Mary Zwicker, European Correspondent: The United Kingdom put an end to a clinical trial that would have tested the effects of puberty blockers on children as young as 10-years-old. On Feb. 20, the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K. announced the halt of a proposed clinical trial of puberty blockers on minors after the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) voiced [...]
Interim Staff: On March 18, the Ontario Court of Appeals upheld a Superior Court decision in favour of the City of Hamilton which censored a Christian Heritage Party of Canada advertisement defining a woman, that was intended for bus shelters in the southwestern Ontario city. In January 2023, CHP Canada attempted to purchase advertising space in bus shelters in Hamilton for a [...]
The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters Diane Coyle (Princeton, $41, 306 pages) Economist Diane Coyle argues that traditional economics metrics like Gross Domestic Product and the System of National Accounts, important as they were in helping policy-makers and economists understand material well-being, are inadequate to measure complex modern economies and thus economists are unable to answer the vital question: “Are things [...]
Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $56 hc or $38 pb in August, 531 pages) Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys have written a remarkable biography of a poet, Constantine Cavafy, who lived, in their own admission, an unremarkable life, by writing it thematically rather than linearly. Cavafy was born into a Greek family in Alexandria, [...]
Paul Tuns: On March 5, the Ontario Superior Court heard arguments in the case of Campaign Life Coalition and Maeve Roche v. Parliamentary Protective Services (PPS) over the latter’s 2023 prohibition against CLC using signs with abortion victim photography during a press conference on Parliament Hill. In May 2023, CLC had a scheduled press conference the day prior to the National March [...]
Administration dithers on abortion pill review Oswald Clark, U.S. Correspondent: While American pro-lifers have generally supported Donald Trump as a president and candidate despite the fact he says he does not want a federal law banning abortion, there has been a shift in the movement’s leadership that patience is running short with the Trump administration. Donald Trump points to numerous pro-life policies that [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements You have to wonder if Paul Ehrlich ever thought he’d live to 93. The biologist and writer – his initial specialty was butterflies, though his ambitions proved much broader – had his death announced this March to what can only be described as a mix of tributes and mockery. We should, according [...]