Today the New York Times reports on weekly consumer reports conducted by University of Michigan. According to director Richard T. Curtin, many people are suffering from pricey oil–and are changing their spending because of it: just not the rich.
“Cutbacks in spending have been concentrated among households with less than $50,000 in annual income, according to [...]
Last week’s front-page Washington Poststory detailing a long-suppressed Nigerian government report on Pfizer’s botched 1996 experiment on Nigerian children shines much needed light on a dark corner of globalization: the drug industry’s human experiments overseas. But those who are now calling for stricter regulations on the practice aren’t goingnearly far enough.
According to the May 7 [...]
Tina Rosenberg’s long opinion piece in today’s New York Times brings much needed attention to the plight of “poor people’s diseases,” from sleeping sickness to tuberculosis (“The Scandal of ‘Poor People’s Diseases,’” New York Times, March 29, 2006). But her argument about malaria—that more DDT would vanquish the disease—is all wrong.
The basic gist of the [...]
Something went horribly wrong in an early experimental trial of a German start-up drug company’s new cancer-and-arthritis med. Sometime last week, the drug—TGN 1412—was given to 6 healthy volunteers in a routine Phase 1 trial, designed to test the drug’s safety. Today, all six of those volunteers are laid up in intensive care wards in [...]
Proving pesticides are safe by testing them on humans is harder than proving them safe by testing on animals, so the new standards are actually higher, not lower–i.e. more likely to protect public health! so long as pesticides are being used, i think it is good that the EPA is requiring human testing. why should [...]
Aid is a potent drug. It can help or hinder, depending on the circumstances. If you don’t have cancer, for example, a cancer drug will kill you. That’s why the maxim that is meant to guide medicine is to first do no harm. Don’t rush to “help” because your help (being faulty, partial, subjective) could [...]
Enviro Bill McKibben has written a new book which, according to Publishers Weekly “contends that there is no boundary to human ambition or desire or to what our very inventions may make possible.” Bill McKibben is very smart and writes beautifully–and I haven’t read his new book-but I have an opinion anyway. (A bad habit [...]
To think that we could develop a man-made mosquito–our own super-mozzie– more adept than those in the wild, with their great diversity of habits and lifestyles greatly underestimates the wiliness of these dappled flies.
Stalked by pathogens, needed by no creature, these insects have neverthless thrived for over 100 million years, in almost every place where [...]
The news media is in a big kerfuffle over reports of a new geneticallymodified mosquito that is resistant to malaria, and all the strongerthan wild mosquitoes for it. Sounds perfect, right? Stronger bugs thatfight off the parasite would easily eclipse the local weaklings thatfall prey, and soon enough, there’d be no more malaria.
And yet…each malarial [...]
According to the BBC, the Nigerian authorities have now issued warrants for the arrest of several Pfizer staffers! Their case against Pfizer, regarding the botched 1996 Trovan trial on meningitis patients, has been preposterously slow. There are several lawsuits pending and all have been adjourned, postponed, delayed etc etc more than twice. This latest twist [...]
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Sonia Shah