January 20, 2009 · 4:17 pm

Stem Cell Debate – Pro current policy

An excerpt of a letter signed by Cardinal Francis George, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, sums the arguments:

The embryonic stem cell policy initiated by President Bush has at times been criticized from both ends of the pro-life debate, but some criticisms are based on false premises. The policy did not ban embryonic stem cell research, or funding of such research. By restricting federally funded research to cell lines in existence at the time he issued his policy, he was trying to ensure that Americans are not forced to use their tax dollars to encourage expanded destruction of embryonic human beings for their stem cells. Such destruction is especially pointless at the present time, for several reasons.

  • First, basic research in the capabilities of embryonic stem cells can be and is being pursued using the currently eligible cell lines as well as the hundreds of lines produced with nonfederal funds since 2001.
  • Second, recent startling advances in reprogramming adult cells into embryonic-like stem cells – hailed by the journal Science as the scientific breakthrough of the year – are said by many scientists to be making embryonic stem cells irrelevant to medical progress.
  • Third, adult and cord blood stem cells are now known to have great versatility, and are increasingly being used to reverse serious illnesses and even help rebuild damaged organs. To divert scarce funds away from these promising avenues for research and treatment toward the avenue that is most morally controversial as well as most medically speculative would be a sad victory of politics over science.

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January 20, 2009 · 4:05 pm

Security Breaches — Whither policy can reduce?

This post by the Post needs unpacking…

A data breach last year at Princeton, N.J., payment processor Heartland Payment Systems may have led to the theft of more than 100 million credit and debit card accounts, the company said today.

…

The Heartland disclosure follows a year of similar breach disclosures at several major U.S. cards processors. On December 23, RBS Worldpay, a subsidiary of Citizens Financial Group Inc., said a breach of its payment systems may have affected more than 1.5 million people.

In March 2008, Hannaford Brothers Co. disclosed that a breach of its payment systems — also aided by malicious software — compromised at least 4.2 million credit and debit card accounts.

In early 2007, TJX Companies Inc., the parent of retailers Marshalls and TJ Maxx said a number of breaches over a three-year period exposed more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers.

In 2005, a breach at payment card processor CardSystems Solutions jeopardized roughly 40 million credit and debit card accounts.

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January 20, 2009 · 8:47 am

Stem Cell Policy – Economic boom for some states

California’s Imperial Valley sees the potential new rule from the Obama administration as an economic plus to support California’s $3 billion, voter approved, investment in stem cell research.

However, any new rule would not result in creation of additional stem lines for research.  That activity is banned by law :

The Dickey-Wicker amendment, first passed in 1995, prohibits the use of federal funds for the creation of human embryos for research purposes or the destruction or injury of human embryos.

But, the new rules could provide the ethical guidelines missing from current policy:

“The current Bush policy harms U.S. interests not just because it severely restricts the use of federal funds for a potentially life-saving new branch of medical science,” he wrote. “It also hurts the nation because, to the extent it allows such research to go forward, it demands almost nothing in the way of ethical constraints.” In other words, Bush’s attempt to claim the moral high ground on a contentious issue stranded the very research he was trying to regulate in murky ethical waters.

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January 19, 2009 · 12:31 am

Evolution of an Institution

Stanley Fish’s column finds a rather terse description of the public expectations of higher education:

In this latter model , the mode of delivery – a disc, a computer screen, a video hook-up – doesn’t matter so long as delivery occurs. Insofar as there are real-life faculty in the picture, their credentials and publications (if they have any) are beside the point, for they are just “delivery people.”

So, if college faculty are to be reduced to the identical functional role that k12 teachers now find themselves, who will determine the curricula that they will teach?  And, who will lead the discoveries of knowledge and technologies yet to come?  The first question will undoubtedly be answered by corporations who define the skillsets their workforce requires.  As to the second, corporations have largely abandoned the costs of basic research as a long term expense that makes no sense in a world that values assets on a short term basis.

The power of the written and spoken word has been reflected in education since the time of the Greek empire.  Curiously, another article in todays NYT discusses the differences in approach to literature in language found in comparison of President Bush and President-elect Obama.  To the point, the author states the impact of Obama’s literature upon the development of Obama’s political skills:

But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.

So, should education devolve into a means of training workers for tasks that require little appreciation for communication skills?  If not, how should these skills be taught to be appreciated?  Rhetoric and composition in a for-profit school are taught with different intended outcomes than similar courses in public and private non-profit colleges.

From the essay on Obama’s love of books:

The incandescent power of Lincoln’s language, its resonance and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears between the magisterial and the down-to-earth, has been a model for Mr. Obama — who has said he frequently rereads Lincoln for inspiration — and so, too, have been the uses to which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders, and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a new vision of reconciliation and hope.

What do we lose if we adopt the for-profit approach to short term goals?

We may lose those who find inspiration in history, literature and art whom we, today, find attractive as leaders.   Think about this — do you want to decide whom to elect based upon rhetoric and vision or based upon a stack of 30 powerpoint slides?

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January 18, 2009 · 4:54 pm

Stem Cell Debates – GA – Take II

Rumors are persisting that Georgia will seek to restrict stem cell research on pro-life grounds, no matter what fed law says…

“I would assume there will be an effort to restrict embryonic stem cell research. Georgia would stake out its ground as being pro-life,” said state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah).

