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01 / 05
Castro’s ‘Accomplishments’ in Cuba a Load of Nonsense

Blog Post | Health & Medical Care

Castro’s ‘Accomplishments’ in Cuba a Load of Nonsense

Cuba has a two-tier healthcare system like all communist countries, lags in other indicators, and lacks basic human rights.

Justin Trudeau sure as heck stepped in it, hasn’t he? Of course, the Canadian prime minister was not alone in praising Fidel Castro’s “significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.” Here is a compilation of the usual suspects (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.) fawning over the dead dictator’s “legacy.” And, since fish stinks from the head down, let’s not forget President Obama’s lionization of the Castro brothers’ “accomplishments” when he visited Havana earlier this year.

Sure, our 44th president acknowledged that Cubans are pathetically poor and lack basic human rights, but then he took the sting out of his condemnation of the Cuban dictatorship by saying that the Cuban government “should be congratulated” for giving each child basic education and every person access to healthcare. I wonder if our president would perform a similar rhetorical summersault when talking about General Augusto Pinochet, whose economic policies have turned the once backward Chile into Latin America’s richest country in one generation.

Looking on the bright side, at least nobody has claimed that Cuban education and healthcare are of world-beating quality. That Cubans should be literate is to be expected. All communist dictatorships taught their people how to read and then they gave them all the reading material that the government propaganda ministries have managed to print.

When it comes to healthcare, let’s get a few things straight. All socialist regimes have had a two tier healthcare system—one for the senior communist party members (with excellent and motivated doctors, and western drugs and medical equipment) and one for the hoi polloi (with apathetic medical staff and shortages of, well, everything). I know this because I grew up under socialism and spoke to Cubans, whose stories are very similar to my own.

And to drive my point about healthcare and socialism home, here is a New York Times story about Venezuela’s socialist healthcare entitled, “Dying infants and no medicine: inside Venezuela’s failing hospitals.”

As I keep telling my progressive friends, all you need to know about a country is whether foreigners are trying to get in (viz. USA) or natives are trying to get out (viz. Cuba). Incidentally, while Justin Trudeau’s Canada is a beautiful place, stories like this one, “Canadian Politician Comes to U.S. for Heart Surgery,” do not inspire much confidence in Canada’s government-run healthcare system.

But let’s turn back to Cuba and note the ultimate, almost comical, irony of the Castros’ rule. Everything good that has happened under communism would, almost certainly, happen under a different social and economic system. While verified data are difficult come by and need to be cleared from the fog of Cuban propaganda, the U.S. Department of State tried to do just that, by comparing improvements in human wellbeing in Cuba between the 1950s (i.e., the last decade of the hated Batista regime) and 2000.

To wit, literacy rate in Cuba rose by 26 percent between 1950-1953 and 2000. It rose by 37 percent in Paraguay, which was run by fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner between 1953 and 1989. It rose by 346 percent in Haiti, which is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The food consumption in Cuba actually declined by 12 percent between 1954-1957 and 1995-1997. In Chile, it rose by 19 percent and in Mexico by 28 percent. Between 1954-1957 and 1995-1997, car ownership in Cuba declined at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. It increased at an annual rate of 16 percent in Brazil, 25 percent in Ecuador and 26 percent in Colombia.

Let us conclude with data from Human Progress and look at child mortality and life expectancy. Once again, Cuba underwhelms. Between 1963 (the first year for which we have data) and 2015, infant mortality in Cuba declined by 90 percent. It declined by 94 percent in Chile (damn you, Pinochet!) and 86 percent Latin America and the Caribbean (not too shabby, you random assortment of Latin American dictators!).

Between 1960 and 2015, life expectancy in Chile rose by 42 percent and in Latin America and the Caribbean by 34 percent. It rose in Cuba by 25 percent. If this is success, I wonder what failure looks like.

This first appeared in Reason. 

Blog Post | Human Development

The Real Threats to Golden Ages Come From Within

History’s high points have been built on openness, Johan Norberg's new book explains.

Summary: Throughout history, golden ages have emerged when societies embraced openness, curiosity, and innovation. In his book Peak Human, Johan Norberg explores how civilizations from Song China to the Dutch Republic rose through trade, intellectual freedom, and cultural exchange—only to decline when fear and control replaced dynamism. He warns that our current prosperity hinges not on external threats but on whether we choose to uphold or abandon the openness that made it possible.


