Vatican statement on gender-affirming surgery and human dignity

 A new statement from the Vatican has been widely covered in the press.

Here's the story from the National Catholic Reporter:

Vatican condemns surrogacy, gender-affirming surgery, gender theory in new doctrinal note. Vatican doctrinal chief calls it 'painful' that some Catholics support gay criminalization  BY CHRISTOPHER WHITE, April 8, 2024

"Sex change operations, gender theory and surrogate motherhood pose grave threats to human dignity, according to a major new Vatican document released on April 8. 

While the highly anticipated treatise, "Dignitas Infinita: on Human Dignity," which has been the source of much speculation for months, offers a broadside against the creation of new rights motivated by sex and gender, it is largely a reiteration of long-held Catholic teaching on a number of social and moral concerns. 

The new document, however, seeks to elevate a number of social themes emphasized by Pope Francis during his decadelong papacy — such as poverty, migration and human trafficking — as being equally a part of the full panoply of potential threats to human dignity as bioethical concerns, such as abortion and euthanasia.   

...

"Among the newly identified threats to human dignity are poverty; war; the travail of migrants; human trafficking; sexual abuse; violence against women; abortion; child surrogacy; euthanasia and assisted suicide; the marginalization of people with disabilities; gender theory; sex change; and digital violence.

Gender theory, according to the document, is a subject of considerable debate among scientific experts, and risks denying "the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference."  

The document repeats a frequent warning of Francis against "ideological colonization," where the pope has sharply criticized western governments for allegedly imposing their sexual values on the developing world. All efforts to eliminate sexual differences between men and women must be rejected, says the document. 

At the same time, the document also begins with a caveat that all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, must be respected, and "every sign of unjust discrimination is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence."

"For this reason," the document continues, "it should be denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation."  

Last year, Francis became the first pope to specifically condemn the criminalization of homosexuality and said that the Catholic Church must work towards an end to what he described as "unjust" laws that criminalize being gay. At present, at least 67 countries have laws criminalizing same-sex relations. 

In its brief section on gender-affirming surgeries, the document avoids using the term "transgender" and instead offers a muted prohibition against medical interventions for such purposes.

...

"Catholic LGBTQ groups criticized the new Vatican document within hours of its publication, saying it failed to acknowledge the concrete experience of transgender and nonbinary individuals.

New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group that had an historic meeting with Francis at the Vatican last October, said in a statement that the text "fails terribly" and shows the limits of the church's understand of human dignity.

...

"The new document also goes on to repeat the pope's recent call for an international ban on the rising practice of surrogate motherhood, declaring that the "legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a 'right to a child' that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life."  

In January, Francis used his annual "State of the World" address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See to push for a global ban on surrogacy. 

While the pope had previously condemned the practice, the pope's sweeping remarks on the topic — where he called it a "grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child" — marked the first time he had made such a specific policy proposal. Last month, the Vatican's ambassador to the United Nations, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, also pressed for an international prohibition against the practice. "

Kidneys: compensation and altruism

 Apropos of my debate with Debra Satz this afternoon, here are two articles about kidney donation, from pure altruism or with compensation, in the New York Times and in The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy.

In the NYT:

Let People Sell Their Kidneys. It Will Save Lives., By Dylan Walsh, April 2, 2024

"There are 100,000 people in the United States waiting for a kidney. More than half a million are on dialysis, which from my experience I know to be more of a means of survival than a form of living. ... The National Kidney Foundation estimates that without more investment in preventing diabetes and other ailments, more than one million people will be suffering from kidney failure by 2030, up from over 800,000 now.

...

"Creating a market for kidneys is not a new concept, but it’s historically been met with disgust: Sell what? To be fair, some of the ways to structure such a market would be irresponsible, coercive and deserving of that disgust.

"But others are more thoughtful and prudent. One approach is to make the federal government the sole purchaser of kidneys. Donor and recipient would never meet. Compensation would be fixed, haggling impossible. After the kidney is acquired, the transplant process would unfold in the typical manner."

