And they may portend a disturbing national trend...

What could have been an effective high-tech method to remediate spills was killed by federal regulators...

While he headed the EPA, [William] Reilly was one of those know-nothing policymakers. Obama's tapping him to investigate the Gulf oil spill exemplifies what Newsweek and Washington Post contributing editor Robert Samuelson has called a "parody of leadership..."

Obama's cancer panel is more toxic than the chemicals it condemns...

Nuclear power is a safer, more environmentally friendly source of electricity. So why does the US still rely on coal and oil instead...?

EPA shares blame for impeding oil-spill cleanup technology...

Junk science and The New York Times...

Perhaps via the judiciary, society must balance safety with the right of patients and their physicians to make decisions about medical therapies...

The agency has sown confusion by asking physicians to stop administering a vaccine that even they admit is safe...

Controversies raging over BPA and other chemicals are undermining science and wasting taxpayer dollars...

[The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] could do a lot more good by helping to de-stigmatize an old, cheap, and safe way to control the mosquitoes that spread the disease: the chemical DDT...

Innovation had been stymied by EPA's hostile policies toward the most sophisticated new genetic engineering techniques...

Poor tropical countries like Haiti where malaria is endemic desperately need cheap, effective control of mosquitoes. Instead of continuing the politically correct stigmatization of DDT, United Nations agencies and NGOs such as the Red Cross should be rushing supplies of it to Haiti...

What could have been an effective high-tech method to remediate spills was killed by federal regulators...

Largely under the radar the Obama administration has installed a cadre of big-government, power-hungry political appointees whose decision-making is contrary to the public interest...

Science and technology must play vital roles in environmental protection...

Treating genetically engineered products as though they pose inherent, unique risks, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is not very smart.

Every schoolchild these days seems to be a devoted environmentalist, able to spell "sustainable" before "dog."

While the H1N1 swine flu outbreak has received most of the public and media attention during the past year, another virus has sickened a huge number of Americans (and others).

Last June, the United Nations’ World Health Organization, responding to an outbreak of the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, boosted the pandemic alert to the highest level, Phase 6, meaning that a pandemic was under way – the first time in 41 years that the organization had taken that declared step.

Zeal has replaced science and common sense at the Food and Drug Administration. . . .

The FDA needs to regulate herbal remedies and products. . . .

Peter Berkowitz is right to condemn abuses in the peer-review process ("Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen," op-ed, March 13 ), many of which reflect the biases of both articles' referees and journal editors. . . .

Candidates and incumbents need periodic intelligence and mental status testing. . . .

The incompetence of the World Health Organization. . . .

Regulators Need Appropriate Incentives and Disincentives. . . .

The News article by Catherine Shaffer in the December issue1 entitled “FDA recruits prominent critics” contends that the “the general response” to the appointment of anti-industry zealot Peter Lurie of Public Citizen “is positive, even among those who don't necessarily agree with Lurie's positions.”. . .

Is the former vice president not-so-secretly a narcissistic, shameless phony? . . .

Just when we thought that at long last we wouldn't have Al Gore to kick around any more, he resurfaces with a characteristically pretentious, apocalyptic New York Times op-ed [Feb. 27] about global warming, "an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." . . .

As celebrities endorse nonsensical diets and journalists lend credence to anecdote over science, are we heading for disaster? . . .

A ban on chemical DDT has led to a rise in insect-borne diseases. . . .

An Associated Press story about the first lady's "Let's Move" campaign to address the national epidemic of childhood obesity began: "Michelle Obama wears blinders, of sorts." . . .

To end the obesity epidemic, the government will need a new approach. . . .

The British medical journal's controversial history. . . .

Cut budgets so federal agencies focus on what's important. . . .

Regulatory obstacles will hurt crops and the economy. . . .

Why banning genetically engineered sugar beets and alfalfa will hurt the economy and environment. . . .

I must disagree with Jeremy Lott’s criticism (“Worse than the Cure,” Fall 2009) of a set of regulatory proposals formulated last summer by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel. . . .

Obama's alarmingly inept high-level political appointees. . . .

Blasts of arctic air brought prolonged, record-breaking low temperatures last week from the Midwest to the Southeast. . . .

Wild West makes a comeback with underwear bomber. . . .

In the Wild West, when law enforcement was spotty or nonexistent, vigilantes sometimes stepped in. . . .

The government's rationing of expensive care would be a cure worse than the disease. . . .

