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Re-Booting DDT
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is
| fascinating. So is the 19-page annual
| letter that describes the work of the Bill
| and Melinda Gates Foundation, the worldâs
| largest philanthropy. But for someone as
| smart as Gates, who can afford to hire
| experts on any subject under the sun, some
| of his foundationâs strategies are
| baffling.
|
| Consider his foundationâs approach to
| malaria, which focuses on bed nets, a low-
| tech, only modestly effective intervention,
| and on the development of a vaccine, a
| high-tech solution that has eluded
| intensive efforts for decades. This
| approach dismisses an old, cheap, and safe
| way to control the vector â the Anopheles
| mosquito â that spreads the disease: the
| chemical DDT.
|
| [...]
|
| Moreover, even if mosquitoes become
| resistant to the killing effects of DDT,
| they are still repelled by it. An
| occasional dusting of window frames and
| doorframes is extremely effective. Bill
| Gatesâs experts seem not to know that; the
| foundationâs annual letter contains the
| following single mention of DDT: âThe world
| hoped in the 1950s and 1960s that [malaria]
| could be eliminated by killing mosquitoes
| with DDT, but that tactic failed when the
| mosquitoes evolved to be resistant to the
| chemical.â
|
| [...]
|
| But policies based on science and data have
| a short half-life at the UN. With a notable
| absence of fanfare, in May 2009 the WHO,
| together with the UN Environment Program,
| reverted to endorsing less effective
| methods for preventing malaria, announcing
| that their goal is âto achieve a 30% cut in
| the application of DDT worldwide by 2014
| and its total phase-out by the early 2020s,
| if not sooner.â In the absence of effective
| vaccines or new anti-malarial drugs â and
| the funding and infrastructure to deliver
| them â this decision is tantamount to mass
| murder, a triumph of radical environmental
| politics over public health.
|
| How can we drain the public-policy swamp?
`----
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/miller7/English
In the fight against malaria and other insect-borne diseases, DDT is still our most effective weapon
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2010/05/09/2003472536
Researchers to improve crop nutrition value
,----[ Quote ]
| Research to improve sorghumâs nutritional
| levels through genetic engineering is under
| way.
`----
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Researchers%20to%20improve%20crop%20nutrition%20value%20/-/1056/907348/-/12nn1y9/-/
Partner our Nutrition Mission, BSY tells Gates
http://www.todaynews.in/city/bangalore/partner-our-nutrition-mission-bsy-tells-gates-69003.html
Yeddyurappa request Bill Gates to become partner in Nutrition Mission
http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=178473
GMO monopolies.
Recent:
US Senate, Bill Gates Give the Planet a Middle Finger for Earth Day
,----[ Quote ]
| Today the Senate Foreign Relations committee
| held a hearing on the Global Food Security Act
| (S.384), which, as I have documented on this
| blog before, Monsanto HAS been involved in
| lobbying on. The bill first came to my
| attention about a year ago, when the same
| committee held a very similar hearing about
| the same bill. In the year since then, I've
| become increasingly knowledgeable and outraged
| about the issues surrounding global food
| security. In the meantime, the Obama
| Administration took the lead on the issue of
| global food security from the Senate, and
| USAID is doing quite a bit already (in
| partnership with the World Bank and private
| organizations and companies) to really f*ck
| things up worldwide.
`----
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20674.cfm
Gates Official Comes Under Investigation by Senate Committee
,----[ Quote ]
| The head of global health for the Bill &
| Melinda Gates Foundation is under scrutiny
| by members of Congress for his previous job
| at one of the world's largest
| pharmaceutical companies.
|
| The Senate Finance Committee is
| investigating whether the drug company
| GlaxoSmithKline knew of possible health
| risks associated with the diabetes medicine
| Avandia. The committee's senior members,
| Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and
| Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa,
| released a report over the weekend that
| says that the company intimidated outside
| researchers from studying the drug.
|
| [...]
|
| Only a small portion of the 334-page report
| focuses on Dr. Yamada. But it says he made
| phone calls to officials at the University
| of North Carolina and the University of
| Pennsylvania to shut down studies of
| possible negative side effects of Avandia.
|
| At the University of Pennsylvania, two
| researchers said that phone calls by Dr.
| Yamada and other drug company executives
| "were highly unprofessional and had a
| chilling effect on their professional
| activities."
`----
http://philanthropy.com/blogPost/Gates-Official-Comes-Under/21393/?sid=&utm_source=&utm_medium=en
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