Durably improving health is really, really hard. I've discussed this in the context of drug discovery, which must contend with the ever-more-apparent reality that biology is incredibly complex, and science remarkably fragile. Here, I'd like to focus on another challenge: measuring and improving the quality of patient care.

In the wake of every bust comes the political reaction.

Of the many factors that make improving the health system difficult, few challenges are greater than the misty-eyed recollection – often from genuinely distinguished practitioners – of how great things used to be.  Doctors were highly regarded authority figures, pure and beloved, while patients were meek and grateful in the presence of such brilliance and expertise.

Successfully translating scientific discoveries requires a sense of urgency, which some disease foundations seem to have, and many big pharmas appear to need. Patients waiting expectantly for medical research to produce important new cures are finding bad news almost everywhere they turn.

The core of medicine, and medical research, is and must be the patient, and the success of future drug development will depend upon our ability to keep patients in the front of our minds and at the center of our efforts.

John Tomasi of Brown University will deliver the March Bradley Lecture.

Friedrich Hayek was acutely aware of the fragility of free societies. He was convinced that the greatest threat to freedom in the West lay not only in socialism but in the ideal of social justice itself--what he called “the...

Forces allied to the former Gadhafi regime could still threaten a fragile new government using guerilla and terrorist tactics. It would be a mistake to underestimate his tenacity or to dismiss the warning of his son Seif that "We will fight to our very last man, woman, and bullet."

Unfortunately, the rising threat of an Iranian Winter--nuclear or otherwise--is likely to outlast and overshadow any Arab Spring.