On Dec. 13 the Senate passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill that increases the budgets for a wide spectrum of federal departments and agencies, including health, education, veterans' and law enforcement programs. . . .

Federal regulators have warned that taking two common medicines together could harm millions of Americans. . . .

New Restrictions on Prescribing, Advertising, Distribution, and Sales Could Debilitate Industry . . . .

From the earth's poles to the tropics, from the oceans to the planet's most fertile farming regions, global warming could present daunting challenges. . . .

The H1N1 swine flu has sickened at least 22 million and killed almost 4,000 in the United States since April, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . . .

Not enough to significantly reduce drug spending. . . .

The only things being protected these days by the Environmental Protection Agency are the insupportable, unscientific views of radical activists. . . .

Some of the assumptions made by Mr. Della Vedova about "biosimilar" copies of a class of drugs called "biologics" are dubious. . . .

The Pelosi bill will hurt not only drugmakers, but patients too. . . .

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right last week when she called her latest health-care-reform proposal a "his toric moment": After decades of life-saving and cost-cutting scientific innovations from drug and medical-device companies...

There must be a self-satisfied smirk on the face of the executives at big pharmaceutical companies as they watch congressional Democrats attempt to punish health insurance plans for having the nerve to raise questions about the consequences of current health reform proposals...

Bill Gates may be the world's richest person--and also the most generous, as measured by amount of philanthropy--but we shouldn't assume this makes him the most perspicacious...

Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz received the 1949 Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for "his discovery of the therapeutic value of [prefrontal lobotomy]in certain psychoses," including depression and schizophrenia...

Frank Young, former head of the Food & Drug Administration, used to admonish his minions that there were times that common sense should prevail over established policies or rules...

President Barack Obama, appearing recently on ABC-TV's "This Week," made what may be the most revealing statements of his tenure...

Scientists recently discovered in Southeast Asia the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drugs for treating malaria, the artemisinins...

Norman Borlaug, the plant breeder known as the father of the Green Revolution, passed away on Saturday at the age of 95...

Health care reform is intended to control spending, expand coverage and protect consumers...

Consumers are increasingly being exposed to what chemistry Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir dubbed “pathological science,” the “science of things that aren’t so.”...

The federal Cash for Clunkers program ends Monday--and good riddance...

Two drug companies that jointly market a prominent cancer drug recently changed the labeling to discourage the drug's use in colon-cancer patients who have certain gene mutations, following clinical studies that showed the drug is not effective in those patients...

Once upon a time there was a horse that was so productive working in the field that he put all the other horses to shame...

News that India may suffer a weaker-than-normal monsoon this year is raising concerns about crop yields and food supply...

"Complementary and alternative medicine" is big business, accounting for almost $34 billion annually in out-of-pocket spending in the U.S., according to a report from the National Institutes of Health released last month...

Federal "user fees," a sort of tax imposed on those who benefit directly from governmental actions or programs, are familiar to many Americans: The charges range from admission to national parks to the processing of passports...

It has become fashionable at the White House and on Capitol Hill to try to cut costs at the expense of the research-intensive (as opposed to generic) pharmaceutical industry...

It's no secret that medicines can enhance the quality or length of life but may cause problems -- even life-threatening ones -- if they are misused...

If there is any truth in the reports about the grab bag of potent drugs found in Michael Jackson's medicine cabinet, it's no wonder he experienced cardiac arrest, probably preceded by respiratory arrest...

Another reminder came this week that medicines can enhance the quality or length of life but may cause problems – even life-threatening ones – if they are taken carelessly...

Cases of H1N1 swine flu continue to appear—especially in the Southern Hemisphere...

How would you feel if you had to slip $100 to somebody at the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew your car registration?...

Cases of H1N1 swine flu continue to appear - especially in Australia, which has seen cases quadruple in a week, with confirmed cases surpassing 1,200...

Remember Harry and Louise, the made-for-television couple whose advertisements helped scuttle the Clinton health care plan 16 years ago?...

In his weekly message on March 7, President Obama tried to reassure a nation jittery about the economy: “With every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper­to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis.”...

Scientists have created a line of monkeys carrying a gene that encodes a green fluorescent protein integrated into their DNA and passed on to their offspring...

Activism can be a good thing...

Re “Managing a Flu Threat With Seasoned Urgency” (front page, May 10): As the co-discoverer of one of the key enzymes of the influenza virus and as someone who has written extensively about H5N1 avian flu, I do not count myself among the “flu experts” who believe that the World Health Organization and Dr. Margaret Chan, its director general, “performed well” during the current outbreak of H1N1 swine flu...