“Every act of major technological innovation … is an act of rebellion not just against conventional wisdom but against existing practices and vested interests,” says economic historian Joel Mokyr. He could have said the same about artistic, business, scientific, intellectual, and other forms of innovation.

Swedish scholar Johan Norberg’s timely new book—Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages—surveys historical episodes in which such acts of rebellion produced outstanding civilizations. He highlights what he calls “golden ages” or historical peaks of humanity ranging from ancient Athens and China under the Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) to the Dutch Republic of the 16th and 17th centuries and the current Anglosphere.

What qualifies as a golden age? According to Norberg, societies that are open, especially to trade, people, and intellectual exchange produce these remarkable periods. They are characterized by optimism, economic growth, and achievements in numerous fields that distinguish them from other contemporary societies.

The civilizations that created golden ages imitated and innovated. Ancient Rome appropriated and adapted Greek architecture and philosophy, but it was also relatively inclusive of immigrants and outsiders: being Roman was a political identity, not an ethnic one. The Abbasid Caliphate that began more than a thousand years ago was the most prosperous place in the world. It located its capital, Baghdad, at the “center of the universe” and from there promoted intellectual tolerance, knowledge, and free trade to produce a flourishing of science, knowledge, and the arts that subsequent civilizations built upon.

China under the Song dynasty was especially impressive. “No classic civilization came as close to unleashing an industrial revolution and creating the modern world as Song China,” writes Norberg.

But that episode, like others in the past, did not last: “All these golden ages experienced a death-to-Socrates moment,’” Norberg observes, “when they soured on their previous commitment to open intellectual exchange and abandoned curiosity for control.”

The status quo is always threatening: the “Elites who have benefited enough from the innovation that elevated them want to kick away the ladder behind them,” while “groups threatened by change try to fossilize culture into an orthodoxy.” Renaissance Italy, for example, came to an end when Protestants and Catholics of the Counter-Reformation clashed and allied themselves with their respective states, thus facilitating repression.

Today we are living in a golden age that has its origins in 17th-century England, which in turn drew from the golden age of the Dutch Republic. It was in 18th-century England that the Industrial Revolution began, producing an explosion of wealth and an escape from mass poverty in much of Western Europe and its offshoots like the United States.

And it was the United States that, since the last century, has served as the backbone of an international system based on openness and the principles that produced the Anglosphere’s success. As such, most of the world is participating in the current golden age, one of unprecedented global improvements in income and well-being.

Donald Trump says he wants to usher in a golden age and appeals to a supposedly better past in the United States. To achieve his goal, he says the United States does not need other countries and that the protectionism he is imposing on the world is necessary.

Trump has not learned the lessons of Norberg’s book. One of the most important is that the factors that determine the continuation of a golden age are not external, such as a pandemic or a supposed clash of civilizations. Rather, says Norberg, the critical factor is how each civilization deals with its own internal clashes, and the decision to remain or not at a historical peak.

A Spanish-language version of this article was published by El Comercio in Peru on 5/6/2025.

New York Times | Health & Medical Care

FDA Approves Studies of Pig Organ Transplants

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to two biotechnology companies for clinical trials that will transplant organs from genetically modified pigs into people with kidney failure. If successful, these studies could lead to the broader use of cross-species transplantation, a dream of medical scientists for centuries…

The United Therapeutics study, which is expected to begin midyear, will start with six patients who have been on dialysis for at least six months but do not have other serious medical problems. There will be a three-month waiting period between each transplant so that doctors can learn from the outcomes.

If the first six transplants are successful, the trial will expand to include up to 50 participants in what is called a phaseless trial — a type of study that combines the traditional Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials and can lead directly to approval…

The eGenesis trial will begin with three patients with kidney failure who are unlikely to receive a human organ within five years.”

From New York Times.

NBC News | Human Freedom

Americans Can Now Visit China for up to 10 Days Without a Visa

“China said Tuesday it was expanding its visa-free transit policy, allowing Americans and other eligible foreign travelers to stay in parts of the country as long as 240 hours, or 10 days, as officials try to attract more overseas visitors.

China’s National Immigration Agency announced the measure, which is effective immediately, on its WeChat account, saying passport holders from 54 countries are eligible. They include countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well as the United States and Canada.

Previously, travelers could stay in China visa-free for as long as 72 to 144 hours depending on where they visited, as long as they continued on to a third country or region.”

From NBC News.