As a Senator, Kamala Harris embraced all sorts of terrible ideas, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. But she’s now disavowed those proposals in an attempt to make herself seem more reasonable. Trump, by contrast, is consistent. For better or worse, he’s pushing in 2024 the same agenda that he ran […]
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary: Together Paul and Tyler explore whether psychologists understand day-to-day human behavior any better than normal folk, how babies can tell if you’re a jerk, at what age children have the capacity to believe in God, why the trend in religion is…
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealand’s government sacked the entire board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) last week, replacing it with a sole commissioner. The move marked more than just another shake-up in the country’s beleaguered health system. It signalled the spectacular failure of a grand experiment that has turned New Zealand into […]
Farmers Weekly reports: The Minister of Food Safety is set to take on his counterparts from all Australian states and the Federal Government on Thursday to try to save New Zealand infant formula exports to Australia and potentially to China. Andrew Hoggard’s aim will be to amend proposed rules that would limit New Zealand producers’ […]
Recall that Chemist Warehouse found a structure that let them operate in New Zealand despite pharmacy guild regulations that had seemed aimed to block such entry. The pharmacists are having another tilt at it.In Australia, a pharmacy that wanted to fill prescriptions could not set up within 200m, 1.5km or 10km of an existing pharmacy depending…
Graham Adams writes on the media’s mission to demonise NZ’s health system — Not long after I began treatment in 2015 for an aggressive leukaemia, I was phoned by a representative of the Cancer Society. A hospital oncology staffer had strongly recommended I give the organisation my name and contact details so I did. I […]
A while back I was a big fan of Doctors without Borders (or “MSF”, for “Médecins Sans Frontières”). It was put in my will to get a big bequest, and when I auctioned of a copy of Why Evolution is True, autographed by many famous scientists and nonbelievers, and illustrated and illuminated by Kelly Houle, […]
Here we have a 55-minute (remote) conversation between Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Stock conducted during the “Dissident Dialogues” conference in NYC last May. Here’s a précis of Stock’s background from Wikipedia: Kathleen Mary Linn Stock OBE is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic […]
If you’ve followed this website regularly, you’ll know that the UK’s Cass Review, which evaluated and criticized the NHS’s treatment of gender dysphoria, has been widely accepted in the UK, causing the country to slow down on “affirmative care”, following the lead of other European countries. No longer will the NHS run a conveyer belt […]
In an ageing and growing population, the failure of primary health care in New Zealand is a dire problem. Many general practices are shadows of their former selves. There are too few doctors and too many patients. Many people can’t even get enrolled. Those who are enrolled report wait times to see a GP of…
If you don’t understand how things work you make foolish mistakes. To explain how the government got into its cancer drugs muddle, we need to explain first how New Zealand’s pharmaceutical purchasing system works. There is a parallel between Pharmac and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The Government sets the monetary policy framework with […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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