Science and Human Rights

I attended the launch of a new Science and Human Rights Coalition at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC last week, where I witnessed an amazing spectacle: a bunch of top scientists grilling scruffy human rights activists…on possible collaborations. It’s an interesting time for scientists to be throwing their hat into the human rights struggle, after eight years of science being perverted by our political leadership to serve right-wing ideology! Look for my story on the coalition, and what it means for public debate around human rights, in an upcoming issue of The Nation.

Jeff Farias show

I just finished a very pleasant half-hour radio interview with Jeff Farias of Phoenix’s Jeff Farias Show. I was a little nervous, having spent the last 6 months writing non-stop, that I’d be a bit foggy but it appears that I can, in fact, still talk in sentences (sort of). Check it out here. There should be a podcast up soon, too.

Crude translations…

I was pleased to find a commentary about CRUDE in the Athens daily Kathemerini this morning, in part because I could honestly say, it is all Greek to me….My crude translation (ha!) suggests a fairly positive summary, but if anyone out there can say for sure, please drop a line: sonia@soniashah.com. Check it out here

Improving the lot of women overseas (what do i know?)

Look out for the January edition of Ms magazine. They’re running a special feature in which leading feminists offer their thoughts and suggestions on how our new president can improve the lot of women at home and overseas. I was honored to contribute a paragraph or two myself!

Also this month, the History Channel is re-airing a documentary on oil called CRUDE, which features a certain author and shopper….yes, that’s me at Stop & Shop cruising the aisles and talking smack about oil. (A blogger wrote about my appearance in the film and called me “youngish.” Thanks. Better than “oldish,” right?) Question is: does anyone care anymore, now that the price of gas has fallen to two bucks a gallon? I fear not, but OPEC is tightening the taps so I’m guessing the price may yet rise, again. It hurts but it’s the only way forward.

Body Hunters Awarded Prix Prescrire 2008

The French-language edition of my book, The Body Hunters, has been awarded the 2008 Prescrire prize for books on medicine and pharmaceuticals! Every year, the nonprofit journal Prescrire awards a handful of books among the many it reviews for the prize. My understanding is that The Body Hunters was one among five chosen from around 300 titles. Merci!

Also, the German newspaper Der Spiegel ran a nice commentary about the German-language edition of The Body Hunters. They’re recommending the book on their website. Check it out here.

Glaxo trials in Argentina

ABCNews.com featured a story on a problematic Glaxo clinical trial in Argentina (and quotes me a few times,badly–the last time I do a phone interview for a print piece?!). The allegation is coercion and lack of informed consent. The piece doesn’tpoint out one of the major factors of the story, which is that thevaccine GSK was testing may well be aimed at preventing relativelytrivial conditions such as ear infections, but was tested onimpoverished Argentinian kids with pneumonia. That’s not uncommon–Idescribe a similar trial in my book, aimed at a drug for inconvenientcases of diarrhea in the West but tested on malnourished, HIV-positivechildren in Zambia. Check out the ABC story here

Is there a “right” to participate in experimentation?

Some like to say that people have “right” to participate in clinical trials. People have a right to proven care, not to experiments. Trials are risky for subjects, which is often the whole point of doing the trial. A new review shows the extent.

In a survey of 739 international drug trials published between 1996 and 2002, University of Nottingham researchers found that 71 percent reported adverse events, with 20 percent reporting serious adverse events. Nearly 40 percent reported adverse drug reactions, with 11 percent reporting severe adverse drug reactions. Six were terminated early because of drug toxicity; subjects died in 11 percent of the trials. In two of those trials, the deaths could be attributed to the experimental drug.

And these, dear readers, were trials that might have been expected to minimize risks, for the subjects involved were all children.

See more here.

TIME magazine on clinical trials boom in India

Today’s TIME magazine ran a feature on the clinical trials boom in India. It’s a good one, and not only because it quotes me at both the top and bottom of the piece! Check it out here.

Disease journalism

My critical review of Lara Santoro’s book on international health journalism appears in The Lancet sometime this month. Link will be forthcoming. In other news from The Lancet, a new study found that 6 weeks of daily nevirapine given to the breast-fed babies of HIV-positive mothers reduced the babies’ risk of getting the virus from their moms by 15%…but six months later, as many were infected as controls.

The reason to even consider giving nevirapine (which has adverse effects in over 30 percent of infants and also can complicate AIDS therapy if it becomes necessary later on) to these babies is because their families lack access to safe drinking water with which to feed them, and so must be fed mothers’ milk despite its contamination with HIV virus. Some of the authors say, it’s a terrible situation, but the drug kind of works, a little bit, so let’s do it, it is better than nothing.

But why is it that it is possible to go to rural and impoverished places and provide tiny little babies with sick mothers pricey, sophisticated foreign-made pills EVERY DAY for weeks on end….and NOT possible to clean up the water?

In a highly unusual move, some of the study’s own authors asked the very same question. Check it out here.

FDA scraps Declaration of Helsinki!

My opinion piece on the FDA’s scrapping of the Declaration of Helsinki, and with it adequate protection for the human rights and safety of clinical trials subjects in the developing world, appeared in The Nation online a couple weeks ago. Check it out here.