101 because the language ‘‘com- ing Subject Matter Eligibility Under 35 U S C  § 101’’ re- puter usable medium’’ referred to tangible storage me- cently issued by the Patent and Trademark Office con- dia, such as a server, floppy drive, main memory and firm that the recitation of a general purpose computer hard disk as disclosed by appellant’s specification, and is sufficient to satisfy Section 101 where the general did not ‘‘implicate the use of a carrier wave ’’ purpose computer is ‘‘programmed to perform the pro- In an older decision, Ex parte Cornea-Hasegan,62 cess steps,       in effect, becom[ing] a special purpose however, the Board seemingly came to the opposite conclusion, holding that a claim reciting ‘‘a computer Concerning data transformation, there seems to be readable media including program instructions which agreement of the Federal Circuit and at least one dis- when executed by a processor cause the processor to trict court that a method that is both limited to transfor- perform’’ a series of steps was not patent-eligible under mation of specific data and limited to a visual depiction Bilski  The board first determined that ‘‘analysis of a representing specific objects or substances qualifies un- ‘manufacture’ claim and a ‘process’ claim is the sameunder 63 Id  at 11 
57 No  2008-004440 at 12-13 (B P A I  Aug  24, 2009) 
65 Diamond v  Diehr, 450 U S  175, 185, 205 USPQ 488 58 No  2008-004366 at 10-11 (B P A I  Aug  10, 2009) 
(1980); Gottschalk v  Benson, 409 U S  63, 67, 175 USPQ 673 59 No  2009-002913 (B P A I  Aug  5, 2009) 
60 Id  at 10 (comparing In re Lowry, 32 F 3d 1579, 1583-84, 66 ‘‘Interim Examination Instructions for Evaluating Sub- 32 USPQ2d 1031 (Fed  Cir  1994) to In re Warmerdam, 33 F 3d ject Matter Eligibility Under 35 U S C  § 101,’’ U S  Patent and 1354, 1361-62, 31 USPQ2d 1754 (Fed  Cir  1994)) 
Trademark Office, Aug  24, 2009, at 6 (78 PTCJ 530, 8/28/09) 
61 No  2009-003902 at 10 (B P A I  Sept  14, 2009) 
The authors’ recent experiences with examiners suggest that 62 No  2008-004742 (B P A I  Jan  13, 2009) 
the examiners are following these instructions 
der Section 101 67 Thus, claims analogous to those in In Concerning claims directed to computer program re Abele68 in which ‘‘data clearly represented physical products, one district court has held that appending ‘‘A and tangible objects, namely the structure of bones, or- computer readable media including program instruc- gans, and other body tissues [so as to recite] the trans- tions’’ to an otherwise non-statutory process claim is in- formation of that raw data into a particular visual depic- sufficient to make it statutory 72 The board has also tion of a physical object on a display’’ are patent- held ineligible claims to ‘‘a computer readable me- dia ’’73 The board has, however, also upheld the eligibil-ity of ‘‘a computer program product’’ as being embod- ied in a computer readable medium 74 Given these in- Bilski has had a significant impact in eliminating consistent decisions, the patent eligibility of claims in patent protection for inventions that are performed en- tirely by humans or can be interpreted as such if read Concerning claims directed to generalized computer broadly  This includes claims that describe processes processing functions, several Board decisions suggest for creating or manipulating legal and financial docu- that, absent a tie to a concrete real-world application, ments and relationships  In this area in particular, many such claims are likely to be deemed an ‘‘algorithm’’ un- pending applications filed prior to Bilski are no longer der Benson and therefore held to be non-statutory  75 patent-eligible, and many issued patents are no longer Any recitation of a specific field of use for the claimed valid  This retroactive impact of the Bilski decision is process or use of the outcome of such processes are troubling, given the investment in these patents and ap- also more likely to be found ‘‘field-of-use’’ or ‘‘post- plications, which have now been rendered essentially solution activity’’ limitations insufficient to render the worthless despite the suggestion in the Federal Circuit’s claim patent-eligible  Thus, the more tied a claimed pro- earlier State Street decision, now overruled, that such cess is to tangible results or particular applications (not claims qualified for patent protection 
just fields of use), the more likely it is to qualify under Inventions that do not fit within the four statutory categories are also not patent-eligible  The Federal Cir-cuit and the board have rejected claims directed to ‘‘a III  Presenting and Claiming Methods in Patent signal,’’ ‘‘a paradigm,’’ ‘‘a user interface’’ and ‘‘a corr-elator’’ on the basis that these items did not qualify as a ‘‘machine, manufacture, composition of matter or pro- Several strategies for describing and claiming meth- cess’’ under § 101  70 There is also an increasing focus ods or processes in patent applications may avoid or on the tangibility of the claimed invention in that, to minimize potential Section 101 problems 
qualify as a ‘‘machine’’ or ‘‘manufacture’’ under Section First, the description provided in a patent application should include well-defined steps or functions associ-ated with method or process  For example, when the claims include ‘‘initiating’’ method steps, a description Remaining areas of uncertainty concerning the scope of well-defined physical steps or functions for initiating of Section 101 include (1) what qualifies under Bilski as should be provided, and a concrete item, machine, de- a ‘‘transformation of an article or data,’’ (2) whether vice, or component that is responsible for the initiating claims to computer programs (Beauregard claims) function should be identified  For claiming ‘‘identify- qualify, and (3) whether internal computer processing ing’’ method steps, provide specific parameters for functionality not tied to a specific application or tan- making the identification, such as according to a speci- fied measurement 76 Where data is involved, the source Concerning data transformation, other than Abele- and type of data should be specified 
