- Interesting look at the barriers to adoption of open source software
- Great Rebuttal of the FUD Micro$oft showed with regard to OO (previously linked to here)
- Accent archive — how much fun could you have with this and some mixing software?
- What looks like a great resource: Developer roadmap for moving to Linux, via /.
- Ludum Dare Game Competition
- And a pony — great approach. I’ve been on Negotiation I course today and yesterday (hence no updates) … I might write to the instructors and tell them
to include this one as well 😉 - I was amazed to see one of my favourite towns from back home, Hermanus, featured in the NYT (Free reg req). Since it is already a tourist spot, I won’t pout too much.
It is a beautiful place and the whales are always amazing to watch — very much worth the couple of hours drive if you are in Cape Town - 6 000 000 people in poor countries need retroviral drugs.300 000 are getting them. Tell me again about how the first world is more effective, a leader in all things?
- Tories look desperate too … who woulda thunk Michael Howard would hold a gay summit?
- The Passivator identifies passive tense and adverbs to help you critique and improve your writing. via Simon,
the CSS ninja - Vow of Silence — wow. Wow. via Simon again
- This crosses the TMI line. But it’s still rather funny.
- Where cellphones should go when they die — great idea, wonder if they have a UK counterpart, via Neil Gaiman
- Debunking “mark of the beast” conspiracy theory, via BoingBoing
- Steve Don’t Eat it 5 — possibly should come with a “Surfer don’t read it” warning, particularly if you’re squeamish about body fluids 😉
via 0xDECAFBAD - “Java is a great language being destroyed by Rampaging Computer Science” — great rant, being posted to by loads of people (now including me!)
Posted by Meri @ 6:26 PM on April 1, 2004
Comments (4) Permalink
Comments (4) Permalink
April 1st, 2004 at 6:50 PM
Regarding the retroviral drugs, the first world is being more effective and a leader in all things by inventing the anti-retroviral drugs in the first place. Without those first world pharmaceutical company, 6,000,000 people in poor countries would need anti-retroviral drugs, and *none* would be getting them (unless there are any second or third world pharmaceutical firms developing them, in which case they are also culpable because they aren’t selling them at the marginal cost of production either).
I admit isn’t much comfort for the 5,700,000 people.
April 2nd, 2004 at 8:33 AM
There are generic drug companies in the secdond & third world that have developed easier to administer (i.e. fewer pills, fewer times per day) significantly cheaper drugs. The agreement was that companies will be allowed to create generic versions for poorer countries that cannot afford the pharma company price. The AIDS plan in question was meant to take these drugs to the poorer countries.
If you read the article, the main issue is that although the American gov also signed up to this plan, they aren’t allowing any of their funding to be spent on the generics (which could supply a significant multiple more people for the same cash) and are also refusing to help the prevention programmes unless they are abstinence based (which doesn’t work, see previous blogmarks).
On the whole, countries appear to have gotten quite excited and committed to this, but they are not following through. Millions of people dying doesn’t feature on the political radar in many first world countries. I think it’s sad.
April 2nd, 2004 at 5:42 PM
I think it’s sad too.
I’m not sure what I think about the production of generic versions of patented drugs for use in only some markets. The problem with drug development is that it’s a very expensive and risky business – developing a single drug to the point of non-trial clinical use costs around one *billion* dollars. This has to be amortised over the total number of doses sold in the drug’s lifetime (which may in some rapidly progressing fields, such as AIDS treatment, quite short). It seems to me that it might possibly be better in the long run for the western pharmaceutical companies to treat fewer people in the third world at higher prices to help fund development of better treatments rather than treating more in the short term by allowing generic versions of patent-protected treatments. But all these kinds of utilitarian arguments make me feel a bit unsettled if I think about them too long.
(I’m also not sure that the generic versions will be as effective. The frequency of drug doses required depends on the half-life in the blood of the drug – you have to keep the level close to the most effective concentration – so it may be that the generic clones are trading effectiveness for cheapness.)
Also, did you notice the recent correction at the end of the article?
“Correction: March 31, 2004, Wednesday. Because of an editing error, a front-page article on Sunday about the difficulty of distributing drugs to AIDS patients in poor countries referred incorrectly to President Bush’s January 2003 plan to spend $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS in the third world. While United States spending thus far has not kept pace with the plan, the president has issued a five-year budget plan that foresees reaching it; his requests have not fallen short of the goal.”
(I didn’t even notice the second page the first time I read it!)
April 3rd, 2004 at 1:43 AM
I think that the biggest issue is that anti-retroviral drugs have completely different uses depending on whether you are talking first or third world. In the first world, the intent is to keep the patient feeling absolutely normal, able to live out their life with HIV that takes a very long time to progress to AIDS (if it progresses at all). Thus achieving maximum effectiveness of the dose is important … and worth paying for.
In the third world, the intent is just to keep people alive. Even if that’s just a few more years, keeping them alive and working is critical. Remember that in many of these countries other diseases such as measles, pox, tuberculosis, etc, which are rare in the first world are killing a significant percentage of the population, even without the terrific boost that HIV/AIDS gives to the mortality rate.
I think the utilitarian argument is not one that can be ignored … after all, we don’t want drug research to stop completely because of the generic trade. Likewise, many of the big pharma companies have been gaming the patent system massively by keeping alive patents via minor changes to formulae etc, long after their research and profitability goals had been reached. But that’s a separate issue.
I think allowing cheaper, generic drugs for diseases such as HIV, TB, etc can also be utilitarian if you expand the scope of your argument. Last I heard 40% of South Africans were infected with HIV. That means that statistically, 4 out of 10 people I grew up with will die of AIDS. I don’t have as much info about the rest of Africa, but I would imagine the picture is similar or getting that way.
Most of those infected are in the 16-35 age group, which means that you have a country where the “earning years” are dying off in scores. There are farms where the grandparents & grandchildren are having to try to survive without the usual adult contingent. The orphan numbers are sky-rocketing. Europe thinks it has pension problems. You should try looking at the SA budget sometime.
What happens if this continues unchecked? Basically, Africa and any other third world areas are screwed. They will have no earners, their economies will be destroyed and they will become barren wastelands. Why does the first world care? Because these are the consumers of the future. For everything, but particularly for drugs.
Let’s face it, in the first world the demand for disease fighting drugs is hardly strong any more. Conditions are such that few people ever get really sick … all they need is the occasional course of anti-biotics for the flu (I am talking in the average case, of course). The third world is where the money is at, as soon as their economies recover enough for them to afford drugs. But you know what, if the drug companies insist on letting these millions of people die, they are limiting their own expansion and (I feel) ensuring their own demise.
It all depends on how far you extend the logic. Since more money was spent on the reconstruction of Iraq last year than the TOTAL AID sent to Africa, I think the world might have its priorities wrong. But then priorities run on politics, not on human rights or needs.