Biofuels: The lesson for Biomedicine

By Jerome J. Schmitt

As always, Congress's heavy-handed intrusion into free-markets -- most recently acting precipitously in the market in bio-fuels in the name of Al Gore's "Global Warming" Alarmism -- causes unexpected and unintended consequences, causing congress to now consider an ignominious retreat on Ethanol Legislation according to The Hill:

"Sharply rising food prices may force Congress to reconsider the fivefold increase in ethanol production it mandated just four months ago, some lawmakers say."

Just on American Thinker this week we have seen reported:

SCIENCE Magazine concludes that ethanol production damages the climate and pollutes the rivers

Food Scientists report that diversion of grain supplies to bio-fuel production is causing starvation in the third world.

NATURE Magazine reports that "global warming" may take a "holiday"

SCIENCE and NATURE are the two premier world publications in science yet Al Gore assured Congress in late March that the "science is settled". Not one human has ever been harmed by "Climate Change", but we see millions of Haitians, Egyptians, Mexicans and others in the third-world now demonstrating and rioting because of US government-induced famine. The only beneficiaries of these harmful policies have been Al Gore's adherents who have profited on this misery by their "green investments". None of this would surprise Adam Smith who noted that:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

In this case, the conspirators are the "green" industrialists seeking a "contrivance", in this case a congressional mandate, to raise bio-fuel prices for their benefit regardless of the suffering it causes to the world poor.

If this is the fiasco and misery the congressional democrats can wreck in the bio-fuels industry, misled by "experts" such as Al Gore, imagine what havoc will be wrecked on the health-care and pharmaceutical industries if the Democrats have their way.