style claims discussed above, what qualifies as a data or Also, drawings should be provided that depict the article transformation remains unclear  Claims that concrete item, device, component or combination have been held not to meet the transformation prong in- thereof, and each method or process step or function clude claims directed to the creation or manipulation of should be linked expressly to at least one item, device data representing an intangible series of rights and ob- or component in the drawings that performs the step or ligations (e g , credit card data) and claims directed to function  Broadening language indicating that other the transformation or manipulation of legal obligations components may also be used to perform the function and relationships  Beyond these specific examples, it is may also be included to avoid an unduly narrow inter- difficult to predict what will or will not qualify as a data or article transformation under Bilski 
The claims should affirmatively claim the device, ma- chine or component performing each step or function 
67 In re Bilski, 545 F 3d at 963; Research Corporation Tech- For computer or software-related inventions, the de- nologies, 2009 WL 2413623 at *9 
scription should specify that the software functionality 68 The claimed process involved graphically displaying vari- ances of data from average values wherein the data was X-rayattenuation data produced in a two dimensional field by a com- 72 Cybersource Corp , 620 F  Supp  2d at 1080 
puted tomography scanner  See In re Bilski, 545 F 3d at 962- 73 Cornea-Hasegan, No  2008-004742 
74 Ex parte Bodin, No  2009-002913 (B P A I  Aug  5, 2009) 
69 In re Bilski, 545 F 3d at 963 
75 E g , Ex parte Greene, No  2008-004073 (B P A I  Apr  24, 70 In re Nuijten 500 F 3d 1346, 1357, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed 
2009); Daughtrey, No  2008-000202; Ex parte Arning, No 
Cir  2007) (74 PTCJ 631, 9/28/07) (signal); In re Ferguson, 558 2008-003008 (B P A I  Mar  30, 2009); Cybersource Corp , 620 F 3d 1359, 1366, 90 USPQ2d 1035 (Fed  Cir  2009) (77 PTCJ F  Supp 2d at 1080 (concerning claim 2) 
489, 3/13/09) (paradigm); Ex parte Daughtrey, No  2008- 76 See Brief of American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 000202 (B P A I  Apr  8, 2009) (user interface); Ex parte Laba- Supporting Respondent, Bilski v  Kappos, No  08-964, ABA die, No  2008-004310 (B P A I  May 6, 2009) (correlator) 
Amicus Br  at 12-13 (U S  amicus brief filed Oct  2, 2009) (78 71 E g , Nuijten, 500 F 3d at 1356-7 
PATENT, TRADEMARK & COPYRIGHT JOURNAL is performed by a computer or computer components 
patent or published application, the option of importing Specificity as to the type of computer component per- subject matter into the specification is limited to ‘‘non- forming each function may be helpful in establishing essential’’ subject matter  In other words, the specifica- eligibility under the Bilski test 
tion can only be amended to disclose a machine for per-forming process steps as long as one skilled in the art IV  Fixing Pre-Bilski Applications to Meet the New would recognize from the original disclosure that the process is implemented by a machine  The key in mak- For patent applications filed prior to the Bilski deci- ing this type of amendment is avoiding (or overcoming) sion, it can be challenging to meet the new require- a rejection under 35 U S C  § 112, para  1, for lack of ments for patent eligibility, particularly when no ma- chine or transformations were expressly described in If incorporation by reference is not an option, a patent applicant may submit evidence, such as a decla- In some cases, there may be sufficient explicit de- ration by the inventor or a duly qualified technical ex- scription of a machine, e g , a computer, such that the pert, demonstrating that one skilled in the art would un- machine can be added into the body of the claims  For derstand the disclosed method to be one performed by example, patent applications for computer-related in- a machine  Unlike attorney argument, which can be dis- ventions sometimes contain a generic description of regarded, such evidence must be considered by the ex- computers that are used to perform the claimed method, and such a generic description may be suffi- One other option is to reformat the claims  Since Bil- cient to impart patent eligibility to the claims when the ski ostensibly does not apply to system and apparatus general-purpose computer is programmed to become a claims, in some instances it may be possible for an ap- plicant to convert his method claims into system claims For patent applications lacking in an explicit descrip- to avoid application of the Bilski test  This strategy, tion of any machine, however, the application may in- however, is unlikely to succeed where the patent speci- corporate by reference patents or publications that can fication does not describe such a system for implement- be used to bolster the specification and provide support ing the method and therefore does not provide the req- for the requisite claim amendments  When an applica- uisite disclosure of the claimed invention under Section tion incorporates by reference a U S  patent or pub- lished U S  patent application, any description from the incorporated references, whether or not the subject The future of the Bilski machine-or-transformation matter is ‘‘essential’’ to support the claims, may be im- test now rests with the Supreme Court  Regardless of ported into the specification  This option may enable the outcome of the appeal, however, it is clear that the importation of the requisite description of a machine, scope of statutory subject matter under Section 101 has which can then also be recited in the claims 77 When been narrowed  The Supreme Court now has a chance the document incorporated by reference is not a U S 
