An article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on the just price of cancer drugs in the United States contains an odd reference to a nonexistent book by Aristotle, notesJohn B. Shannon.Unraveling the origins of this error reveals an almost farcical series of misinterpretations. Arguments from authority are generally a good thing. If e from people with a few letters after their names, it’s often safe to bet that those claims are backed up by years of invested study and...

Generally speaking, social services do not remove children from their homes as a first choice. Most have family programs that work with parents to resolve issues with parenting skills, nutrition, education, addiction issues and so on. A child has to be in imminent danger for them to be removed from their parents’ care. A lot of kids are in imminent danger. Not only that: the social workers who must work with these families are overwhelmed. Joseph Turner reports: In my...

UPDATE: More on Romania and Human Trafficking Where are the young women, the girls of Romania? If they are not hidden, they are trafficked. That is a harsh reality in a country of harsh living. Stefania is 18 and a rarity. She still lives in a rural home with her father, in a ramshackle house with no electricity. She dreams of going away “somewhere” for an education and is resolute that she will never take money from a man. Then...

You may have noticed over the past couple of years that effective altruism has e the hot new trend/buzzword in philanthropy. As the Centre for Effective Altruism explains, Effective Altruism is a growing social movement bines both the heart and the passion guided by data and reason. It’s about dedicating a significant part of one’s life to improving the world and rigorously asking the question, “Of all the possible ways to make a difference, how can I make the greatest...

What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery. But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of...

As eco-warriors glom onto Pope Francis’ Laudato Si encyclical for its dire warnings of climate change, they often ignore this inconvenient line: “Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate.” Quoting the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Francis writes: At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make...

Do you recognize the name Jessica Jackley? What about Kiva? Jackley is the young woman who started Kiva in 2005. Kiva, a crowdfunding site, asks not simply for donations, but for micro-loans. To date, Kiva has facilitated $730 million in loans in 83 countries, funding entrepreneurs in agriculture, clothing manufacturing, and transportation, just to name a few areas of endeavor. In an interview with Christianity Today, Jackley discusses her new book, Clay Water Brick: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do...

Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome, spoke to Vatican Radio about the ing U.S. papal visit. Pope Francis is planning to visit Washington, D.C., New York City and Philadelphia in September. This 2015 trip coincides with the World Meeting of Families, which was established by St. John Paul II in 1994. This will be Pope Francis’ first U.S. visit since being elected to the papacy. Listen to Jayabalan’s Vatican Radio interview here. ...

Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, is looking ahead to a post-Obama economy. He notes that every presidency has problems it leaves behind upon exiting the White House, but we have some major economic and moral obstacles to e. Gregg outlines the challenges: mounting debt, entitlement programs that keep growing, crony capitalism, unemployment. What to do? Doing nothing isn’t an option for American conservatives. I’d suggest, however, that the incremental approach generally followed by conservatives—which often amounts to trying to...

Amnesty International, the human-rights watchdog organization, voted Tuesday to support the decriminalization of “sex work” at its Dublin-based International Council Meeting. This was in spite of the fact that anti-human trafficking organizations around the globe pushed for just the opposite. Sex workers are one of the most marginalized groups in the world who in most instances face constant risk of discrimination, violence and abuse,’ Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, said in a statement. Shetty called it “a historic day” for...