Category: Friedman, Milton

With Metformin Patent Expired, No Firm Has Incentive to Fund $50 Million Randomized Clinical Trial to Show It Aids Longevity

The article quoted below was published eight years ago. Dr. Barzilai and his team are still, even now, trying to raise the (probably higher) funds to conduct the metformin clinical trial. Firms have no incentive to conduct the clinical trial. Since the patent for metformin (originally issued for its efficacy against diabetes) expired in the year 2000, even if the clinical trial succeeded, no firm would be able to recover in revenue the $50 cost of conducting the clinical trial. Clinical trials are so hugely expensive largely due to the large and long Phase 3 component, intended to prove efficacy. That is why I salute Milton Friedman’s suggestion that a step in the right direction would be for the FDA to only mandate the smaller and quicker Phase 1 and Phase 2 components, mainly intended to prove safety. If the total cost of the clinical trial was much lower, it might be easier to find non-profit or academic funding. (It’s hard to raise $50 million on a GoFundMe page!)

The system is set up so that cheap (off-patent) drugs like metformin do not get tested, and so do not get FDA approval for off-label uses. So the system is set up to reduce the use of low cost, but possibly effective, medicines.

(p. D5) “Aging is by far the best predictor of whether people will develop a chronic disease like atherosclerotic heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia or osteoarthritis,” Dr. James L. Kirkland, director of the Kogod Center on Aging at the Mayo Clinic, said in an interview. “Aging way outstrips all other risk factors.”

He and fellow researchers, who call themselves “geroscientists,” are hardly hucksters hawking magic elixirs to extend life. Rather, they are university scientists joined together by the American Federation for Aging Research to promote a new approach to healthier aging, which may — or may not — be accompanied by a longer life. They plan to test one or more substances that have already been studied in animals, and which show initial promise in people, in hopes of finding one that will keep more of us healthier longer.

As Dr. Kirkland wrote in . . ., “Aging: The Longevity Dividend”: “By targeting fundamental aging processes, it may be possible to delay, prevent, alleviate or treat the major age-related chronic disorders as a group instead of one at a time.”

. . .

The team, which includes Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, and Steven N. Austad, who heads the biology department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, plans to study one promising compound, a generic drug called metformin already widely used in people with Type 2 diabetes. They will test the drug in a placebo-controlled trial involving 3,000 elderly people to see if it will delay the development or progression of a variety of age-related ailments, including heart disease, cancer and dementia. Their job now is to raise the $50 million or so needed to conduct the study for the five years they expect it will take to determine whether the concept has merit.

. . .

Several studies have . . . found that individuals with exceptional longevity experience a compression of morbidity and spend a smaller percentage of their life being ill, Dr. Barzilai and his colleague Dr. Sofiya Milman wrote in the “Aging” book.

For the full commentary see:

Jane E. Brody. “Pursuing the Dream of Healthy Aging.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 2, 2016 [sic]): D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 1, 2016 [sic], and has the title “Finding a Drug for Healthy Aging.”)

Dr. Kirkland’s co-edited book mentioned above is:

Olshansky, S. Jay, George M. Martin, and James L. Kirkland, eds. Aging: The Longevity Dividend, A Subject Collection from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2015.

One study that documents that those who live 107 or more years do not have more years of illness and morbidity (the “compression of morbidity hypothesis”) is:

Sebastiani, Paola, and Thomas T. Perls. “The Genetics of Extreme Longevity: Lessons from the New England Centenarian Study.” Frontiers in Genetics 3 (Nov. 30, 2012).

Tax Universities to Offset Their Negative Externalities?

(p. A11) What can we do about the corruption of American higher education? Milton Friedman had an idea 20 years ago: Tax the schools rather than subsidize them. That reflected a change of heart. In “Capitalism and Freedom” (1960), he argued that college education had enough “positive externalities” to justify subsidies. But when I was researching a book in 2003, I emailed him (then 91) and asked if he still believed that.