to clarify what has been excluded; it may even reject ormodify the Bilski machine-or-transformation test  How 77 Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, Eighth Ed , Rev 
this will affect the development and protection of cur- 7/2008, at § 608 01(P); see also 37 C F R  § 1 57 
rent and future technologies remains to be seen 
Source: http://www dorsey com/files/upload/luedke_bna_patent_journal_nov09 pdf
(resolução 404 2012 retificação 19062012)
RESOLUÇÃO Nº 404 , DE 12 DE JUNHO DE 2012 Dispõe sobre padronização dos procedimentos administrativos na lavratura de Auto de Infração, na expedição de notificação de autuação e de notificação de penalidade de multa e de advertência, por infração de responsabilidade de proprietário e de condutor de veículo e da identificação de condutor infrator, e dá outras providências 
Cheloidi e cicatrici ipertrofiche in dermatologia
a cura del dr  Antonio Del Sorbo - Specialista in Dermatologia e Venereologia antoniodelsorbo@libero it I Cheloidi di Alibert A volte una ferita anche apparentemente banale, guarisce lasciando una cicatrice voluminosa, rossastra e soprattutto antiestetica  I cheloidi sono cicatrici abnormi che possono far seguito a intervento chirurgico (es: tiroide, mammella, etc) e questo u
Context 3: How Oxycontin, Florida and the Sackler Family Created the Opioid Crisis In America
Why are the Sacklers worth $13 billion today? Answer: “The Oxy Express Explained”
(MASS TORT NEXUS MEDIA)
A COMPARISON OF OXYCODONE PRESCRIBING
In the first six months of 2010, Ohio doctors and health care practitioners bought the second-largest number of oxycodone doses in the country at just under 1 million pills 
Florida doctors bought 40 8 million in the same period, the comparison is astounding, yet it flew under the DEA, Opioid Big Pharma and everyone elses radar for years and years 
Of the country’s top 50 oxycodone-dispensing clinics, 49 were in Florida  From August 2008 to November 2009, a new pain clinic opened in Broward and Palm Beach counties on average of every three days 
Pharmacies and distributors are at fault as well, pharmacies ordered jaw-dropping numbers of pills from opioid drug distributors, the middlemen between manufacturers and pharmacies 
90 of 100 of the nation’s top 100 oxy-buying doctors in 2010, were in Florida  49 of 50 of the country’s top oxy-dispensing clinics were in Florida  For some reason this didn’t raise an alarm or cause anyone to look further at the time 
Purdue Pharma New What Was Happening In Florida
Purdue and the Sacklers chose to ignore Florida, because apparently nobody there sued them or complained  In 2007, in other states, the infamous drug maker and three of its executives pled guilty in federal court and paid out $634 5 million in fines for purposefully misleading regulators, doctors, and patients about the addictiveness of their opioid painkiller  Around the same time, Purdue was also sued by several states, including Washington, over similar allegations  Purdue agreed to a $19 5 million multi-state settlement  And in 2015, Purdue settled a case with Kentucky, agreeing to pay $24 million 
As part of the state settlements, Purdue was supposed to set up monitoring programs to make sure that its opioid drug didn’t wind up in the wrong hands  It was supposed to watch out for shady pharmacies, unusually large orders, or suspiciously frequent orders  But on this front, Everett alleges that Purdue once again put profits over people 
Obviously, this was ignored as the Florida based “Oxy Expres”; rolled on for years and years with np input, comment or oversight by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family other than “show me the money” and enjoying a life of luxury on the misery created and managed in the Purdue Pharma boardroom  But, the Purdue boardroom isn’t the only guilty “Opioid Big Pharma” industry player who designed and supported the opioid prescribing crisis 
For the current status of efforts to make Opioid Big Pharma accept responsibility in litigation filed in federal and state courts across the country, see: https://www masstortnexus com/Briefcases/254/OPIOID-CRISIS-BRIEFCASE-INCLUDING-MDL-2804-OPIATE-PRESCRIPTION-LITIGATION
Why Distributors Are Liable
Cardinal Health, one of the nation’s biggest distributors, sold two CVS pharmacies in Sanford a combined 3 million doses of oxycodone, flooding the town of 54,000 with an average of 250,000 oxycodone pills every month 
West of Jupiter, a Walgreens drug distribution center sold 2 2 million tablets to a single Walgreens’ pharmacy in tiny Hudson, a roughly six-month supply for each of its 12,000 residents  It shipped more than 1 1 million pills to each of two Fort Pierce Walgreens pharmacies 
For 40 days starting in late 2010, the distribution center shipped 3,271 bottles of oxycodone — 327,100 doses of the drug — to a Port Richey Walgreens pharmacy, prompting a distribution manager to ask: “How can they even house this many bottles?”
There were 53 million oxycodone prescriptions filled in 2013 by US pharmacies, according to NIDA  This translates to approximately one bottle of this addictive drug for every 6 people in the country  How was this not noticed by those responsible for monitoring narcotics prescribing in the United States?