#####

In The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy:

Semrau, Luke. "The Altruism Requirement as Moral Fiction." In The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, p. jhae011. US: Oxford University Press, 2024.

"Abstract: It is widely agreed that living kidney donation is permitted but living kidney sales are not. Call this the Received View. One way to support the Received View is to appeal to a particular understanding of the conditions under which living kidney transplantation is permissible. It is often claimed that donors must act altruistically, without the expectation of payment and for the sake of another. Call this the Altruism Requirement. On the conventional interpretation, the Altruism Requirement is a moral fact. It states a legitimate constraint on permissible transplantation and is accepted on the basis of cogent argument. The present paper offers an alternative interpretation. I suggest the Altruism Requirement is a moral fiction—a kind of motivated falsehood. It is false that transplantation requires altruism. But the Requirement serves a purpose. Accepting it allows kidney donation but not kidney sale. It, in short, rationalizes the Received View."

Here's the concluding paragraph:

"I have argued that the Altruism Requirement is a moral fiction. No sound arguments demonstrate its truth. It continues to enjoy widespread endorsement on account of its perceived link to the Received View. It is taken as a means of allowing kidney donation but not kidney sale. Thus, it is unsurprising that, on examination, in ethical argument and in the practice of transplantation, it is, de facto, a No Payment Requirement."

Kidney Markets with Alvin Roth and Debra Satz (tomorrow, at Stanford)

 Tomorrow Debra Satz and I will respectfully disagree with each other about the prospects for and desirability of compensation for kidney donors, as part of the series  she is conducting on Democracy and Disagreement.

Kidney Markets with Alvin Roth and Debra Satz

FROM THE SERIES: Democracy and Disagreement

Tuesday, April 9, 2024  3:00pm - 4:50pm

CEMEX Auditorium, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA

Free

Stanford professors Alvin Roth and Debra Satz discuss kidney markets.

ABOUT THE SERIES:  Democracy and Disagreement

Debra Satz, the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Paul Brest, interim dean and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, host faculty members on opposing sides of a given issue for discussions that model civil disagreement. 

Open to the Stanford community.

Call for kidney exchange in Jordan

 Here's a paper by Jordanian transplant docs, pointing out that kidney exchange (and perhaps cross border kidney exchange) would be useful for Jordan, a small country with little deceased donation.

Al-Thnaibat, Mohammad H., Mohammad K. Balaw, Mohammed K. Al-Aquily, Reem A. Ghannam, Omar B. Mohd, Firas Alabidi, Suzan Alabidi, Fadi Hussein, and Badi Rawashdeh. "Addressing Kidney Transplant Shortage: The Potential of Kidney Paired Exchanges in Jordan." Journal of Transplantation 2024 (2024).

Abstract

Jordan performed the Middle East’s first living-donor kidney transplant in 1972. In 1977, the country became one of the first Arab countries to regulate organ donation and transplantation. Despite these early advances in living donor transplantation, Jordan’s organ donation after brain death program remains inactive, making it challenging to meet organ demand and placing many patients on long transplant waiting lists. As of 2020, only 14.2% of the patients with end-stage kidney disease have access to a living donor. The scarcity of compatible living donors exacerbates Jordan’s organ shortage, leaving patients with extended waits and uncertain transplant prospects. Due to the lack of living donors and the inactive brain death donation program, additional options are needed to meet organ demand. Kidney paired exchange (KPE), emerges as a potential solution to the problem of donor shortage and donor-recipient incompatibility. By allowing living donors to direct their donated organs to different compatible recipients, KPE offers the promise of expanding transplant opportunities for patients without suitable living donors. However, the current Jordanian law restricting living kidney donation to fifth-degree relatives further limits the pool of potential donors, aggravating the organ shortage situation. This article explores the feasibility of implementing KPE in Jordan and proposes an approach to implementing KPE in Jordan, considering ethical and legal aspects to substantially increase kidney transplants.

Israel Institute for Advanced Studies summer school in economics (and cs)

 Here's the announcement for this summer's summer school in Economics in Jerusalem (with the program and list of speakers updated on April 8).

