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No Beef to Breast Cancer Scare
“Breast cancer risk linked to red meat, study finds,” headlined the Washington Post’s front page last Tuesday. “Younger women who regularly eat…
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The Unboring Pundit
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> John Tierney's Tuesday column began innocently enough. He…
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America’s Lights Go Out?
Soon after the widespread blackouts of 2003, the Electric Reliability Organization was established, and it recently issued its first report. That report makes for grim…
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What will we do when America’s lights go out?
Soon after the widespread blackouts of 2003, the Electric Reliability Organization was etablished, and it recently issued its first report. That report makes…
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Lifestyles of the Ethical Consumer
Recently, the celebrity gossip blog, DMZ, took a swipe at celebrities “who claim they’re green, but guzzle gas”. George Clooney, among others,…
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Trans Fat Hysteria Could Be Lawsuit Bonanza
The takeover of Congress by Democrats could result in a big payday for trial lawyers at the expense of the feckless food industry.
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Enviro fog calculus
A new report by the World Wildlife Fund says if current trends continue, the Earth will be too small to sustain humanity. “Pressures on the…
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Gambling with freedom
Your after-tax income belongs to you. You are free to spend it, invest it, waste it, burn it, or tithe it away—and none of…
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The Snowe-Rockefeller Road to Kyoto
In a recent letter to ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Rockefeller (D-WV)…
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Voters don’t care about the environment
Barring the invention of a time machine, no one can know exactly what will happen on election day. The best that experts can do is…
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Celebs Mislead Californians on Air Pollution Threat
What do Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts know about air pollution and health in California? The answer can only be “not much,” based on…
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Is Fairness Doctrine on Its Way Back?
This election season, much of the GOP’s difficulties stem from the disaffection of conservative talk radio. For the past two years, while supporting…
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And Now a Word From Our Critics
FridayBalance is an important conceit of American journalism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, previously partisan newspapers edged toward respectability and…
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What’s the Doughboy Afraid Of?
WednesdayVermont is cold. That message will be repeated several times Wednesday night but it's bleeding obvious from the minute I step out of…
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Business Bankrolling of the Left
Big business primarily supports right-wing advocacy groups, right? Think again. A recent report from the Capital Research Center shows Fortune 100 corporate foundations…
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Rules of Ridicule
“Ridicule is man's most potent weapon,” says the fifth rule of Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul Alinsky's classic…
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Blunting the greenhouse panic
A new study provides experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a major factor in causing the Earth's climate to change. Given the…
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Fishy Dietary Advice
Researchers announced this week that the health benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks. But as far as the data indicate, the scales are…
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The Man for All Seasons
Life really can imitate art. Leon Hesser's straightforward yet gripping biography of Norman Borlaug, the plant breeder known as the Father of the…
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Big business loses a buddy with Mark Foley resignation
WASHINGTON – We’re still figuring out who knew what and when about former Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s behavior toward pages, but the disgraced…
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A Nobel Prize For Pinpointing U.S. Greatness
America is now five for five in the Nobel Prizes this year. And the announcement of Edmund Phelps as the economics recipient is…
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Are Bad Drugs Coming to a Pharmacy Near You?
In “The Third Man,” the brilliant, shadowy, 1949 film, Orson Welles' character, Harry Lime, is a morally bankrupt, cynical racketeer and dealer of…
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Petronoia
As the price of oil and gas rose to 1970s oil crisis levels over the past year, pundits flew out of the woodwork…
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Israel’s New Northern Friend
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> While the antics of Canada's left-wing, anti-Israel ideologues have been…
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Day of Reckoning for DDT Foes?
Last week’s announcement that the World Health Organization lifted its nearly 30-year ban on the insecticide DDT is perhaps the most promising development in…
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Aaron Sorkin VS. the Moralists
No one would ever accuse The West Wing of being anything but a defiantly liberal show. And in many ways, that was part…
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Credit card ricochet
“Partners in plunder.” That's how an intriguing new book describes the hidden relationship between big government and big business. <?xml:namespace prefix = o…
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Back to Business School
It’s the beginning of the fall semester and MBA programs across the world are preparing students to become good business leaders.
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Drug Testing, Drug Hazards
A clinical trial that went badly awry at London's Northwick Park Hospital in March became the drug-testing community's worst nightmare. Six healthy volunteers ended up…
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White House Wobbles on Warming?
Rumor around Washington has it that the White House is about to change its long-established policy on global warming. It is hard to…
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The Ratings Game
It's a familiar experience for many moviegoers: You walk out of a theater scratching your head, wondering why a movie was given a…
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Lance Armstrong’s Self-Inflicted Cancer?