The emergence of new viral diseases serves as a reminder of the high stakes and huge ripple effect of public health decision-making...

One can argue that the situation regarding off-label prescribing of drugs is even worse than described by Richard A. Epstein ("Cancer Patients Deserve Faster Access to Life-Saving Drugs," May 2)...

Just when concerns about H5N1 avian flu seemed to give way to other worries -- especially the flagging economy -- a new strain of H1N1 swine flu swept into our consciousness...

NOW that the H1N1 swine-flu outbreak appears to be waning, it's time to draw important lessons from what happened...

President Obama tried recently to reassure a nation jittery about the economy: "(W)ith every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper — to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis."...

Influenza pandemics are the stuff of nightmares...

The extent and impact of the swine flu epidemic, which appears to have originated in Mexico and spread rapidly to a dozen countries and parts of the U.S., is still unknown...

America's politicians and government officials have been slow to grasp the importance of societal resilience -- the ability to recover from or adapt to adversity...

The FDA, which regulates products worth more than $1 trillion -- a quarter of every consumer dollar -- has over the past two decades become a dangerous impediment to patients' getting the medicines they need...

California is short of more than jobs, money and optimism these days...

The scientific community is practically giddy at the prospect of the Obama administration after the supposed cynicism, manipulation and ignorance of the Bush years...

In a just-released survey weighted to mimic the nation's adult population, 64 percent of respondents reported that the financial downturn had already caused them to make "painful" cutbacks in spending this year, while 27 percent reported being "extremely" or "very" worried about being able to pay bills...

The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has sickened more than 100,000 and killed at least 4,500, with more cases reported daily...

Deciding how to vote in the November election was excruciatingly difficult: I was so put off by the pronouncements on scientific issues by Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin that, in the end, I didn't vote for a candidate for president...

The misery of a bad head cold is something that most of us have experienced...

Federal regulation imposes staggering costs on the economy — costs that dwarf even the massive “economic stimulus” package signed by the president: about $1.1 trillion annually (as of 2005)...

The one thing everyone in Washington seems to agree on these days is that the food and drug administration is in trouble and needs major "change"...

The acquisition by Merck of competitor Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion is not a sign of corporate health...

In order to avoid conflicts of interest, President Obama promised repeatedly that he would not appoint lobbyists to positions in his administration, and one of his first actions in office was to issue an executive order forbidding executive branch employees from working in an agency or on a program for which they have lobbied during the previous two years...

To the Editor: Alice Waters and Katrina Heron’s suggestions for improvements in the National School Lunch Program include a healthy helping of wishful thinking and inconsistency...

From rubber duckies and plastic bottles to pesticides used in agriculture, the world often seems full of lethal hazards...

Even when used to make products of negligible risk and that contribute significantly to public health, recombinant DNA technology (a.k.a. 'genetic modification', or GM) applied to agriculture has a tough row to hoe...

China has an unenviable record on international public health cooperation, to put it kindly...

Congress continues to show that it cares more about perception than performance, more about public relations than the public...

The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, promised during her confirmation hearing to base agency policies and decisions on science, not politics: “If I am confirmed, I will administer with science as my guide, ” she said...

HERE'S some more bad news for the New York-New Jersey area: The once-invulnerable pharmaceutical industry is facing tough times of its own...

The costs of healthcare can be “nation-ruining,” warned outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt...

The acquisition by Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, of rival Wyeth, for $68 billion, is something of an act of desperation...

A report from a panel appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that California should expand pollution prevention initiatives, add "green chemistry" to public school curricula and offer public access to comprehensive information about the chemicals in consumer products...

A GROUP of multi-national European scientists has used gene-splicing techniques to create an extraordinary tomato...

Many Americans are at risk from the combinations of prescription pills, over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements and foods they consume...

Lethal tampering with food or drug ingredients (to say nothing of lead paint in toys and poisonous toothpaste) from China seems to be business as usual...

Personalized health care should be an "explicit goal of health care reform" for the Obama administration, outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt wrote in a "note on the desk'' to his successor...

It's hardly a secret that the U.S. congress performs miserably: The Gallup annual poll on confidence in institutions, released several months ago, found "just 12% of Americans expressing confidence in Congress, the lowest of the 16 institutions tested this year, and the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question."...

China’s food adulteration woes continue as testing has revealed that melamine contamination of eggs produced in three provinces has caused kidney stones and renal failure in children...

