Day: April 23, 2002

The Gates Comedy Show

Bill Gates is, of course, testifying in person during this round of the penalty phase of the Microsoft antitrust trial. He probably should have stayed home. According to the Associated Press, Gates actually testified today that the penalties proposed by the states could limit Microsoft’s ability to fix security holes in its Windows.

Gates was referring to a proposal that would require Microsoft to continue selling the previous version of Windows after it releases a new version. Gates said Microsoft wouldn’t be allowed to recall or replace a version if a major security hole is found.

First, that last sentence shoudl read that “Gates said Microsoft wouldn’t be allowed to recall or replace a version when a major security hole is found.”

Second, it is difficult to believe that security in Microsoft products could get any worse. The implication of Gates’ comments are that security holes probably still exist in previous versions of Windows such that fixing the damn things would require major rewrites of parts of the OS.

That Gates sure knows how to inspire a sense of wellbeing and security in us Windows users.

World Bank Wants Universal Primary Education

The World Bank is joining Oxfam in seeking more funds to push for universal primary school education in the developing world.

In many parts of the developing world, few students learn to read or do basic math, with girls being disproportionately undereducated. Worldwide more than 125 million children do not attend school, largely due to a lack of funding.

The World Bank hopes to start 10 pilot projects in June, and then focus its money on those projects that are most successful at increasing primary school enrollment.

The World Bank wants developed countries to put up $1 billion immediately to pay for these new projects as well as fund existing projects.

Source:

World Bank pushes ‘education for all’. David Schepp, The BBC, April 21, 2002.

European Union Scientific Commission Weighs In on Importance of Primate Research

At the beginning of April the European Commission’s Scientific Steering Committee adopted a four page statement outlining, “The Need for Non-Human Primates in Biomedical Research,” that aptly made the case for the ongoing importance of medical research involving non-human primates.

The Steering Committee’s statement reads, in part,

Whether or not, eventually, non-human primates are used for research, will need to be decided upon a case-by-case basis, and following a careful assessment, which takes into account the justification below, the possible existence of alternatives, ethical considerations and the problems that could result from not using the non-human primates. The SSC stresses that unnecessary and duplicated or redundant research using non-human primates should be avoided at all costs . . . However, it considers that for certain experiments there are no alternatives to the use of non-human primates.

The rest of the four-page report is an excellent summary of the irreplaceable nature of primate research. For example, on primate research into malaria, the Steering Committee notes that animal alternatives simply cannot accomplish everything that needs to be done in investigating malaria,

Although considerable research can be done in vitro, the [malaria] parasite has obligatory intra-hepatic developmental phases that are not amenable to in vitro cultivation. To date primates have been used as pre-clinical screens for a variety of new vaccine candidates, based on recombinant sub-unit approaches and live-vectored approaches. Different malaria vaccines will require different immune responses (humoral or cellular) and well-characterized models with similar immune responses to humans (such as macaques) are essential in vaccine development. New malaria drugs will have to work effectively in vivo, and many drugs that are effective in vitro fail in vivo. Monkey models are vital to evaluate promising new drugs for efficacy.

When the Steering Committee says that the malaria parasite “has obligatory intra-hepatic developmental phases,” what it means is that when people are infected with malaria the parasites travel through the blood stream through the liver where they enter the liver’s cells and begin to multiply. Then after a period of time lasting as little 8 days to as long as several months, the malaria parasites leave the liver and enter red blood cells.

When researchers study malaria, they need to study this phase during which the malaria parasite “incubates” in the liver. It is simply not possible at the moment to study that sort of complex behavior in vivo — researchers need to infect non-human primates with malaria parasites to study it. There simply is no animal alternative.

Similarly, with tuberculosis primate studies are vital for narrowing the number of potential treatments that go into clinical trials (which are, after all, extremely expensive). The Steering Committee writes,

Mouse and guinea pig models are used to screen potential new vaccines and drugs, however their patterns of disease and their immune responses are often markedly different from those seen in humans. Recently a careful analysis of two macaque models (rhesus and cynomolgus) has shown the value of these two models and their similarity to the human situation. These models are now being used to screen and select among new candidate vaccines before embarking on the complex, protracted and expensive clinical phase.

And then there are diseases where primates are literally the only experimental model available. Such is the case with Hepatitis C,

Hepatitis C cannot be cultured and the only other species other than man that can be infected is the chimpanzee. Early HCV vaccine studies in chimpanzees have begun to show progress but non-human primate research is essential to bring a truly effective vaccine to the clinic. Thanks to studies in chimpanzees which are still alive and healthy today, millions of doses of a very successful Hepatitis B vaccine have been given World-wide. However, Hepatitis B is still transmitted and many new infections occur daily. New less expensive HBV vaccines are required for developing countries to halt and eliminate this chronic human pathogen.

And yet most European countries seem convinced that primate research can be outlawed altogether with no impact on the biomedical progress. In fact there is but a single research facility in all of Europe that conducts research involving chimpanzees and animal rights activists are pushing for a European Union-wide ban on all research involving great apes.

Source:

The Need for Non-Human Primates in Biomedical Research. Statement of the Scientific Steering Committee of the European Commission, Adopted at its Meeting of 4-5 April 2002.

Sexual Equality Kills Off Women’s Literary Tradition in China

In China, a tradition of women’s writing that stretches back almost two centuries is on the verge of dying out. Thank goodness for progress.

Nushu is a unique form of Chinese that uses symbols for sounds rather than for specific meanings (as traditional Chinese character scripts do). Moreover, it was developed by women to communicate with other women.

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, nushu was in use by women in China at least since the Taiping Rebellion of 1850. Barred from any sort of formal education, and with little power at all, women in China used nushu to write letters, compose poems and songs, and tell their stories.

Interestingly, while some Leftists in the United States were pushing Communist China as a model, the Cultural Revolution attacked nushu as feudalistic. “The women who knew nushu, who used to get together to sing [nushu songs], were seized and protested against and criticized,” Zhou Shuoyi told The Los Angeles Times. “And the materials they had were confiscated and burned.”

Zhou himself reports being denounced in 1958 as a “rightist” for his scholarly research into the women’s-only script.

Ironically what the Communist Chinese could not do, progress has. With widespread education of girls in China, nushu has all but died out. It just isn’t relevant anymore.

That’s progress. Women in China still face enormous problems, but today they are largely the same problems faced by anyone being forced to live under one of the last remaining Communist governments in the world.

Radical feminist accounts of the lives of women in China focus on practices such as footbinding, which is certainly part of the story, but so are the creative ways in which women responded to their second class status, such as nushu, which should not be forgotten.

Source:

China’s Mother Tongue Is Dying. Henry Chus, The Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2002.