Gregory Conko is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, DC-based public interest group. His research at CEI focuses on issues of food and pharmaceutical drug safety regulation, and on the general treatment of health risks in public policy. He is particularly interested in the debate over the safety of biotechnology and bioengineered foods, as well as the application of the Precautionary Principle to domestic and international environmental and safety regulations.
Mr. Conko is also the Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the Auburn, Alabama-based AgBioWorld Foundation, a non-profit organization he co-founded in 2000 with Tuskegee University plant genetics professor C.S. Prakash. The AgBioWorld Foundation provides information to teachers, journalists, policymakers, and the general public about developments in plant science, biotechnology, and sustainable agriculture.
Mr. Conko’s book, The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Praeger, 2004), co-authored with Henry I. Miller, was named by Barron’s as one of the 25 best books of 2004. His other writings have appeared in such journals as Nature Biotechnology, Transgenic Research, Politics and the Life Sciences, the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology, and the Cumberland Law Review, and in such newspapers as the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs as a commentator on public health and consumer safety issues, and he frequently participates in international meetings on food safety and trade as a credentialed Non-Governmental Organization representative.
Mr. Conko is a member of the Board of Scientific and Policy Advisors for the New York-based American Council on Science and Health. He served as a principal investigator for the California Council on Science and Technology’s 2002 report “Benefits and Risks of Food Biotechnology.” He was selected by the American Swiss Foundation as one of 25 Young Leaders from the United States in 2001. And, in 2006, he was named by the journal Nature Biotechnology to its short list of "Who’s Who in Biotechnology."
Prior to joining CEI in 1994, Mr. Conko was a Research Associate with the Capital Research Center in Washington. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and History from the American University. And he received his Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude from the George Mason University School of Law, where he served as Articles Editor of the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy.
Gregory Conko
Insurance Industry Stung By Health Care Deal
by Gregory ConkoWith much of the health care reform debate still focused on the wisdom of including a government-run, “public” health insurance “option,” too many of us are neglecting a far more insidious feature of the Democratic proposals: the mandatory purchase requirement. Under each of the bills moving through Congress, every person living in the United States would be required by law to have health insurance. And, if your employer doesn’t provide you with it, you’ve got to buy it yourself or pay a monetary penalty.
What’s more, the proposals would make it more difficult to get some of the options that are available now — particularly the low-cost insurance plans that cover only catastrophic health events and have substantial cost-sharing features. And, depending on which bill would eventually be enacted into law, Congress, state insurance commissioners, and/or a federal Health Choices Commissioner would get to dictate what benefits have to be covered in every policy, and would be empowered to determine whether any given plan even qualifies as health insurance. The end result will be considerably higher costs for almost every person living in the country.
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Fall of the Wall: The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance
by Gregory ConkoTwenty years ago today, a figurative and literal tear appeared in the once seemingly impenetrable Iron Curtain–the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Soon after, millions of East Germans and others under Soviet domination would rise up and demand their freedom.
That day, November 9, 1989, will be remembered forever as one of the greatest in the history of human liberty. Throughout the East Bloc, communism would begin to fall. Millions would begin to experience political and social freedom for the first time. Families, separated for nearly 30 years would be reunited. And, throughout Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall would create an opportunity to expose communism’s violent and merciless legacy.
In the United States, though, the anniversary will pass with barely a mention. With a few noteworthy exceptions (see here and here), the American media has treated the event as an opportunity to praise Mikhail Gorbachev, condemn the West, and lament the coming of crony capitalism in Russia.
Not wanting to let the opportunity pass, some of my colleagues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute have produced a short video commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall .
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“Cities Are Probably the Greenest Thing That Humans Do.”
by Gregory ConkoA few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review. Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and he concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.
Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, in which he takes on these environmental shibboleths in a more concerted fashion. On American Public Radio’s Marketplace program yesterday, host Kai Ryssdal discussed the new book with Brand. Asked what prompted him to write the book, Brand said that,
“My fellow environmentalists have been wrong about a couple of issues and were getting in the way of important things we should be doing, both with biotechnology and with nuclear technology, and in terms of how we think about cities, and in terms of how I know we’re going to think about geoengineering–that is, direct intervention in the climate.”
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Baucus Bill Is a Cure Worse than the Disease
by Gregory ConkoWith Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever. Opponents had their summer of protests. But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform effort.
As I explain in a new Competitive Enterprise Institute paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without affecting long-term health care inflation. The only measures that could reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.
Skeptics have made hay arguing that the so-called Sustainable Growth Rate can’t be counted on to cut $245-billion in Medicare spending. But Senate Finance Committee negotiators have designed a Medicare Commission—what the White House previously called an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission—to make similar cuts in physician and hospital payment rates in a more opaque way.
In an April New York Times interview, President Obama suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost…the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives.” That’s not exactly a death panel roving the country to pull the plug on innocent grandmas who’ve survived past their sell-by dates, but the effects could be equally pernicious.
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