As he introduced his new budget director last week, President-elect Barack Obama said that in tough economic times, the government must "shed the spending we don't need" by getting rid of federal programmes that no longer make sense and running others in a more frugal way...

Sometimes politics has to take a backseat to science...

By choosing a seasoned Washington operator like former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, President-elect Barack Obama has made his health care priorities clear...

Milk occupies a special place in our lives and language...

Most of the coverage of the departure of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) from the powerful chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has focused on his anti-environmentalism and his staunch defense of the interests of dysfunctional Detroit automobile manufacturers...

As they say in the blogosphere, follow the link...

One of the least visible but most important of the Obama administration's appointments will be the head of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates products worth more than $1 trillion, or 25 cents of every consumer dollar...

In a recent Wall Street Journal article about a drug company's alleged suppression of unfavorable findings in clinical trials, the reporter repeatedly used terms like "negative studies," "negative outcomes" and "negative results."...

A cornerstone of American medicine is physicians' ability to prescribe drugs for not-yet-approved uses, based on findings in the medical literature and their own clinical judgment...

The Food and Drug Administration’s proposed policy is inconsistent and unwise...

Turbulent and uncertain markets often elicit a flight to quality stocks and to sectors less likely to be affected...

A Food and Drug Administration policy published for public comment Sept. 18 threatens the health of a promising new field, the production of animals with novel and valuable traits...

West Nile virus has hit California particularly hard this year, causing at least 155 serious illnesses – more than twice as many as in any other state – and three deaths...

Earlier this year, firebombs that exploded minutes apart destroyed a car parked outside the campus home of a researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and burned the front door of another’s house...

Recombinant DNA technology, or genetic modification (GM), applied to agriculture has yielded a cornucopia of grains, fruits and vegetables that are resistant to disease, salt or drought, display enhanced nutritional content or produce higher yield with lower chemical input and environmental impact...

Milk occupies a special place in our lives and language...

Once again, Prince Charles has demonstrated a pitfall of the sort of inbreeding that has plagued the royal families of Europe for centuries: feeblemindedness...

I never knew my maternal grandparents...

Last week, firebombs that exploded minutes apart destroyed a car parked outside the campus home of a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, and burned the front door of another's home...

As a wet-behind-the-ears medical intern, a colleague of mine once greeted a new patient with a breezy, "So what's your problem?"...

Bret Stephens is right to marvel at how seriously Al Gore's blather is taken ("Al Gore's Doomsday Clock," Global View, July 22), especially given his dismal record of prognostication and judgment on technology over many years...

Worried about trace chemicals in the water supply or carbon monoxide in your home?...

Gallup's annual poll on confidence in institutions, released June 20, finds "just 12 percent of Americans expressing confidence in Congress, the lowest of the 16 institutions tested this year, and the worst rating Gallup has measured for any institution in the 35-year history of this question."...

As a fresh-faced medical intern, a colleague of mine greeted a new patient with a breezy, "So what's your problem?"...

Most Americans are unhappy with the performance of the U.S. Congress, which has granted no favors recently to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries...

Imagine for a moment that a researcher at a typical European or North American university was being threatened to halt his studies of, say, a new metal alloy for airplanes or a treatment for malaria...

IT'S the organic-food industry's worst nightmare: The surest answers to "killer tomatoes" are "Frankenfood" and irradiation, both anathema to the "natural" crowd...

Unfortunately, produce growers cannot protect us 100 percent of the time...

An outbreak of food poisoning first linked to a bacterium called Salmonella Saintpaul in raw tomatoes has spread to at least 16 states over the past several months...

Members of the California State Assembly's no-amount-of-regulation-is-ever- enough Democratic caucus recently announced forthcoming legislation to address oil spills...

It’s springtime, and political correctness is blooming in Iowa...

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution purposefully divided governance among three separate but interdependent branches, intending to ensure the principal powers — legislative, executive and judicial — were not concentrated in a single branch...

If you were strapped for cash and lived in North Dakota, would you spend money on hurricane insurance?...

European Union officials continue to refuse to let the World Trade Organisation save them from themselves...

John Little (Letters, May 12) perpetuates much of the “Big Lie” about genetically modified food – namely, that it is untested, unregulated, unsafe and unwanted...

"Enhancement" of physical and mental abilities is becoming more and more sophisticated, at least for those who can afford it...