The 34th Advanced School in Economic Theory and Computer Science Sun, 23/06/2024 to Thu, 27/06/2024

General Director: Eric Maskin, Harvard University

Organizers: Elchanan Ben-Porath, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Michal Feldman, Tel Aviv University, Noam Nisan, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Contemporary economic theorists and computer scientists have a large research agenda in common. Topics of mutual interest include the design of contracts, auctions, and information structures, as well as the use of algorithms to achieve fair allocations. This summer school will explore all these topics and more

Speakers:

Fair division of indivisible items: Uriel Feige, Weizmann Institute of Science

Algorithmic contract design: Michal Feldman, Tel Aviv University

Multidimensional mechanism design: Sergiu Hart, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Revenue maximization from samples: Yannai Gonczarowski, Harvard University

Fairness in learning and prediction: Katrina Ligett, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Matching markets: From theory to practice: Assaf Romm, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Economic aspects of Blockchains: Aviv Zohar, Assaf Romm The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Still illegal in Idaho

 Here's a map from The Hill of places where marijuana will be legal to various degrees by the end of this year. Grey states are where marijuana is still entirely illegal.  Despite the best attempts of the previous presidential administration to make America grey again, Idaho is one of only three states that remain grey: they are surrounded by states in which cannabis is legal in some form, and most of Idaho's neighbors have legalized marijuana (even) for recreational purposes (bright green on the map).

But Idaho is holding the line, which seems to be politically popular there.

The NYT has the story:

A Legal Pot Pioneer Was Busted in Idaho With 56 Pounds. He Has a Plan.  By Corey Kilgannon

"In retrospect, the Idaho shortcut might have been a bad idea.

...

"Idaho is surrounded mostly by pot friendly states and is strict about people driving through with the stuff. The authorities are especially vigilant in “corridor counties” along Interstate 84, of which Gooding County — where Mr. Beal encountered the state police — is one.

"Under state law, carrying more than 25 pounds of marijuana is a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years; the maximum is 15 years, with a maximum fine of $50,000.

“It’s one of the worst places in the country to possess marijuana, definitely,” Michelle Agee, Mr. Beal’s court-appointed lawyer, said. “Idaho is stuck in the 1950s as far as marijuana goes. It’s definitely the wrong place, wrong time for a person to be accused of having marijuana.”

...

"Reached for comment, Idaho’s attorney general, Raúl R. Labrador, a former Republican congressman who helped found the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that legalization in neighboring states had done nothing to deter the strict enforcement of the laws in Idaho.

“We’ve watched how those decisions to legalize drugs have ruined other states, and Idaho demands just a bit better for our citizens and communities,” he said. “If you are trying to transport marijuana across state lines through Idaho, take the long way instead. It’ll save us money on your incarceration.”

Jon Levin to be new President of Stanford.

 

Stanford alum, business school dean Jonathan Levin named Stanford president

Interviews by lottery at Queens University School of Medicine

 Overwhelmed by large numbers of applications, and concerned about fairness, Queens University will set admissions thresholds (on grades and exam scores) and then determine by lottery which applicants move to the interview stage.

New admissions process improves equitable access to the Queen’s MD Program

"Queen’s Health Sciences (QHS) is adapting its MD Program admissions process to create a more inclusive entry point for all applicants, minimize systemic barriers to becoming a doctor, and increase student diversity.

"The renewed medical student admissions process will launch this fall, for 2025 admissions, and includes a pathway for lower socioeconomic status (SES) applicants and adjustments to the current Indigenous pathway. A new comprehensive approach to support the recruitment of Black students will launch in a second phase of this admissions change.  

...

