In The News

Golden Age Is Fast Wilting

Gwynne Dyer October 17, 2006
The world is gradually losing its ability to feed itself. While the “Green Revolution” revolutionized agricultural efficiency in the second half of the 20th century, that revolution is over with its legacy steadily eroded by inexorable population growth. For the sixth time in seven years, the world will not produce enough food to feed itself in 2006, according to journalist Gwynne Dyer....

Union Disrupts Plan to Send Ailing Workers to India for Cheaper Medical Care

Saritha Rai October 12, 2006
It is no secret to American companies that prohibitive costs of providing healthcare to their employees eat into their profit margin: the consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that by 2008, top U.S. companies will be spending as much on health care as they made in profits, forcing the scaling back or eliminating of benefits. In response, some firms have begun considering employees...

Alcohol Pickle

Adam Cohen September 25, 2006
The government of Finland has historically curbed alcohol through high taxes on the beverages. European Union law, however, permits individuals to carry alcohol throughout the bloc without restriction. Since the tax reductions, crime and alcohol-related illness have escalated in Finland, prompting the Finnish government, now holding the EU presidency, to propose higher alcohol taxes throughout...

WHO Calls for Spraying Controversial DDT to Fight Malaria

Betsy McKay September 15, 2006
Intent on eradicating malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced plans to use DDT to combat a disease that still infects about 500 million people per year, most in impoverished countries. Malaria was eradicated in the US more than 50 years ago through extensive outdoor spraying of DDT, but the chemical was later banned or restricted throughout much of the world. Alternatives to...

A Small Charity Takes Lead in Fighting a Disease

Stephanie Strom August 8, 2006
Diseases that are common among the world’s poor, such as black fever, are not on Big Pharma’s priority list. For the first time, with the help of the Gates Fund, a small charity is bringing a cure to market. Despite skepticism from other researchers, the non-profit Institute for OneWorld Health, based in San Francisco, tackled black fever, the second largest parasitic killer in the world after...

Gates Won't Fund AIDS Researchers Unless They Pool Data

Marilyn Chase July 21, 2006
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, run by the chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, will deliver $287 million in five-year grants to researchers working to produce an AIDS vaccine. The caveat: Grantees must agree to pool their results. Fragmented and overlapping work in the area of AIDS research has hindered progress toward a vaccination for the virus that affects 40 million people around...

Push for New Tactics as War on Malaria Falters

Celia W. Dugger June 30, 2006
Malaria should be easy to control. Mosquito nets, insecticides and even medicine are inexpensive – and yet funds have tended to go toward consultants and research rather than treatment. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of children die from malaria, more than any other disease – a statistic that attracts yet more funds from major donors along with new scrutiny. In the US, Bush administration...