Chinese officials have reported that the country’s fifth outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu this year is killing chickens in poultry markets in the southern city of Guangzhou...

Ever-increasing governmental regulation is in vogue on both sides of the Atlantic these days...

Higher food prices worldwide are big – and bad – news...

After six years of deliberation, in January 2008, the Food and Drug Administration finally—and rightly—concluded that food from cloned animals is safe and may be sold and consumed...

Congress has been in a regulating mood for the past few years, spurring federal agencies directly or indirectly to pile new regulatory requirements (and inflated costs) onto myriad consumer products and activities...

I take issue with your statement that “drug companies, especially the biotechnology companies, are at the root of the problem; they often charge exorbitant prices for monopoly drugs that were developed with heavy government assistance.”...

The head of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation warned last week that critically low food supplies and high demand portend a crisis...

The FDA believes it has discovered the contaminant in the blood-thinning drug heparin that has caused hundreds of allergic reactions and 19 deaths.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration, the nation's most ubiquitous regulatory agency — which regulates products accounting for 25 cents of every consumer dollar — is crying poor....

Those of us who regularly seek out information about scientific and medical subjects have learned there's a hierarchy of reliability...

It is hard to open a newspaper without finding a new example of corruption, malfeasance or misconduct by United Nations officials or agencies...

The well-publicized use by athletes of performance-enhancing drugs including androgenic steroids and human growth hormone has gotten more people than ever before thinking and talking about the subject...

It has become fashionable to bash prescription medicines and the industry that makes them...

People who use science to inform their decisions and policies, on anything from cancer prevention to climate change and food safety, know about the hierarchy of reliability...

European Union officials adamantly refuse to let the World Trade Organization save them from themselves...

"There is a right way and a wrong way to produce (ethanol)," the New York Times editorialized on Feb. 24...

The headlong rush in many parts of the world to replace oil with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) illustrates how the best of intentions can run afoul of the law of unintended consequences...

Regarding "The Real FDA Scandal" (Review & Outlook, Feb. 6): You are correct that "spend[ing] more money" alone will not remedy the FDA's most significant problems, which are: mismanagement, a corporate culture that is excessively risk-averse, and lack of accountability...

Bill Gates may be the world's richest person -- and also the most generous, as measured by amount of philanthropy -- but we shouldn't assume those characteristics make him the most perspicacious...

President Calvin Coolidge was famous for saying that the business of America is business...

Although it’s true that the Food and Drug Administration lacks “enough money or enough skilled scientists to do its job,” more resources alone are not the answer...

Many of us can recall when it was hazardous for tourists to drink tap water in much of Europe...

Hollywood's depictions of germ-phobic, obsessive hand-washing, such as by Jack Nicholson in the film “As Good As It Gets,” are good for a laugh...

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom may have new leaders who bring the promise overall of better trans-Atlantic relations, but when it comes to the politics of global trade, some things never change. ..

Most Americans are unhappy with the performance of Congress: Recent major polls have found congressional approval ratings in the range of 20 percent to 28 percent...

Often, what emerges from Congress is a parody not only of good government, but of common sense...

Warehoused pharmaceuticals recently seized in Dubai were part of a complex supply chain of counterfeits that ran from China through Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Britain and the Bahamas, finally leading to an Internet pharmacy whose American customers believed they were buying medicine from Canada...

Activism can be a good thing...

The framers of the U.S. Constitution purposefully distributed the essential business of government among three separate but interdependent branches, intending to ensure that the principal powers — legislative, executive and judicial — were not concentrated in the hands of any single branch...

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a statewide ban in October on children's toys that contain more than minuscule amounts of chemicals called phthalates, he was simply carrying on a California tradition of misguided, often damaging "health" regulations...

The Journal accurately describes the drug industry's malaise ("Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis," page one, Dec. 6), but it isn't so much that "the industry's science engine has stalled" but that government regulators have slammed on the brakes...

I once heard columnist George Will refer to a general election as a futile narcissistic exercise...

Activism can be a good thing...

Charlie Munger, vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's long-time business partner, once shared with me the secret of their success, "Warren and I have made a lot of money simply by not being stupid..."

Michael Krasny's tell-all memoir, "Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life," will disappoint many of his National Public Radio listeners...

In the war between pathogenic bacteria and humans, the microbes seem to be winning: They're evolving resistance to our antibiotics faster than we're evolving new ways to attack them...

There is a constant war between pathogenic bacteria and humans, and the microbes seem to be winning...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently trying to improve its efficiency by outsourcing a small number of non-critical jobs...

Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz received the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine for "his discovery of the therapeutic value of [prefrontal lobotomy] in certain psychoses," including depression and schizophrenia...

Whether through love of principle or of lucre, in May the faculty senates at the public University of California and the private Stanford University — my own institution — struck an important blow for academic freedom and against priggish, anti-business Puritanism...

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand," economist Milton Friedman quipped...

During his first months as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton denounced the UN Development Program for its “unacceptable” funding of Palestinian propaganda and publicly identified “countries who are in a state of denial” about the need for UN reform...

The pendulum swings back and forth about what ails the regulation of drug development...

The pendulum swings back and forth about what ails the regulation of drug development...

Magicians Penn & Teller have a great video on YouTube in which they convince people to sign a petition banning di-hydrogen monoxide, a ubiquitous and potentially dangerous chemical found in many raw and prepared foods, and even in the air...

The eight-year-old U.S. outbreak of West Nile virus shows no signs of abating...

You might be surprised to learn what is “known to the state of California”…

Biotechnology is everywhere these days, from the production of pest-resistant crops to microorganisms that make biofuels to new drugs and vaccines...

The Gates Foundation could learn a thing or two from Norman Borlaug...

Your editorial neglected some of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona's more prominent deficiencies...

The Washington political game has two modes: claiming undeserved credit and shifting blame for your own shortcomings to others...

From pre-school to planning funerals, green is in....

Several stories in the news the past week are fascinatingly linked, but no one seems to have noticed....

Don’t believe all the eco-hype...

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will head a new group intended to achieve a "green revolution" in African agriculture...

Milk occupies a special place in our lives and language. It has been dubbed “nature’s most perfect food,” and we speak sentimentally of the “land of milk and honey” and the “milk of human kindness.” ...

Water shortages in California are nothing new; the last major drought occurred during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s...

Many states nationwide are considering legislation to legalize the medical use of marijuana...

A sad litany of new examples suggests the FDA has lost its ability to reason about risk...

From preschool to planning funerals, green is in...

Accountability at the FDA described by Dr. Mark Thornton ("Black Wednesday at the FDA," editorial page, May 14) are only the tip of the iceberg...

Policymakers and legislators often fail to consider the law of unintended consequences...

In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed House Bill 246, a measure that redefined the calculation of the value of π, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter...

Twenty years ago, then-FDA Commissioner Frank Young and I began a Wall Street Journal op-ed thus: "Defining the terms 'biotechnology' and 'genetic engineering' isn't an easy task, since the terms don't represent natural groupings of processes or products...

We should be skeptical of legislators' attempts "to fit a new problem into a framework for which it wasn't designed..."

Jack Frost taunted farmers across the Southeast last week with blasts of arctic air that devastated spring crops...

Jack Frost taunted farmers across the Southeast last week with blasts of arctic air that devastated spring crops...

In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously passed House Bill 246, a measure that redefined the calculation of the value of ð, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter...

The Food and Drug Administration lately has been trying to demonstrate to its critics that it really, really, really takes drug safety seriously...

Lately, the FDA has been trying to demonstrate to its critics that it really, really, really takes drug safety seriously...

From the Earth's poles to the tropics, from the oceans to the most fertile farming regions, global warming could present daunting challenges...

From the earth’s poles to the equatorial deserts, from the oceans to the most fertile farming regions, global warming could present daunting challenges...

We're attacking global warming with a lot of hot air -- with strategies that will never work...

FDA regulators need to balance patients' access to therapies with ensuring the safety of drugs...

The appropriate choice of an analgesic depends on many variables, including the cause and severity of the pain and whether the patient has inflammation, liver or cardiovascular disease, a history of stomach or duodenal ulcers, or a tendency to hemorrhage...

If it’s true that developments in California are a harbinger of progress elsewhere in the nation, all of America is in big trouble...

The latest Al Gore flap concerns the extravagant electricity and natural gas consumption at the former vice president's mansion in Nashville...

Part 1 of this article series described the FDA's recent attempts to convince its critics that it takes drug safety seriously...

The old saying in Washington that 'when something has been repeated three times it becomes a fact' has been applied lately to supposed shortcomings in the safety of prescription drugs...

Mark Eisner's ill-informed Letter (Jan. 29) is the perfect affirmative response to the headline in the Letters section "Are Organic Food Advocates in Thrall to Mythology Rather Than Science?"

