The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
GLOBAL WARMING
An article explains the shortcomings of climate impact models.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Global Environment and Energy Policy Myron Ebell on the positive effects of global warming.
When talk turns to global warming, there are only three socially acceptable opinions that may be expressed. It’s going to be bad, terrible or catastrophic. At the risk of committing heresy, I’d like to suggest that the debate about climate change include, for once, a fair assessment of the benefits alongside the declamations of harm.
HEALTH & SAFETY
New York City culinary workers struggle to adjust to the city’s recent ban on trans fats.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar Steve Milloy on the dubious research behind current trans fat bans.
The New York City Board of Health this week banned the use of trans fats by restaurants. The decision is directly traceable back to the “research” of Harvard University’s Alberto Ascherio and Walter Willett, the promoters-in-chief of trans fats hysteria. Now that the Board has deemed their dubious trans fats research suitable for dictating public policy, New Yorkers ought to hope that Ascherio and Willett don’t press the Board to implement some of their other published research that is similar in “quality” to their trans fats work. New Yorkers could, for example, see restaurants banned from serving potatoes, peas, peanuts, beans, lentils, orange juice and grapefruit juice.
MEDICINE
FDA announces a plan to require stronger warning labels on over the counter drugs.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: General Counsel Sam Kazman on why FDA overcaution is a hindrance to effective medicine.
“Because of the Food and Drug Administration, with its inclination toward deadly overcaution, it can require 10 to 15 years and nearly $1 billion to create, test, and bring to market a new drug… Advances in medicine may require difficult scientific breakthroughs. Advances in medical regulatory policy might only require the reframing of basic questions, such as the role of FDA. ”