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November 30, 2006
Hot CHAI
The Clinton Foundation has cut deals with two of the largest drugmakers to the developing world -- India's Cipla and Ranbaxy -- to reduce prices on 19 pediatric AIDS drugs, says The New York Times. The foundation was an early player in cutting prices for AIDS drugs in the developing world, brokering bulk deals between countries and suppliers.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:40 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2006
Empowerment Ameliorates Domestic Violence
The Lancet published results from a South African program that offered women access to microfinance lending to start small businesses. Main result: Higher economic status. Side effect: Fewer reports of physical and sexual abuse for participants compared to a control group. Full report here; information about the program here.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:37 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2006
Family Planning Methods: HHS Edition
President Bush's pick to head the Health and Human Services Department's federal family planning programs has a long history of downplaying the effectiveness of birth control, misleading people about safe sex and promulgating a theory that premarital sex acts as a physical, chemical deterrent to eventual happy marriage. This essay from Slate points out some of his inconsistencies and wonders about the problems with putting him in charge of a program mandated "to provide information and access to birth control."
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:35 AM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2006
State of the World
UNAIDS's new annual report on the spread of the epidemic brings mostly bad news. The total number of infected worldwide stands at 40 million. Africa saw 2.8 million new infections last year, though Eastern Europe and Central Asia saw the greatest percentage increases.
UPDATE, Dec. 4: A New York Times editorial laments the slow progress and, in some cases, backsliding.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:33 AM | Comments (0)
Playing Catch-Up
An October report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm, set out to evaluate abstinence-until-marriage sex-ed programs. Abstinence is sometimes taught to the exclusion of information about safer sex, which proponents say encourages promiscuity. Opponents of abstinence-only education say that withholding information about condoms, for example, leaves students uninformed and more prone to disease or pregnancy if they do have sex. Proponents say explicit sex talk in schools encourages promiscuity.
The two sides spar over whether data supports one approach or the other in reducing teen pregnancy, teen sex and disease transmission. GAO’s contribution: "Most of the efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of abstinence-until-marriage education programs included in GAO's review have not met certain minimum scientific criteria ... that experts have concluded are necessary in order for assessments of program effectiveness to be scientifically valid, in part because such designs can be expensive and time-consuming to carry out."
Government rules both here and abroad sometimes direct money to abstinence-only programs. An earlier GAO report says such rules result in confusion and misspent money on the ground. PEPFAR's response.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:27 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2006
Condom Use Up -- To What Effect?
A study in the Lancet says that African women's condom use is on the rise. Per the Associated Press: "While abstinence rates changed little, the study found that condom use more than tripled, from 5.3% in 1993 to 18.8% in 2001, with a median yearly increase of 1.4%." The study looked at survey data only through 2001, and the story provides a good occasion for the usual suspects on either side of the condom debate to repeat their talking points.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:25 AM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2006
TRIPping Up
When countries join the World Trade Organization, they have to agree to abide by the patents of other members. It would not be fair, after all, to let one country make and then sell a product on the cheap when the labor that went into inventing it is protected by a patent in the product's home country.
WTO rules governing intellectual property, known as TRIPS, have some exceptions. One is around patents on prescription drugs, whose high cost under patent puts them out of reach in some parts of the world. Some countries, particularly poorer countries, have the right to break a patent in case of a public health emergency. Though the AIDS rates in parts of the developing world would qualify as such an emergency, drug companies have fought countries that try to break patents and make cheap generics, or import them from countries that do.
Countries will try to hammer out a new version of TRIPS in December. A primer on the key issues, from the Consumer Project on Technology, which advocates for a liberal interpretation of TRIPS, is here.
Doctors Without Borders' Campaign for Access to Essential Medicine reports that prices have risen since TRIPS came along in 2001.
And a new Oxfam report says that 74 percent of AIDS medications are still under patent, and that the 77 percent of people living in Africa who lack access to any such drugs do so because of pressure to comply with patents.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2006
Does a Democratic Victory Mean More Money to Fight AIDS?
Stalled reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act, which provides most of the domestic money to fight AIDS, could get a boost from the Democratic takeover of Congress. The law has been hung up on a fight over money between rural areas that have seen an HIV boom and the urban centers where the disease remains a heavy burden. The easy answer -- more money -- may now be available. The San Francisco Chronicle provides an overview of upcoming HIV-related legislative issues.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 02:21 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2006
Not Even Stephen Schwandt...
In the midst of this year's CMJ Music Marathon, Econo runs a story I wrote about one of this season's most praised new albums, The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America. I try to take a contrary view.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)