Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Stephan: Conservative readers write me, saying I favor Democrats. Democrats sometimes write and say I am being too hard... on Democrats. It seems I need to say this periodically, so let me say it once again: I do not care about partisan politics. I care about fact based compassionate life affirming policies. Whomever proposes and supports such policies I support. The data that Blue value policies produce superior social outcomes is irrefutable. (See Social Values, Social Wellness: Can We Know What Works? http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900346-6/fulltext).
Here is the founding vision of SR. I put it on the net back in 1998 when I began doing this:
SchwartzReport is a daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, liberty, and things that are life affirming. It also warns readers about actions, and events that threaten those values. Stories have been vetted for accuracy by either a significant peer reviewed research journal or, at the least, a major journalistic publication.
As it happens more compassionate life affirming policies are put forward by Democrats than Republicans. That is a fact. That's what gives me the appearance of being partisan.
-- Stephan
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Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Stephan: This is good news. We are still far from the top in terms of infant mortality, but at least now we are moving in the right direction.
HYATTSVILLE, MARYLAND — After significant declines in the 20th century, the U.S. infant mortality rate plateaued from 2000-05 but declined again from 2005-11, officials say.
Marian F. MacDorman, Donna L. Hoyert and T.J. Mathews of the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found in 2005 the infant mortality rate was 6.87 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, not significantly different from the rate of 6.91 in 2000.
Subsequently, the U.S. infant mortality rate declined significantly from 2005-06, but did not change significantly from 2006-07, and then declined significantly each year from 2007 through 2010, the report said.
In 2011, the U.S. infant mortality rate was 6.05 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, 12 percent lower than the rate of 6.87 in 2005.
From 2005 through 2011, the neonatal mortality rate — deaths under age 28 days per 1,000 live births — declined 11 percent and the post-neonatal mortality rate — deaths at ages 28 days to under 1 year per 1,000 live births — declined 14 percent.
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Saturday, April 20th, 2013
ROB GARVER and CHARLES SEIFE, - ProPublica
Stephan: This is yet another sorry story of how corrupted American regulatory agencies have become. First the explosion in Texas of a plant that had not been subjected to regulatory oversight since 1985. Now this about Big Pharma. Our government fails us over and over because the conservatives, who philosophically promote only the most minimum government, have destroyed the regulatory safety net. This lunacy endangers us all.
This week, we reported that the Food and Drug Administration left medicines on the market for years after discovering they were approved based on fraudulent studies by Cetero Research, which did testing for drug companies worldwide.
Turns out that wasn’t an anomaly: The agency’s slow, secretive response in the Cetero case mirrors how it handled an earlier instance of scientific misconduct at another contract research organization, MDS Pharma Services.
The FDA found that data produced from 2000 through 2004 at two MDS facilities in Quebec, Canada, were questionable.
As it would do with Cetero, the FDA announced it was requiring drug manufacturers to redo many of the MDS studies conducted during the five-year problem period. And, just as in the Cetero case, the agency declined to make public a list of the 217 generic drugs, both on the shelves and awaiting approval, that it said could be affected by MDS’ potentially faulty research.
Instead, the FDA assured the public that all affected drugs were safe and effective, even as it was requiring re-testing of many of those medicines.
As with Cetero, most of the tests the FDA was concerned about were ‘bioequivalence’ tests, designed to show whether a generic drug is equivalent to the original […]
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Saturday, April 20th, 2013
BOB GARFIELD, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The Boston marathon bomb event, and the subsequent search and gun battle of last night about 11 p.m. revealed an astonishing shift in media in the U.S.. Both the strengths and weaknesses of cable news were on display, and a clear trend emerged in which the videos captured by civilians, as it were, created an entirely new record of a mass event. Not just the video. I followed it on Reddit. The strength of the street battle mixing commercial news crews with volunteer video made for mesmerizing television. But the space in between the major events screamed of cable news weakness. Here is an excellent assessment of what I mean. It wouldn't surprise me that you have said something like this yourself.
The marathon coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing has set into motion the all-too-familiar. When something awful happens, the human impulse is get informed instantly. That often means rushing to a TV and gaping at the unfolding drama. It’s an understandable reflex, but usually, a self-defeating one, like scratching a sore or drinking sea water.
It may satisfy the immediate urge, but beware the consequences. CNN’s false report about arrests was as predictable as it was irresponsible; live TV coverage is a world of blunder. So, if you must tune into 24-hour cable news for the latest, there a few things always to bear in mind:
A watched pot never boils. Following violent crimes and disasters, the intensity of the coverage is inversely correlated with the prospects for advancing the story. Incidents last as long as they last – usually, seconds – then they are over. The ‘when’ and ‘where’ and some of the ‘who’ (victims) are immediately obvious. The rest of the ‘who’ (the culprits, the missing), plus the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, can take days or weeks or months to unravel.
The latest developments usually aren’t. Desperate to add to the endlessly repeated basic facts, reporters will breathlessly pass along tiny […]
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Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Stephan: The austerity analysis so beloved by conservatives turns out to be something less than claimed -- as the result of an Excel program error, if you can believe it. Here is an excellent essay explaining why I say this.
Click through to see the chart.
Government indebtedness matters. Default and financial panic are the stuff of finance-minister nightmares. Government borrowing can crowd out private investment, dragging growth down. Yet economists have struggled to specify when a country needs to worry about its debt load. In a 2010 paper Carmen Reinhart, now a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard University, seemed to provide an answer. They argued that GDP growth slows to a snail’s pace once government-debt levels exceed 90% of GDP.
The 90% figure quickly became ammunition in political arguments over austerity. Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman, cited their ‘conclusive empirical evidence
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