Natural capital: dollars and cents/dollars and sense

Sustainable business makes dollars and sense.

The last decade has marked a radical change in the business of sustainability, say environmental activists and industrialists alike. On the wane are "greenwashing" campaigns in which corporations promote dubious environmental accomplishments to draw attention away from environmentally damaging practices. On the rise are corporate investments in sustainability programs, new types of environmenta...

Eradicating polio: the dollars and sense.

Hopefully, we are now at the bitter end of global eradication of wild polioviruses, with annual cases of paralytic polio down globally from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to under 2000 today.[1] Following successful eradication, we must choose wisely among the many policy options[2] that will determine our future risks, costs, and benefits.[3-8] But first, we need to complete polio eradication. W...

Implantable loop recorders. dollars and sense.

Syncope is a common, often perplexing clinical problem causing emotional stress to patients, their families, and often, the physicians caring for them. In a large, 26-year prospective study of men and women ages 30 to 62 years, 3% of men and 3.5% of women experienced at least one syncopal episode (1). That study excluded adolescent and elderly populations. Syncope has been reported in up to 47%...

Common sense, dollars and cents, and drug-eluting stents.

ew technologies in medicine almost always bring higher osts to the medical system. Most new medical technologies o not offer cost offsets via prevention of subsequent pisodes of illness or reductions in labor costs. Two papers n the current issue of the Journal (1,2) document an xception to the rule of purely increased costs of a new echnology. However, despite demonstrating offsetting cost avi...

Drug-eluting stents: more dollars than sense?