The ingratitude expressed by the National Science Foundation over a huge funding increase for an important project is inexplicable.
Policy & Ethics
We need to control pharmaceutical prices. FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has a number of proposals, but we need to make sure that they are both practical and effective.
A premature infant is born with a form of severe lung injury that carries a 20% chance of survival. Her physician decides to throw a medical “Hail Mary” and try an untested adult technique to bypass the injured lungs. The infant survives, and after a few more tries, the physician realizes that the survival rate may be as high as 80% with this new treatment. Does he know enough that the treatment should become standard practice, or is a randomized clinical trial required?
If the federal government stays out of picking winners and losers in energy, the trend toward lower emissions is likely to continue.
As Christopher Wild stepped down as director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer there was hope that the status quo, activism parading as epidemiology would end. The status quo won.
In the grand tradition of misidentifying problems and offering proposals that won’t work, the city council of Washington, D.C. wants to force manufacturers of flushable toilet wipes to change the label to “non-flushable.” This is wrong.
Is it time to re-examine concerns surrounding the intersection of patient privacy and a loved one seeking elected office?
A major thread in public policy debates about the opioid crisis is an asserted need to “solve” it by limiting production of opioid analgesics, and reducing medical exposure to potentially addicting drugs. But will these steps produce a remedy? Will our addiction and overdose problems improve with such a one-size-fits-all policy? Almost certainly not.
Walmart apparently has some big plans for its pharmacies and it will involve you. A whistleblower document from the company reveals what steps it will take to (wrongly) address the overuse of painkillers. You will be graded on your probability of misusing not just opiate drugs, but also sedatives and stimulants. Since when does Walmart tell our doctors what they can or cannot give to their patients?
The recent self-death by 104-year old scientist David Goodall brings to the fore a key question: Whether to deem deterioration from advanced aging – beyond having an incurable disease – as another reasonable consideration for euthanasia.
McKinsey, a global business consultancy, believes that homelessness in Seattle is the result of wealth. They even have a correlation to "prove" it. We created a graph to show that the real cause of Seattle homelessness is the number of victories by the Husky football team.
In California, Robin Hood robs from the poor ... and gives to the solar industry.