Natural & Physical Sciences 
Recommended
Green Energy Economy Reconsidered
A "green economy" utopia is a popular dream in the minds of people across the ideological spectrum. However, Cato scholars Peter Van Doren and Jerry Taylor note that this is less a dream than a memory of the distant past. The main technologies being advocated for today's green revolution are the same technologies employed in the 13th century and before. Comparing lifestyles between then and now should be enough to make one reconsider returning to that route. If that doesn't work, Van Doren and Taylor offer five reasons why pursuing a reenergized portfolio of entirely green initiatives is neither feasible nor economical.
Should We Revise America's Drug Policy?
Are there good, politically viable reasons for drug legalization? Former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson recently visited Cato and made the case for drug legalization on the grounds of government efficiency, crime reduction, and social responsibility. Check out his arguments, and decide for yourself!
Congress Can't Repeal Economics
In his weekly column, John Stossel explains that no matter how hard Congress and other politicians try, they can’t beat the laws of economics. Bent on keeping their grand promise to “cover more for less money” with the new healthcare bill, politicians are being rebuffed by private companies responding to market forces, who are dropping extensive demographics from coverage in response to the bill. Public bureaucrats are crying foul, but Stossel notes that responding to economic realities is not calloused; it’s responsible – responsible to customers, shareholders, and the American public.
'Repeal ObamaCare' Rap Video
In response to the ObamaCare law that passed earlier this year, the Galen Institute has released a rap video entitled 'Fellin' It.' The rappers discuss the negative effects of the legislation, providing both possible solutions and reasons to oppose the law, with a chorus that says, "If you feel how I feel, then we need to repeal."
Perhaps this video will inspire you to enter the Cato On Campus YouTube video contest. (You could win a trip to next year's Cato University in San Diego!)
Event: A Darker Shade of Green
"Green" policies are often advertised as good for the environment and cost-efficient; we are bringing together a few scholars who will address these claims economically and scientifically, painting a picture that shows otherwise. This event will focus on the increasing push by the federal government to go "green," and how such policies on energy and environment negatively impacts society, especially young people. Please join us!
Come to Cato, or watch the event online here: http://www.cato.org/events/100723sf.html
How Will ObamaCare Affect Young Adults?
Starting in 2014, the federal government will require nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance. How will that requirement, and other elements of President Obama's new health care law, affect the incomes, employment opportunities, and health care of young adults?
Cato On Campus and the Galen Institute are partnering to host a panel discussion to address these questions.
The event is open for all interns in the DC-area, and those online via an online video stream. Please plan to attend, and tell your friends. Take advantage of this opportunity to broaden your knowledge on a policy that will dramatically impact the rest of your life!
Forthcoming Death Panels in the U.S.?
Claims of “death panels” were derided as far right-wing lunacy when the Obamacare legislation was being debated over the past year. However, Cato health policy scholar Michael Tanner notes that those claims may not be as far from reality as the bill's defenders would like the public to think. President Obama's recent nomination of Donald Berwick to direct the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the office that oversees government healthcare programs), seems to substantiate the claims of upcoming rationing of healthcare services. Tanner explains how Berwick’s infatuation with the British healthcare system, and its rationing mechanism, could lead to some interesting – and scary – developments stateside.
Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?
About a month after its passing, truths about Obamacare are emerging. Peter Suderman, of Reason, discusses how the medicine of the new legislation is becoming harder to swallow. The Administration is claiming that success is just around the bend of some new, stronger regulations, but such regulations are projected to be costly – cost being the symptom of the debt disease that has plagued the U.S. and the rest of the world. Suderman notes that, "With each passing day, it looks more likely that costs will go up, businesses will face bureaucratic burdens, and many individuals will lose their current health care plans." All sorts of other costs are emerging the longer the bill is being analyzed.
