Babies got cheaper this month. Twice.

First, Belgian scientists announced that their new method has the potential to cut the costs of some in-vitro fertilization treatments from $7,500 to below $300. Their cut-price recipe requires little more than baking soda and lemon juice in place of purified carbon dioxide gas to maintain acidity when growing an embryo in a lab before implanting it.

Second, a baby called Connor was born after 13 of his parents' embryos had their genomes analyzed using next-generation DNA-sequencing techniques in an Oxford laboratory.

Only three of the embryos were found to have the right chromosome number, and one of these "normal" embryos was then implanted in his mother. This new approach, made possible by the rapidly falling cost of DNA sequencing, promises to cut the number of failures during IVF, reducing both cost and heartache.

The two announcements are a reminder that cost reduction and productivity boosts are the purpose of most innovation. Medicine is no exception. Innovation is driving down the costs of medical interventions all the time, and the falls may be about to accelerate, thanks to biotechnology and information technology.

Whence, then, the relentless rise in the costs of healthcare? Part of the answer is known as the Jevons paradox after the Victorian economist Stanley Jevons.

The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large.  Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine."

Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe.  "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me.  "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief."

That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough.  What worries a small group of GOP Senators and Congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him.

They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for Translator.  T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War.  One of those prisoners was John McCain.

I have just sent the following letter to a friend in the White House who asked for informed suggestions regarding Tony Snow's recurrence of cancer.  Many TTPers have expressed their concern for Tony and are praying for him.  Here is an initial series of suggestions for him.
 
Dear Tim,

A close friend of mine for many years is a medical researcher whose IQ was unable to be measured by MIT as it was so far above 200.  Here is what he suggests for Tony, as supplementing the treatment from his physicians.

Go to this website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the National Institutes of Health:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/.   In the PubMed search box, enter in the specific medical name of the type of cancer Tony has as determined by the pathology report, plus "treatment," plus "immune" or "immunity," plus "experimental" or "adjuvant."

When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road.

Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about "extreme weather."

Those who made their living from alarm  switched tactics  to jump on any unusual weather event -- whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood -- and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

This proved a rewarding tactic, because people -- egged on by journalists -- have an inexhaustible appetite for believing in the vindictiveness of the weather gods. The fossil fuel industry was inserted in the place of Zeus as the scapegoat of choice, with scientists as the weather gods' priests.

The fact that people have short memories about weather events is what enables this game to be played. Even here in mild England, people are always saying, "I have never known it so cold/hot/mild/windy/wet/dry/changeable as it is this year."

One Christmas I noticed the seasons had been pretty average all year, neither too dry nor too wet nor too cold nor too warm. "I have never known it so average," I said to somebody. I got a baffled look. Nobody ever calls the weather normal.

Ann Coulter's famously calling Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" at the CPAC conference here in Washington earlier this month has scandalized a great many conservatives and every single Republican candidate.

It was brilliant.

That's a description, not approval.  I winced when I heard the forbidden word, not because it's forbidden but because it's so hurtful.  It's purposefully demeaning to homosexuals, especially to those who really can't help what they are.

Yet Ann's use of the term was diabolically clever, for with it she accomplished her goal:  demolishing Edwards' candidacy.  With this one single word, she made sure John Edwards will never be elected President of the United States.

She knew exactly what she was doing.