What conditions or diseases is this medicine prescribed for?

Modafinil is used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy (a condition that causes excessive daytime sleepiness) or shift work sleep disorder (sleepiness during scheduled waking hours and difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep during sleeping hours in people who work at night or have rotating shifts). Modafinil is also used in conjunction with breathing devices or other treatments to prevent excessive sleepiness caused by obstructive sleep apnea or hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS; a sleep disorder in which the sufferer momentarily stops breathing or breathes shallowly many times during sleep and therefore does not get enough rest when sleeping). Modafinil belongs to a class of drugs called wakefulness-stimulating agents. It works by changing the amounts of certain natural substances in the area of the brain that controls sleep and wakefulness. How should this medication be used?

Modafinil comes as a tablet to take by mouth. They are usually taken once a day, with or without food. If you are taking modafinil to treat narcolepsy or OSAHS, you will probably take it in the morning. If you are taking modafinil to treat shift work sleep disorder, you will probably take it 1 hour before you start your shift. Take modafinil at the same time every day. Do not change the time of day you take modafinil without first talking to your doctor. Talk to your doctor if your shift does not start at the same time every day. Follow the directions on your prescription carefully, and ask your doctor or pharmacist to explain any part you do not understand. Take modafinil as directed.

Modafinil may be habit-forming. Do not increase your dose or take it more often or for a longer time than directed by your doctor.

Modafinil may decrease drowsiness, but it will not cure the sleep disorder. Keep taking modafinil even if you feel well rested. Do not stop taking modafinil without talking to your doctor.

Do not use modafinil to avoid getting enough sleep. Follow your doctor's recommendations for good sleep habits. Continue to use any breathing devices or other treatments your doctor has prescribed to treat your condition, especially if you have OSAHS. What other uses is this medicine for?

This medicine is sometimes prescribed for other uses; ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information. What special precautions should I follow? Before taking modafinil,

tell your doctor and pharmacist if you are allergic to modafinil, armodafinil (Nuvigil), or any other medications. tell your doctor and pharmacist what prescription and nonprescription medications, vitamins, nutritional supplements, and herbal products you are taking. Be sure to mention any of the following: anticoagulants ('blood thinners') such as warfarin (Coumadin); certain antidepressants such as amitriptyline, amoxapine, clomipramine (Anafranil), desipramine (Norpramin), doxepin (Sinequan), imipramine (Tofranil), nortriptyline (Aventyl, Pamelor), protriptyline (Vivactil), and trimipramine (Surmontil); certain antifungal drugs such as itraconazole (Sporanox) and ketoconazole (Nizoral); cyclosporine (Neoral, Sandimmune); diazepam (Valium); certain anticonvulsant drugs such as carbamazepine (Tegretol), phenobarbital and phenytoin (Dilantin); monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors, including isocarboxazid (Marplan), phenelzine (Nardil), selegiline (Eldepryl, Emsam, Zelapar) and tranylcypromine (Parnate); propranolol (Inderal); selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac, Sarafem), fluvoxamine (Luvox), paroxetine (Paxil) and sertraline (Zoloft); rifampin (Rifadin, Rimactane); and triazolam (Halcion). Many other medications may also interact with modafinil, so be sure to tell your doctor about all the medications you are taking, even those that do not appear on this list. Your doctor may need to change the dosage of your medications or monitor you closely for side effects. tell your doctor if you drink alcoholic beverages or have ever drunk large amounts of alcohol, use or have ever tried street drugs, or abuse certain prescription drugs, especially stimulants. Also tell your doctor if you have had chest pain, irregular heartbeat, or other heart problems after taking a stimulant, and if you have or have ever had high blood pressure; a heart attack; chest pain; a mental illness such as depression, mania (frenzied, abnormally euphoric mood), or depression.

Read all about it:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/05/16/paramount-thinks-that-filming-transformers-3-being-filmed-violates-copyright/

This weekend, my copy of Fredrik Colting's "60 Years Later: Coming Through The Rye" arrived in the mail. I had to order it from Europe, because its currently banned here in the U.S.

The courts are still considering the question of keeping the ban in place, but for now, it remains banned, and the Appeals Court has strongly hinted that a fair use defense will likely fail.

Background here [PDF link]:

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/ef45934b-3434-4217-9dd1-52d6d97736b6/1/doc/09-2878-cv_opn.pdf

I have added this to my growing collection of books that have been banned in the U.S. When I read them, I feel like the way Guy Montag must have felt while secretly reading his banned books in "Farenheit 451".