Offshore Drilling, Still Worth the Risk
Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey discusses the BP oil spill currently impacting the southern coast of the U.S. and presents a cost/benefit analysis to determine if the U.S. should pursue additional off-shore oil drilling. He warns that many, on both sides of the issue, blow this type of event out of proportion, saying "in deciding whether or not to continue offshore exploration for oil and gas, a calm quantitative approach makes more sense.” In a preliminary analysis of research studies, Bailey finds that opening additional off-shore drilling options, could amount to $323-$967 billion of total benefit, adjusting for both price fluctuations and environmental risk. “Progress is a trial and error process, and increasing safety results from learning how to make better trade-offs over time between risks.”
Ask the Expert: Shirley Svorny on the Future for Healthcare Professionals
Cato scholar Shirley Svorny discusses the nuances of the new Obamacare legislation in relation to aspiring medical school students. She explains that while there will likely be a shift from general physicians to specialists working in teams and that taxes will almost surely increase, there are several glimmers of hope for those pursuing futures as healthcare professionals. Namely, Svorny notes that the market will adapt to new challenges, and remarks that government regulations aren't likely to stand too much in the way.
Will You Meet This Challenge?
Cato Constitutional Studies scholar Ilya Shapiro sends out a challenge to anyone wanting to debate the constitutionality of the new health care legislation. Shapiro offers to debate anyone - anytime, anywhere. Will you take him up on it?
Is Healthcare a "Right"?
Economics professor Steven Horwitz discusses the danger of declaring things like healthcare and education a "right." Many rights, such as free speech, force people to refrain from obstructing another's right. Ensuring universal healthcare, however, is different because it would force people to do something for others. The problem with positive rights is that they distort incentives and do not result in successful policies without infringing on the negative rights of others. (It is impossible to provide a social program for some without taking money from others.) Horwitz explains that the libertarian end goal is the same as the leftist's, namely that the most people have the best healthcare. The difference is how that happens.
Endangered Findings: the Basis for EPA Intervention may have gone Extinct
The next wave of government intervention into our private lives is expected to come in the form of "environmental" regulations. Cato scholar Pat Michaels describes how the Environmental Protection Agency has been anticipating the opportunity to "dictate how and how much we can drive, fly, consume, or make." However, the precedent for such regulations is based on reports that have had their accuracy questioned over the past year. Michaels presents multiple published findings and journals that document substantial discrepancies with the IPCC report that the EPA is using. The EPA appears to have lost its scientific footing for regulating the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. However, that does not mean they are not going to try.
Price Controls Won't Help Healthcare
As President Obama resurrects healthcare reform, up from its grave in Massachusetts, his actions serve as a highlight real of his previous missteps on the subject. Cato scholar Michael Tanner offers several real world predictions of what might happen should Obama's policy actually pass the increasingly hesitant Congress. Tanner reminds that every action has a reaction, and that price controls set by government regulation will have unwanted effects. Furthermore, he notes that "limiting the prices that insurers can charge does nothing about the underlying costs of health care." Without substantative changes, Americans will end up with higher costs, less service and/or more debt. Thankfully, Tanner offers several recommendations for real reform.
Student Forum: Climate Fantasies and Realities
Cato On Campus and the DC Forum for Freedom partner to bring a student forum to the Cato Institute on January 22, 2010 at 4pm. Pat Michaels, resident climatologist and scholar at Cato, will present on the topic of global warming, Climategate, and his 30+ years in the scientific research community. Please join us for an engaging presentation, discussion, and reception to follow. (Pat Michaels was prominent in the Climategate e-mails hijacked from the University of East Anglia in late 2009, cited in one e-mail as someone one scientist wanted to "beat the crap out of.”)
If you cannot attend the event in person, please watch the event online and participate by submitting your questions via the live online discussion board, here.
IRS to Regulate Healthcare Coverage Under Pending Bill
"Since $290 billion in foregone collections isn't enough to disqualify you from your job, we might as well give you more responsibilities," is what, in essence, Congress' health bills say to the IRS. Peter Suderman of Reason calls attention to an article in Kaiser Health News that discusses new duties to be performed by the IRS under the current healthcare bills. The IRS, in addition to collecting taxes, will be responsible for checking to see if Americans have health insurance, notifying them of missing documents and assigning fines, and collecting those fines. The IRS was never intended to perform this duty, nor should it be. But it is now, under the new healthcare bills circling through Congress. We'll just have to wait and see how the ever-burdened IRS adjusts to the new challenge, and what other freedoms will be sacrificed.
