Economist, Jan 23, 2016

choi

The millennial generation | Young, Gifted and Held Back. The world’s young are an oppressed minority. Unleash them.
http://www.economist.com/news/le ... ifted-and-held-back

Quote:

"in important ways they [the older generation] hold their juniors down.

"Roughly a quarter of the world’s people—some 1.8 billion—have turned 15 but not yet reached 30. * * * They are the best-educated generation ever—Haitians today spend longer in school than Italians did in 1960. Thanks to all that extra learning and to better nutrition, they are also more intelligent than their elders.

"These children that you spit on[:]  Many of their [young people's] woes can be blamed on policies favouring the old over the young. Consider employment. In many countries, labour laws require firms to offer copious benefits and make it hard to lay workers off. That suits those with jobs, who tend to be older, but it makes firms reluctant to hire new staff. The losers are the young. In most regions they are at least twice as likely as their elders to be unemployed. * * * Housing, too, is often rigged against the young. Homeowners dominate the bodies that decide whether new houses may be built. They often say no, so as not to spoil the view and reduce the value of their own property. Over-regulation has doubled the cost of a typical home in Britain. Its effects are even worse in many of the big cities around the world where young people most want to live. Rents and home prices in such places have far outpaced incomes.

"Young people are often footloose. * * * This makes them more productive * * * it is striking that so many governments discourage not only cross-border migration but also the domestic sort. * * * A UN study found that 80% of countries had policies to reduce rural-urban migration, although much of human progress has come from people putting down their hoes and finding better jobs in the big smoke. All these barriers to free movement especially harm the young, because they most want to move.

"many governments favour the old: an ever greater share of public spending goes on pensions and health care for them. This is partly the natural result of societies ageing, but it is also because the elderly ensure that policies work in their favour. * * * This is unprecedented and unjust—the old are much richer.

"The young could do more to stand up for themselves. I * * * It is not enough for the young to sign online petitions. If they want governments to listen, they should vote. * * * The young are an oppressed minority—albeit an unusual one—in the straightforward sense that governments are systematically preventing them from reaching their potential.  That is a cruel waste of talent.

"The remedy is easy to prescribe—and hard to enact. Governments should unleash the young by cutting the red tape that keeps them out of jobs, and curbing the power of property-owners to stop homes from being built.

Note: "It is a lot to expect from political leaders who often seem unequal to the task of even modest reform. But every parent and grandparent has a stake in this, too. If they put their shoulders to the wheel, who knows what they might accomplish."
(a) unequal (adj): "INADEQUATE, INSUFFICIENT  <unequal to the task>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unequal
(b) To "put one's shoulder to the wheel" is a phrase. All three online dictionaries (Oxford, Macmillan and thefreedictionary.com (the last based on American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed (2011)) have "shoulder" and "wheel" both in singular form.

choi

(2) Family relationships | Divorce: A Love Story; While the government talks up family values, marriage break-ups are soaring.
http://www.economist.com/news/ch ... -divorce-love-story

Quote:

"At the [Chongqing's district-government] bureau, divorce takes half an hour and costs 9 yuan ($1.40). It is administered a few steps away from where other couples get married and take celebratory photographs.

"As long as both sides agree on terms, China is now among the easiest and cheapest places in the world to get a divorce. In many Western countries, including Britain, couples must separate for a period before dissolving a marriage; China has no such constraints. In 2014, the latest year for which such data exist, about 3.6m couples split up—more than double the number a decade earlier (they received a red certificate, pictured, to prove it). The divorce rate—the number of cases per thousand people—also doubled in that period. It now stands at 2.7, well above the rate in most of Europe and approaching that of America, the most divorce-prone Western country (see chart). Chongqing’s rate, 4.4, is higher than America’s.

Note:
(a) National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nov 23, 2015
www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm
(2015 marriage rate 6.9 (excludes data for Georgia), and divore rate 3.2 (excludes data for California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, and Minnesota), both figures "per 1,000 total population");  Content source: CDC/National Center for Health Statistics)

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is a CDC agency.
(b) "Married people previously had limited opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex in social situations, according to research by Li Xiaomin 李晓敏 of Henan University. Peng Xiaobo, a divorce lawyer in Chongqing, reckons 60-70% of his clients have had affairs."

choi

(3) Medicine | Curing Multiple Sclerosis; Stem cells are starting to prove their value as medical treatments.
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... nts-curing-multiple

Quote:

"a relapse rate of around 10% within five years

"such drugs [that treat multiple sclerosis] can slow the progression of the disease, they cannot do what the stem-cell therapy seems able to, which is to reverse it and improve patients’ quality of life—for example by allowing them to walk again.

"Dr Burt reckons, a stem-cell transplant in America costs, all in, $120,000—and that sum would be lower in countries with less-expensive health-care systems. Indeed, doctors in Britain think the treatment should cost hospitals about £30,000 (just over $40,000).

Note:
(a) "THIRTY years ago a young haematologist called Richard Burt was training at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore."
(i) That was when Richard K Burt, MD, was a fellow, having completed his residency.
(ii) Dr Richard Burt. Stem Cell Research Facts, undated.
www.stemcellresearchfacts.org/dr-richard-burt/

It sounds too rosy.
(iii) What nags me is three decades latter, Dr Burt can only publish the result of an uncontrolled study, which is meaningless in science -- particularly in light of highly unpredictable course of these diseases (with or without treatment). See
Burt RK et al, Association of Nonmyeloablative Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation with Neurological Disability in Patients with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis. JAMA, 313: 275-284 (Jan 20, 2015)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25602998
("These preliminary findings from this uncontrolled study require confirmation in randomized trials")

(b) "And other conditions, too, seem susceptible to the stem-cell approach. Mesoblast, an Australian company, received approval last September for a stem-cell treatment for graft-versus-host disease, in which the transplanted tissue attacks the host."

Press release: Mesoblast Partner JCR Pharmaceuticals Receives Recommendation For Approval Of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Product In Japan. Mesoblast, Sept 3, 2015
https://globenewswire.com/news-r ... oduct-In-Japan.html
(Japan recommended for approval JR-031, developed by Mesoblast's Japanese partner JCR Pharmaceuticals Co, Ltd  JCRファーマ株式会社)