A state constitutional amendment has been filed to define life at conception.  But, that is not directed at this fight.

Stay tuned.

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January 18, 2009 · 7:17 am

The word for this decade “information”

Yeah, plastic is definitely, definitely out.  Information is in.  Got any?  Want some?

Just as plastic raises concerns regarding negative environmental consequences, information raises, metaphorically speaking, similar environmental concerns as individuals and corporations stress over who controls access to information.

Health Care Information Technologies (HCIT) is an area that offers seemingly “low hanging fruit” in terms of immediate individual and societal benefits.  Namely, more reliable information exchange between care providers will significantly reduce errors, thus lowering cost while increasing the quality of care.  Yet, despite bipartisan support for the outcomes of adopting electronic healthcare information systems, the pace of adoption is extremely slow.

Today, a NYT article highlights the difficulties President Obama will face as he pursues the deployment of HCIT.  Here is  one part of a very tough challenge:

“Health I.T. without privacy is an excellent way for companies to establish a gold mine of information that can be used to increase profits, promote expensive drugs, cherry-pick patients who are cheaper to insure and market directly to consumers,” said Dr. Deborah C. Peel, coordinator of the Coalition for Patient Privacy, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union among its members.

And, here is another:

In a letter to Congressional leaders, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group for insurers, expressed “serious concern about privacy provisions being considered for inclusion in the economic stimulus bill.”

She criticized, in particular, a proposal that would require health care providers to obtain the consent of patients before disclosing personal health information for treatment, payment or “health care operations.”

Which leaves us with this pithy summation:

Such a requirement, she said, could cripple efforts to manage chronic diseases like diabetes, which often require coordination of care among many specialists.

“Health information technology will succeed only if privacy is protected,” said Frank C. Torres, director of consumer affairs at Microsoft. “For the president-elect to achieve his vision, he has to protect privacy.”

As an area of policy, one could ascribe the lack of progress to market failure, public failure, or both.  Multiple public values can be identified within this discussion.  Privacy, quality of life, and economic concerns are just a few of the values inherent to this debate.

The core topic of this debate, as portrayed by the article, is the quality of privacy.  How good is it?  Who controls it?  More importantly, who defines what “privacy” is?

So, who wins the debate?  Whose definition of  “public value” carries the day?  In sum, whose values does policy represent?

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January 15, 2009 · 9:27 am

Remember when?

Oil refiners claimed that because regulations had prevented them from building needed refineries, they could not produce the gasoline necessary to keep up with demand (and thereby mollify the price increases)?

Well, now look at what the refiners are doing:

So now they are storing oil or selling it to traders, or retooling their refineries to produce less gasoline and more products with better profit margins, like heating oil, diesel or jet fuel.

NYT Where is Oil Going Now?

Doing so allows the manufacturer to manipulate supply, thus managing prices to a level which the producer’s desire to produce is appropriate.

How does the current policy structure, which has  a goal to produce energy at prices that support economic growth,  react?

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December 27, 2008 · 8:13 am

Healthy Information Technologies

This post is merely a bookmark to me to read this later…

For most doctors, who work in small practices, an investment in electronic health records looks simply like a cost for which they will not be reimbursed. That is why policy experts say any government financial incentives to use electronic records — matching grants or other subsidies — should be focused on practices with 10 or fewer doctors, which still account for three-fourths of all doctors in this country. Only about 17 percent of the nation’s physicians are using computerized patient records, according to a government-sponsored survey published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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December 18, 2008 · 7:05 am

Madoff – Public Value Failure and Market Failure

Markets depend upon information to be efficient.  This NYT story on Madoff indicates that information was in short supply, and a disaster ensured.

The outsize impact on the industry may have resulted largely because Mr. Madoff (pronounced MAY-doff) managed his funds much the way that real estate leaders have operated successfully for decades: He provided little information and demanded a lot of trust.

So, where were the government regulators, those charged with ensuring that the market provide the necessary disclosures so that investors can rationally make their “risk” decisions?  Absent, according to a Washington Post op/ed:

Those who support regulation also say that hedge funds should disclose more of what they do. Well, Madoff did make some disclosures; it’s just that they weren’t true. As SEC Chairman Chris Cox has all but admitted, the scandal doesn’t show that his agency lacked the power to regulate; it shows that it failed to exercise it. Responding to this scandal with more regulation would be like thrusting more pills on a patient who refuses medication.

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December 16, 2008 · 9:56 am

Inertia, Public Participation and low probability of a consensus

Our founding fathers warned of a “tyranny of the majority“.   The city of Grand Junction thought they had an idea the people would endorse — a means to fund public safety projects.  However, the voters of Grand Junction failed to endorse the measure.  Here are reasons why:

  • In focus groups, 9.6 percent said the initiative may have failed because of its tie to overturn TABOR for a nonspecific amount of time, which many said was an unpopular move in Grand Junction.
  • Another 13.7 percent said the project was misunderstood, and 7.8 percent said the poor economy didn’t help.
  • Nearly 9 percent said people who voted no distrusted the city or didn’t believe the city couldn’t find the money another way, and
  • 6.7 percent said people didn’t approve of the way the city spent money in the past, such as on roundabouts of the Seventh Street and Colorado Avenue projects.

Question : If the public can’t agree on how to fund a public value – is that a public value failure, or a market failure (lack of information)?

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