Charts and Data On Florida’s Oxycontin Gold Mine
https://www documentcloud org/documents/3936665-Purdue-Pharma-1-in-48-Study html
https://www documentcloud org/documents/3534759-uS-Atty-on-Purdue-Settle html#document/p2/a384323
A Boardroom Contrived Opioid Epidemic
This is the pain chart created by the “Opioid Big Pharma Industry” to support massive over-prescribing of opioids across the country to everyone who walked in to a medical treatment facility, this was an effort to increase narcotic prescribing practices in mainstream medical care–and it worked very very well! This chart became a standard treatment assessment protocol tool across the country 
https://www documentcloud org/documents/3936646-DEA-NATL-DRUG-ASSESSMENT-2010 html#document/p51/a383739
HOW WEST VIRGINIA WAS TARGETED
It-Was-Raining-Opiates-How-drug-companies-submerged-West-Virginia-in-opioids-for-years
Reliably red on the political map, Huntington is a West Virginia town with a 182-year-old university, a storied football team and more than 100 churches 
It’s where Will Lockwood graduated from high school  It’s where he enrolled at Marshall University  It’s where he first tried OxyContin  By the time Lockwood entered Marshall, Detroit dealers were trickling into Huntington, selling OxyContin and pills with OxyContin’s active ingredient, oxycodone 
Even though Lockwood could step out his front door and get the drug, Detroit street dealers weren’t the preferred supplier, they were in Florida 
It may have been 1,000 miles away, but to Lockwood, getting OxyContin and oxycodone from Florida’s loosely regulated pain clinics “was legal, in a sense ”
Twice a month, different “crews” from Huntington crowded into vans and headed south to Palm Beach and Broward counties, home to more than 200 pill mills, the pain clinics where anyone with a fake ache and hard cash could walk out with pills and prescriptions 
After hitting a string of clinics, the Huntington crews drove back with “around 500 to 600 pills per person,” said Lockwood 
But it wasn’t just a few hundred pills  It was tens of thousands 
And it wasn’t just Huntington, The West Virginia vans were part of a nationwide caravan heading to South Florida  Cars bearing tags from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Virginia and Ohio crowded into one clinic parking lot after another, loading up on pills and prescriptions 
News stories and law enforcement focused on those “parking lot” states in Appalachia, where dealers and addicts with a tank of gas or a cheap plane ticket traveled the “Oxy Express” to Palm Beach and Broward 
But Florida’s pill pipeline reached far beyond those roadways 
By 2010, Florida was the oxycodone drug dealer of choice for drug users and dealers in the Great Lakes, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions as well as the Southeast, DEA records show, an area spanning virtually every state east of the Mississippi  It wasn’t just that Florida guaranteed a flow of cheap oxycodone  For 10 years, key lawmakers and agency heads repeatedly looked the other way as crooked doctors and bogus clinics flooded almost half the nation with the highly addictive drug 
In failing to crack down, Florida extended by years the amount of time highly addictive oxycodone would be available to both first-time experimenters and addicts  It gave criminals the raw materials for trafficking  It gave Will Lockwood the OxyContin needed to feed his growing habit, It paved the way for his eventual jump to heroin 
Jumping state lines
Teenage high-school wrestling buddies in New Port Richey ran oxycodone into Tennessee; they were paid with cash hidden in teddy bears  A Hillsborough County man mailed 17,000 pills to Glen Fork, W Va , a month’s supply for every man woman and child in the tiny town 
A Boston Chinatown crime boss trafficked pills from Sunrise into Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and South Carolina  Wellington twins and pill mill kingpins Paul and Phil George, brothers who oversaw one of the largest operations in the country from their five Palm Beach and Broward clinics, pushing oxycodone into Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and South Carolina 
A husband and wife team operating out of a Forest Hill Boulevard clinic funneled pills to Delaware  At Palm Beach International Airport, two federal security agents accepted $500 a pop each time they waved through thousands of pillsbound for Connecticut and New York 
A Palm Bay man’s Puerto Rican family bought local pills destined for the working class town of Holyoke, Mass  In Rhode Island, police pulled over a Lauderhill man caught speeding through Providence  They found 903 oxycodone tablets and 56 morphine pills in the car 
Senior citizen and Tulane business graduate Joel Shumrak funneled more than 1 million pills into eastern Kentucky from his South Florida and Georgia clinics, much of it headed for street sales — an estimated 20 percent of the illicit oxycodone in the entire state 
Van loads of pill-seekers organized by “VIP buyers” traveled from Columbus, Ohio, to three Jacksonville clinics, where armed guards handled crowd control (federal indictment) and doctors generated prescriptions totaling 3 2 million pills in six months  In Miami, Vinny Colangelo created 1,500 internet website names to entice drug users throughout the nation to one of his six South Florida pain clinics or pharmacies 
Even the Mafia got in on the Florida oxy express action: A Bonanno crime family associate oversaw a local crew stocking up on Palm Beach and Broward pain clinic oxycodone, upstreaming profits to the New York family 
At times, it seemed almost no section of the country was free of Florida-supplied pills: When Olubenga Badamosi was arrested driving his Bentley Continental in Miami in 2011, the Oregon man was one of two traffickers overseeing a crew smuggling South Florida oxycodone to sell in Salt Lake City, Seattle and Denver as well as Oregon, Nevada, Texas and even Alaska 
Pharmacy delivers oxy ‘pot of gold’
It would be hard to overstate Florida’s role in feeding the country’s voracious appetite for oxycodone  Oxycodone 30-milligram tablets were favored by addicts  And in 2009 and 2010, roughly four of every 10 of those pills were sold in Florida  Small wonder: Of the nation’s top 100 oxycodone-buying doctors, 90 were in Florida 
Pharmacies, too, ordered jaw-dropping numbers of pills from drug distributors, the middlemen between manufacturers and pharmacies 
West of Jupiter, a Walgreens drug distribution center sold 2 2 million tablets to a single Walgreens’ pharmacy in tiny Hudson, a roughly six-month supply for each of its 12,000 residents  It shipped more than 1 1 million pills to each of two Fort Pierce Walgreens pharmacies  By contrast, a single Walgreens pharmacy in the Central Florida townOviedo bought 169,700 doses of oxycodone in 30 days 
People on both sides of the counter knew what was going on: In a letter to the chief executive of Walgreens, Oviedo’s police chief warned that people were walking out of the town’s two Walgreens stores and selling their drugs on the spot, crushing and snorting them, or — still in the pharmacy’s parking lot — injecting them 
Why Pharmacies are LIABLE
In Fort Pierce, a Walgreens pharmacist accidentally provided an extra 120 oxycodone pills to a customer  When the druggist called to ask that the man return the pills, the customer’s girlfriend bluntly responded that he was an addict, that he sold oxycodone and the 120 pills were “a pot of gold,” DEA records show 
