What We’re Reading

Preeti Aroon

• “‘Wombs for rent’ grows in India,” by Sunita Thakur for Marketplace. Just about everything seems to get outsourced to India these days. You can even pay up to $10,000 to rent a poor Indian woman’s womb and get the baby you’ve always wanted but couldn’t carry yourself. Some say the practice gives destitute women opportunity; others say it’s exploitation. The debate continues on a New York Times blog.

Mike Boyer

• “Four Types of Government Operatives: Bullies, Muggers, Sneak Thieves, and Con Men,” by Robert Higgs for the Independent Institute. Unhappy about your government leaders? Higgs argues it’s because bullies, muggers, thieves, and con men “make up a large proportion of the leading figures in government today.”

JAVIER SORIANO/AFP/Getty

David Francis

• Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko detail how the latter’s murdered husband morphed from loyal KGB operative to vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin. It contains many priceless nuggets—for example, did you know that Putin, when asked to run for president of Russia, asked to be put in charge of Gazprom instead?

Blake Hounshell

• They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, by Jacob Heilbrunn. As you might guess from the title, this is hardly a sympathetic portrait of the “neoconservative” movement. But with Weekly Standard favorite John McCain on on the upswing in New Hampshire, Heilbrunn’s prediction that the “neocons” will rise again is looking prescient.

Adam Lewis

• “China Offers Unproven Medical Treatments,” by Christoper Bodeen and Alan Scher Zagier in the Washington Post. While presidential candidates debate the arcana of healthcare policy, Americans are taking advantage of the newest trend in outsourcing: medicine. Chinese hospitals are willing to perform little-tested and potentially lethal procedures using stem cell transplants to aid those suffering from debilitating diseases and disorders. But at what cost?

Prerna Mankad

• “How the millennium development goals are unfair to Africa,” a Brookings Global Economy and Development Working Paper. FP contributor William Easterly offers a goal-by-goal analysis of how the U.N. is setting Africa up for “failure.”

Kate Palmer

• Climate Debate Daily, a new aggregator from the people who brought you Arts and Letters Daily. With so much spin, hyperbole, and misinformation about global warming and climate change, this is a great new source for all the major arguments being made on all sides of this important debate.