"The MD Program will set admissions thresholds for grade point average (GPA), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), and Casper (a situational judgment test) at levels that align with the potential for predicting success in medical school, without concern for the number of applicants who meet these thresholds. While the MD Program already posts GPA thresholds, as part of this change, MCAT thresholds will be posted as well. All applicants who meet these thresholds will be entered into a lottery to determine who will be invited to interviews. "

HT: Jonah Peranson (of National Matching Services)

UNOS and HRSA agree on new short-term OPTN contract

 In case you were wondering about the transition to a new deceased organ allocation model:

UNOS and HRSA agree on new short-term OPTN contract, March 29, 2024, Richmond, VA

"Today, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) announced it has signed a new short-term contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to oversee the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The new contract will go into effect tomorrow, March 30, as our current one expires today, and has a base period of nine months and the option to extend it for two additional six-month periods.

"In the interest of OPTN continuity in service of patients, UNOS agreed to largely maintain the current scope of work with minimal changes in cost. The new contract accommodates the separate UNOS corporate Board of Directors and OPTN Board of Directors, including the provision of appropriate insurance for the OPTN Board.

“We look forward to continuing our partnership with the federal government to help patients get the transplants they need and provide the stability the government desires for the OPTN,” said Maureen McBride, Ph.D., CEO of UNOS.

"Aligned with the establishment of the new UNOS corporate board, HRSA announced this week that it intends to establish a new separate legal entity to serve the OPTN board of directors over the next 90 days."

Children in China

 The NYT ran an interactive story on China's change in family policy, from one child (from 1979 to 2015), to two and now to three. At the link you can see old slogans and new ones.  But it was hard to limit family sizes, and it's hard to increase them. (The relaxation of the one-child policy increased demand for surrogacy in China, where it isn't legal. But it isn't clear how much demand there is for three children families.)

OneThree Is Best: How China’s Family Planning Propaganda Has Changed, By Isabelle Qian and Pablo Robles  

"For decades, China harshly restricted the number of children couples could have, arguing that everyone would be better off with fewer mouths to feed. The government’s one-child policy was woven into the fabric of everyday life, through slogans on street banners and in popular culture and public art.

"Now, faced with a shrinking and aging population, China is using many of the same propaganda channels to send the opposite message: Have more babies.

"The government has also been offering financial incentives for couples to have two or three children. But the efforts have not been successful. The birthrate in China has fallen steeply, and last year was the lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949."

"Under the one-child policy, local governments levied steep “social upbringing fees” on those who had more children than allowed. For some families, these penalties brought financial devastation and fractured marriages.

"As recently as early 2021, people were still being fined heavily for having a third child, only to find out a few months later, in June, that the government passed a law allowing all married couples to have three children. It had also not only abolished these fees nationwide but also encouraged localities to provide extra welfare benefits and longer parental leave for families with three children."

#######

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Surrogacy in China: available but illegal

Headlines that could have been April 1

 

Chinese zoo denies its sun bears are humans dressed in costumes

Nose-Picking Health Workers Had Higher COVID Risk— "Deserves more consideration as a potential health hazard," researchers say

US driver pulled over with huge African bull riding shotgun in car. Converted vehicle stopped in Nebraska with gigantic-horned Watusi bovine called Howdy Doody as passenger

Man Shot Dead at Pole-Dancing Studio, Naked Dancers Flee Into Night

Reform and Conservative Converts Qualify for Subsidized Circumcisions, Israel's Top Court Rules

Authorities Seize Alligator Being Held Illegally in Home Near

 Buffalo

(the alligators should be housed near the crocodiles...)

MATCH-UP 2024 7th International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences, Oxford, 9 - 11 September, 2024

 Here's the announcement and call for papers of the latest edition of the Match-Up series of conferences.

MATCH-UP 2024   7th International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences 

University of Oxford, United Kingdom   9 - 11 September, 2024

 "MATCH-UP 2024 is the 7th workshop in an interdisciplinary and international workshops in the series on matching under preferences. It will take place on 9 - 11 September 2024, hosted by the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

"Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and the task is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal with respect to these preferences.

"The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas.