Did the use of performance-enhancing drugs cause seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s testicular cancer? That’s what a Sports Illustrated columnist suggested this…
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Green Leaders: Three chief executives who embraced environmental causes neglected their firms’ core business needs
Green CEOs and good business just don't mix. Witness this past week's embarrassing examples of Ford Motor Co.'s Bill Ford and BP's Lord John…
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BP’s mixed messages on core ‘old world’ activities
Sybil Ackerman (“BP is deserving of censure, but not a vendetta”, September 1) raises interesting points but fails to assign responsibility for BP's problems…
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Welcome to Washington, Wal-Mart
WASHINGTON – As liberal politicians, vocal unions and editorial pages argue that Wal-Mart underpays and mistreats its employees (The Boston Globe even implied that Wal-Mart…
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Why spurning food biotech has become a liability
Henry I. Miller, MD, Gregory Conko & Drew L. Kershen By rejecting gene-spliced ingredients in their products, some major food companies may be…
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Weathering Hurricane Hysteria
It’s peak North Atlantic hurricane season again and much is being made of a supposedly increased hurricane threat due to man-made global warming.
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Katrina and Her Policy Waves
Despite the lack so far of any hurricanes hitting America this hurricane season (at time of writing), environmental activists are using the memories…
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Turning MySpace into TheirSpace
Like a coffee shop or a mall, the Internet has evolved into a digital “third place,” a location we visit not only for…
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No, Rice Krispies Aren’t Bio-Toxic
If you listen to environmental activists these days, you might think that snap, crackle, and pop coming from your Rice Krispies is the…
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Boomers Targeted in New Waistline Scare
“Just a few extra pounds could mean fewer years, study finds,” headlined a front-page, above-the-fold story in the Washington Post this week. The…
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Judicial Activism in Overdrive: Massachusetts, et al, v. EPA
August 31 is the deadline for filing the petitioners’ brief with the Supreme Court in Massachusetts et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Plaintiffs, who…
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Politicized Science Produces Bad Public Policy
A new study about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Vietnam veterans once again spotlights the need to separate the process of establishing veterans’ benefits…
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EPA’s Never Ending Dioxin Scare
If ever there was an example of what’s wrong with the intersection of government and science, the Environmental Protection Agency’s 20-year campaign to scare…
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America the Parent?
Why is government trying to be our parent again? Congress’s latest effort is the campaign to regulate video game content. Yet this is…
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UNITE-HERE on the Attack: Pioneer of Corporate Campaigns Pushes Harder Than Ever
Full document available in PDF America’s national hotel chains are bracing for union trouble. The UNITE-HERE labor union thinks it has found…
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Ignoring Limits on Harassment Liability
Back in 1999, in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the Supreme Court laid down a test for when sexual harassment rises to…
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Protection Against Unanticipated Lawsuits
On Monday, in Arlington Central School District v. Murphy, the Supreme Court limited the court costs recoverable under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act…
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The High Cost of Petitioning
A radical pro-affirmative action group, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), joined by Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, have filed a Voting Rights Act…
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A License To Complain
Last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that a worker alleging retaliation for complaining about discrimination may sue even if she has not suffered a…
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Get Rid of the High Places
In one of the least surprising developments of 2006, a Louisiana politician has been snared in a corruption scandal. Democratic Congressman William Jefferson has…
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Data Mismanagement
Members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, now say that Sarbanes-Oxley can be unduly burdensome on business. The law that, in…
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The Responsible Corporation
Does anybody believe that companies should be socially irresponsible? I don’t think so. The problem is that few people seem to agree on…
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Global Warming Skeptic Claims Environmental Conversion
Al Gore’s new global warming movie is apparently causing some to think that a major turning point in the debate is at hand.
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Homeland Bureaucracy?
Writer P.J. O'Rourke once quipped: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” It seems…
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Defining Virtue
by Isaac Post | May 21, 2006 David Vogel’s The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility offers…
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Schumer’s Way
Senator Schumer is on a roll. After coasting to an easy and well funded re-election in 2004, the senior senator from New York is…
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Tracey Ross: TV’s Outspoken Individualist
How many Objectivists are there among television actresses? Well, there is one for sure: Tracey Ross of NBC’s popular soap opera “Passions.” As you…
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Volatile Gases
The European emissions trading scheme (ETS) was launched with great fanfare last year. The idea was to require certain energy-intensive industries to have a…
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Harper Falls into the UNESCO Trap
Budgets and softwood lumber deals aren't Prime Minister Stephen Harper's only significant initiatives. On Friday, he followed through on an unfortunate promise he…
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The war hero vs. the bureaucrats
Pity poor Eddie Rickenbacker. His life so closely resembled the clichéd “American Dream,” that you can't blame him for buying into American mythology.
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Corporate McSocial Responsibility
Fast-food gadfly Eric Schlosser has a new book out. Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food is Fast…
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Bad Bugs, Few Drugs
During the late 1960's, my college roommate suffered a seemingly minor skin infection on a finger, which quickly turned into blood poisoning and…
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Politicians Should Quit Grandstanding; Focus on Long-Term Energy Solutions
As public anger over soaring gas prices continues to build, members of Congress have noticed that their re-elect numbers continue to go down. …
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‘Green’ Politicians Add to Gas Price Woes
Amid the race between politicians to capitalize on consumer anger at high gas prices, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn…
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‘Green’ Politicians Add to Gas Price Woes
Amid the race between politicians to capitalize on consumer anger at high gas prices, at least one member of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.,…
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A Bird Flu Manhattan Project?
