In The News

Will the Doha Round Implode in 2003?

Ernesto Zedillo January 24, 2003
The current round of trade liberalization negotiations suffered major setbacks in 2002. Developed and developing member countries of the World Trade Organization fought over intellectual property rights, agricultural subsidies, and rampant protectionism masquerading as special and differential treatment, among other issues. Here, the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and...

No Sugar Coating, Just Tea Please

Amira El-Noshokaty December 18, 2002
Modern 'Western' medicine – consisting now of pharmaceutical drugs manufactured in factories – has spread around the world as the norm for medical treatment. Despite its popularity, though, traditional medicine forms, such as acupuncture and herbal treatments, are also reaching out from their original bases to benefit people around the globe. The International Seminar on the...

Strict International Patent Laws Hurt Developing Countries

Amy Kapczynski December 16, 2002
In 1998, 39 pharmaceutical companies filed a lawsuit against South Africa. They hoped to stop the government from producing the generic drugs that would have made treatment affordable for the country's AIDS victims. A public outcry ensued, and critics accused pharmaceutical companies of valuing profit over human life. Although these same companies were eventually pressured into dropping...

Patent Your Heritage

Tina Rosenberg December 15, 2002
Online libraries in the making will soon document and patent the traditional and biological heritage that is being exploited by pharmaceutical companies in the industrialized world. India is leading the crusade against the misappropriation of their medicinal patrimony by shielding it instead of trying to take it back from foreigners who patented it. This online library will provide a translation...

China’s Deadly Cover-Up

Nicholas D. Kristof November 29, 2002
Around one million people are infected with HIV in Henan Province in central China. Unlike other parts of China, where AIDS spread through drug use and prostitution ever since China opened its doors to the outside world, Henan's peasants received the virus by selling blood through government-monitored programs that pooled the blood, extracted plasma, and reinjected the blood back into the...

Thais Urged to Spearhead Vaccine Drive

Arthit Khwankhom November 21, 2002
Global health concerns rank high on the agendas of many governments. Many of the tropical diseases prevalent in developing countries, however, are under-researched by large pharmaceutical companies because there are few profits to be made from producing drugs for people in poor regions. But in Southeast Asia, not all are despairing over the lack of interest by large pharmaceutical companies....

What AIDS Means in a Famine

Alex De Waal November 19, 2002
With 29 million Africans infected with H.I.V. and a life expectancy of under 40 for countries hit hardest by the disease, the last thing African governments need is a famine. Without assistance from resource-poor African governments, African families will have to develop new tactics to confront the dual threat of H.I.V. and famine. Prior to the outbreak of AIDS, families were experts at...