The Senate Pulled a Fast One
An enormously broad healthcare bill barely passed in the Senate early this week, as most Americans were heading home for the holidays and not paying much attention to politics. Michael Cannon, Cato's director of health policy studies, comments that many people have been seduced by the concept of an 'individual mandate,' which is included in the bill's final form and uses the force of law to coerce people into buying insurance, whether or not they want it. The utopian ideals of the health bill distracted people, even though it "was an audacious proposal from the start, as it made their health care plan even more left-wing than the Clinton plan, which voters soundly rejected for being too statist." Now that the bill has moved one step closer to becoming law, Cannon notes, "The question now is whether the Left, the Right, and the mainstream will recognize the Senate health care bill for what it is."
Government, Putting You on a Diet
To cover enormous budget shortfalls, state governments are contemplating a tax on carbonated beverages. Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy explains how the government is simultaneously patting itself on the back for halting childhood obesity, while hitting an already recession-ridden economy with additional taxes. De Rugy points out several evaluation agencies that have analyzed such policies. Some claim that a tax would curb consumption of calorie-packed drinks while raising revenue for states, while others doubt its effect. De Rugy notes that people are generally resourceful in getting what they want, so a tax won't do much else than get government involved in yet another area of the economy. Wouldn't it be a better idea to put big government on a diet?
The Cold Heart of Obamacare
Cato fellow Nat Hentoff presents what's at stake in the current healthcare reform bills. He proposes that the biggest reform that takes place is that the current bills insert government bureaucracy between patients and their doctors. Calling this intervention "death panels" misses the point, not because it's false but because it under-exaggerates the personal intrusion of government in people's private lives. "If congressional Democrats succeed in passing their health-care "reform" measure to send to the White House for President Obama's signature, then they and he are determining your health decisions."
A Reason To Be Skeptical: Lessons of ClimateGate
Reason's David Harsanyi addresses the recent disturbance in the force of the Climate Change community, following the publishing of hacked e-mails between some of the most vocal global warming alarmists. Harsanyi lists the offences that have thus far been exposed, and says that skeptics have a certain duty to call controversial and debatable "settled facts" into question. “True believers will question your intelligence, your sanity and your intentions,” he notes, but “The uglier the names get, the more anger you see, the more that science-challenged politicians push invasive legislation, the more skeptics will join you.” And in the process, rational thinking may emerge.
Deafening Silence on Real Climate Change
Cato climate scholar Pat Michaels asks, 'where have all the scientists gone?' Michaels cites that a scientific article in a recent refereed journal, sponsored by NASA, has found that Antarctic ice has experienced the least seasonal melting in decades. The problem is, no one has reported on the study. "NASA seems to beat the drum only when the news on global warming is bad, and remains mute when it is good," writes Michaels He concludes that although NASA has not been equitable, journalists can be let off the hook either.
The bias in the climate change debate has also hit Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of SuperFreakonomics. They include a chapter on climate change in their new book, which has been met with personal insults rather than debates on their findings, reports John Stossel here.
Free Trade Is a Boon to the Environment
Cato scholar Sallie James responds to the growing divide between advancing environmental proposals and increasing protectionist policies. Many countries claim to be striving for stronger environmental agreements while enacting their own protectionist measures. James counters that, "Indeed, because trade leads to wealth, and wealth to an increased desire and ability to protect the environment, the two are complementary. Nonetheless, many G-20 leaders are doing their best to set them up as being inalterably opposed."
The Dog Ate Global Warming
Cato scholar Pat Michaels explains that there may be something fishy about the data used in the climate change debate. He demonstrates that the temperature data used in penning legislation and regulations, to a large extent, is hidden or non-existent. Those responsible for the data sets used by government agencies have stated, "we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment." Michaels concludes that if the data don't exist, the science is faulty, and therefore any policy resting on such so-called "science" is bunk.