That was in September  The same man came back to the same Walgreens in December and January with a prescription in hand, and the pharmacy filled his prescriptions every time 
‘Wild West of Oxycodone Prescribing’
Cincinnati-based Masters Pharmaceuticals Inc  was a middling-sized drug distributor selling oxycodone to Florida pharmacies 
It sold to other customers in other states  But mostly, it sold to Florida: Oxycodone made up more than 60 percent of its drug sales in 2009 and 2010, according to federal records  Of its top 55 oxycodone customers, 44 were in Florida 
Company CEO Dennis Smith worried that the Florida-bound oxycodone was getting in the wrong hands  A trip to Broward did nothing to ease his mind  “It was,” he later testified, “the Wild West of oxycodone prescribing ”
Bus and park benches touted pain clinics  When Smith picked up and thumbed through City Beat, a free magazine, he found pages of ads for pain clinics  “It would show young people sitting around a pool and it named the pain clinic and say (sic) ‘we dispense on site,’ and that really hit home hard ”
Smith stopped selling to pain clinics  But the company continued to shovel millions of oxycodone pills to Florida pharmacies  Masters executives figured the pharmacies would keep an eye out for excessive prescriptions written by pill mill doctors  But not all pharmacies were worrying about doctors at pain clinics, many pharmacies were courting the pill mills prescribers 
A Lake Worth Family Pharmacy
In 2009, the small pharmacy off Lucerne Avenue in Lake Worth had a history  It had been in business for 43 years  The owner and head pharmacist had been there for 32  It had shaded parking and a downtown location, a stone’s throw from the City Hall Annex 
When a Masters inspector visited, he was alarmed to find Tru-Valu Drugs bustling with a long line of young, thin, tattooed customers arriving in groups of 10 to pick up pills  There were signs in the pharmacy warning of limits on the number of oxycodone pills handed out  Even Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, an oxycodone manufacturer, was worried about the volume of its pill sales there 
Of the 300,000 doses of all drugs the small pharmacy dispensed in December 2008, 192,000 were for oxycodone 30 mg, the dosage preferred by traffickers and users alike 
The huge oxycodone volume was no accident  The owner and head pharmacist, unidentified in DEA records, told a Masters inspector that the pharmacy “has pushed for this (narcotic) business with many of the area pain doctors ”
And, despite the torrent of oxycodone going out the door, the pharmacy owner expressed frustration that drug distributors were limiting the amount of narcotics they would sell to his now-closed pharmacy 
Ohio to Florida and Back
Pharmacy after pharmacy benefited from the combination of Masters’ Ohio oxycodone business and Florida’s unregulated pill mills 
In Englewood, north of Fort Myers, the pharmacy owner filled prescriptions for six pain clinics — including clinics an hour’s drive away  A Masters inspector found cars from Tennessee and Kentucky in the parking lot and young men leaving the pharmacy carrying large trash bags 
Superior Pharmacy not only filled oxycodone prescriptions for pain clinics, it shared waiting room space with a pain clinic in a Temple Terrace strip mall outside Tampa  Neither Masters nor Superior had so much as Googled the background of pain clinic doctors writing those prescriptions, the DEA later said 
Had they done so, the DEA dryly noted, they “would likely have come across a press release” announcing one of the doctors had been arrested and charged with trafficking in prescription drugs 
Hundreds of thousands of oxycodone pills were sent from Ohio distributors to Florida pharmacies  Unknown thousands of pills headed right back up to Ohio 
When Ohio police burst into Christopher Thompson’s home outside Columbus, they found an assault rifle, $80,000 in cash and oxycodone from his Florida deals  A construction worker whose own pill habit started at age 14, Thompson oversaw a ring of 15 Ohio buyers who traveled to Florida to pick up oxycodone to resell in Central Ohio 
Two hours to the west in Martin’s Ferry, David L  Kidd orchestrated a ring of buyers traveling to West Palm Beach and Central Florida to pick up oxycodone for resale on the streets of eastern Ohio and West Virginia 
Doctors and pharmacies from Florida were complicit with Kidd’s ring in fueling Ohio’s opioid epidemic, wrote the U S  attorney for West Virginia after Kidd’s 2011 arrest: “The steady flow of pain pills into the Ohio Valley from Florida must stop ”
Driving To Pick Up Death By Rx
With more drugs came more deaths, in January 2010, say police, Fort Lauderdale pathologist Dr  Lynn Averill started a seven-month oxycodone shopping spree, buying 437,880 oxycodone pills from drug distributors 
The same month, Matthew Koutouzis drove from Toms River, N J , to see Averill in her Broward County pain clinic  The 26-year-old collected prescriptions for 390 pills and overdosed two days later  Brian Moore traveled 13 hours from his Laurel County, Ky , home to see Averill  He left with prescriptions for 600 pills and also overdosed within 48 hours 
Kenneth Hammond didn’t make it back to his Knoxville, Tenn , home  He had a seizure after picking up prescriptions for 540 pills and died in an Ocala gas station parking lot 
Keith Konkol didn’t make it back to Tennessee, either  His body was dumped on the side of a remote South Carolina road after he overdosed in the back seat of a car the same day of his clinic visit  He had collected eight prescriptions totaling 720 doses of oxycodone, methadone, Soma and Xanax  Konkol had every reason to believe he would get those prescriptions: In three previous visits to the Plantation clinic, he had picked up prescriptions for 1,890 pills 
An estimated 60 percent of her patients were from out of state, a former medical assistant told the DEA  In 2015, Averill pleaded not guilty to eight manslaughter charges  She is awaiting trial in Broward County  Averill was just one doctor at just one clinic  In 2010, the year Averill’s patients overdosed, Florida received applications to open 1,026 more pain clinics 
An online message board advising drug users summed it up: “Just go anywhere in South Florida and look for a ‘pain management clinic ’ It shouldn’t be too hard; you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one ” Complain about anything from a back injury to a hangnail, it advised, “and they’ll set you right up ”
By this time, Kentucky had reined in its pill mills  It didn’t matter, Ohio, Delaware, North Carolina, Connecticut acted as well, but other state’s efforts didn’t matter either, Florida continued ignoring the pill mills and rogue doctors feeding the nation’s oxycodone habit, the pills flowed 
“There were folks down there, where if I had an opportunity to, get my hands around their throat, I would have wrung their neck,” said Huntington Mayor Steve Williams  On Florida’s inaction he stated, “There was total evidence as to what was happening  It lays at the foot, in my opinion, of the public officials there that allowed it to continue on ”
Governor Jeb Bush Backed A Solution
