Published: March 17, 2008
The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall ... have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.
...The regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border....
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/science/earth/17salmon.html?th&emc=th
The New York Times www.nytimes.com
Published: March 20, 2008
A potentially useful antidote to drug company influence over the prescribing practices of doctors is under consideration in Congress. The idea is to have government-funded health professionals visit doctors to give unbiased guidance on the safety and effectiveness of drugs to counter the one-sided sales pitches they get from pharmaceutical company representatives.
...According to testimony before the Senate Special Committee on Aging last week, In a Pennsylvania project, for example, experts from Harvard Medical School prepared educational materials and trained pharmacists and nurses to deliver it, enhancing medical care and saving more than $500,000 a year on gastrointestinal drugs alone in a pharmacy assistance program for low-income senior citizens. Total savings to public and private health insurance programs were surely much higher.
Similar physician-education programs are being established in several other states and have been set up in Australia, England, the Netherlands and several Canadian provinces....
With comprehensive, unbiased information, doctors should be more likely to prescribe the best drug for a patient, not necessarily the newest, high-priced drug that is being pushed by a drug company sales representative.
The New York Times www.NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/opinion/20thu2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Environmental Valuation & Cost Benefit News covers legal, academic, and regulatory developments pertaining to the valuation of environmental amenities and disamenities, such as clean air, trees, parks, congestion, and noise. We apprise the reader about ways in which costs and benefits are measured, and the results of empirical studies. We hope that this information will allow public and private organizations to comprehend the risks and benefits of various actions, help disputants to resolve conflicts equitably and efficiently, and improve the quality of public policies. We will only discuss issues related to the empirical quantification of private and social costs and benefits and damages, and summarize information from daily newspapers, academic journals, legal publications, court decisions, professional newsletters commissioned studies, and on-line services. This newsletter is dedicated to the principal that all policies place values upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that more information, explicit specification of assumptions, and rigorous analysis can help our society to better meet these ends. This site will increasingly serve, in conjunction with others, as a valuation database. We will include a wide range of studies, including non-environmental reports, because omission of a factor effectively values it at zero, and biases decisions. Heavy traffic has caused several site crashes. We are attempting to correct these problems. Apologies for any inconvenience.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| << < | Current | > >> | ||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||