Cap-and-Trade is Dead, But Alive
Cato scholar Pat Michaels presents the idea that Obama and Congress Democrats can toss out the Waxman/Markey Cap-and-Trade bill and still get what they want. "Thanks to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007), the EPA has authority to issue its own regulations on carbon dioxide," says Michaels, adding that "the president has really had the power to enact its core components on his own all along." Thinking strategically, by using Obama to enact (rather than pass) regulations, those officials seeking re-election can get the results they want while clinging to the anonymity that they need to keep their seats.
Cato Trade Policy Analyst Sallie James lays out the international and business implications of cap-and-trade policies in a podcast, posted here. James states that political figures have “not thought through the implications of what they’re proposing,” concluding that the trade provisions not only are ineffective, they are going to be harmful.
Fuel Standards Are Killing GM
Cato scholar Alan Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal writes, in a compelling and timely manner, that "General Motors is likely to become profitable only if it is allowed to specialize in what it does best — namely, midsize and large sedans, sports cars, pickup trucks and SUVs. The company can't possibly afford to scrap billions of dollars of equipment used to produce its best vehicles simply to please politicians who would rather see GM start from scratch, wasting more taxpayer money on "retooling" to produce unwanted and unprofitable subcompacts and electric cars. The average mileage of GM's future cars won't matter if nobody buys them."
Global Warming Debate Heating Up
Forecasting scholars Dr. Kesten C. Green and Dr. J. Scott Armstrong take on MIT's recent Global Warming report: "Policymakers and the public should be made aware that the forecasts from the MIT modellers, as well as those used by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], are merely the opinions of some scientists and computer modellers. ...The forecasting procedures were not valid and there is no reason for policymakers to take their forecasts seriously."
Cato Institute Conference on Health Care Reform
The Cato Institute invites you to participate in a one-day conference, featuring health care experts from across the political landscape, on the state and future of health care reform in America. Even before the results of the 2008 elections were known, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., were preparing some of the most sweeping health care reforms America has seen in decades. The question is: will the reforms being crafted in Congress improve this picture, or make these problems even more acute?
Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism
By Jerry Taylor: "It is businessmen — not bureaucrats or environmental activists — who deserve most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century and who represent the best hope for a Greener tomorrow"
Patrick Michaels Speaks at Dartmouth
Patrick Michaels, Senior Fellow a the Cato Institute, spoke at Dartmouth College on Tuesday, February 23rd, to a packed auditorium where he argued that "The discussion surrounding global warming has become wildly extreme... You either believe it's the end of the world unless we do something about it right now, or you're a denier." Check out the story in The Dartmouth
January YouTube of the Month
Congratulations to Matt Bufton of the University of Windsor for submitting Cato on Campus' January YouTube of the Month. His video, "Health Care in Canada" provides a short discussion of how Canada's health care system actually prohibits competition, something almost no other developed country does.
January Op-Eds of the Month
Congratulations to Jonathan Slemrod and Charles Johnson for winning the Cato on Campus Op-Eds of the Month! Covering environmentalism and free speech on campus, their op-eds will now be considered for the Op-Ed of the Year and a full scholarship to Cato University.
Michael Cannon: "Healthy Competition: How to Free American Health Care"
Who: Michael Cannon What: Speech on "Healthy Competition: How to Free American Health Care" followed by a panel. Where: Disneyland Hotel Host: California Medical Association
December Op-Ed Winners
Congratulations to the first winners of the Cato on Campus Op-Ed Contest: Mytheos Holt and Simon Franěk! Their op-eds, both citing Patrick Michaels and dealing with environmental policy, tied for the December 2008 Cato on Campus Op-Ed Contest.
Much to Lose in Fixing System
By Michael Tanner: "[n]ot all change is change for the better. And before we head down the road to a government-run health care system, we need to stop and think about what we stand to lose."
Does Barack Obama Support Socialized Medicine?
Cato scholar Michael F. Cannon argues that "reasonable people can disagree over whether Obama's health plan would be good or bad. But to suggest that it is not a step toward socialized medicine is absurd."
