Medicineball
This here has got to be the most gloriously confusing op-ed I've read in a long while (via simonoff). I mean, let's just look at the by-line for a start: it's as if Paul Wolfowitz and Jeffrey Sachs managed to set aside their differences and team up with Bill Gates to advocate micro-lending as a solution to third world poverty. Three people of disparate backgrounds and divergent political views coming together to write an op-ed in a national newspaper in support of something that's not popular but actually works? I had to resist the momentary urge check and see if it was raining toads or something.
I suspect Billy Beane could have written it better all by himself since he wouldn't have felt the need to include soporific nonsense about how evidence-based medicine "would not strip doctors of their decision-making authority nor replace their expertise" (it should and inevitably will), or invoke the oft-heard but questionable claim that America has "worse health quality than most industrialized nations" (depends on how you measure it). But the fact that, in addition to the next POTUS, prominent figures on both sides of the aisle like Newt Gingrich and John Kerry are both throwing their weight behind something that's both correct and important is . . . well, that's the most confusing part of all: I think I'm a little bit . . . optimistic about a politicized subject?
Hmm. Still no toad rain. Yet. Maybe it'll happen when Dennis Kucinich and Mitt Romney team up with Gary Becker to advocate prying open the claws of the FDA.
I suspect Billy Beane could have written it better all by himself since he wouldn't have felt the need to include soporific nonsense about how evidence-based medicine "would not strip doctors of their decision-making authority nor replace their expertise" (it should and inevitably will), or invoke the oft-heard but questionable claim that America has "worse health quality than most industrialized nations" (depends on how you measure it). But the fact that, in addition to the next POTUS, prominent figures on both sides of the aisle like Newt Gingrich and John Kerry are both throwing their weight behind something that's both correct and important is . . . well, that's the most confusing part of all: I think I'm a little bit . . . optimistic about a politicized subject?
Hmm. Still no toad rain. Yet. Maybe it'll happen when Dennis Kucinich and Mitt Romney team up with Gary Becker to advocate prying open the claws of the FDA.