The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENVIRONMENT
Scientists predict an intense hurricane season for 2007.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy & Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on last year’s predictions of global warming-fueled hurricanes:
“If global warming caused catastrophic hurricanes [in 2005], then how do the alarmists explain this year? Those who tried to use the tragedy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to press for energy rationing legislation should apologize for their shameless exploitation of Gulf Coast victims.”
2. HEALTH
The Food and Drug Administration contemplates stricter safety testing for new medical devices.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on why the FDA is already too slow in approving new drugs and devices:
“The US Food and Drug Administration is among the most highly regarded agencies of the federal government. But for more than two decades, doctors, patient groups, and public policy experts have argued that FDA’s lengthy process for approving new drugs and medical devices often costs lives by denying patients potentially beneficial new treatments. Beginning in the early 1990s, those complaints began to be taken seriously by Congress and the agency. This resulted in a slow progression of legislative and regulatory changes, culminating in passage of the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997.”
3. SCIENCE
New York City bans restaurants from selling food containing trans fats.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the sketchy science behind the ban:
“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.”