Responsible Drug Use
"Those who support drug prohibition often do so with the premise, implicit or explicit, that life without prohibition would be marked by vastly more irresponsibility, addiction, accidents, health problems, and death. Those who favor ending drug prohibition are forced to argue, not only for an unfamiliar policy, but also against this parade of horribles. Yet are we not able to think about and manage these substances rationally and responsibly?"
C.S.Oy
By Radley Balko and Roger Koppl: "But as forensic evidence becomes more and more important in securing convictions, the need for monitoring and oversight grows exponentially. Every other scientific field properly requires peer review, statistical analysis, and redundancy to ensure quality and accuracy. It's past time we applied the same quality-control measures to criminal forensics, particularly given the fundamental nature of what's at stake."
Keeping Our Cool: What to do About Global Warming
By Jim Manzi: "The loss of economic and technological development that would be required to eliminate literally all theorized climate change risk would cripple our ability to deal with virtually every other foreseeable and unforeseeable risk, not to mention our ability to lead productive and interesting lives in the meantime."
The Grand Exaggerator
By Patrick Michaels: "OK, it's pretty much standard rhetoric in Washington to say that if you don't do as I say, there will be massive consequences. But to say, as Gore recently did: 'The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk;' and: 'The future of human civilization is at stake' — that's a bit much, even for the most faded and jaded political junkie."
Kidneys for Sale: Iranian Organ Donation
By Kerry Howley: "'What can Iran teach us about good governance?' is not a question often posed in Washington. But according to Benjamin Hippen, a transplant nephrologist in North Carolina, the Iranians have managed to do something American policy makers have long thought impossible: They’ve found kidneys for every single citizen in need."
Fuel vs. Food
By Indur M. Goklany: "In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic."
The Biofuel Brew Ha-Ha
By Peter Suderman: Reason contributor Peter Suderman writes that the biofuels craze is boosting the price of beer, because farmers are shifting away from barley to biofuel crops made more lucrative by mandates and subsidies.
Showing That You Care: The Evolution of Health Altruism
By Robin Hanson: "Human behavior regarding medicine seems strange; assumptions and models that seem workable in other areas seem less so in medicine. Perhaps, we need to rethink the basics. Toward this end, I have collected many puzzling stylized facts about behavior regarding medicine, and have sought a small number of simple assumptions which might together account for as many puzzles as possible."
Is Health Care a Right?
In this podcast economics Professor Russell Roberts of George Mason University debates a physician who thinks health care is a right and the government should provide it.
Organ Transplants: Kidneys for Sale
"In his most controversial segment yet, reason.tv host Drew Carey offers a startling solution to the critical shortage in kidneys available for transplant: Pay people to donate their kidneys."
WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems
By Glen Whitman: "Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions— some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares."
The Ultimate Scholar
By Donald J. Boudreaux: "Last Friday, Feb. 8, marked the 10th anniversary of the death of the great economist Julian Simon. Although he never received the professional or popular acclaim of economists such as Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson or F.A. Hayek, Simon's insights and work rank with those of history's greatest social scientists."
Flex-Fuel Nonsense
By Jerry Taylor: "Congress can no more guarantee that fuel prices will go down from now until the end of time than it can guarantee a robust sex life for fat, balding, middle-aged men. Fuel prices are subject to supply and demand curves that do not answer to Congress — particularly in global energy markets."
Global Warming: Risks and Consequences
"Last fall, at the Reason in DC conference, one of the most strongly attended and memorable panels was titled "Climate Change: Risks and Consequences" and featured Lynne Kiesling, a senior lecturer in economics at Northwestern University, proprietor of the blog Knowledge Problem, and an expert in retail electricity markets; Ronald Bailey, reason's longtime science correspondent and author of, among other books, Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution and ECOSCAM: The False Prophets of Environmental Apocalypse; and Fred L. Smith, Jr., the founder and president of Competitive Enterprise Institute."
