tisiwoota

Honestly, now:

What sort of parents give their child a name like Percy?

Could there be a name more likely to destine its bearer to play the scrawnier role in a David vs. Goliath story?

The saga of Percy Schmeiser began in 1998, (more…)

Having already looked at the question of why people can’t patent themselves, it’s time to branch out across the evolutionary tree and ask: “what’s the big deal with patenting genetically-modified plants?”

One reason this has been a contentious issue is the trickiness of figuring out what, exactly, has been patented.

Is it:
a) just the inserted transgene, or
b) the whole plant?

This question was one of the topics I explored in a final paper for a senior-year elective in property law. In the course of my research, I came across a review (authored by Nathan Busch) which compared the insertion of a transgene in a plant to the “mere” addition of a lever to a watch, based on the finding below from an old court case:

“The inventor of the patent lever, without doubt, added a very useful improvement to it; but his right to a patent could not be more extensive than his invention. The patent could not cover the whole machine as improved, but barely the actual improvement.”
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There’s an interesting article in this week’s Economist comparing the ability of democracies and dictatorships to reduce poverty. Basically it finds that dictatorships (like China) achieve the most extreme results– either the most striking miracles or the most terrible tragedies, often within the span of the same ruler, while democracies (like India) muddle along with more moderate achievements. The analysis is drawn from the work of Ashutosh Varshney of the University of Chicago, who has also done some very interesting work in conflict resolution.

“Why might democracy militate against poverty reduction in poor countries? Mr Varshney has two suggestions. First, democracies have a bias towards “direct” methods of tackling poverty, such as subsidies and hand-outs, which, in the long run, are less effective than “indirect” methods—ie, those that generate faster economic growth. In India, this seems undeniably true. Governments have built up whopping budget deficits, thanks largely to subsidies. Many farmers, for example, receive subsidised or free fuel, fertiliser, electricity and water. But little public money is spent on improvements that would do most to lift the growth rate: in infrastructure, primary education and basic health care. Everybody wants better roads, and nobody votes against them. But every politician promises to build them and hardly any do. Cutting subsidies, on the other hand, is a sure vote-loser.

Second, the poor are not necessarily a homogenous group. In a democratic system, they may organise themselves along lines other than economic class and “the shared identities of caste, ethnicity and religion are more likely to form historically enduring bonds”. If you are born poor, you may die rich. But your ethnic group is fixed. In India, with its myriad linguistic and caste-based groups, the upshot is a dispiriting beggar-thy-neighbour politics. Just as subsidies are easier to deliver than are roads and schools, so are affirmative-action schemes, giving jobs to members of specified castes.

The relationship between caste and class helps explain the wide regional discrepancies in India. Mr Sen has noted that in one Indian state, Kerala, infant mortality has fallen from 37 per 1,000 in 1979, the same as in China, to ten now, compared with 30 in China. He suggests that the improvement relates directly to India’s democratic strengths. The collapse of the public health system in China in the reform era was possible because there was little political resistance, whereas the deficiencies of Indian primary health care are subject to constant public scrutiny.”

Via InfoServe, AllAfrica has an overview of the GM debate in Zambia:

“In 2002 the Zambian government shocked many by returning emergency food aid just when million of Zambians faced starvation. The reason: the package contained potentially unsafe GM maize. Three years on, an audit of the manner in which the GM ‘debate’ was played out in the national media offers important insights.”

According to the article, the government based its decision not on local health or environmental concerns, but was rather swayed by agricultural export lobbyists. That’s a real shame, and not something anti-GM groups should hold up proudly as a victory. On any other issue, I would think that members of such groups would be appalled if European business concerns were to drive a developing country’s decision about how to respond to an emergency situation.

I respect that there are legitimate concerns about GM food, and am skeptical about claims by GM producers that their technology will put an end to hunger (since hunger is more often a problem of distribution than supply), but still, it’s worrisome when a movement is willing to put its principles above more basic ones and immediate human needs.

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In regards to the wider context, my opinions on the GM debate are mixed: On the one hand, the integrity of science has suffered greatly from the conflicts of interest posed by corporate funding, and the impartiality of internal reviews is often dubious (think, for example, of GlaxoSmithKline’s decade-long suppression of findings about the lethal side-effects of Paxil). On the other hand, the environmental movement tends to suffer from unfounded, reflexive suspicion of new technology, and has a bad habit of sensationalizing and extrapolating negative results out of proportion.

While in Geneva, I happened to have dinner with Professor Terje Traavik of the Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology, who last year made a controversial decision to publicize findings of possible adverse health effects of GM Bt corn crops before his work had been published or reviewed by the scientific community. I don’t know whether his initial findings will be borne out or not, and it certainly may not have been the wisest course of action to publicize the findings so early on (though having spoken with him, I should at least convey my impression that his decision was sincerely motivated out of good conscience).

But I do very much agree with his contention that we’re not investing enough in risk assessment research. (more…)

Really. That’s the goal of the Millennium Villages Project, a UN plan led by economist Jeffrey Sachs [you know, the guy Bono calls his “professor“].

Via AdamSmithee, I found a NY Times article on the village of Sauri in Kenya, which will receive $250,000 a year over the next five years for agricultural, educational and health programs.

The project will eventually expand to 10 villages. It will be a highly visible way of demonstrating that aid can be used effectively, and should help counteract the perception held by some donors that development programs in Africa inevitably fall prey to corruption and mismanagement. Sachs has been very critical of donor’s attitudes in this regard. As Sachs told AllAfrica.com, “[W]hen the Kenyan government recently proposed a national social health insurance fund - the very thing needed to scale up access to basic health care - donors quickly objected rather than jumped at the opportunity to examine how it could actually be accomplished.”

“In support of his claim regarding the relative unimportance of sleaze as an impediment to development, Sachs cites the “corruption perception index” compiled annually by Transparency International. He notes that four poor Asian countries - India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh - are advancing economically much faster than four poor African countries - Ghana, Senegal, Mali and Malawi - even though the African four score better than the Asian four on Transparency’s corruption scale.”

In another interview, Sachs makes this analogy about the history of aid in Africa:

“If you have a block of blazing buildings on fire and you send one fireman and he sprays the hose and the fire continues, you shouldn’t make the conclusion, ‘We did the best we could, (we have) no more use for firemen, they are not effective’. Maybe we should conclude that we should have made more of an effort to stop this fire from spreading.”

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I would interested to learn more about how the Millennium Villages Project is run, and what sort of input the local population has in determining how the funds are directed.