"List of Topics

"The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:

• Two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g., college admissions, medical resident allocation, job markets, and school choice)
• Two-sided matchings involving agents and objects (e.g., house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, and school choice)
• One-sided matchings (e.g., roommate problems, coalition formation games, and kidney exchange)
• Multi-dimensional matchings (e.g., 3D stable matching problems)
• Matching with payments (e.g., assignment game)
• Online and stochastic matching models (e.g., Google Ads, ride sharing, Match.com)
• Other recent applications (e.g., refugee resettlement, food banks, social housing, and daycare)

Fraud in physics? Room temp superconductors, again

 It should come as no surprise that it's not only social sciences that can be roiled by accusations of research misconduct.

Here's a story in Nature about a scientist who had a paper retracted from Nature, and then had another accepted, and then also retracted, both about room temperature superconductors.  It's a long, detailed story, but it says something about both science and about peer review.

Superconductivity scandal: the inside story of deception in a rising star’s physics lab. Ranga Dias claimed to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductors, but the work was later retracted. An investigation by Nature’s news team reveals new details about what happened — and how institutions missed red flags.   By Dan Garisto

"A researcher at the University of Rochester in New York, Dias achieved widespread recognition for his claim to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductor, a material that conducts electricity without resistance at ambient temperatures. Dias published that finding in a landmark Nature paper1.

"Nearly two years later, that paper was retracted. But not long after, Dias announced an even bigger result, also published in Nature: another room-temperature superconductor2.

...

" Nature has since retracted his second paper2 and many other research groups have tried and failed to replicate Dias’s superconductivity results. ...The scandal “has damaged careers of young scientists...

...

"Three previous investigations ... by the University of Rochester did not find evidence of misconduct. But last summer, the university launched a fourth investigation,... That fourth investigation is now complete and, according to a university spokesperson, the external experts confirmed that there were “data reliability concerns” 

...

"Nature retracted the CSH paper on 26 September 2022, with a notice that states “issues undermine confidence in the published magnetic susceptibility data as a whole, and we are accordingly retracting the paper”.

...

"Felicitas Heβelmann, a specialist in retractions at the Humboldt University of Berlin, says misconduct is difficult to prove, so journals often avoid laying blame on authors in retractions. “A lot of retractions use very vague language,” she says.

...

"The lack of industry-wide standards for investigating misconduct leaves it unclear whether the responsibility to investigate lands more on journals or on institutions.

...

"After Nature published the LuH paper in March 2023, many scientists were critical of the journal’s decision, given the rumours of misconduct surrounding the retracted CSH paper.

...

"All four referees agreed that the findings, if true, were highly significant. But they emphasized caution in accepting the manuscript, because of the extraordinary nature of the claims. Referee 4 wrote that the journal should be careful with such extraordinary claims to avoid another “Schön affair”, referring to the extensive data fabrication by German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, which has become a cautionary tale in physics and led to dozens of papers being retracted, seven of them in Nature. Referees 2 and 3 also expressed concern about the results because of the CSH paper, which at the time bore an editor’s note of concern but had not yet been retracted. 

...

"When asked why Nature considered Dias’s LuH paper after being warned of potential misconduct on the previous paper, Magdalena Skipper, Nature’s editor-in-chief, said: “Our editorial policy considers every submission in its own right.” The rationale, Skipper explains, is that decisions should be made on the basis of the scientific quality, not who the authors are."

Stanford Center for Computational Market Design: Inauguration on Monday

 On Monday, there's a market design event:

Stanford Center for Computational Market Design: Inauguration

Please register to attend the event. Registration is free of charge.

Mon, Apr 1 2024, 1:45 - 7pm

Mackenzie Room, Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center Room 300 475 Via Ortega 3rd Floor Stanford, CA 94305                     

1:45-2:00 Welcome and Introductions

2:00-2:30 Kidney transplants: At Stanford and around the world   Alvin Roth, Professor of Economics, Stanford University

2:30-2:45 Introduction to the Center   Amin Saberi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

2:45-3:30  Panel Discussion: Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google), Jonathan Hall (Chief Economist/VP of Applied Science, Uber), Ann Miura Ko (Co-Founding Partner, Floodgate)    Moderator: Itai Ashlagi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Coffee Break  

4:00-4:30 Auctions with Computationally Difficult Constraints  Paul Milgrom, Professor of Economics, Stanford University

4:30-5:00 What is Missing in Market Design? Michael Schwartz, Chief Economist and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

5:00-5:30 Redesigning the U.S. Organ Donation System: Moving from Monopolies to Patient-Centered Accountability  Jennifer Erickson, Senior Fellow, Federation of American Scientists    Gregg Segal, CEO, Organize

5:30-5:45 Summary and Wrap-up  Itai Ashlagi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

5:45   Reception

Cannabis in US airports

 An anomaly of US Federal law is that marijuana is illegal on airplanes (interstate commerce) even when the airports involved are in states where marijuana is legal.

