For a man who has yet to make his case with any conviction or force, Mr Bush is not in a bad position.

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However, Dr. Goldacre takes a slightly different position a bit later in the book (Bad Pharma, p. 243) in a section where he chastises the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK for wasting money by not using generics.

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In policy making, lots of ideas are thrown out in order to set the good apart from the bad, and in order to stake out a position for compromise.

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"You're trying to second-guess politicians and as an investor, that's a really bad position to be in, " says Alec Letchfield, head of U.K. equities for HSBC Global Asset Management in London.

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Was it a fear that bad fortune could put him in that position?

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To tackle the edgy orginal programs that they appear to be branding themselves with, Starz recently hired Chris Albrecht, the former CEO of HBO who stepped down from his position in 2007 amid a slew incidents of bad behavior that included sexual harrasment and alcohol abuse.

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Its screen is three feet by two feet and employs surveillance information to give those in charge an overhead view of a war zone that shows the position of both good guys and bad.

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