Latest Articles

Is the Miracle of Vaccination Fading?
We need a concerted effort to counteract 'vaccine hesitancy" and increase vaccination rates

July 18, 2019  •  Fox & Hounds

This year's debate over Senate Bill 276 (Pan) has generated significant controversy in an area where there should be none – the importance of vaccinating all children from often deadly or debilitating communicable diseases.

This debate comes as infectious diseases that used to claim the lives of one in six children before their fifth year are making an alarming comeback in California and nationwide. The culprits are parents who should know better – and the politicians who accommodate them.

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A Speech That Should Be Punished
Harvard, enough is enough!

July 16, 2019  •  American Greatness

Much has been written about the attacks on free speech, especially at universities and colleges. Speakers with conservative viewpoints are routinely banished from important venues, denied attendance, picketed, or subjected to the "hecklers' veto." At the University of California Berkeley and other campuses where conservative speech has been met with disorder, activists have justified it because, they claim, "speech is violence." Gone is adherence to the maxim of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "If there be time to . . . avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

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Giving In To Big Corn
Consumers will suffer the hangover from the feds' ethanol binge

July 12, 2019  •  City Journal

The Environmental Protection Agency released a final rule on May 30 that opens the door for gasoline to be blended year-round with up to 15 percent ethanol, a mixture called E15. This rule boosts by 50 percent the proportion of ethanol (denatured ethyl alcohol derived, most often, from corn) allowed in a gallon of motor fuel in the summer months.

The new mandate is essentially a bribe to midwestern farmers, compensating them for lost exports caused by retaliatory tariffs that U.S. trade partners imposed in response to Trump administration policies. If U.S. trade policy hurts farm exports, the logic appears to go, let's force motorists to purchase more corn ethanol to reduce the oversupply of corn.

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Midwestern Values: May We Never Lose Them
The Midwest's virtues of generosity, self-discipline, and comity are in short supply elsewhere

July 4, 2019  •  American Greatness

I spent nearly a week in June in the flyover part of the country—Topeka, Kansas, to be exact—and found it to be a refreshing change. There's noticeably less snark, whining, self-entitlement, and virtue signaling there than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live and work.

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Cost-Saving Biosimilars' Many Obstacles
Biosimilars could save vast amounts in drug expenditures--if appropriate reforms were adopted

June 28, 2019  •  Regulation

Innovating new drugs is an expensive and uncertain business, typically taking 10-12 years and costing, on average, $2.55 billion to bring a new product to market. The risks are enormous, and deserve significant financial rewards; at the same time, it's undeniable that the costs of many new, complex drugs are high and possibly unsustainable. In the near future, one critical, emerging pricing issue will be how rapid is the uptake of a blockbuster class of drugs called "biosimilars," which can be thought of as generic versions of biologics, drugs that are complex biological molecules derived from living cells. Typical biologics include vaccines, gene therapy, blood and blood components, antitoxins, and allergenic products.

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