Unintended Consequences
By Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt: "But with a government that is regularly begged for relief — these days, from mortgage woes, health-care costs and tax burdens — and with every presidential hopeful making daily promises to address these woes, it might be worth encouraging the winning candidate to think twice (or even 8 or 10 times) before rushing off to do good. Because if there is any law more powerful than the ones constructed in a place like Washington, it is the law of unintended consequences."
Congress Strong-Arming Baseball? That's Foul.
By Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch: "First, Major League Baseball, along with other sports leagues and private-sector ventures, simply should not be required to submit their business plans -- much less blood and urine samples -- to Congress or any other government body."
Dismal Science Sees Upbeat Future
By Alexander Tabarrok: "Forget the talk of recession. The world is about to enter a new era in which miracle drugs will conquer cancer and other killer diseases and technological and scientific advances will trigger unprecedented economic growth and global prosperity."
The Failure of U.S. Organ Procurement Policy
By T. Randolph Beard, John D. Jackson, and David L. Kaserman: "In this article, we calculate how many lives will be lost if the United States continues in its current policy course. We do this to motivate policymakers to stop implementing one ineffectual policy action after another and attack the organ shortage with more effective weaponry in the form of financial incentives."
In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm
By John Tierney: "Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels."
Drug Use and the Candidates
By Stanton Peele: "There has been massive drug and underage alcohol use by Americans over the years -- more than 110 million Americans, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, have used illicit drugs. Yet the overwhelming majority of them -- like Messrs. Bush, Clinton and Obama -- have grown up to be productive citizens. Some believe there's no need to know about their youthful misconduct."
Not So Hot
By Patrick J. Michaels: "If a scientific paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?"
The Great Depression: Is an epidemic of depressive disorder really sweeping America?
By Will Wilkinson: "The alleged epidemic of depression simply doesn’t exist. Horwitz and Wakefield are right: Millions who have been diagnosed with major depression never had it in the first place, even if their lives were nonetheless improved by the drugs they were prescribed."
The Great Global Warming Swindle
"The most disturbing part of the movie, and what makes it worth spending the hour-plus to watch it, is the way it portrays the momentum of the global warming crusade. When you have lots and lots of people heavily invested in a point of view, how can they possibly change?" - Arnold Kling
WHO's Watching Over You
From Agoraphilia. The WHO rankings, by purporting to measure the efficacy of healthcare systems, implicitly takes all differences in health outcomes not explained by spending or literacy and attributes them entirely to healthcare system performance. Nothing else, from tobacco use to nutrition to sheer luck, is taken into account.
35 Inconvenient Truths
We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff.
Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana
"I think it’s clear by now that the federal government needs to reclassify marijuana. People who need it should be able to get it – safely and easily," says The Price Is Right and Power of 10 host Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining medical marijuana and the war on drugs.
The Tragedy of the Commons and the Implications for Environmental Regulation
Bruce Yandle of Clemson University and George Mason University's Mercatus Center looks at the tragedy of the commons and the various ways that people have avoided the overuse of resources that are held in common.
Green Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
By Roger Bate: "There is little more annoying for a policy analyst than when two types of wrong-headedness conspire to undermine his case. Such is the case for policies driven by the pursuit of a pesticide free -- or at least pesticide diminished -- future, which will cause an increase in insect-borne disease. "
Vaccination Bill Mutates
Sigrid Fry-Revere, Director of Bioethics Studies at Cato, writes about the new HPV vaccine, and why states should not mandate it.
A Short Course in Brain Surgery
By Stuart Browning. In A Short Course in Brain Surgery, filmmaker Stuart Browning shows the callousness of "single-payer", government-run health care systems as practiced in Ontario, Canada. His film highlights the plight of Lindsay McCreith, an Ontario man with a cancerous brain tumor who went to Buffalo, NY to receive the timely medical care that is rationed in his home country.
Behind the Baby Count
By Bernadine Healy, M.D.: " We're a nation of beautiful babies. In a remarkable achievement, the loss of babies during their first year of life has plummeted by almost 70 percent since 1970. Yet the nation's infant mortality rate is used time and again as evidence of America's failed health system."
