Day: January 4, 2002

The U.S. Invasion of Moheli

Somehow I missed this story the first time around, but its a pretty fascinating example of somebody with a lot of guts (or a lot of stupidity) taking advantage of the war on terror.

On December 19, a few dozen armed men claiming to be members of “the army of the United States” seized control of the island of Moheli which is part of the Indian Ocean nation of Comoros.

The soldiers disabled most of the communications facilities on the island and broadcast messages in French accusing the president of Comoros of being in league with terrorists.

Comoros is made up of a series of islands, which have a habit of declaring themselves independent from time to time and don’t always get along with each other. Add an occasional military coup, and the result is a very unstable country. On Dec. 23, Comoros held a referendum on a new constitution, and the seizure of the island was apparently an attempt to disrupt that process.

The Comoros military quickly moved in and captured or killed many of the invaders, who Comoros claimed were mercenaries.

What Did the Rose Bowl Prove?

I had to laugh last night near the end of the Rose Bowl when one of the announcers said that Miami’s trouncing of Nebraskas proved the Bowl Championship Series naysayers wrong — Miami was undoubtedly the number one team in the nation.

Not. All the Rose Bowl proved was that the naysayers were right — Nebraska had no business at all being in the championship game in the first place.

South African Court Orders AIDS Drug to Be Given to Pregnant Women

For years now, the government of South Africa has refused to allow the distribution of the anti-AIDS drug nevirapine to pregnant women. In December 2001, the Pretoria High Court ordered the government to provide the drug to HIV-postive pregnant women, but incredibly the government insists it will appeal the ruling.

Nevirapine is used widely around the world to reduce the risk of an HIV-positive mother passing along the disease to her unborn child. Studies show that pregnant women taking the drug cut in half the risk of passing HIV along to their children.

Although 200 HIV-positive infants are born every day in South Africa, the government has refused to allow distribution of the drug. The government claims it is not sure the drug is safe, although it has been tested extensively. It also argues that the drug is too expensive, but the drugs’ maker, Boehringer Inglheim, has offered to provide the drug free of charge to South Africa for at least the next five years.

The real reason the drug has not been distributed seems to be due to people within the government — including president Thabo Mbeki — who do not believe that HIV causes AIDS.

Source:

SA to fight Aids drug ruling. The BBC, December 19, 2001.

China’s Bizarre Ban on Condom Advertising

For a country that officially bars many couples from having more than one children, you might think that China would promote contraception measures such as condoms. You would be mistaken. Believe it or not, The State Administration for Industry and Commerce has banned advertising for condoms since 1989 under regulations that prohibit “any products meant to cure sexual dysfunction or help improve people’s sex life.”

The ban is enforced to the point that when China Central Television ran a public service announcement in 1999 touting condoms for birth control and disease prevention, the ads were quickly taken off the air. One of the effects of such a bizarre policy is that China may be in the midst of a runaway HIV epidemic.

Officially there are already 600,000 HIV positive persons in China, though international health agencies suspect that number might be as high as 1 million. Moreover, the number of cases is quickly accelerating. The number of official cases jumped 67 percent from 2000 to 2001.

Surveys of Chinese attitudes toward HIV reveal that few people in China know much about the disease. In a study conducted in 2000 by the State Family Planning Commission, 20 percent of those surveyed had never heard of AIDS, and 50 percent did not know that the disease could be transmitted by sex.

Chinese media, including the official Communist Party organ The People’s Daily recently called for a lifting of the ban on condom advertising. Hopefully the government will follow suit and begin a massive education campaign about and allow such advertising, or China could face the sort of pandemic that is now afflicting sub-Saharan Africa.

Source:

With ignorance as the fuel, AIDS speeds across China. Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times, December 30, 2001.

China lets condoms out of the closet. John Schauble, TheAge.Com, January 1, 2002.

Researchers Succeed in Controlling Cystic Fibrosis in Mice Model

University of Iowa researchers this month published the results of their successful efforts using genetic engineering to prevent Cystic Fibrosis in mice.

Cystic fibrosis is the most common life-threatening genetic disorder in the United States — about 30,000 children and adults are affected by the disease. Due to a genetic mutation, salt does not get transported properly through the cells that line the lungs. This causes a thick build-up of mucus within the lungs and respiratory infections.

Although there have been numerous improvements in treatment for CF over the past couple decades, the median age of death for people with the disease is still around 25.

The new research conducted by Xiaoming Liu and colleagues in Iowa involved mice who received a graft of diseased human lung cells. The mice were then exposed to a virus which was engineered to implant a gene fragment into the diseased lung cells.

The gene fragment fools uses the process which the defective gene uses to create a new protein to slip in a corrected version of the gene in RNA. The mice exposed to the virus saw a 10 percent improvement in lung function which the researchers report was enough to keep the disease under control.

There are still a number of obstacles that will need to be overcome before this sort of approach could be tested in human beings, but it cannot be emphasized enough how animal testing has allowed researchers to make such significant headway into finding a cure for cystic fibrosis only a little over a decade since the gene defect that causes the disease was first discovered.

Source:

Gene therapy hope for cystic fibrosis. Jeremy Thomson, Nature, January 4, 2002.

UK Fur Farms Must Close by Jan. 1, 2003

Two years ago, Great Britain passed the Fur Farming Prohibition Act 2000 which set out a procedure under which it would eventually become illegal to keep animals solely to slaughter them for fur. The actual implementation date of the act had been delayed while details were worked out regarding compensation for the 13 fur farms that were in existence when the act was passed.

Those details were finalized recently and at the end of December the government announced that all fur farms must be out of business by January 1, 2003. Currently there are only three such business left in Great Britain.

Farms forced out of business will be able to receive compensation for the government for loss of earnings and for the disruption caused in needing to find a new line of work.

Source:

Last mink fur farms must close by 2003. Paul Brown, The Guardian (London), December 28, 2001.