Women's Lives Remain Expendable

The developing world all over microbicide trials take place designed to test whether various gels reduce the likelihood of women becoming infected with HIV and other STIs. That, undoubtedly, is a noble cause, except the execution is leaving frequently something to be desired. A number of trials have been stopped either because the gel didn't work, or because it actually increased the likelihood of an infection. This itself should make one wonder about the very concept that is underlying these trials. Either way, microbicide trials are a kind of poor sister of AIDS vaccine trials, so unlike HIV infected participants in AIDS vaccine trials, women who become HIV infected during microbicide trials do not receive AIDS clinical care from the investigators. In many developing countries this means in effect that they're left to die. Women's lives clearly remain expendable... no doubt bioethicists (many of whom busy themselves these days creating reasons for why such infected women are owed nothing by the investigators and their sponsors) will eventually condemn such trials as unethical. The question remains whether in that future time we will also see a return of that old 'different values and regulations were in place at the time' argument, that is usually wheeled out to justify such failures of ethicists to speak out.

Novartis - rapidly running out of friends in India

Indian treatment access activists demonstrating against Novartis' legal challenge against the Indian patent regime. Novartis' success, as I reported earlier, would put at risk the Indian production of cheap generics (eg for the treatment of HIV/AIDS in many developing countries).

Paying for Neglected Disease Research

There has been a lot of hand waving accompanying recent donations of large swathes of money by the likes of Bill Gates and others. - Don't worry, I won't even mention the insufferable Bono and his funny Africa related initiatives (you bought the red motorola phone, watch, armani underwear, condom already in order to eliminate poverty in africa? do it now, according to Bono and his friends this constitutes a major contribution toward the elimination of world poverty.) - Somehow, at least this was the impression given by many commentators, these sorts of philanthropic giving-away exercises would make a big difference in the fight against neglected diseases such as Malaria and TB. MSF reports today that in actual fact these private activities don't make much of a difference as the sums required to deal effectively even with TB are substantially larger then what even the Gates Foundation is prepared to spend. All goes back, ultimately to the responsibility of governments to provide the funding required to develop the tools to eradicate such illnesses. Further useful background readings at one of the useful health sites on the web, the kaisernetwork.