An Exploratory Analysis of Pharmaceutical Price Disparities and Their Implications Among Six Developed Nations

In our study of 43 drugs, prescription drug prices in several wealthy nations (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K.) were much lower than in the U.S. on average, well below relative per capita GDP. There was relatively little difference among the five foreign nations. All this is consistent with previous research. After separating less-unique from more unique drugs, however, important new findings emerged. Relative prices for less-unique drugs, which are subject to strong competition, were at about half the U.S. level. We suggest that this reflects the exercise of monopsony power that does not exist in the U.S., where buyers as well as sellers compete. On the other hand, relative prices for highly unique drugs tended to be approximately proportional to per capita GDP or higher. Remarkably, biotech drugs were priced at or above U.S. levels in Canada and France

The Spirit of Serrano: Past, Present and Future

A decades-long school funding revolution continues in the United States. The litigation sparked by the Supreme Court of California\u27s 1971 decision in Serrano v. Priest continues to reshape the legal, political, and educational landscape in the United States, affecting the lives of children, parents, educators, and taxpayers throughout the nation. Serrano-inspired lawsuits have transformed school funding policies nationwide, resulting in billions of dollars in new funding and a notable redistribution of resources among school districts. Serrano-inspired litigation has changed public schools in many states to a degree second only to the transformation that followed Brown v. Board of Education. To understand school funding litigation in the present and to better anticipate future developments, a review of the past, present, and likely future of school funding litigation is invaluable. This article briefly reviews and discusses the past, present and likely future of Serrano-inspired school funding litigation

Commentary: Grades- Achievement, Attendance, or Attitude

This article addresses the impact that grades can have on the lives of students and discusses what grades actually represent in terms of student achievement. It also addresses disputes involving grading policies that allowed non-academic factors in decisions on grades or academic credit. The article includes a brief summary of the history and legal theories related to grading challenges and then provides a review of the relevant case law including Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, Barnard v. Inhabitants of Shelburne, Tinker v. Des Moines, Goss v. Lopez, Knight v. Board of education, Gutierrez v. School District, and Fisher v. Burkburnett independent School District. The article concludes with a discussion of judicial treatment of these issues and the lessons these cases teach for establishing and administering a legally sound grading policy. In order to avoid successful challenges to their grading policies the authors recommend that school officials focus primarily on academic evaluations, respect students’ due process rights, and comply with applicable state and federal laws

Blood and Turnips in School Funding Litigation

There are always winners and losers in school funding reforms, which often leads to protracted litigation in these cases. School funding reforms directly affect tax burdens, the distribution of resources, and the allocation of educational opportunities. Competition over limited resources is inevitable. Although win-win scenarios are ideal, they are not likely in school funding disputes. Limited resources generally make school funding reforms a zero-sum game, with significant systemic changes redefining who wins and loses under the new system. After the initial exuberance that occurs with a court victory, reform advocates must still face the challenge of translating their court victory into authentic and lasting improvements in school funding. Ultimately, this implementation means obtaining legislative support for more money for the schools represented by funding reformers. In times of large budget surpluses it may be possible to increase funding for reform advocates\u27 schools without generating any discernible pain for others. Budget surpluses never last forever, however, and sooner or later reform advocates will encounter the state\u27s firm fiscal and political realities. Eventually more money for funding reformers\u27 schools will mean less money for other schools, higher taxes, or both. Of course, these options will be politically unpopular. For example, in response to a judicial order for public school funding reform, a chairman of a New York State Senate Education Committee replied: “We are not the federal government ... we can\u27t go downstairs to the basement of the Capitol and print money .... The court has set the bar so high as to make it virtually impossible in the real political world in which we operate.” On the road from a court victory to authentic and lasting reforms there are two hard truths: 1) No matter how noble the purpose, money cannot be allocated for that purpose if there is no money available; and 2) Authentic and lasting reform cannot be achieved without adequate and sustained political support for the reform. Although it is not the panacea that some school reformers hoped it would be, judicial decisions in school funding disputes can be helpful to reform advocates. Authentic and lasting changes in school funding require adequate fiscal resources, effective school funding legislation, and sufficient long-term political will to enact and sustain positive changes in school funding systems. Judicial involvement may serve as a catalyst for change, but reform advocacy must extend more broadly to encompass the political realm. The only enduring resolution to school funding problems lies in persuading the electorate that making a quality education available to every child is clearly in everyone\u27s long-term self-interests. Advocates must persuade the electorate and lawmakers that educational inequities should be eliminated not only because they are unconstitutional, but because they are unwise public policy. Judicial opinions may contribute to this process by calling public attention to the problems caused by inadequate funding of public education. The hearts and minds of the public and their political representatives, however, are unlikely to be won through an unrealistic and unpopular mandate from an overreaching court. Court orders resulting in higher taxes and unpopular school resource shifts in the state may even inflame public opinion against future school funding reform efforts, and increase public support for alternatives to public schools. In the end, judicial extremism may simply lead to legislative extremism to oppose the court\u27s actions

John Dupre

John Dupre recently retired after 25 years as State Director of Nutrition Programs for the State of Louisiana.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/icn_ohistories/1003/thumbnail.jp