If it’s true that developments in California are a harbinger of "progress" elsewhere in the nation, Americans are in big trouble...

I spent much of my first year of graduate school, in 1969, doing research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in California...

California politics lately seems a parody of itself...

The FDA’s preliminary decision last week to permit the consumption of food from cloned animals is a good one..

Would you try to review a 700-page book after reading a single paragraph?

Jack Frost sent a chill into California farmers last week with blasts of arctic air that threatened several of the state’s major agricultural areas, from San Diego to the Central Valley and along the coast...

Jack Frost taunted area farmers last week with blasts of arctic air that threatened several of central California's major farming areas...

The FDA's preliminary decision last week to permit the consumption of food from cloned animals is a good one...

My recent article about defective consumer products and the vagaries of customer service elicited a flurry of responses...

Twenty years ago, the then-FDA Commissioner Frank Young and I began a Wall Street Journal opinion–editorial thus..

There exists a constant tension between the development of innovative, valuable new technologies and activists opposed to them...

Barely a week after my Hoover Institution colleague economist Milton Friedman passed away last month, I had a stark first-hand reminder of the wisdom of his limited-government, libertarian views...

The application of recombinant DNA technology, or gene splicing, to agriculture and food production, once highly touted as having huge public health and commercial potential, has been paradoxically disappointing...

The U.N. task force that wrapped up here on Friday deliberated on the regulation of foods obtained with recombinant DNA (or gene-splicing) technology...

An important regulatory milestone recently passed unnoticed -- the 20th anniversary of the Reagan administration’s science-based biotechnology regulatory policy, which was supposed to usher in a broad revolution in agriculture...

Vural Ozdemir and Bryn Williams-Jones ask “[w]hether the pharmaceutical industry equitably contributes to civil society and international health..."

"The American people voted for change and they voted for Democrats to take our country in a new direction,” said a triumphant Nancy Pelosi upon becoming the new Speaker of the House...

Since the first reports of an outbreak of E. coli-related illnesses traced to fresh, bagged spinach, this deadly strain of bacteria has led to three deaths and approximately 200 illnesses nationwide...

Food poisoning from food contaminated with microorganisms is very common: 76 million cases and 5,000 deaths annually in the United States, according to government figures...

Fruits and flowers are not the only things blooming in the tropics...

Your article "Stalk-Raving Mad -- French Farmers, Activists Battle Over Rise in Genetically Altered Corn" (Marketplace, Oct. 12) failed to put my quote on the long-term effects of genetically engineered crops into the larger context of the process of safety testing done by biotechnology companies in order to gain government approval to introduce a GE crop into the U.S. food system…

Life really can imitate art....

A brief comment about your excellent Oct. 13 editorial "Faster FDA Cures": It's certainly true that the additional resources provided by the user fees under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act of 1992 have been net positive to American patients (as well as to drug companies), but in endorsing a reauthorization of the legislation, you raised the question of whether we need to resort to user fees to realize the same benefit…

American needs high-profile heroes these days...

At a time when the American population is aging and more seniors are suffering from chronic diseases, the pharmaceutical pipeline is drying up

While riding in a subway train in Washington DC recently, I watched a guy sell a bootlegged DVD of a first-run movie to a woman...

In "The Third Man," the brilliant, shadowy, 1949 film, Orson Welles' character, Harry Lime, is a morally bankrupt, cynical racketeer and dealer of black-market, diluted penicillin...

Political-science researchers at UCLA recently quantified political bias in a spectrum of media outlets...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman correctly concluded that the blame for many of the distortions of the marketplace caused by government lies with the system itself, not just the actors within it...

In the Old West, when law enforcement was spotty or nonexistent, vigilantes sometimes stepped in. A known cattle rustler might be found face-down in a gully with a terminal case of "lead poisoning," as they used to say in TV westerns...

"Rhetoric and paté abounded on the first day of the City Council's ban" of foie gras in Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune, "as restaurateurs and gourmands openly flouted the prohibition – cultured, giddy, goose-liver-fueled acts of defiance...

Wars have been fought over politics, economics, territory, ethnic origin, race, religion and national pride...

A clinical trial that went badly awry at London's Northwick Park Hospital in March became the drug-testing community's worst nightmare...

In the late 1990s, a singular phenomenon swept the world...

Wars have been fought over politics, economics, territory, ethnic origin, race, religion and national pride...

The medical marijuana controversy rages on...

