The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Monday, June 4, 2007
Issues in the News
1. SAFETY
New laws governing the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals come into force across Europe.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Risk & Environmental Policy Angela Logomasini on the costs of compliance:
“After a seven-year policy battle, Europe’s new chemical law takes effect [this month]. The law is known as REACH—the acronym for the bureaucratic name Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals. The Hayek Institute in Brussels and CEI warned that this law will not only be an expensive drain on Europe and the world economy, it means empowering bureaucrats to deprive consumers and businesses the right to engage in free commerce.”
2. MEDICAL
A new drug from Bayer show promise in treating liver cancer.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Sam Kazman on a poll of oncologists that found 77% believed that the Food and Drug Administration was too slow in approving new drugs:
“FDA reform is frequently attacked as a pet project of big business that will allegedly open the door to snake oil remedies. This characterization is wrong. As these polls demonstrate, for many medical specialists, fighting heart disease and cancer can often mean fighting FDA. If this isn’t a public health problem in need of reform, what is?”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Global warming coverage becomes controversial at The Weather Channel.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on The Weather Channel’s climate expert, Heidi Cullen:
“Not content to report the weather, the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen has become a global warming pundit, recently appearing on Larry King Live, where she seemed to say (incorrectly) that melting sea ice contributes to sea level rise. In a blog post [earlier this year], Ms. Cullen scolded a fellow meteorologist, who declined to lecture viewers about global warming, noting how the issue had been ‘politicized’ and that, given the cyclical nature of weather patterns, he was unsure what ‘generalizations’ could be inferred from the warming trend of recent times.”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To contact a CEI expert for comment or interviews, please call the CEI communications department at 202-332-2273 or email to [email protected].