Category: Regulations

“It’s Time for the FDA to Get with the Program”

(p. A14) Are eggs good for you or not?
It’s never been more confusing for consumers to answer that seemingly simple question. Vilified for years for their high cholesterol content, eggs more recently have broken back into dietary fashion. Nutrition experts today are touting eggs’ high levels of protein, essential vitamins and nutrients like brain-booster choline.
Government guidelines sometimes contradict nutrition experts’ advice as they play catch up with the latest scientific findings. Dietary advice from the U.S. departments of agriculture and health and human services includes eggs as part of a healthy diet, but also says cholesterol intake should be as low as possible. And the Food and Drug Administration says that eggs are too high in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol to be labeled “healthy” by food marketers.
It’s such a scrambled issue that one egg brand is petitioning for an official government reassessment of eggs. “There’s so much new science out there about eggs, it’s time for the FDA to get with the program,” says Jesse Laflamme, chief executive of Pete and Gerry’s Organics, who filed a citizen’s petition urging the agency to rethink its ban on calling eggs “healthy.”

For the full commentary, see:
Ellen Byron. “The Great Egg Conundrum.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, June 13, 2018): A14.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 12, 2018, and has the title “The Great Egg Debate: Are They Healthy or Not?”)

NYC Government Hid Public Housing Lead Paint Violations

(p. A1) The federal government on Monday [June 11, 2018] delivered a withering rebuke of New York City’s housing authority, accusing officials of systematic misconduct, indifference and outright lies in the management of the nation’s oldest and largest stock of public housing.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said the authority, which houses at least 400,000 poor and working-class residents, covered up its actions, training its staff on how to mislead federal inspectors and presenting false reports to the government and to the public about its compliance with lead-paint regulations. The failures endangered tenants and workers for years, the prosecutors said, and potentially left more children than previously known poisoned by lead paint in their apartments.
The accusations were contained in an 80-page civil complaint filed against the authority on Monday in federal court by the office of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, after a lengthy investigation.
The problems at the authority “reflect management dysfunction and organizational failure,” the prosecutors said, “including a culture where spin is often rewarded and accountability often does not exist.”

For the full story, see:
Benjamin Weiser and J. David Goodman. “Rot, Deception and Danger in Public Housing.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 12, 2018): A1 & A21.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 11, 2018, and has the title “New York City Housing Authority, Accused of Endangering Residents, Agrees to Oversight.”)

Drones “Stifled” by Stringent Regulations

(p. B5) The commercial drone industry is being stifled by unnecessarily stringent federal safety rules enforced by regulators who frequently pay only lip service to easing restrictions or streamlining decision-making, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The unusually strongly worded report released Monday [June 11, 2018] urges “top-to-bottom” changes in how the Federal Aviation Administration assesses and manages risks from drones.
. . .
. . . minimal but persistent levels of risk already are accepted by the public,according to the report. A fundamental issue is “what are we going to compare [drone] safety to?” said consultant George Ligler, who served as chairman of the committee that drafted the document.
“We do not ground airplanes because birds fly in the airspace, although we know birds can and do bring down aircraft,” the report said.

For the full story, see:
Andy Pasztor. “FAA’s Safety Rules for Commercial Drones Are Overly Strict, Report Says.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 12, 2018): B5.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 11, 2018, and has the title “FAA’s Safety Rules for Commercial Drones Are Overly Strict, Report Says.”)

Regulations Support Car Incumbents and Undermine Tesla Profitability

(p. A13) . . . governments everywhere have decided, perversely, that electric cars will not be profitable. In every major market–the U.S., Europe, China–the same political dispensation now applies: Established auto makers effectively will be required to make and sell electric cars at a loss in order to continue profiting from gas-powered vehicles.
This has rapidly become the institutional structure of the electric-car industry world-wide, for the benefit of the incumbents, whether GM in the U.S. or Daimler in Germany. Let’s face it, the political class always had a bigger investment in these incumbents than it ever did in Tesla.
Tesla has a great brand, great technology and great vehicles. To survive, it also needs to mate itself to a nonelectric pickup truck business. . . .
We’ll save for another day the relating of this phenomenon to Mr. Musk’s recently erratic behavior and pronouncements. . . . Keep your eye on the bigger picture–the bigger picture is the global regulatory capture of the electric car moment by the status quo. And note the irony that Tesla’s home state of California was the original pioneer of this insiders’ regulatory bargain with its so-called zero-emissions-vehicle mandate.
Electric cars were going to remain a niche in any case, but public policy is quickly ruling out the possibility (which Tesla needed) of them at least being a profitable niche.

For the full commentary, see:
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. “BUSINESS WORLD; A Tesla Crackup Foretold; The real problem is that governments everywhere have ordained that electric cars will be sold at a loss.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 23, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 22, 2018.)

