Free Republic

MARCH was National Kidney Month. I did my part: I got a new one. My good fortune, alas, does not befall nearly enough people, and the federal government deserves much of the blame. Today 70,000 Americans are waiting for kidneys, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which maintains the national waiting list. Last year, roughly 16,000 people received one (about 40 percent are from living donors, the others from cadavers). More are waiting for livers, hearts and lungs, which mostly come from deceased donors, bringing the total to about 92,000. In big cities, where the ratio of...

How the trauma industry exploited 9/11 On September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a group of psychologists sent an open letter to the American Psychological Association. The 19 signatories, all established experts in trauma research and treatment, were concerned that thousands of people in New York City and elsewhere would receive dubious, even damaging, counseling. “In times like these,” the letter said, “it is imperative that we refrain from the urge to intervene in ways that—however well-intentioned—have the potential to make matters worse.…Unfortunately, this has not prevented certain therapists...

Like many women of a certain age, I have a bad habit, first learned in the 1960s and '70s. Whenever I'm in a professional setting, I count the number of women in the room. These days there are occasions when I don't have enough fingers and toes to do the job. Which brings me to the present, and an ugly little spat that is roiling the waters of opinion journalism in the same way that Lawrence Summers's comments about the dearth of women in math and science rocketed through the academy. Op-ed pages, the accepted wisdom insists, don't carry enough...