One of the first dinners Florida Gov  Jeb Bush hosted after moving into the governor’s mansion in 1999 was a small one  Among those sitting at the table with Bush were Lt  Gov  Toni Jennings, state Sen  Locke Burt and James McDonough, who would become the state’s hard-nosed drug czar  There was an urgent topic on the agenda that night: the explosion of prescription painkillers  For the state’s first family, it may have been personal  Bush had talked publicly about one of his children’s struggle with addiction 
By the time the meal ended, all had agreed on the need for establishing a prescription drug monitoring program that would collect information and track prescriptions written for controlled substances, such as oxycodone 
Absent a prescription drug monitoring database, there was no way to know whether someone was “doctor shopping,” going from doctor to doctor, getting more and more prescriptions to feed their habit 
And there was no way to know whether a doctor was overprescribing, key to pinpointing whether a pill mill was operating, and where  Similar databases had been adopted by more than a dozen states  It was being described as a “silver bullet” to curb overprescribing  Soon enough, $2 million to get the database up and running would be on the table — but it came with a catch 
Florida Attorney General Misfires Against Purdue
In 2001, OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma was fending off early criticism of its blockbuster painkiller  At issue was whether Purdue’s aggressive marketing campaign had misled doctors and patients alike  Purdue and three top executives later pleaded guilty to federal charges of illegally marketing the drug



ground_truth: It required the transformation to be limited to specific data and a visual depiction representing specific objects or substances.

prompt_front: Now, answer the following question based on the text below, only give me the answer and do not output any other words.

Question: What was the reason given by Governor Rick Scott for not implementing a prescription drug monitoring database in Florida?

Read the following text and answer briefly.

Context 3:  Far from being safe and non-addictive, OxyContin carried the same addiction risk as morphine, and was every bit as potent 
But that was six years away  In 2001, towns in Maine reported an alarming uptick in crime tied to OxyContin  The first of several congressional hearings was ramping up  Critics and parents who lost children were piling on  Reporters were starting to write stories 
In November, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth appeared poised to take on the company  Calling OxyContin street sales “a major threat to public health,” Butterworth told a state Board of Medicine committee that Purdue should consider temporarily taking the drug off the market  It wasn’t only traffickers concerning Butterworth  It was the sales pitch 
In late 2001, Butterworth called a young assistant attorney general into his office and gave him a magazine article on OxyContin and an assignment: Look into Purdue marketing  Former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg  The young lawyer, now-Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, said he knew nothing about OxyContin  But he didn’t like what he read 
During the yearlong inquiry, 589 Floridians died after taking oxycodone  Nothing criminal was found, Aronberg later said  Instead, Butterworth and Purdue struck a settlement  As part of a $2 million deal, Purdue would pay to establish a prescription monitoring database, the same silver bullet sought by Bush  After Florida’s computerized system was up and running, the same system would be free to any other state  The entire country, not just Florida, would benefit 
It could have been a groundbreaking deal  There was one catch  State lawmakers had to vote to create the prescription monitoring program by 2004, or Purdue would keep its money 
Marco Rubio Kills The Anti-Oxy Rx Bill
A political gight killed the program  “And there was one person who was responsible,” said former state Sen  Burt, now an Ormond Beach insurance executive  “And it was Marco Rubio ”
A rising state lawmaker in 2002, now-U S  Sen  Marco Rubio had the clout to make or break the legislation  He had been one of two state House majority whips and was on the fast track to becoming House speaker 
Rubio didn’t kill the 2002 bill out of opposition to prescription monitoring—it was politics “as usual” yet nobody blamed Rubio for the resulting opioid crisis that seems to have started in his political backyard and flourished beyond belief  
U S  Sen  Marco Rubio, R-Fla , was a leader in the Florida House in 2002 when he blocked a vote on prescription monitoring  That year, Rubio favored a bill changing the Miami-Dade County charter, which failed to pass because of a single “no” vote in the Senate  Burt cast the vote 
Angered by what he saw as Burt’s betrayal, Rubio killed the prescription drug monitoring bill  “When I found out he broke his word, it made the choice easy,” Rubio told The Miami Herald 
It’s not certain that the full Legislature would have passed the bill had it made it to a floor vote  Rubio was the first, not the last, in a line of state legislative leaders over years who would refuse to seriously consider the bill  Most cited privacy concerns 
But prescription monitoring databases in Florida and other states free to use Florida’s model would have pinpointed rogue doctors, would-be pill mills and doctor-shoppers across the country, just as all three were beginning to converge  In doing so, it could have curbed a national opioid epidemic when it was just an emerging problem, not the monster it would become 
Only weeks after the 2002 bill was killed, Bush suppressed a sob as he discussed his daughter’s arrest for forging a prescription  Court-ordered to drug treatment and then briefly to jail, Noelle Bush survived her pill addiction  The 2004 deadline for greenlighting a monitoring system passed  So did Purdue’s million-dollar obligation to pay for it 
Between 2002, the year Rubio killed the database that could have identified doctor-shoppers, and late 2011, when the database finally came online, more than 20,800 Floridians died after taking prescription opioids, including OxyContin, annual Florida Medical Examiners’ reports show  “Not getting that bill through the Legislature resulted in Florida becoming the pill mill capital of the United States,” said Burt 
“There was heartache for thousands of families beyond measure and it didn’t have to happen ”
Florida Officials Were Told Of The Oxy Express
The East Kentucky hills and valleys of Greenup County suit Keith Cooper, a long-haired undercover cop-turned-sheriff: “It’s a backwater  I tell people all the time I am a hick sheriff from a hick location, and by 2011, the rural county and its sheriff had big city problems 
Greenup is near the stretch of interstate highways that provided drug traffickers and users with a straight shot to Palm Beach and Broward pill mills  It’s less than an hour’s ride to Huntington Tri-State Airport, where a $27 flight to Fort Lauderdale was a popular draw for dealers hoping to stock up 
Arrests for Florida pills soon eclipsed local arrests for pot 
“When we locked ’em up, we take all their pill bottles and all their paperwork, and we found maps to the doctors offices and everything,” recalled Cooper 