The WSJ has the story and a picture:

Don’t Put Your Stash in the Overhead Bin. A ‘Cannabis Amnesty Box’ at Chicago’s Midway Airport.  By Bob Greene

Danny Kahneman (1934-2024)

 Danny Kahneman passed away today.

Here's the Washington Post obituary:

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-winning economist, dies at 90. He found that people rely on shortcuts that often lead them to make wrongheaded decisions that go against their own best interest  By Chris Powe

"Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and best-selling author whose Nobel Prize-winning research upended economics — as well as fields ranging from sports to public health — by demonstrating the extent to which people abandon logic and leap to conclusions, died March 27. He was 90.

"His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor for the New Yorker. She did not say where or how he died.

...

"Dr. Kahneman took a dim view of people’s ability to think their way through a problem. “Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions,” he wrote in his popular 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” “They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.”

"Dr. Kahneman spent much of his career working alongside psychologist Amos Tversky, who he said deserved much of the credit for their prizewinning work. But Tversky died in 1996, and the Nobel is never awarded posthumously.

"Both men were atheist grandsons of Lithuanian rabbis, and both had studied and lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their three-decade friendship and close collaboration, chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 2016 book “The Undoing Project,” was a study in opposites.

"According to Lewis, Tversky was the life of the party; Dr. Kahneman never even went. Tversky had a mechanical pencil on his desk and nothing else; Dr. Kahneman’s office was full of books and articles he never finished. Still, Dr. Kahneman said, at times it was as if “we were sharing a mind.” They worked so closely together that they tossed a coin to decide whose name would go first on an article or a book.

"Their research helped establish the field of behavioral economics, which applies psychological insights to the study of economic decision-making, but also had a far-reaching effect outside the academy. "

Mexico’s Law Suit Against US Gun Dealers

U.S. gun dealers are protected against lawsuits stemming from crimes committed by their customers. by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), But that law doesn't protect them from lawsuits resulting from their own actions, and a U.S. judge has permitted a suit by Mexico to go forward which accuses five Arizona gun dealers of violating American laws.

Law.com has the story:, 

Federal Court in Arizona Allows Mexico’s Case Against US Gun Dealers to Proceed. The federal gun industry shield law should not keep the suit from moving forward, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled. by Amy Guthrie 

"A federal district court judge in Arizona has ruled that a lawsuit filed by the government of Mexico against five Arizona firearm dealers alleged to be engaging in weapons trafficking should be allowed to proceed.

"U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez held that the federal gun industry shield law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), should not prevent the suit from advancing. 

...

"The complaint “adequately alleges that defendants’ knowing violation of firearm-specific statutes proximately caused plaintiff’s injuries for purposes of the predicate exception to the PLCAA,” she wrote in her ruling, dated March 22.

"Mexico’s lawsuit seeks to hold the dealers accountable for “reckless and unlawful business practices,” alleging they facilitated gun trafficking across the border into Mexico and contributed to gun violence in that country. "

American guns fuel Haiti's gangs

The U.S. is an importer of illegal drugs, and an exporter of illegal firearms (i.e. firearms whose sale is legal, even protected in the U.S., but illegally smuggled into countries that would like to control firearms...)

The Guardian has the story:

Guns and weapons trafficked from US fueling Haiti gang violence. Experts say most guns smuggled from states with lax firearms laws such as Florida, Arizona and Georgia.  by Oliver Laughland

"As Haiti has again plunged into violent chaos, images of gang members bearing high-powered rifles, pump-action shotguns or automatic weapons in the streets of Port-au-Prince have become ubiquitous.

