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Colonialism, Pharmaceutical style

Byoliveridley

Legal wrangle puts India’s generic drugs at risk – health – 29 January 2007 – New Scientist

Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India’s patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday. Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India’s patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.

In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per patient annually. But the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in India, allowed costs to plummet to about $70 per patient per year, Mwangi adds.

You’ve got to love the friendly multinational arguing to make extra billions while people die. But I don’t think any Indian judge will overthrow Indian patent law. And there is a national interest  exemption built into most patent statutes, per the TRIPs agreements.

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    Zardari calls J&K militants terrorists

    Byoliveridley

    Declaring that India is not a “threat” to his country, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has described the militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir as “terrorists,” the first such admission by any top Pakistani leader.

    “India has never been a threat to Pakistan. I, for one, and our democratic government is not scared of Indian influence abroad,” Mr. Zardari told Wall Street Journal in an interview.

    He spoke of the militant groups operating in Kashmir as “terrorists,” the paper said, noting that former President Pervez Musharraf would more likely have called them “freedom fighters.”

    Indicating a major shift in Pakistan’s well-known position, Mr. Zardari had, as chief of the Pakistan People’s Party, said in March that the ties between the two countries should not be held “hostage” to the Kashmir issue, which should be left for future generations to decide, raising hackles at home

    via The Hindu : Front Page : Zardari calls J&K militants terrorists.

    Apparently, “our terrorists” ≠ “your freedom fighters” any more. I am not sure it changes the equation much in Kashmir, which, last I checked, was still burning.

    Predictably, Mr. Zardari is getting a lot of guff about his statements and his foreign minister has already walked them back. He is more used to being a monarch maker who works in the background, put a microphone on him and his gaffes are McCainesque.

  • Hindu Terrorists – No Oxymorons

    Byoliveridley

    The revelation that a militant section of the Hindutva network was behind the September 29 bomb blasts in Muslim-dominated Malegaon in Maharashtra and Modasa in Gujarat has shattered the myth propagated by the Hindutva campaign that only Islamist fundamentalism breeds terrorism. Indeed the Sangh Parivar’s loaded argument has been that while all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim. Saffron rabble-rousers have had no compunction in lobbing this charge at the Muslim community as a whole. While it has become almost an article of faith with the parivar to link Islamist fundamentalists with terrorism, today, with the arrests of radical Hindu activist Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and four others, among them a retired Major, the Sangh and its affiliates find themselves warding off the same accusations. Prima facie, the case against the Sadhvi and her accomplices is serious. The Anti-Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra, which has been on the trail of Hindutva terror since 2006, has charged them under the Indian Penal Code for murder as well as under sections of the Indian Explosives Act, 1884, and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967.

    via The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Hindutva’s terror link

    Note: Sadhvi means saint! Terrorist accused saint, now that is an oxymoron we can believe in.

    Seriously, what has this so called Hindutva movement come to? Ban them all!

  • Government fights to prevent testing slaughtered cattle for mad cow

    Byoliveridley

    Imagine a country where the government will go to great lengths to prevent you, a small business, from holding your products to high safety standards because it is concerned that big business will be hurt. Well, if you live in the US of A, it is your government! Yes, it sounds anti-competitive to me, and it is, but the USDA is in the hands of big business, and the plutocracy protectionary principle is in full force here, I can only laugh! Wouldn’t you like it if you’re suspected of a crime and try to argue that you don’t want to be fingerprinted because there might be a false positive identification on you? I suspect you would not get very far with that argument!

    That being said, it would be interesting to compare the incidence rate of mad cow disease with the incidence rate of false positives, would settle this question…

    U.S. government fights to keep meatpackers from testing all slaughtered cattle for mad cow – International Herald Tribune

    The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

    The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

    Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

    The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

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    Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals – A new Resource

    Byoliveridley

    Critical Windows of Development is a timeline of how the human body develops in the womb, with animal research showing when low-dose exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals during development results in altered health outcomes.

    Critical Windows of Development

    This promises to be an easy to use database showing development timelines of infants, and the documented effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals at these timelines. The prime focus is bisphenol A and phthalates at this point in time. The Environmental Health News has more about the program here. It is not out for public consumption yet, so stay tuned…

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    Tuesdays With Turtles – Hometown Edition

    Byoliveridley

    I grew up in Chennai and worked with the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network in the mid ’90s. It’s nice to see an article on them in the city’s biggest newspaper.

    The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Olive Ridley hatchlings go home

    CHENNAI: Scores of newborn Olive Ridley turtles entered their natural habitat — the sea — under the watchful eyes of conservationists at Elliots Beach, Besant Nagar, here early on Sunday. Conservationists said nearly 75 eggs hatched on Sunday alone and most of the young ones were safely released into the waters. But about 25 eggs reportedly did not hatch and some were stillborn. Volunteers of the Students Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN) annually collect Olive Ridley turtle eggs from the Besant Nagar coastline upto Neelankarai, a fishing village beyond Tiruvanmiyur. The eggs are then taken to a hatchery at Oorurkuppam, a fishing village located behind the Theosophical Society premises. It takes 45 days for the young ones to hatch.

    In Chennai, and most of South India, the adult sea turtles are not poached, only the eggs. Also, it is not possible to just secure the nest with “do not poach” notice! So the eggs need to be relocated to a hatchery where they’re re-buried. For more on sea turtle “management” in India, I would suggest visiting Kartik Shanker’s excellent website.

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    Pet Poisonings – A chemistry detective story

    Byoliveridley

    Melamine in pet food may not be accidental – USATODAY.com

    A nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastic and sometimes as a fertilizer may have been deliberately added to an ingredient in pet food that has sickened and killed cats and dogs across the country, public and private officials say. A leading theory is that it was added to fake higher protein levels.

    Melamine has been found in wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate and, in South Africa, corn gluten, all imported from China, and all meant for use in pet food, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed Thursday.

    “It adds to the theory when you see other products that are labeled as protein supplements, in this case rice protein, and in South Africa corn gluten and in the previous case wheat gluten,” said Stephen Sundlof, FDA chief veterinarian. “That melamine was found in all three of those, it would certainly lend credibility to the theory that this was intentional.”

    Interesting, apparently, melamine was added to increase the nitrogen content of the food so it would show up as protein in the most common protein test, which only looks for nitrogen. When I am not working, I guess I will look up the test details.

    I wonder if this is only the tip of the iceberg? What other techniques do food manufacturers use to fake it? Growing up, food adulteraion was a serious problem in India, and still continues to be an issue in the third world.

    More on this story to come, I am sure.

    One more thing that needs to be said is that the FDA has been very reactive, as opposed to proactive. This is partly because the FDA does not issue recalls, it first “strongly suggests” that the company involved recall whatver product it is that may be having issues. Only if this issue is not addressed can the FDA start seizure proceedings, which could take months. The FDa regulates and monitors on a company level, not at a product level.

    For example, when Japan had one sample of U.S beef test positive for mad cow disease, that was the end of beef imports from the U.S. This is an extreme case because you’re dealing with an infectious disease, but the point is that when you are finding huge levels of pesticide in food from a country, the first thing you need to do is stop everything, troubleshoot, then turn things back on again. Yes, this gets expensive, but so does 1000s of sick pets. The difference is, who pays. In the U.S, it’s always the consumer!