Fewer Regulations Allow Faster Chinese Cancer Innovation

(p. A1) HANGZHOU, China–In a hospital west of Shanghai, Wu Shixiu since March has been trying to treat cancer patients using a promising new gene-editing tool.
U.S. scientists helped devise the tool, known as Crispr-Cas9, which has captured global attention since a 2012 report said it can be used to edit DNA. Doctors haven’t been allowed to use it in human trials in America. That isn’t the case for Dr. Wu and others in China.
In a quirk of the globalized technology arena, Dr. Wu can forge ahead with the tool because he faces few regulatory hurdles to testing it on humans. His hospital’s review board took just an afternoon to sign off on his trial. He didn’t need national regulators’ approval and has few reporting requirements.
Dr. Wu’s team at Hangzhou Cancer Hospital has been drawing blood from esophageal-cancer patients, shipping it by high-speed rail to a lab that modifies disease-fighting cells using Crispr-Cas9 by deleting a gene that interferes with the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. His team then infuses the cells (p. A10) back into the patients, hoping the reprogrammed DNA will destroy the disease.
In contrast, what’s expected to be the first human Crispr trial outside China has yet to begin. The University of Pennsylvania has spent nearly two years addressing federal and other requirements, including numerous safety checks designed to minimize risks to patients. While Penn hasn’t received final federal clearance to proceed, “we hope to get clearance soon,” a Penn spokeswoman said.
“China shouldn’t have been the first one to do it,” says Dr. Wu, 53, an oncologist and president of Hangzhou Cancer Hospital. “But there are fewer restrictions.”

For the full story, see:
Rana, Preetika, Amy Dockser Marcus and Wenxin Fan. “China Races Ahead In Gene Editing.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, January 22, 2018): A1 & A10.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 21, 2018, and has the title “China, Unhampered by Rules, Races Ahead in Gene-Editing Trials.”)

Canada’s Single-Payer System Causes “Suffering and Deaths of People on Wait Lists”

(p. A17) Canada’s single-payer health-care system, known as Medicare, is notoriously sluggish. But private clinics like Cambie are prohibited from charging most patients for operations that public hospitals provide free. Dr. Day is challenging that prohibition before the provincial Supreme Court.
. . .
People stuck on Medicare waiting lists can only dream of timely care. Last year, the median wait between referral from a general practitioner and treatment from a specialist was 21.2 weeks, or about five months–more than double the wait a quarter-century ago. Worse, the provincial governments lie about the extent of the problem. The official clock starts only when a surgeon books the patient, not when a general practitioner makes the referral. That adds months and sometimes much longer. In November [2017] an Ontario woman learned she’d have to wait 4½ years to see a neurologist.
. . .
Dr. Day’s lawsuit aims to overturn these provisions. It alleges that the government’s legal restrictions on private care are to blame for the needless “suffering and deaths of people on wait lists.” Dr. Day argues that the current system violates citizens’ rights to “life, liberty, and security of the person,” as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the equivalent of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

For the full commentary, see:
Sally C. Pipes. “Single-Payer Health Care Isn’t Worth Waiting For; An orthopedic surgeon challenges Canada’s ban on most privately funded procedures.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, January 22, 2018): A17.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 21, 2018.)

Trump’s Judges Constrain the Administrative State

(p. A1) WASHINGTON — It has been practically a given that anyone nominated for a federal judgeship by a Republican president had to pass an unspoken litmus test — usually on abortion but often on any number of divisive social issues.
The Trump administration has a new litmus test: reining in what conservatives call “the administrative state.”
With surprising frankness, the White House has laid out a plan to fill the courts with judges devoted to a legal doctrine that challenges the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight. Those not on board with this agenda, the White House has said, are unlikely to be nominated by President Trump.
. . .
(p. A13) That the concept of “the administrative state” has become so central to politics today shows how successful the Trump administration has been in elevating to the mainstream ideas that once thrived mainly on the edges of conservative and libertarian thought.
A year ago it was a term known mostly among academics to describe the vast array of federal departments and the unelected functionaries who run them. It entered the mainstream political lexicon last year after the president’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, pledged a “deconstruction of the administrative state” under Mr. Trump.
. . .
But this thinking has been advanced by many libertarian-minded conservatives who have long doubted whether the founders envisioned the creation of many New Deal and Great Society programs and the abundance of regulations that flowed from them.
“A lot of this, if you unpack it, I think it will get back to fundamental fairness,” said Mark Holden, general counsel for Koch Industries, which is led by Charles G. and David H. Koch, two of the biggest financial backers of the effort to elect office holders committed to deregulation and free-market enterprise.
The Trump judicial selection process, Mr. Holden added, was ultimately focused on “the size and scope of government and scaling it back, to the extent that it’s counterproductive and contrary to due process.”

For the full story, see:
Jeremy W. Peters. “New Litmus Test for Trump’s Court Picks: Taming the Bureaucracy.” The New York Times (Wednesday, March 28, 2018): A1 & A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 26, 2018, and has the title “Trump’s New Judicial Litmus Test: Shrinking ‘the Administrative State’.”)