"Rhetoric and paté abounded on the first day of the City Council's ban" of foie gras in Chicago (Aug. 22), according to the Chicago Tribune, "as restaurateurs and gourmands openly flouted the prohibition - cultured, giddy, goose-liver-fueled acts of defiance...

Even in the dog days of August, a lot of attention has been paid to Senate confirmation hearings for FDA commissioner nominee Andrew von Eschenbach…

Leon Hesser's straightforward yet gripping biography of Nor man Borlaug, the plant breeder known as the Father of the Green Revolution, offers the kind of nobility and idealism shown by Jimmy Stewart in the classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...

Activism can be a good thing…

Some aspects of our political and personal lives -- zoning, city planning, traffic laws, noise ordinances, conformity in architecture, composition of school boards, and so forth -- can effectively be determined at a local level…

The letter from Yannick Phillips ("GMO bill needs scrutiny now," July 28) is rife with misrepresentations…

Anatole France famously said, "If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing…

Ask any farmer in America's major wheat-growing regions about this year's crop and you'll get an earful…

As the "new biotechnology" -- gene-splicing, or "genetic modification" (GM) -- enjoys ever more varied and impressive successes, the intractable opposition from environmental and other activists has become reminiscent of the old cartoon cliché about the person who year after year inaccurately predicts the end of the world…

In regard to "Weekend Interview: Get Your Priorities Right" by Kimberley A. Strassel (editorial page, July 8): Bjorn Lomborg calls for more advocacy for efficient ways to accomplish major international health, economic and environmental goals…

Scandals, incompetence, and profligacy at the UN are hardly news these days, but many of the organization's worst transgressions are hidden from public view…

Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg, who became a punching bag for environmental activists after he challenged the popular wisdom that the natural environment is deteriorating, in a recent interview repeated the theme of his controversial book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist …

Mendacity and misrepresentation are nothing new from anti-meat, anti-technology, anti-capitalism activist Jeremy Rifkin…

Scandals, incompetence and profligacy at the United Nations are hardly news these days, but many of the organization's worst transgressions are hidden from public view…

Nobel Laureate Anatole France said famously, ``If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing…

United Nations deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown has a singular view of what constitutes international diplomacy…

Claudia Rosett’s superb NRO piece offers example after example of corruption and profligacy at the U.N…

United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown has a singular view of what constitutes diplomacy…

It has been said that California is a decade ahead of the rest of the country in adopting new ideas…

In their recent article on NRO, Bob Goldberg and Peter Pitts took issue with a previous article published on NRO written by me, criticizing the FDA…

Fruits and flowers are not the only things blooming in the tropics…

I thought we weren't going to have Al Gore to kick around any more…

The "safety" of a drug is a relative thing.

Environmental groups have filed a spate of nuisance lawsuits that attempt to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from registering or reregistering pesticides.

Vaccines traditionally offer low return on investment but high exposure to legal liability.

Innovations such as gene therapy, even when used for enhancement, should be treated similarly to other analogous medical and quasi-medical interventions.

Product labeling that conveys essential information is important, but compulsory labeling of gene-spliced foods is a bad idea for several reasons.

"genetic resistance is where we want to go." But this definitive solution has been made hugely expensive and impractical by regulatory obstacles erected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Drug development in this country is more lengthy and expensive than anywhere in the world.

Regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been criticized for being inefficient and unscientific.

The Justice Department announced on Monday that federal drug agents will no longer arrest or prosecute people who are legally using, selling or supplying medical marijuana in the states that allow it...

GUESTS: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com; Hugo Restall, AWSJ; Alissa Rubin, The New York Times; Henry Miller, Hoover Institution; Ron Nordland, The New York Times...

Regulation and risk aversion hinder advancement...

The UN’s attempts to attain and maintain international peace and comity too often degenerate into exercises in ineffective, politicized, lowest-common-denominator diplomacy, but a worse menace is its ambition to become the regulator of many products and activities, including chemicals and biotechnology. . . .

Most of the coverage of the departure of Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.) from the powerful chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has focused on his anti-environmentalism and his staunch defense of the interests of dysfunctional Detroit auto manufacturers...

Bill Gates es uno de los hombres más ricos y de los filántropos más generosos, pero no asumamos por ello que sabe mucho de todo...

Without better management of water resources, the world’s current consumption will likely need to double by 2050 to provide food for a global population of some nine billion, according to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development...

This year, Congress is considering a variety of legislative changes that would substantially affect the regulation of pharmaceutical drugs...