He replied: “I have not changed my view that higher education has some positive externality, but I have become much more aware that it also has negative externalities. I am much more dubious than I was . . . that there is any justification at all for government subsidy of higher education. The spread of PC”—political correctness—“would seem to be a very strong negative externality, and certainly the 1960s student demonstrations were negative externalities. . . . A full analysis along those lines might lead you to conclude that higher education should be taxed to offset its negative externalities.”

For the full commentary, see:

Richard Vedder. “Harvard Should Pay Its Fair Share.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023): A11.

(Note: ellipses in original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 22, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Friedman’s book mentioned above is:

Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

University of Chicago Press Undermines Its Own New Edition of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom

(p. C9) I had never read “Capitalism and Freedom” and was renewed in my admiration for midcentury American reading audiences. The book, full of tightly reasoned arguments about the principles of economic freedom in various spheres of life, sold 400,000 copies in its first 18 years. The University of Chicago Press, which first published the book six decades ago, evidently would rather it stop selling. The new edition’s foreword is written by Binyamin Appelbaum, a member of the New York Times editorial board, who treats Friedman’s classic text as mildly interesting artifact. “Friedman’s claim that ‘widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric,’ ” Mr. Appelbaum assures us, “misapprehended the nature of society, which is more like a muscle than a fabric.” I await Chicago’s edition of J.K. Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society,” with a foreword by Larry Kudlow.

For the full review, see:

Barton Swaim. “Of Markets and Morals.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021 [sic]): C9.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 29, 2021 [sic], and has the title “Politics: Of Markets and Morals.”)

The book under review is:

Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020 [1st ed. 1962].

The Applause at Davos for Milei’s Defense of Free Market Capitalism “Was More Than Polite”

(p. A17) There were no marches for Adam Smith or posters of Milton Friedman at Davos this year, but the applause for the combative defense of free markets by Argentina’s new libertarian President Javier Milei was more than polite. Citing the contrast between ages of stagnation and the miracle of accelerating progress in the modern era, Mr. Milei reminded his audience that “far from being the cause of our problems, free-trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet.”

His words resonated because, as one heard in panel after panel, the empirical foundations of the fashionable statist view appear to be crumbling. For now at least, the China miracle seems to be over. Beijing isn’t only suffering one economic shock after another. Its worst problems—demographic decline, a property bubble, overinvestment in manufacturing, and fear of arbitrary state actions against both foreign and domestic businesses—are the result of government planning gone wrong. As China doubles down on repression, its economic problems get worse.

Fifteen years after the financial crisis, meanwhile, tightly regulated Europe has fallen behind the U.S. Using chained 2015 dollars to minimize the effect of currency fluctuations, total European Union gross domestic product in 2008 was 81% that of the U.S. In 2022 it was 73%, hardly an argument for the European way.

For the full commentary, see:

Walter Russell Mead. “GLOBAL VIEW; Davos Turns Gently to the Right.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024): A17.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 22, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Stigler’s Account of Friedman’s “Exhilarating” Conversion of 20 Chicago Economists to Coase’s Theorem

(p. C8) Although he never reached the renown of his lifelong friend Milton Friedman, George Stigler was a founding member of the Chicago school of economics. His charming and readable memoir—really a linked series of vignettes—recounts his time at Chicago, from graduate school to professor.

. . .

Riveting accounts of notable moments in the history of economic thought include the “Coase conversion evening”—a long argument that ended with Friedman convincing 20 economists to embrace a founding theorem of the law and economics movement. “What an exhilarating event,” Stigler recalls. “I lamented afterward that we had not had the clairvoyance to tape it.”

For the full review, see:

Jennifer Burns. “Five Best on Biographies of Economists.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, November 4, 2023): C8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 3, 2023, and has the title “Five Best: Lives of Economists.”)

The book under review is:

Stigler, George J. Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988.

Milton Friedman Made the Case for Freedom to 15 Million Viewers

New York Times reviewer Szalai says that watching Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” documentary today is a surreal experience. To the contrary, I say that watching Milton Friedman’s documentary today is an exhilarating experience and watching the the evening news today is a surreal experience. (As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was in the audience for a couple of the episodes of Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” documentary.)

(p. C1) The documentary series “Free to Choose,” which aired on public television in 1980 and was hosted by the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, makes for surreal watching nowadays. Even if Ronald Reagan would go on to win the presidential election later that year, it was still a time when capitalism’s most enthusiastic supporters evidently felt the need to win the public over to a vision of free markets and minimal government.  . . .

