Modern Luddites

Legend has it Ned Ludd led a band of nineteenth century loom operators on a rampage to destroy mechanized looms that threatened their jobs and wages. They were hanged for their crimes and Ludd's name entered the language meaning one who resists technological innovation. Most of the old loom operators did lose their jobs and there are those today who believe the industrial revolution was a bad thing, never mind that it ushered in an era of prosperity history had never known. Today's most prominent Luddites would destroy not machinery but the fossil fuels that power it, all in the cause of saving the planet. Their mantra is renewable energy but one suspects a hidden Malthusian motive. At seven billion and climbing there are too many of us. The renewable energy of choice, wind and solar, won't support us all. If we were fewer, those who are left could return to the pristine world they imagine it would be. Fortunately, especially for the world's remaining poor, Luddites and Malthusians alike always underestimate man's ingenuity and ability to adapt. All the talk about climate change has produced an array of new technologies. Hydraulic fracking has already had a dramatic impact on relatively clean burning natural gas. Even the price of gasoline is down, though it has edged back up recently. And there are more nuclear engineers doing more interesting work than at any time at least since Three Mile Island. The nuclear developments are particularly interesting. Today's reactors are all based on the same basic water cooled design with elaborate and expensive safety mechanisms to prevent meltdowns. That most new ones are being built in places like China with less than transparent oversight does not inspire confidence. But new designs are coming out that are small, inexpensive, modular, and walk away safe. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works Lab thinks they can have a fusion reactor ready within a decade that will fit on the back of a truck and can be used to power a ship, a factory, or a small town without impacting the existing grid, and without producing radioactive waste. Transatomic Power is a startup founded by two MIT engineers to develop a design based on a molten salt reactor that will use existing nuclear waste as fuel. Molten salt reactors aren't really new. Oak Ridge National Laboratories developed them in the 60's before the Nixon administration pulled the plug on them in 1973. But interest has revived because of inherent advantages. They are said to be meltdown proof and produce relatively low levels of nuclear waste. There are a number of other designs in the works, none of them particularly useful in the production of nuclear weapons. Some of them use thorium for fuel, a radioactive element several times more abundant than uranium. An inexhaustible, safe, and universally available supply of inexpensive energy may be within reach. Don't discount the Luddites. They will surely demagogue the technology, regardless of how safe and beneficial. I suspect they will get their way for a time. But like Ned Ludd they are swimming against the tide. China will get its energy. So will India, and so will sub Saharan Africa. They will use it to lift their poor into the middle class. Memory of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima will no doubt retard nuclear deployment in the West but if, as appears likely, it can bring affordable and reliable electricity to corners of the globe that never had it, then those places will adopt it. In recent decades the world has made remarkable progress in lifting people out of extreme poverty. We may be about to make some more, due in no small part to the Luddites who would try to stop it.