My collection also includes Alice Randall's "The Wind Done Gone", which subsequently became available in the U.S., though I had acquired my copy during a time when it was still banned under court order.

Herbert W. Armstrong's "Mystery of the Ages" remains banned in the U.S. The background as to how that came to be can be found here:

http://www.authorslawyer.com/case/227F3d1110.html

It still seems surreal for me to have to come to grips with the fact that courts are in the regular habit of banning works of literature in the U.S., and the notion that there are places in the world more free than my own country in terms of allowing people to read what they want to. I had always equated book banning with fascist regimes, not my dear grand U.S. of A. But alas, these lines have now been blurred. Such is the natural result of the extreme copyright regime that the legal system has imposed upon us.

I have never understood people who become justifiably apoplectic when the government bans books at the behest of a political party in power, but then remain silent (or even offer their support) when the same government power bans books at the behest of private corporate interests. The end result is the same. A free mind who wishes to explore creative works and form artistic judgments on them is prevented from doing so by force of law.

Rather than openly exercise my free mind in a free society, I am forced to become Guy Montag - effectively having to find Underground Railroad societies in order to obtain books I want to read, and hoping that the Firemen do not come knocking on the door to take away my possessions and burn them at the behest of authors who have long since perished.

UPDATE: As the comments section has revealed, the copyright owner of "Mystery of the Ages" eventually sold its rights, allowing the work to be distributed again after being banned for more than a year. Again, this is another instance of my acquiring a copy of it while it was banned. More details of how they tried to keep it banned for some time are revealed here:

http://www.raisingtheruins.com/index.php?page=synopsis

http://www.pcog.org/battle.php

The key point is that distribution became available again not as a matter of right, but only because the prevailing plaintiff in the case changed its mind in allowing distribution to go forward (in accordance with the wishes of the author who actually wrote it).

The Washington Legal Foundation reports on an (admittedly small) step in the right direction to counter overly broad patent claims.

Read it here:

http://wlflegalpulse.com/2010/05/04/brief-video-commentary-on-written-description-patent-requirement-case/

Update: This is also worth taking a look at -

http://ideas.4brad.com/studio-does-content-id-takedown-my-hitler-video-about-takedowns

The Guardian newspaper reports:

In a landmark ruling, the UK Information Commissioner's Office has ruled that Queen's University Belfast must hand over data obtained during 40 years of research into 7,000 years of Irish tree rings to a City banker and part-time climate analyst, Doug Keenan.

This week, the Belfast ecologist who collected most of the data, Professor Mike Baillie, described the ruling as "a staggering injustice ... We are the ones who trudged miles over bogs and fields carrying chain saws. We prepared the samples and - using quite a lot of expertise and judgment - we measured the ring patterns. Each ring pattern therefore has strong claims to be our copyright. Now, for the price of a stamp, Keenan feels he is entitled to be given all this data."

Read the whole thing here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/20/climate-sceptic-wins-data-victory

Via Michelle Geis, Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan gets on board with links to a new report in Genetics in Medicine suggesting that "exclusive licensing of gene patents does more to block competition and decrease patients' access to testing than it does to spur innovation."

Read his post here:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/when-patents-kill-innovation.html

The report itself can be found here:

http://journals.lww.com/geneticsinmedicine/toc/2010/04001

For those of you who would argue that copyright doesn't need major reform because it already provides for exceptions such as "parody", here is an example to demonstrate how hollow such arguments can be in terms of how the law actually operates on a practical level for everyday users:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/04/youtube-removes-hundreds-of-those-hitler-is-speaking-german-parody-videos.html

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/hitler-parody-takedown/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8617454.stm

See it for yourself here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/13/star-wars-uncut-fans-recr_n_536332.html

http://www.starwarsuncut.com/

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is set to retire at the end of this Court's current term.

There are growing predictions from many authorities that Stevens might be the primary author of the Bilski patent case which has yet to be handed down.

Nobody ever got rich by successfully predicting what the Court will do, but overall, this seems to be very good news.

Stevens has been the one Justice who has consistently argued in favor of rational limitations on IP laws based on Constitutional principles.

He was the primary dissenter in the Eldred case which expanded copyright terms.

In his Eldred dissent, he specifically argued for limitations in the scope of both copyright AND patent law.

He was also a dissenter in the Diamond v. Diehr case - arguing that there should be further limits on software patents.

If Stevens is indeed the author of the Bilski opinion, that will likely be a good sign that the decision will offer something of good substance in terms of getting back on the road towards a sane patent regime.