Archive for January, 2007
Ethical Pharmaceutical Collaboration: A Catch-22 for Patent Law
The Guardian is reporting that British scientists have found ways to create drugs at a fraction of the cost of big pharma’s development costs:
Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, based at Hammersmith hospital, calls their revolutionary new model “ethical pharmaceuticals”.
Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug turn [...]
IPCC Report: Global Warming is Certain and Man-made
The Toronto Star is reporting on the upcoming 4th report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It says this IPCC report will place the burden of global warming fairly squarely on humanity:
The report, to be released in Paris Feb. 2, should all but end any debate on climate change and compel governments [...]
Financial Inclusion in India: Trends Beyond Microfinance
I was recently in Bombay visiting a company that provides technology solutions to extend financial services to the poor, specifically to MFI clients of private Indian banks. It does this by providing smart cards for clients and a banking infrastructure for MFIs. The visit offered a perfect opportunity for me to understand the Indian banking [...]
Vaccine Demand Forecasting: Creating Markets and Incentives
The PSD Blog and CGD’s Global Health Policy Blog mention a Scientific American article on the need for and initiatives to forecast the demand for vaccines. The problem this work addresses is what happens in the absence of well-defined markets:
Unpredictable demand creates a three-way catch-22 problem, as pointed out in a 2002 study commissioned by [...]
Israel and the Palestinians - A recognition problem
For years, Hamas has been asked to officially recognize Israel, and Hamas has refused. This past week, Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas movement, seemed to change that stance slightly. The Economist quotes him as saying:
It is true that in reality there will be an entity or state called Israel on the rest of [...]
Gates Foundation Asset Investments: To Review or Not
The Guardian reported earlier that the Gates Foundation will review its asset investments to address concerns that the companies it supports cause the very problems it is trying to fight.
The announcement comes after a major investigation by the Los Angeles Times discovered that some of the billions spent by the Gates Foundation on improving health [...]
Deconstructing Narmada: Large Dams and Economics
For better or worse, the Narmada Dam is now complete. Its various NGO opponents and their star cast must now accept defeat against the economic logic of growth. And where economic logic prevails, can comparisons with China be far behind?
Entrepreneurship in the US and India: Competitive Advantage
Duke University reports that immigrants are behind 25% of the startups created in the USA between 1995 and 2005. More striking than the total number, however, was the dominance of Indian entrepreneurs. They founded 26% of tech startups - more than those created by immigrants from the four next biggest sources combined - UK, China, [...]