They had an enormous audience: The 15 million viewers who watched the first episode saw an avuncular Friedman (diminutive and smiling), leaning casually against a chair in a Chinatown sweatshop (noisy and crowded), surrounded by women pushing fabric through clattering sewing machines. “They are like my mother,” Friedman said, gesturing at the Asian women in the room. She had worked in a factory too, after immigrating as a 14-year-old from Austria-Hungary in the late 19th century. Friedman explained that these low-wage garment workers weren’t being exploited; they were gaining a foothold in the American land of plenty. The camera then cut to a tray of juicy steaks.

For the full review, see:

Jennifer Szalai. “Sounding an Alarm Over America’s Values.” The New York Times (Saturday, February 18, 2023): C1 & C4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Feb. 17, 2023, and has the title “Is the Marriage Between Democracy and Capitalism on the Rocks?”)

The book based on Milton Friedman’s documentary is:

Friedman, Milton, and Rose D. Friedman. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980.

Milton Friedman’s “Unflinching Defense” of Libertarianism

(p. A3) . . . [Milton] Friedman was highly influential. In academia, he did pioneering work on consumer behavior, monetary history and the unstable relation between inflation and unemployment. Outside the ivory tower, he is remembered for his unflinching defense of classical liberalism—a position that today is often called libertarianism. “Capitalism and Freedom” is the best entry into Friedman’s lucid mind. You will enjoy reading it even if you disagree with most of his judgments. A socialist student at Harvard once told me it was one of his favorite books. “Why?” I asked. “Because it clearly explains the point of view I have to argue against.”

For the full review, see:

N. Gregory Mankiw. “Five Best: Economics Primers.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug. 18, 2023): A3.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 2, 2023, and has the title “Five Best: Economics Primers.”)

Friedman’s best popular book, developed from lectures first presented at Wabash College that were co-organized by my mentor Ben Rogge, is:

Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Milton Friedman Was a “Formative Intellectual Influence” to George Shultz

(p. A13) [George] Shultz, an unflamboyant personality once described by a college classmate as a “steady, plodding intellect,” reached the commanding heights of American government, holding four cabinet posts over his career from secretary of the Treasury to state. Shultz died in 2021 at the age of 100.

. . .

For a time Shultz was on track for a career in academia, working in the economics department at MIT and later the University of Chicago. “Chicago is what started me,” Shultz said. Milton Friedman, a formative intellectual influence and enduring friend, methodically deepened Shultz’s faith in free markets and his skepticism of government intervention in the economy. “Milton didn’t hit the tennis ball hard but it always came back,” Shultz once remarked, “which was reflective of the way he argued, too.”

. . .

. . . Shultz was hardly immune from being wrong. For example: Along with the rest of the State Department, he tried to talk Reagan out of using the line “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Shultz worried it was too provocative.

The cautionary tale is that many know Shultz from perhaps the biggest error in judgment he ever made, some 90 years into his life. That’s his association with Elizabeth Holmes, the Silicon Valley founder convicted of fraud in federal court. Shultz was one of Ms. Holmes’s first marks, and he helped her assemble a board for her blood-testing company from his Rolodex. Among the wreckage was Shultz’s relationship with his own grandson, Tyler, who early on discovered the company’s misrepresentations.

For the full review, see:

Kate Bachelder Odell. “BOOKSHELF; Subsume the Ego And Stay Loyal.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 7, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 6, 2023, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘In the Nation’s Service’ Review: George Shultz’s Quiet Strength.”)

The book under review is:

Taubman, Philip. In the Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2023.

Mamet Was Opened to Friedman, Hayek, and Sowell by a Guy Who “Wasn’t Strident or Arrogant”

I often wonder what sort of person, making what sort of argument, is most able to convince those who start out disagreeing. My mentors Ben Rogge and Deirdre McCloskey exemplify the attitude that impressed David Mamet in the passage quoted below. (On the other hand, Murray Rothbard, Karl Marx, and Ayn Rand convinced a lot of people, and each of them could sometimes be strident. I wonder still.)

