Friday Hodgepodge

Notable Commentary

Image by Mark Fletcher-Brown, via Unsplash, license.

"Consider how the two-fold problem of growing resistance to our current antimicrobial drugs and the dearth of new antimicrobials under development looks once the specifics are omitted." -- Gregory Salmieri, in "Intellectual Property and the Freedom Needed to Solve the Crisis of Resistant Infections" (2018, PDF, via Tracking Zebra) in George Mason Law Review, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 215-229.

"Legislators can help by reducing legal and regulatory barriers that prevent patients and physicians from contracting voluntarily in 'direct pay' relationships." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Is Your Doctor Making Mistakes Because He or She Is Too Tired?" at Forbes.

"If we care about freedom of speech, or freedom of anything, we must have a clear understanding of what speech is and what it is not and insist that the legal system honor the difference." -- Tara Smith, in "Just Sayin' -- How the False Equivalence of Speech with Action Undermines the Freedom of Speech" (PDF) in Drexel Law Review, vol. 11, no. 467, pp. 467-537.

"Although the media readily provide platforms for the most groundless assertions -- from the claim that vaccines cause autism to the claim that genetically modified foods cause cancer -- no hearing is given to the skeptics of catastrophic warming." -- Peter Schwartz, in "Science as Political Orthodoxy" at RealClear Politics.

"I expect people to return to gold, as they realize that it is better to hold an asset with no yield than to incur a negative yield." -- Keith Weiner, in "All This Borrowing to Consume Is Unsustainable and the Bill Is Overdue" (interview) at Pro Aurum News.

My Two Cents

Gregory Salmieri's conceptualization of the problem of antibiotic resistance as a tragedy of the commons is a stunning feat of measurement omission, which he tops by proposing a new kind of intellectual property. I am in awe after reading this very clear and enjoyable piece, and I hope his idea gets the serious consideration it deserves.

-- CAV