Michael Fumento is a journalist, author, and attorney who specializes in health and science. He can be reached at Fumento[at]gmail.com.
Medicare is speeding toward insolvency , and only major fundamental changes can save it. But beware the "tweakers"--those who say that little things can add up to a lot. Usually what they're pushing is of little benefit to Medicare, but of much benefit to them.
The "Toyota defense" just sprung a killer from prison. Ironically, it did so just days after a whistleblower revealed that the government was sitting on powerful evidence undercutting the whole "the throttle made me do it" excuse.
Four years ago, Koua Fong Lee sped down a St. Paul, Minn., freeway off ramp at between 70 and 90 mph in his 1996 Camry. He struck two vehicles waiting at a stop light --instantly killing Javis Adams, 33, and his 10-year-old son, Javis Jr. Another passenger, 6-year-old Devyn Bolton, was left paraplegic and later died from her injuries.
Flu season has just ended, and if you're reading this you're most likely still alive.
But don't buy that t-shirt just yet, the one proudly proclaiming "Survivor: Great Swine Flu Pandemic." Here are some phony flu fast facts you should know.
The predictions and the government alarms didn't quite match up to reality.
"The whole aim of practical politics," wrote H.L. Mencken, "is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Last year's hobgoblin was swine flu. The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warned of as many as 90,000 excess flu deaths, and the federal government declared two national emergencies. Yet, with the U.S. flu season ending, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate we've had perhaps a third the usual number of flu deaths.
Good Friday, April 17, 1992: I'd just started a great job at Investor's Business Daily in Los Angeles, and two weeks earlier I'd purchased the car of my dreams, a beautiful, blue Toyota MR2 Turbo. To me, at least, it looked like a small Ferrari. It was fast and sleek. I was taking my girlfriend, Mary, who had just recently followed me out from Denver, where we'd met, to see a city she'd always dreamed of visiting: San Francisco.