Repeal the Blaine Amendment

Texas and 37 other states have constitutional provisions prohibiting the use of state funds at sectarian schools, schools with religious affiliations. Originally anti-Catholic measures, they are called Blaine Amendments after former U.S. House Speaker James G. Blaine who attempted to have the amendment added to the U.S. Constitution in 1875. He failed but the idea proved popular at the state level. Speaker Blaine was reacting to the wave of Irish and German Catholic immigrants demanding their own schools. Catholics objected to their children being required to participate in Protestant prayer services and use the King James Bible, common practice in public schools at the time. To Blaine, sectarian meant Catholic. It would not have occurred to him that the ban might someday affect Protestants. I wonder what he would think now as all religious expression is increasingly banned from public schools. The practical effect today is to reinforce the K-12 public school monopoly on state funding, and to complicate proposals for school choice. Parents who can't afford private school tuition are pretty much stuck in the public school system. School districts are under increasing pressure to provide alternatives like magnet and charter schools, and to allow students in underperforming schools to enroll in other public schools with better records. Some districts have responded with imaginative solutions that work well for some students but a private school option really should be part of the mix, including schools with religious affiliation. To get around Blaine, private school choice proposals in Texas don't include vouchers. Instead they provide business tax credits for donations to non profits who offer scholarships or tuition assistance for low income families who can demonstrate academic or financial need. There are at least three bills pending in the current legislature to authorize these tax credits. They differ primarily in size and scope. None of them would cost the state money because the credits are lower than the per pupil costs in public schools. Tax credits have proven effective in other states. They are growing more popular and have generally withstood Blaine based legal challenges. They are a response to increasing awareness that some schools are failing our children. Internal reform efforts have been going nowhere for many years in some districts. To force a child to remain in a school where she cannot get an adequate education is unconscionable. She must be given alternatives. And what's wrong with vouchers anyway? A Texas veteran is free to use his GI Bill benefits at the accredited school of his choice and that would include SMU, TCU, or for that matter Brigham Young. Just how does K-12 differ? Blaine's roots are in religious discrimination. It's effect still is, only now the discrimination is against any religion, usually Christian religion. Catholics defied Blaine and built their own schools without state assistance, paying their children's tuition and public school taxes as well. Others who could afford it followed suit. The resulting schools are among the best in the nation by any measure, and most of them are open to families who are not particularly affluent. If they have a religious affiliation they typically welcome children from other faiths. President Obama's children attend a private Quaker school, as did Chelsea Clinton. My granddaughter's high school class at St. Agnes in Houston included wealthy Muslim girls from the Middle East, and not so wealthy girls who's families couldn't begin to afford the tuition. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. It is in everyone's interest to see to it that our children get the best education available, all of our children. Parents should have a big say in that. The Blaine amendment is in the way. Repeal it.

Measles vs. Autism

CDC reports 102 cases of measles in the United States for January, the latest data available on their web site. To say that it has been widely covered in the media would be an understatement. It has also been widely reported that about one in four people with measles will need to be hospitalized. A number of cases have been treated in emergency rooms but if anyone has been hospitalized with measles I can't find it in the news. So far as I can tell no one yet has died. The outbreak is said to be the result of rising numbers of unvaccinated children, probably true. One commonly cited reason for not vaccinating is an unfounded fear of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. That fear is traced to a discredited 1998 study published in Lancet and since retracted, partly true. The fear can also be traced to an obvious and unexplained correlation between a dramatic increase in the recommended vaccination schedule beginning about 1990 and an explosion in the number of children being diagnosed with autism. One in 68 children born in 2002 had autism in 2010. In 2000 the number for the 1992 cohort was 1 in 150. That's a lot of children and many of their parents point to vaccines. They tell story after story of healthy, happy children suddenly becoming sick after a well baby visit where they received multiple injections including the MMR. Public health officials insist it is coincidence. Parents aren't buying it. Their children regressed into autism after getting the shots. They want to know why. There is more. Authorities can't explain the absence of autism among the Amish, who don't vaccinate. Pediatricians who treat large numbers of unvaccinated children (there aren't many but they are out there) report that they rarely if ever see autism. The Vaccine Court once in a great while compensates a child who can demonstrate that her autism was triggered (careful, don't say "caused") by a vaccine injury. The standard of proof is very high. None of this necessarily implicates the vaccines but something is causing this epidemic, and it is an epidemic. Part of it can be explained by better diagnosis, and autism can be difficult to diagnose, but over the course of twenty years autism went from rare to common. Ask an elementary school teacher if she ever saw autism in her classroom before 1985. It wasn't there. You can't miss it today. CDC points to genes and most federal research dollars go into genetics. Genes may well make some children more susceptible but there is no such thing as a genetic epidemic. There has to be an environmental factor. Something has changed. Officials insist over and over again that the vaccines have been exonerated. More and more mothers look at the available evidence and conclude it isn't worth the risk, especially if they are well educated, and especially if they already have one child with autism. Many of them still get the shots but space them out and get fewer simultaneous injections. They may reject some shots for diseases where their child is at very low risk. The hepatitis b shot at birth is unnecessary for most babies. I suspect measles immunization rates would go up if the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines were available separately. Most children who contract measles will recover with no long term side effects save a life long immunity. Most children who have autism will suffer a life long disability, often a severe disability. Officials believe herd immunity is the most important consideration. I suspect most mothers would put her child's interest first. There is a solution to all this. Find out what's causing autism