Fewer Summer Jobs Filled by Teenagers

(p. D8) You can still find high school and college students boiling hot dogs and cleaning the fryer at the clam shacks, country clubs and state fairs that spring to life when the weather turns hot. But the food that fuels a summer vacation is now more likely being prepared by temporary workers from other countries or local adults trying to make the gig economy work for them.
. . .
Although youth employment in the United States still spikes in the warmer months, the number of teenagers in the summer labor force fell to 43 percent in 2016, from almost 72 percent at its peak in 1978, according to the most recent figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Pressure has come from several directions. School started stretching into summer. Employment laws became more restrictive. Scooping cones or running a dough-filled Hobart were no longer considered worthy résumé builders.
At the same time, demand for summer workers rose.

For the full story, see:
Kim Severson. “Where Have All the Teenagers Gone?” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 23, 2018): D8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 22, 2018, and has the title “That Summer Food-Stand Job Is No Longer Just for Teenagers.”)

Firms Transship to Avoid Tariffs

(p. B1) SHANGHAI — Want to avoid American tariffs? In China, a company called Settle Logistics says it knows a way.
Specifically, that way goes through Malaysia — a 4,600-mile diversion compared with sending a shipping container from China straight across the Pacific to the United States. But when those Chinese products arrive at an American port, they will look as if they had come from Malaysia, according to the company, and will be spared tariffs aimed at Chinese goods.
“For those unfair trade barriers targeting our industries from certain countries,” Settle Logistics says on its website, “we can adopt other approaches to bypass those trade tariffs in order to expand markets.”
Such zigzagging routes are called transshipments, and President Trump has used them to justify the trade fight he has picked with a number of countries. They could also take on new relevance should the United States and China carry out their threats to levy a total of more than $200 billion in tariffs against each other.
. . .
(p. B6) Stamping out such transshipments could prove difficult. The United States made a big effort in the late 1990s to address the relabeling in Hong Kong of garments that had been made in mainland China, said Patrick Conway, a textiles trade specialist.
But after American officials gathered enough evidence to put companies on a watch list, the companies quickly disappeared, said Mr. Conway, who is the chairman of the economics department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some of the same people involved emerged later, but at other companies.
“We can anticipate a game of Whac-a-Mole,” Mr. Conway said.

For the full story, see:
Keith Bradsher. “Dodging Tariffs With a Handy Detour.” The New York Times (Monday, April 23, 2018): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 22, 2018, and has the title “Tariff Dodgers Stand to Profit Off U.S.-China Trade Dispute.”)

Government Uses Cruel Painful Snare Traps to Kill Gorgeous Respectful Foxes

(p. A18) BRIGANTINE, N.J. — Red foxes can be found all over New Jersey, wandering out of the woods and poking through garbage at dusk in search of a meal. In many places, they might be overlooked, if not seen as a disease-carrying nuisance. But not in Brigantine, an island community where the fox has become an unofficial ambassador.
Many residents warmly share stories of their encounters, like the fox that would routinely come up to a back door or the time a children’s soccer game had to pause so one could cross the field. A fox makes an appearance on the cover of the city’s tourism guide, as much of an attraction as its golf course and pristine beaches. A real estate company regularly sends its mascot, Briggy the Fox, to community events.
Yet the island is also the seasonal home to piping plovers, a small bird that returns every year to dig its nests on the beach. The bird is an endangered species in New Jersey that state wildlife officials closely watch and fiercely protect, including from foxes, creating a bitter conflict that has caused an uproar as residents protest the trapping and killing of the animals.
Some are challenging the use of snare traps, a contraption that they describe as cruel and painful. The contretemps has also stirred a wider debate: Is it fair to kill one animal for the sake of protecting another?
“It disgusts me,” said Donna Vanzant, who owns a marina. “Why go after these gorgeous animals? Just let nature take its course.”
State lawmakers recently wrote a letter to wildlife officials expressing their “deep concern,” and the City Council passed a resolution condemning the “inhumane and indiscriminate killing of red foxes.” Briggy the Fox attended the meeting and held a sign: “Please stop killing my friends.”
“Everyone on the island cherishes the foxes and does not want them killed,” said Donna Grazioli DeAngelis, a retired teacher who started a petition online, which about 90,000 people have signed. “They have been so respectful, so perfect in every way,” she said of the foxes. “People paint them, photograph them. They haven’t been a nuisance in any way.”
. . .
“It’s an overreach and overreaction,” Philip J. Guenther, Brigantine’s longtime mayor, said of the fox trapping. “It just doesn’t seem to make any sense from a protection standpoint.”

For the full story, see:
Rick Rojas. “To Save One Precious Animal, a Town Must Sacrifice Another.” The New York Times (Monday, May 7, 2018: A18.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 6, 2018, and has the title “Trapping Foxes to Save Plovers Sets Off Showdown at Jersey Shore.” The online version says the print version appeared on May 6 on p. A17 of the New York Edition. My print version, as usual, was the National Edition.)