Day: March 12, 2002

Set Phasers to Stun and Put Nation on Yellow Alert

Wow — for the first time since he was appointed to his job, Tom Ridge actually did somehing. He placed the country on yellow alert. He forget to tell the nation to set phasers to stun and raise shields, but I’m sure that’s not too far off.

Ridge has to be the most pointless official involved with the war on terrorism and his new color coded scheme for describing the status of terrorist threats is so lame that even Ted Rall could have come up with it.

Lets see,

  • Green is a low risk of terrorist attack.
  • Blue is a general risk, and agencies are asked to review and update emergency response procedures.
  • Yellow is an “elevated condition,” meaning there is a significant risk of attack. Increased surveillance of critical locations and implementing some emergency response plans are called for.
  • Orange signifies a high risk of attack, meaning the government should coordinate necessary security efforts with armed forces or law enforcement agencies and take additional precautions at public events.
  • Red means a “severe risk” of attack and may require the pre-positioning of specially trained teams, closing public and government facilities and monitoring transportation systems.

I feel much safer now knowing that should I die from a terrorist attack, at least there will be a color coded alert designation. (I just hope it doesn’t clash too much with my outfit.)

Fighting the Wrong War on Poverty

The World Bank is prepared to fight another war on poverty but it does not seemed to have learned anything from its past failures in its efforts to cut poverty rates.

On March 18, Monterrey, Mexico, will host a United Nations summit on special problems in development. World Bank chief James Wolfensohn is running around saying that the current gap between the developed and the developing worlds is “unacceptable” and that nations could no longer afford to tolerate “a wold where less than 20 percent of the population dominates the world’s wealth and resources and takes 80 percent of its dollar income.”

The World Bank wants massive increases in foreign aid to reach $40 to $60 billion. Of course, the United States is raining on the World Bank’s parade.

What exactly is the point of simply throwing more money at the developing world, again. This effort was tried in the 1960s-1980s to largely disastrous results. Such aid did nothing to solve the developing world’s structural problems such as corruption and a lack of respect for human rights. In some cases, in fact, the aid clearly reinforced those trends by subsidizing corrupt regimes.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill puts a damper on the whole affair, noting that past World Bank/IMF efforts to relieve poverty had the perverse effect of reinforcing poverty. Rather than billions in new loans for countries, O’Neill wants the world community to emphasize smaller grants sent directly to non-governmental organizations to use to fight poverty and disease. In addition, O’Neill says countries and the international community must do more to improve private investment flows to improve the economies of the developing world rather than see them constantly at the mercy of World Bank loans.

Of course those ideas don’t exactly make O’Neill a very popular man. As the BBC editorializes in its “news” story, “many developing countries will see a conference which yields little in terms of concrete results as a signal that the world’s rich countries are no longer interested in that goal.” But fixing the developing world’s problems is a two-way street that will require those nations to get serious about eliminating corruption and having more respect for democracy and human rights. Just throwing billions of dollars in loans at these countries isn’t going to solve anything.

Source:

World Bank’s war on poverty. Steve Schifferes, The BBC, March 6, 2002.

New Approach to Dealing with River Blindness

River blindness is a major problem in Asia and Africa, being the leading cause of blindness in many parts of the developing world. New research recently published in Science, however, suggests the disease may be controllable by cheap antibiotics.

River blindness is caused by a small worm, Onchocerca volvulus, which burrows under the skin and then releases hundreds of offspring which spread throughout the body. IT causes a number of problems, with the most severe being an inflammation in the eyes that eventually causes blindness.

Researchers studying the worm’s effect on mice, however, made an important discovery about a bacteria that the worm relies upon. The bacteria, wolbachia, appears necessary for the worm to reproduce and it turns out it is the bacteria — not the worm — which causes the blindness.

In tests on a mice model of the disease, researchers at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, infected two groups of mice with different forms of the worm. The control group was infected with normal worms, while experimental group of mice were infected with worms that had been treated with antibiotics.

The mice infected with the treated worms experienced significantly less inflammation and vision problems than did the control group. The mice model revealed that there is a receptor in the eye that appears to be particularly sensitive to the bacteria, which leads to the blindness-causing inflammation.

British tropical medicine research Mark Taylor told the BBC that the research would revolutionize the treatment of river blindness,

This research has totally changed our understanding of the disease and opens up new options for its treatment. Even in a mud hut medical center, you will find the antibiotics, which are effective and sterilizing the worm and clearing the bacteria. The hope is that this new approach will both clear the pathogenic bacteria from existing worms and, through sterilization, prevent the release of new worms, so preventing the onset of disease and recurring infection.

In other words, after being exposed to the worm, some regimen of antibiotics could be used to ensure that the initial exposure does not result in a deluge of hundreds of worms and the subsequent potential for causing blindness.

Further research is underway to confirm the results and find the most effective methods of using the antibiotics to control river blindness.

Source:

Bacteria cause river blindness. Tom Clarke, Nature, March 8, 2002.

Bacteria ‘holds key’ to river blindness. The BBC, March 7, 2002

Animal Research Yields New Approach to Dealing with River Blindness

River blindness is a major problem in Asia and Africa, being the leading cause of blindness in many parts of the developing world. New research recently published in Science, however, suggests the disease may be controllable by cheap antibiotics.

River blindness is caused by a small worm, Onchocerca volvulus, which burrows under the skin and then releases hundreds of offspring which spread throughout the body. IT causes a number of problems, with the most severe being an inflammation in the eyes that eventually causes blindness.

Researchers studying the worm’s effect on mice, however, made an important discovery about a bacteria that the worm relies upon. The bacteria, wolbachia, appears necessary for the worm to reproduce and it turns out it is the bacteria — not the worm — which causes the blindness.

In tests on a mice model of the disease, researchers at the Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, infected two groups of mice with different forms of the worm. The control group was infected with normal worms, while experimental group of mice were infected with worms that had been treated with antibiotics.

The mice infected with the treated worms experienced significantly less inflammation and vision problems than did the control group. The mice model revealed that there is a receptor in the eye that appears to be particularly sensitive to the bacteria, which leads to the blindness-causing inflammation.

British tropical medicine research Mark Taylor told the BBC that the research would revolutionize the treatment of river blindness,

This research has totally changed our understanding of the disease and opens up new options for its treatment. Even in a mud hut medical center, you will find the antibiotics, which are effective and sterilizing the worm and clearing the bacteria. The hope is that this new approach will both clear the pathogenic bacteria from existing worms and, through sterilization, prevent the release of new worms, so preventing the onset of disease and recurring infection.

In other words, after being exposed to the worm, some regimen of antibiotics could be used to ensure that the initial exposure does not result in a deluge of hundreds of worms and the subsequent potential for causing blindness.

Further research is underway to confirm the results and find the most effective methods of using the antibiotics to control river blindness.

Another excellent example of how animal research can yield important information about diseases that afflict human beings that might never have been discovered without such research (certainly, nobody had discovered the role of the bacteria in decades of research into river blindness).

Source:

Bacteria cause river blindness. Tom Clarke, Nature, March 8, 2002.

Bacteria ‘holds key’ to river blindness. The BBC, March 7, 2002
Thursday, March 14, 2002