Free Republic

Larry Norton sees some of the toughest cases as deputy physician-in-chief for breast cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He has access to the most advanced imaging machines, the best surgeons and numerous new tumor-fighting drugs. But often the fancy technology helps only temporarily. Sometimes a big tumor will shrink dramatically during chemotherapy. Then all of a sudden it comes back in seven or eight locations simultaneously. Norton thinks adding more mathematics to the crude science of cancer therapy will help. He says that oncologists need to spend much more time devising and analyzing equations that describe how fast tumors...

The reckless behavior of a severely bloated financial sector has given us the worst downturn in 70 years. Let's do something about it. Let's put a tax on hyperactive traders. A financial transactions tax can be an effective tool for downsizing the sector and restoring it to its proper role in the economy so this sort of calamity does not happen again. The idea is to place a small tax on financial transactions to discourage speculation without hampering productive investment. Bills recently introduced in the House by Peter Defazio and in the Senate by Tom Harkin call for a 0.125%...