In The News

A Nation of Guinea Pigs

Jenifer Kahn March 14, 2006
Experimental drugs require large testing populations, which are increasingly hard to secure in the developed world. In 2005, the India government lifted restrictions on such testing by foreign-owned firms. So the pharmaceutical industry is outsourcing more trials. India has many advantages for such trials: English-speaking doctors; vast numbers of patients more willing to take experimental...

HIV/AIDS: A Truly Global Response Needed For a Global Scourge

Michael Merson November 29, 2005
Two years after its first appearance in 1981, the AIDS virus had spread to 60 countries. It rapidly became a global epidemic that clearly required a global response. Organizing such a response, however, has proved to be difficult. The first fifteen years of the global struggle against AIDS were marred by low funding, political infighting and controversy over prevention methods. The new...

Asian Countries Gear Up to Tackle Bird-Flu Threat

Nicholas Zamiska November 4, 2005
Asian governments are gradually beginning to confront the possibility of widespread bird-flu infection among humans, and it is their state of readiness, still to be determined, that may prove the most crucial in preventing a global pandemic. Western countries have been preparing themselves for months by stockpiling antiviral drugs, but despite many experts’ warning that a pandemic will most...

Bolivia Provides a Tragic Lesson for Latin America

Norman Lamont October 21, 2005
Bolivia often escapes the notice of Europeans and Americans, writes Norman Lamont, and the country's current troubles merit much greater international attention. Bolivia has seen several governments overthrown over its recent history, and its likeliest contender for the leadership, Evo Morales, now seems determined to force through measures that will further destabilize the country. Morales...

Il faut etre uni pour reconstruire

Ahmed Rashid October 6, 2005

It Takes Two Hands to Clap

Ahmed Rashid October 6, 2005
Two days after Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in September, President Hamid Karzai boasted that his country "now has a constitution, a president, a parliament, and a nation fully participating in its destiny." But as journalist Ahmed Rashid writes, that is not exactly the case. Despite Karzai's previous promises of reform and nation-building, conditions in Afghanistan...

Emergency Measures Set on Dengue Fever

Wayne Arnold September 29, 2005
Avian influenza might claim more headlines, but dengue fever is claiming more victims, killing at least 990 people across Southeast Asia this year alone. First identified three centuries ago, dengue fever spread throughout Asia during World War II – one of the more insidious forms of globalization to stem from that conflict. The prohibition of DDT for use against mosquitoes in the New World...