Protecting Children From the Dark Side of the Internet

This article examines the history of judicial and legislative responses to the issue of consumption of pornography and other harmful materials over the Internet by children. The article begins by giving a brief overview of free speech law in the US. Next, summaries of relevant U.S. legislation and corresponding litigation on Internet free speech are given. Highlighted are: 1) the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the U.S. Supreme Court’s response in Reno v. ACLU; 2) The Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition; 3) the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and United States v. American Library Association; and 4) the Child online Protection Act (COPA) and Ashcroft v. ACLU. The article concludes with an analysis of the issues raised by the legislation and litigation, and comes to the conclusion that the best way to currently protect both children and freedom of speech is to use technology to help control the problems of technology and to use government resources to help empower parents and educators to better protect and supervise children when they use the Internet

The Metaphysics of Evolution

This paper briefly describes process metaphysics, and argues that it is better suited for describing life than the more standard thing, or substance, metaphysics. It then explores the implications of process metaphysics for conceptualizing evolution. After explaining what it is for an organism to be a process, the paper takes up the Hull/Ghiselin thesis of species as individuals and explores the conditions under which a species or lineage could constitute an individual process. It is argued that only sexual species satisfy these conditions, and that within sexual species the degree of organization varies. This, in turn, has important implications for species' evolvability. One important moral is that evolution will work differently in different biological domains

Managing the transition to Open Access publishing: a psychological perspective

Scholarly publishing plays a key role in disseminating scientific and technical knowledge and driving innovation. This paper argues that to manage the transition to the Open Access (OA) model of scholarly publishing we need to understand better what enables, encourages and inhibits the adoption of OA publishing among scientists, and to appreciate individual differences within disciplines. The study adopts a psychological perspective to elucidate motivations, capabilities and opportunities for OA publishing among bio-scientists in the UK. To identify individual differences within the discipline we interview bio-scientists with starkly different past practices for disclosing research data and technologies. Content analysis of the interview data reveals that the sampled bio-scientists face similar obstacles and enablers in their physical environment, but that their motivations and experience of their social environments differ. One group is strongly motivated to adopt OA publishing - mainly by their moral convictions and beliefs that OA benefits themselves, other scientists and society - and feels peer pressure related to OA. The other group expresses fewer pro-OA beliefs, holds beliefs that are demotivating towards adoption of OA publishing, but feels pressure from research funders to adopt this form of publishing. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the former group makes more frequent use of OA publishing compared to the latter group, which suggests that only those with strong motivations will work to overcome the obstacles in their social and physical environments. The individual differences within the discipline suggest that bio-scientists are unlikely to respond to OA policies in the same way and, thus, we question the appropriateness of one-size-fits-all OA policies. We show that psychological analyses of scientists’ behaviour can inform the design of more targeted policies and organisational interventions aimed at steering a transition to the OA model of academic publishing

Thinking like a man? The cultures of science

Culture includes science and science includes culture, but conflicts between the two traditions persist, often seen as clashes between interpretation and knowledge. One way of highlighting this false polarity has been to explore the gendered symbolism of science. Feminism has contributed to science studies and the critical interrogation of knowledge, aware that practical knowledge and scientific understanding have never been synonymous. Persisting notions of an underlying unity to scientific endeavour have often impeded rather than fostered the useful application of knowledge. This has been particularly evident in the recent rise of molecular biology, with its delusory dream of the total conquest of disease. It is equally prominent in evolutionary psychology, with its renewed attempts to depict the fundamental basis of sex differences. Wars over science have continued to intensify over the last decade, even as our knowledge of the political, economic and ideological significance of science funding and research has become ever more apparent

Alterations in the transcriptome and antibiotic susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus grown in the presence of diclofenac

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Diclofenac is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) which has been shown to increase the susceptibility of various bacteria to antimicrobials and demonstrated to have broad antimicrobial activity. This study describes transcriptome alterations in <it>S. aureus </it>strain COL grown with diclofenac and characterizes the effects of this NSAID on antibiotic susceptibility in laboratory, clinical and diclofenac reduced-susceptibility (Dc^RS) <it>S. aureus </it>strains.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Transcriptional alterations in response to growth with diclofenac were measured using <it>S. aureus </it>gene expression microarrays and quantitative real-time PCR. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined by agar diffusion MICs and gradient plate analysis. Ciprofloxacin accumulation was measured by fluorescence spectrophotometry.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Growth of <it>S. aureus </it>strain COL with 80 μg/ml (0.2 × MIC) of diclofenac resulted in the significant alteration by ≥2-fold of 458 genes. These represented genes encoding proteins for transport and binding, protein and DNA synthesis, and the cell envelope. Notable alterations included the strong down-regulation of antimicrobial efflux pumps including <it>mepRAB </it>and a putative <it>emrAB/qacA</it>-family pump. Diclofenac up-regulated <it>sigB </it>(σ^B), encoding an alternative sigma factor which has been shown to be important for antimicrobial resistance. <it>Staphylococcus aureus </it>microarray metadatabase (SAMMD) analysis further revealed that 46% of genes differentially-expressed with diclofenac are also σ^B-regulated. Diclofenac altered <it>S. aureus </it>susceptibility to multiple antibiotics in a strain-dependent manner. Susceptibility increased for ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin and norfloxacin, decreased for oxacillin and vancomycin, and did not change for tetracycline or chloramphenicol. Mutation to Dc^RSdid not affect susceptibility to the above antibiotics. Reduced ciprofloxacin MICs with diclofenac in strain BB255, were not associated with increased drug accumulation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of this study suggest that diclofenac influences antibiotic susceptibility in <it>S. aureus</it>, in part, by altering the expression of regulatory and structural genes associated with cell wall biosynthesis/turnover and transport.</p