Uninsured in America
By Stuart Browning: "Uninsured in America examines the conventional wisdom that 45 million Americans cannot get health insurance and consequently do not have access to health care."
What Do We Really Know About the Spread of AIDS?
By Emily Oster. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, looks at the stats on AIDS in Africa -- and comes up with a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is wrong. We look for root causes such as poverty and poor health care -- but we also need to factor in, say, the price of coffee, and the routes of long-haul truckers. In short, there is a lot we don't know; and our assumptions about what we do know may keep us from finding the best way to stop the disease.
Our Priorities for Saving the World
By Bjorn Lomburg : "Given $50 billion to spend, which would you solve first, AIDS or global warming? Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg put this question to economists and students around the world, and the answers they came up with may surprise you. Ranking our toughest problems not on any moral scale but simply by how effectively they can be solved, Lomborg and his colleagues demand we take a fresh look at doing good."
Chill Out
By Bjorn Lomborg: "The discussion about climate change has turned into a nasty dustup, with one side arguing that we're headed for catastrophe and the other maintaining that it's all a hoax. I say that neither is right. It's wrong to deny the obvious: The Earth is warming, and we're causing it. But that's not the whole story, and predictions of impending disaster just don't stack up."
Gore's Noble Challenge
By Patrick J. Michaels: "Where else -- except perhaps via the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which Gore negotiated -- can someone accomplish so little while spending so much? But, to get there, or at least to the Demo nomination, Gore's going to have to do something he has assiduously avoided: debate."
The Double Standard in Environmental Science
By Stanley W. Trimble: "My experience suggested to me that ideology, not science, had established a significant grip on the top scientific press. This article attempts to portray the emotionalism, exaggeration, and even ideological viciousness — qualities that to me define extremism — that have invaded the field of environmental science."
The Truth About Medical Marijuana
By Steve Chapman: "The mystery is not why anyone believes cannabis can be safe and effective therapy. The mystery is why so many politicians, particularly Republican presidential candidates—Ron Paul, a physician, being the heroic exception—are unwilling to consider the possibility, or to leave the matter up to the states."
CSI: Mississippi - A case study in expert testimony gone horribly wrong
By Radley Balko: "During the last two decades, there have been more than a dozen high-profile cases in which dubious forensic witnesses conned state and federal courts, sometimes for many years and in hundreds of cases."
Universal Suffer-age
By Tom Elliott: "The last few years have demonstrated that rare is the place politicians are unwilling to tread in the name of public health. Universal coverage will complete this governmental mandate to control American lifestyles."
Global Warming: No Urgent Danger; No Quick Fix
"Fact: The average surface temperature of the Earth is about 0.8 C warmer than it was in 1900, and human beings have something to do with it. But does that portend an unmitigated disaster? Can we do anything meaningful about it at this time? And if we can't, what should or can we do in the future?"
Taming the Hurricane
"Anyone concerned about climate change should take a lesson from Hurricane Dean. Even if storms like this become more frequent in the future, people will adapt and survive if they have the financial resources. How silly it seems to take those resources away in futile attempts to "stop global warming""
Is the Sky Really Falling? A Review of Recent Global Warming Scare Stories
By Patrick J. Michaels: "Reports of rapid disintegration of Greenland’s ice ignore the fact that the region was warmer than it is now for several decades in the early 20th century, before humans could have had much influence on climate."
On Earth Day, Remember The Humans
By Indur Goklany: "On Earth Day, we should renew our promise to keep the environment clean—without adding to human misery or stalling improvements in the human condition."
Five Myths of Socialized Medicine
While our health care system is more market-oriented than in most industrialized nations, we don’t really have a free market in health care in the United States. Half the spending is done by government. Most of the rest is done by bureaucratic institutions."
A Better Way to Protect Endangered Species
Laura E. Huggins argues that for wildlife conservation to be successful, negative restrictions on landowners must be replaced with positive incentives.
The Common Law: How it protects the environment
"The purpose of this PERC Policy Series paper is to show, by examining specific cases in American and English history, that strong legal traditions enabled ordinary citizens to protect their air, land, and water, often against politically potent parties."