Science & Technology

If I were to write a business plan based on manufacturing and selling a product few people wanted, for a price few people were willing to pay, in the midst of the worst recession in at least twenty years, would you invest funds in my venture?  You would if you…

In a brief video, constitutional law professor Elizabeth Price Foley discusses the Institute for Justice’s amicus brief, which she co-authored, on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s an excerpt: It’s always been the case under Anglo-American law that contracts have to be…

Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke advocated the federal government’s requirement that insurance companies provide “free” birth control, arguing that, without it, women "struggle financially" and feel “powerless.” In response, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called Fluke a “slut,” the New York Daily News reports. Fluke fired back, saying Limbaugh’s “language…

A new class of drugs shows promising signs of reversing the damage of the frightful disease multiple sclerosis (MS), reports Michael Booth for the Denver Post. New drugs including Gilenya and Tysabri are proving increasingly effective in treating the disease. The web page for Tysabri describes the basics of how…

The Pope belies his church’s “pro life” posturing in his recent condemnation of “artificial fertility,” by which he means any medically assisted pregnancy not involving a “conjugal act” between husband and wife. Thus, the AP summarizes, the Pope condemns “sperm or egg donation and methods such as in vitro fertilization.”…

A recent decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made an end-run around an existing ban on compensation for most bone marrow donations. In light of new technology enabling the extraction of bone marrow cells from blood, the court ruled that “marrow cells taken from a donor's blood were…

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 and died last fall. In his short life, he revolutionized the world of personal computing, digital animation, music distribution, and portable computing. Today I pay tribute to Jobs by writing these words on my 24-inch iMac running the state-of-the-art Lion operating system,…

Daniel Wahl reviews If I Die in the Service of Science: The Dramatic Stories of Medical Scientists Who Experimented on Themselves, by Jon Franklin and John Sutherland, MD.

In his latest video, Peter Schiff observes that the government has no right to force any employer—no matter his religion—to provide “free” birth control for his employees. He discusses some of the absurdities that may result if the government assumes this right. And, as usual, Schiff points out that economically-illiterate…

Catholics angry at President Obama over the insurance mandate to cover birth control should blame one organization above all others: the Catholic Church. In 1993, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, declaring health care “a basic human right,” released a statement calling for government-imposed universal health care, based upon the…