Misimagining the Unimaginable

Came across this cool graphic, showing the rise and fall of U.S. cigarette consumption. The picture also shows when various policy levers were pulled, and how those levers track to consumption. WARNING: No proof of cause and effect. But still quite interesting.      

Back in June, I published a series of essays about efforts to fly people around the country to give them better access to life-saving organ transplants. For your convenience, I have pulled the three essays together into one PDF. As a teaser, I will remind you of the first few paragraphs of the essay. But…

For decades, the pharmaceutical industry has been highly profitable. The recipe for such profits has been pretty simple for most of the last half-century–discover a chemical or molecule that treats a common problem, like hypertension or diabetes or erectile dysfunction, and make billions of dollars while that product is still under patent protection. But of…