(p. A11) . . . I received a galley copy of the playwright David Mamet’s “Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of Free Lunch,” published Tuesday. The book is a collection of essays written over the past two years on an array of cultural and political topics: pandemic zealotry, Donald Trump, terrorism, California’s punitive tax code, Christianity and Judaism, Broadway and the movies. The essays are by turns witty, insightful, affecting and cryptic. What struck me most about the book, though, was how superbly out of place its author must be in the eminent environs of his chosen industry.

. . .

Mr. Mamet announced a turn to the political right in a 2008 essay for the Village Voice, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal,’ ” but he was a black sheep long before then. His 1992 play “Oleanna,” for instance, features a male academic whose life and career are ruined by a calculating female student’s spurious accusation of sexual harassment.

Was there a moment when he decided to break ranks altogether? “I met a guy at my synagogue here maybe 20 years ago,” he says. “He was talking about Milton Friedman and [Friedrich] Hayek and Thomas Sowell. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I was impressed by his attitude. He wasn’t strident or arrogant. It was that guy’s attitude that impressed me.”

The man lent Mr. Mamet some books by these authors. “I said to him, ‘Good, I’ll read them. But,’ I said, ‘when my friends come over, I’ll have to hide them.’ He said: ‘I don’t.’ And that changed my life. What was I saying? Did I really think I had to hide books from my friends? How sick was I? It was a Road to Damascus moment.”

. . .

Woke signaling, blind compliance with public-health authoritarianism, deference to theater critics and tyrannical city officials—Mr. Mamet doesn’t play along. I’m reminded of the line spoken by Richard Roma, the aggressive and highly successful real-estate salesman in “Glengarry Glen Ross” played by Al Pacino in the 1992 film adaptation. “I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion,” Roma says. “If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way.”

For the full interview, see:

Barton Swaim, interviewer. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; A Defiant Scribe in the Age of Conformity.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 9, 2022): A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date April 8, 2022, and has the title “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; Opinion: David Mamet Is a Defiant Scribe in the Age of Conformity.”)

Mamet’s recent book, mentioned in the interview above, is:

Mamet, David. Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch. New York: Broadside Books, 2022.

Rogge and Friedman on Bread and Freedom

At the start and end of the movie above, you can hear the voice and thoughts of my Wabash College mentor Ben Rogge. His interview of Milton Friedman at the end is especially wonderful if you are a libertarian fan of Rogge and Friedman. I believe Rogge had an important hand in the production of this movie, as he did in a couple of movies from Liberty Fund. I think he also advised Milton Friedman on his famous “Free to Choose” television series. Rogge was a libertarian intellectual entrepreneur, who encouraged and enabled many now-more-famous libertarians to think, write, and speak. Whether he is remembered or forgotten, Rogge made a difference.

The movie is based on the book of the same title:

Brown, Susan Love, Karl Keating, David Mellinger, Patrea Post, Stuart Smith, and Catriona Tudor. The Incredible Bread Machine. San Diego: World Research, Inc., 1975.

(Note: the book is based on a poem by R.W. Grant that had the title “Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine.” I believe, but have not confirmed my memory, that a version of Grant’s poem appears in the book by Love et al.)

University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman Center Now Run by “Former Obama Staffers Who Cheer” . . . “Moves Toward Socialism”

(p. A15) Colleges’ ideological turn leftward has become sharper. At my own institution, a center dedicated to Milton Friedman is now run by former Obama staffers who cheer on the Biden administration’s moves toward socialism.

These policies reward professors and administrators who can then raise the price of their services. It’s basic economics that subsidizing demand increases the price of the product. Tuition rising as loan subsidies expand is no different. It isn’t a coincidence that education and health care, the industries in which government subsidies are most pervasive, took the highest price increases over the past 15 years—3.7% and 3.1% a year, compared with the 1.8% average across industries.

For the full commentary, see:

Tomas J. Philipson. “College Subsidies Are a Feedback Loop for Bigger Government.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 11, 2021): A15.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 10, 2021, and has the title “College Subsidies Are a Feedback Loop for Bigger Government.”)