Vaccination to prevent viral and bacterial diseases is modern medicine's most cost-effective intervention. Vaccines to prevent the expected avian flu pandemic could save…
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Ex-Im: Boeing’s Bank Once More
The Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports primarily through loan guarantees, dedicated a majority of its guarantee dollars again…
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Is the U.S. Sugar Problem Solvable?
The United States’ sugar policy has a long history of supporting sugar producers, and the current system has its roots in the agricultural programs of…
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Animal Rights, Human Wrongs
Animal rights extremism—which the FBI has labeled the biggest domestic terrorism threat—has encountered a number of serious reverses recently. These reverses are a…
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Sunset the FCC
Reforming telecommunications law is a favored subject in the halls of Congress this year. Hot issues include streamlining video franchising and addressing the "net…
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Twenty Years After Chernobyl
April 26 marks the 20th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Anti-nuclear activists are still trying to turn Chernobyl into…
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Unholy Alliance
States are embroiled in a nasty squabble with their business partner of seven years: Big Tobacco. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”…
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France’s New Revolution
The French climate of economic sluggishness and widespread unemployment has led to a pervasive restlessness. Many—especially the youth—have taken to rioting, striking, and…
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The UN vs. Technology
With diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS ravaging the world's poor—and perhaps a flu pandemic in the offing—the United Nations'…
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Top Ten Junk Science Stories of the Past Decade
My web site JunkScience.com celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 1, 2006. To mark the event, this column spotlights…
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New fuel standards unnecessary
Once again, the government has issued what it claims is a “win-win” fuel economy mandate— yes, it will raise the prices of new SUVs and…
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Let the Internet Grow Up
America has developed a proud paternal bond with the Internet. We've watched and cheered the net's growth from its awkward, text-heavy infancy into…
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Oil Corruption and Untapped Potential
Robert D. Novak's March 23 op-ed column, “Iraq's Oil Crisis,” highlighted one result of the Bush administration's decision to retain nationalized ownership of the…
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Senate Sets Up Lopsided Global Warming ‘Debate’
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will kick off a legislative effort to address global warming next…
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Waiting to Inhale: ‘Thank You for Smoking’
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Few industries are more demonized than Big Tobacco. From…
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V is for Read the Book Instead
“People shouldn’t fear their governments, governments should fear their people.” This line from the movie V for Vendetta seems to have convinced libertarian luminaries…
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Congress’ Silk Purse
During the Capitol Hill budget debates, many spectators must have found the use of the term “earmarking” somewhat strange. What does it have…
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Reform the Reformers
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> On the Saturday Show (Jan. 21), NPR commentator John Ydstie, in a…
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Terrorist Heroes
Like it or not, comic books are no longer the domain of nerds and adolescents. Driven by the box-office success of adaptations of…
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Politics Nixed In Cancer Stick Flick
When Christopher Buckley’s novel Thank You for Smoking came out in 1994 it was a surprising satire of the vilification of the tobacco…
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New Drug Demagoguery
“New Drugs Hit the Market, but Promised Trials Go Undone” and “FDA: Drug Companies Drop Ball on Studies,” the headlines blared.
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Careful What You Wish For
If you wanted to lower electric energy prices in the US, what would you do? If you answered, “Cripple the domestic railroad industry,” you'd…
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Wi-fi? Why Not?
Walking around a corner, one never knows what will appear. Yet in order to move forward, it’s often necessary to turn corners anyway,…
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Hot Air Hysteria
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are at record highs according to a new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The implication is that…
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Speaking in Tongues
In Monty Python’s classic "Hungarian Phrasebook" sketch, a Hungarian tourist walks into a British tobacconist’s shop, and, consulting a faulty phrasebook, tells…
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Gators and a Lot of Guff
Few experiences inspire awe like paddling a canoe through a Florida swamp filled with otters, turtles and tropical birds. Or spending the night on high…
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Standing Athwart History…
Is there a point at which societal change moves so fast that some people not only do not see it, but emphatically deny…
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Ethanol is good, except when it’s not
Some people accuse George W. Bush of seeing the world in simple terms, black-and-white, good-and-evil. He has been quoted as saying, “in Texas,…
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EPA Whips Up Air Pollution Scare
The air pollution scare industry is at it again — in a very timely manner to help the Environmental Protection Agency impose more dubious…
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Sarbanes-Oxley Accounting Board: An Agency Without Accountability
In 2001, the energy giant Enron unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy, laying off 4,000 of its employees and consuming the life savings of thousands more. In…
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Patients vs. Paternalism
Decisions about drug safety and efficacy are far from easy. Tysabri, a multiple sclerosis (MS) drug that was voluntarily withdrawn from the market last year…
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No Beef in Meat Packaging Controversy
Yet another potential food scare is being manufactured out of thin air — or rather out of carbon monoxide. Last November, with little fanfare,…
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The Lancet Pricks Itself
The term “medical journals” elicits automatic respect from most people. Not from me: I read them. I've found the editors to be increasingly…
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Is CSR A-OK?
A Friday conference at the American Enterprise Institute will try to answer the question: "Is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Serious Business?" And not…