After Joe Biden’s dumb-as-a-doorpost comments about the war in Afghanistan, it’s worth taking a look at an excellent piece, published just a tiny bit too soon, by my friend Michael Crowley at the New Republic. It’s as good an account of Biden’s recent silliness as you’ll find.
A BIN LADEN-ANTHRAX LINK?: An interesting report in the Times of London. I agree that we should not jump to conclusions about the source of this anthrax. At the same time, I don’t think we should deny what is obviously the likeliest explanation. And we certainly shouldn’t stick our heads in the sand because we cannot bear to contemplate what the consequences can and must be.
PATENT NONSENSE: A credible and important study has just come out from a usually liberal source, the Kennedy School of Government (my alma mater) at Harvard. The study was designed to find if restrictive patents on anti-retroviral HIV treatments in Africa were a critical part in preventing an adequate response to the problem. The study found that patents were actually rare in most of Africa, and the main problem was a lack of Western government finance to pay for unpatented medications. Take a look at this interview with Amir Attaran and follow the link to the study itself. The key sentence: “Of the 795 patents we might have found only 172 actually exist, or about 21%. What that means is that in nearly all countries patents are not frequently a barrier to treat people with several of the antiretroviral regimens today. Lack of money explains why the many HIV-positive Africans living in countries with ZERO patented antiretrovirals are not being treated.” Ah, but it’s so much easier to blame the pharmaceutical companies.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius that they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” – Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead.”
The Dish 