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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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A week in the world
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Weeding out democracy
By Peter SnowdonIt was a bad week for germs, and a good week for scientists. On Friday, Colombian researcher Manuel Patarroyo announced that he had made the final breakthrough in his 17-year search for a vaccine against cerebral malaria, which is responsible for some 90 per cent of the million deaths caused each year by the disease. The international scientific community was not expecting an effective vaccine to be found for another 15 years at least. Dr Patarroyo developed a first formula in the late 1980s, but it only induced immunity in 30 per cent of patients. His new vaccine, however, has achieved 100 per cent immunity in populations of owl monkeys, and he hopes to proceed shortly with human trials. Patarroyo told the press he will manufacture the vaccine himself on a site beside his Bogota laboratory, and offer it for sale for less than $1.50. If sufficiently widely used, the vaccine could eventually lead to the disappearance of the disease, by breaking the lifecycle of the parasite. The Spanish government has already pledged $65 million to provide free vaccination for all 60 million children in the continent of Africa.
Earlier in the week, it was the turn of the HIV-AIDS virus to take a blow, as clinical trials conducted simultaneously in the US and Uganda showed that a new inexpensive treatment halved the risk of the virus being transmitted from mother to new-born child. The drug nevirapine requires only two doses, at a cost of less than four US dollars, making it 70 times less expensive than current AZT therapy, as well as twice as effective. UNAIDS estimates that 70 per cent of new cases of HIV infection -- that is, over 4 million annually -- are in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 1,800 HIV-infected babies are born every day in the South, where 1.2 million children under the age of 15 were living with the disease at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, as the world's population ticked past the six billion mark for the first time (according to the International Programmes Centre of the US Census Bureau), the debate over how to feed those of us who will be left alive continued to gather steam. In Mexico, the recently-created National Bio-Diversity Commission (CONABIO), together with the National Commission on Science and Technology, issued a joint statement warning of the dangers to the country's genetic resource base posed by the unregulated introduction of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), especially corn, and demanding new import controls. Mexico is home to some 50 indigenous species of corn, many of which were first cultivated as long as 6,000 years ago. Last year the government banned laboratory and greenhouse experiments with GM corn, for fear of the consequences for native strains. Elsewhere, the European Union is on the verge of a tariff war with the US over the labelling and importing of GM products, while a cross-party group of MPs from the new Welsh Assembly in the UK have called on ministers to adopt legislation that would declare the country a "GM-free" zone.
While its promoters claim that GM technology will lead to increased yields, and are thus humanity's only hope for survival in the face of continuing rapid population growth, critics are unimpressed, pointing to the failure of the "Green Revolution" of the 1970s to prevent recurring famines in the South, casting doubt on the yield accounting systems used, and questioning the sustainability of technologies which encourage over-farming and have already led to land degradation on a historically unprecedented scale. In the North, the debate has centered on health risks to consumers and the potential threat to natural ecosystems from the escape both of pesticide-resistant genes which could create "super weeds", and of lethal "self-sterilising" mechanisms, which could potentially undermine the possibility of any kind of agriculture at all by rendering whole species of plant infertile. In the South, by contrast, the major concern has been the way in which GM technology creates property rights for large Northern companies in what were once common resources, and thus furthers the process of enclosure and dependency which has marginalised so many small-scale farmers, imposing capital-intensive industrial agriculture in their place and thus depriving people of the right to feed themselves.
Even with food, life is never easy. In China, the government has outlawed the Falun Gong movement, a syncretic Buddhist-Taoist spiritual revival led by New York-resident Master Li Hongzhi. Li claims he has brought more than 100 million people better health by teaching them to channel the energy of the cosmic forces within them; Beijing accuses him of trying to create a rival political force, following a series of silent protests by his followers in response to their harassment by the authorities. Whatever is the truth of the matter, Li has sparked off the most threatening mass movement to be seen since the student demonstrations of 1989. Coinciding with the renewed tension with Taiwan, which is still far from defused, the response has been a crackdown reminiscent of the good old days of the 1960s. Thousands were arrested last week, as the government launched a violent propaganda campaign against this new form of "superstition".
Mysticism aside, it has not been a good week for democrats in Asia, either. Novelist Arundati Roy, who has leant her weight to the people's campaign against the Sardar Sarovar dam in India's Narmada Valley, will learn today whether she will be prosecuted for contempt of court for remarks made in her essay The Greater Common Good, discussed in this column three weeks ago. In Gujurat, Congress Party youth activists publicly burned the essay, since republished as a book, and talks due to be given by Roy have been cancelled for fear of violence. Meanwhile, the military junta which runs Burma (aka Myanmar) branded pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi a "traitor" to the memory of her father, independence hero Gen. Aung San, on the 52nd anniversary of his assassination. Aung San was murdered in 1947 by a political rival working with the assistance of British intelligence. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the 1990 elections, but the resulting parliament has never been allowed to convene. Suu Kyi had increased her appeals to neighbouring nations to pressure the junta into dialogue with the NLD in the run up to this week's ASEAN Regional Forum.
In Indonesia, prosecutors showed a new-found consideration for those in their care by suspending the corruption investigation against former President Suharto last Thursday, after the ex-dictator was hospitalised following a mild stroke. In the troubled western province of Aceh, meanwhile, separatist fighters and human rights groups have called a general strike commencing 4 August, if the present government does not withdraw its plan to set up a special military command. The threat comes as tentative talks are underway to try and find a peace agreement between rebels and the government.