“I called the (Florida) medical board and gave them a big list of doctors,” Cooper said  He called the state pharmacy board, too  He got no response 
“So then I called the Attorney General’s Office and the Governor’s Office  I was calling them all, the whole state  Of course, I was talking to the state police the entire time  “I told them, all of the profits were down there  And all of the pain’s up here ” Nothing happened  Florida’s oxycodone pipeline continued to flow 
On the other side of the law in Greenup, Mikey Frazier was banking on it 
The Oxy Express
Frazier was on a scholarship to play baseball at his junior college in Chicago when he suffered a torn rotator cuff  Doctors prescribed Percocet, a pill containing oxycodone, in 2002  When doctors cut him off, he bought it on the street  In 2006, he moved to OxyContin, nearly pure oxycodone  In 2007, he gave his friends money to go to Florida and bring him back pills 
“My buddy had a minivan and he would actually go down one week and take two to three people with him, and then the following week I’d go,” said Frazier  He still remembers the route: “I’d take 64 East to 77 South to 95 South  And it’s just a straight shot ”
Others followed suit  “What got everyone started was because the doctors around here won’t write a strong enough prescription,” he recalled  OxyContin and generic oxycodone still could be had — just not in Kentucky, which had a prescription drug monitoring database 
In Florida, “there was none of that … stuff that they check and find out what doctor you’ve been to,” said Frazier 
“And one person does it, and then they tell a friend, and then they go do it, and that’s how it all really got started here ”
MEDICAID-MEDICAIRE PAID MILLIONS FOR OXY
Tallahassee wasn’t just ignoring the epidemic, It was financing it 
Before her office was raided by law enforcement in December 2001, Asuncion M  Luyao’s patients would wait in a line in the rain to get prescriptions from the Port St  Lucie internist and acupuncturist  She was one of the most prolific prescribers of OxyContin in the state 
And hundreds of thousands of those pills were being paid for by Medicaid, Florida’s taxpayer-financed health program for the state’s poorest and sickest citizens  Between 1999 and 2001, Medicaid shelled out $935,634 for OxyContin prescriptions written by Luyao  That was just OxyContin  Luyao was prescribing an array of addictive drugs  In the 12 months leading up to the clinic raid, Medicaid paid roughly $1 million for 7,000 prescriptions, only about 17 percent of them for OxyContin 
Nor did the raid slow her down  Between the raid and her arrest on trafficking charges four months later, Luyao wrote another 282 OxyContin prescriptions billed to Medicaid  She was not an outlier  In 24 months, taxpayers footed the bill for more than 49 million doses of pills containing oxycodone, even though there were only 1 36 million Medicaid patients  Half were children 
The sheer volume of pills might have been a tipoff that the drugs were not all intended for legitimate use  So were arrest reports dating to 2001  One man had used his 7-year-old son’s Medicaid number to doctor-shop for OxyContin  A Miramar pharmacist who billed Medicaid $3 7 million for OxyContin pills was charged with paying Medicaid patients $150 each to use their IDs 
Medicaid paid for more than $300,000 to fill Dr  James Graves’ OxyContin prescriptions  The Florida Panhandle physician was the first doctor in the nation convicted of killing patients by overprescribing OxyContin 
Addiction risk for people taking high doses of oxycodone begins climbing after just three days, a recent study concluded  And most people on Florida Medicaid getting oxycodone prescriptions in 2011 were getting much more than a few days worth  They were getting an average of nine months worth of pills, state officials said 
Pill mill doctors prescribed 1 million of those pills:
Doctors working for the George twins’ trafficking empire prescribed at least 102,081 oxycodone pills billed to Medicaid before the ring collapsed in 2010 
Working out of a Delray Beach pain clinic founded by a convicted drug smuggler, Zvi Harry Perper, son of the Broward County medical examiner, was arrested on trafficking charges, but not before he wrote prescriptions to Medicaid patients for 115,977 doses of oxycodone in 90 days 
In Lake Worth, Cesar Deleon was arrestedas part of a DEA pill mill sweep and charged with 55 counts of illegally distributing drugs  Deleon wrote orders for 20,302 oxycodone pills for Medicaid patients 
Miami internist Dr  Selwyn Carrington authorized 32,411 doses of oxycodone for Medicaid patients in just two years  He was busted for signing his name to hundreds of prescriptions 
Further, Florida wasn’t in any hurry to stop doctors linked to pill mills 
Carrington was arrested for overprescribing in March 2011  The state’s emergency order to suspend his license was signed months after he had pleaded guilty in 2012 
Perper was busted at a Delray Beach pill mill operated by a former felon in 2011  The state did not act against his license until 2014 
Joseph M  Hernandez was writing prescriptions from his car, a veritable pill mill on wheels, when he was busted in February 2010 on one count of trafficking in oxycodone 
 Florida’s Department of Health didn’t file paperwork to restrict his license for almost 18 months 
During that time, Hernandez wrote oxycodone prescriptions for Medicaid patients totaling 258,940 doses representing a taxpayer-footed bill of $130,165 
Purdue Pharma’s Profits Before Patients Creed
Kelly Skidmore is exactly the type of person Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin marketing was intended to reach: Diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, the former state legislator’s struggle with chronic pain began at age 4 
Skidmore was wary of opioid painkillers, though, one reason her willingness in 2009 to work with Purdue was surprising  But she did it to get Florida’s dormant drug monitoring database up and running 
Then a state representative in a district straddling Palm Beach and Broward counties, Skidmore recalled that, “They came to me and said, ‘Could you help get it across the finish line?’ ”
OxyContin and prescription opioids, a serious problem in 2002, had evolved into a full-blown crisis in the ensuing seven years  Broward alone had more pain clinics than it had McDonald’s  Deaths tied to oxycodone had exploded, up by 263 percent since the prescription monitoring database had first been proposed and killed  Overdoses from prescription opioids were claiming more than seven lives a day 
“By God, if we had had seven dolphins a day dying and washing up on Florida beaches, we would have been appropriating money and solving it,” Skidmore said 
Skidmore believed a database wasn’t going to resolve the underlying addiction crisis  Still, it was a start  Not a silver bullet, but “maybe silver buckshot,” she said  The database law passed with gaping loopholes  No health care professional would have to report opioid prescriptions or check the database before prescribing more, and the state refused to pay for it 
“Just to get that one little piece … took nine years of filing bills and then it had no teeth,” Skidmore said  “And it should have been the easiest piece ”
Where Was The DEA and Everyone Else?