"But this weaponry is not made in Haiti, a country with no firearms or ammunition manufacturing capabilities.

"It is an arsenal that largely comes directly from the US, with most guns, experts say, likely to have originated from states with lax firearm laws, and many trafficked into Haiti from Florida.

"This clandestine trade has left Haiti’s gangs with a vast cache of illegal arms and much greater firepower than the country’s dispirited and underfunded police force.

...

"Joly Germine, a 31-year-old leader of 400 Mawozo, directed specific requests for high-powered weapons via WhatsApp messages sent from a Haitian prison. The requests were made to US citizens in Florida, including Germain’s romantic partner, and the weapons were then stuffed in garbage bags, loaded into large barrels and hidden under “clothes, shoes and Gatorade” ready for shipment.

Anger and Sadness in Tel Aviv

Saturday, on the last night of my just-ended visit to Israel, I attended two adjacent mass public events. 

One was a political demonstration against the leadership of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his governing coalition. The other was a vigil for the kidnapped hostages, living and dead.

In each of these two events, the one Hebrew word you heard more than any other was NOW (עכשיו).  As in "Elections NOW!"  or "Bring them home NOW!"

In the political demonstration, the primary mood expressed by the speakers was anger.  In the vigil, it was sadness.

Below some pictures and a video of a speech with added subtitles in English translation.

From the demonstration:

The signs say "Elections Now!"

The sign (addressed to Bibi) says: "You are the boss.
You are guilty"

From the vigil for the hostages:

Prepared to welcome the hostages home  to Shabbat dinner

x

And one bonus picture, on the road connecting the two gatherings, from the Women Who Wage Peace

Conference in Jerusalem, in solidarity with Israeli academics

 I'm expecting to be back in California later today.  I gave three talks while in Israel, and met with many people, but the proximate cause of my trip was the economics conference organized by Effi Benmelech on behalf of Northwestern's Crown Family Israel Center for Innovation. It was organized as an expression of support for Israeli academics.

Here is the program

Wednesday, March 20 | Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

9:00-9:15 Welcome  Effi Benmelech, Northwestern University

9:15-10:00 Amir Yaron, Governor of the Bank of Israel

10:00-10:15 Break

Macro Session

10:15-11:00 Moving to Fluidity: Regional Growth and Labor Market Churn  Eran Hoffman, Hebrew University

11:00-11:45 Policy Design and Rates of Convergence in Learning Models  Martin Eichenbaum, Northwestern University

11:45-12:45 Lunch

Applied Micro Session

12:45-13:30 Fostering Soft Skills in Active Labor Market Programs: Evidence from a Large-Scale RCT  Analia Schlosser, Tel Aviv University

13:30-14:15 Decomposing the Rise of the Populist Radical Right  Roee Levy Tel Aviv University

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:15 Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation  Edward Glaeser, Harvard University

15:15-15:30 Break

Matching Markets Session

15:30-16:15 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part I  Al Roth, Stanford University

16:15-17:00 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part II  Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Thursday, March 21 Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

Industrial Organization Session

9:15-10:00 Selling Subscriptions Liran Einav, Stanford University

10:00-10:15 Break

10:15-11:00 An Empirical Analysis of Merger Efficiencies  Alon Eizenberg, Hebrew University

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:00 Pharmaceutical Advertising in Dynamic Equilibrium  Ariel Pakes, Harvard University

12:00-13:00 Lunch

Economic History Session

13:00-13:45 Land Privatization and Business Credit: The Response of Bankruptcies to Land Enclosures in England 1750-1830  Karine van der Beek, Ben-Gurion University

13:45-14:00 Break

14:00-14:45 Diversity, Pluralism and Tolerance: The Roots of Economic Progress  Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

14:45-15:00 Break

Experimental Economics

15:00-15:45 Describing Deferred Acceptance to Participants: Experimental Analysis  Yannai Gonczarowski, Harvard University

15:45 Adjourn