Fortune

Shannon Brownlee in Fortune Online | 'Cholesterol skeptics have their day'

Communications — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Cholesterol skeptics have their day (Fortune)

"There's a mountain of evidence that shows that people who have financial relationships with industry produce biased research and come up with biased recommendations for treatment," notes Shannon Brownlee, author of "Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer". Brownlee points out, as has been widely reported, that of the nine medical experts who devised the national cholesterol guidelines, six had received research grants, speaking honoraria, or consulting fees from at least three of the five companies that produce brand-name statins.

Fortune Quotes Michael Dannenberg on Student Loans, 'Big Education'

Communications — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:26:00 -0500

New America in the News:

In the corporate world, there's a short list of obvious suspects who may face tougher times under a Democratic Congress, including Big Pharma and Big Oil. Then there are the not-so-obvious suspects -- like what might be called Big Education.

In fact, the stocks of companies that make their money educating America's college students have had a turbulent year. Look no further than the granddaddy of student lenders, SLM Corp. (Charts) -- more commonly known as Sallie Mae -- which fell some 13 percent through Nov. 7 and dropped another 5 percent on Nov. 8, as the news rolled in that the Democrats had captured the House...

Last spring Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) introduced a Student Borrower Bill of Rights. Among its tenets are a cap on loan interest as a percentage of a borrower's income. "A Democratic majority will definitely have an opportunity to change student-loan law," says Michael Dannenberg, who directs education policy at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

It's no secret that change is needed. A just-released report commissioned by the Secretary of Education calls for "complete restructuring of the current federal financial aid system..."

For the complete article, please visit the Fortune magazine website.

Fixing Social Security

Articles — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Social Security is a mess. With the oldest babyboomers now four years away from qualifying for benefits, the program faces a shortfall of $12.7 trillion. To close the deficit, the program would need to cut benefits by 27% by the time today's 25-year-olds retire. And yet in this silly season, neither presidential candidate is offering a viable solution: Kerry says he won't touch Social Security; Bush promises an expensive privatization plan that would leave individuals with huge market risks. But there's another way. FORTUNE has learned that a new reform idea is percolating within the Social Security Administration. Nothing's… more

Which Nations Will Go Forth and Multiply?

Articles — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0400

When asked how long it will take for the world's population to double, nearly half of all Americans say 20 years or less. That's hardly surprising, given the crowding many of us encounter in everyday life and the reports we hear of teeming Third World megacities. Yet forecasts by the United Nations and others show that world population, currently at a little over six billion, is unlikely to double--ever. Indeed, demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a nongovernmental research organization in Laxenburg, Austria, predict that world population will peak at nine billion within the life-time of today's… more