The DEA all but wrung its hands over Florida’s lethal inaction  The agency ticked off a devil’s brew of regulatory loopholes: Florida’s Health Department regulated health care professionals but not pain clinics  The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration regulated pain clinics that accepted insurance, but pill mills were most often on a cash-only basis  And the prescription monitoring database, mired in a vendor dispute, remained stalled 
In early 2011, when Gov  Rick Scott took office, just one drug — oxycodone — was tied to six fatal overdoses a day  Deaths tied to all drugs claimed 25 a day  In the handful of Appalachian states where traffickers were bringing back South Florida pills, it was worse 
Ohio’s death rate for oxycodone and similar opioids had doubled in 24 months, federal records show  Kentucky’s was up by more than 50 percent  And in West Virginia, home to hard-hit Huntington, death rates tied to pill mill drugs such as oxycodone and Opana had climbed by 341 percent 
The DEA formally pinpointed Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties as the nation’s single biggest hub for trafficking pills across state lines  Within weeks of being sworn in, Scott abolished Florida’s Office of Drug Control, eliminating the state drug czar position, announced plans to drive a final stake in the heart of the database and rebuffed Purdue Pharma’s renewed offer to help pay for it 
Scott, a tea party conservative, cited privacy concerns, expressed skepticism the monitoring program would work and raised the possibility taxpayers would be left with a $500,000-a-year bill to operate it 
Attorney General Pam Bondi had also ridden the tea party wave to her position  She shared many of Scott’s conservative convictions  Unlike Scott, the former prosecutor relentlessly lobbied to keep the database alive  Florida’s failure to adopt the drug monitoring database was so out of step with the rest of the country that it began spawning conspiracy theories on both sides of the law 
Everyone knew prescription monitoring was going to kill the pill smuggling business, said a corrupt Florida Highway Patrol trooper as he drove a load of pills out of Florida, according to a federal lawsuit  Talking to the confidential informant in the seat next to him, the trooper speculated someone in Tallahassee must have a piece of the action, “because (Scott) was so adamant about not putting that system in place  Right?”
In Greenup, an infuriated Cooper told a reporter, “In my opinion, (Scott’s) getting money from somewhere  He has to be ” A few days later, recalled Cooper, “A lieutenant with the state police I’d been talking to down there called me, said, ‘Man, just a head’s up: I wouldn’t come to Florida ’” In states on the receiving end of the Florida pill pipeline and among federal officials, Scott’s resistance triggered outrage 
In Kentucky, where as much as 60 percent of the illicit oxycodone in that state flowed from Florida, Lt  Gov  Daniel Mongiardo proposed erecting billboards at the Florida line: “Welcome to the Oxy Tourism Capital of the World ”
U S  House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, also from Kentucky, twice wrote Scott  “Canceling Florida’s prescription drug monitoring program is equal to firing firefighters while your house is ablaze,” he wrote 
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, asked to meet with Scott  So did DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart 
Three U S  senators — New York’s Chuck Schumer, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse — joined Florida’s Bill Nelson in pointing out that the pills weren’t just a Florida problem: There were “serious ramifications for the rest of the country,” wrote Nelson of Scott’s reluctance to crack down  This is a perfect example of how political rhetoric, in-fighting and contrived agendas prevented an early stop to the emerging opioid crisis many years ago 
WHY DIDN’T THE DEA, DRUG DISTRIBUTORS AND PHARMACIES TAKE NOTICE BEFORE THE OPIOID CRISIS SPREAD ACROSS THE COUNTRY LIKE WILDFIRE? WAS IT BECAUSE OF THE BILLIONS IN PROFITS, QUARTERLY BONUSES AND DIVIDENDS? STOCK OPTIONS CASHED IN BY BOARDROOMS AT EVERY OPIOID BIG PHARMA COMPANY? STAY TUNED FOR HOW “PROFITS BEFORE PATIENTS” BECAME THE NORM
(article excerpts and quotes have been taken from publicly available media sources and court records)



ground_truth: Privacy concerns and skepticism about its effectiveness.