Prometheus bound

The Prometheus in the headline does not refer to one of the greatest figures of Greek mythology—the Titan who defied Zeus, the ruler of the Olympian gods, to steal fire and give it to humans. For his defiance, this champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, was bound to a stake and his ever-generating liver eaten daily by a giant eagle.

Fatal resistance

Tears well up in Naseem Haider’s eyes as he watches his 25-day-old son twitch inside the incubator. Born premature after 29 weeks, this palm-sized infant, weighing no more than a kilogram has a feeding tube piercing through one nostril and an oxygen tube through the other. His vital organs are constantly monitored via wires attached to his body.

Ethics on trial

Nine-year-old Rani is unhappy. She has to stay away from her mother Janki Patel, who is taking part in a clinical trial at a centre 10 kilometres from her house at Bapu Nagar in Ahmedabad. “I do not like these trials. They take my parents away,” says Rani.

Choking access to drugs

Trade agreements with stiff intellectual property protection requirements combined with buyouts of India’s top generics makers by multinationals threaten to deny affordable medicines to millions of poor.

Get your own vaccine

Shuvam Kumar lay on an iron cot in the tetanus ward of the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital in Patna, Bihar. After four days in the hospital, with stiff jaws and high fever, the two-yearold was too weak to cry when the nurse gave him an injection. There is little hope left of his survival, the family had been informed. His father, a labourer in Galurghat village in Gaya, regrets not getting Shuvam to Patna for the tetanus vaccine immediately after he stepped on a nail in the village. Shuvam was not administered the vaccine after birth either. The vaccine is not available in the village.

Non-profit diseases

 

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Patent rites Patents get a makeover

The inside story

The idea that food has therapeutic value is not a new one. Ayurveda, for instance, recommends diet regimes based on seasons and on an individual's constitution (see box: Take cues from traditional wisdom). And it's not just this ancient system of medicine. Traditional communities in most countries had dietary practices that placed a premium on nutrition.

Suffering SARS

Last November, a trader in Foshan, a small industrial town in Guangdong province in China, fell seriously ill with an incurable high fever and cough. He was suspected to be suffering from pneumonia, a non-infectious disease common in the area. But then four health workers who had been treating him in the local hospital also fell critically ill. This confounded Chinese clinicians.

Trade truce

the choice of venue was clever and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center added to the security paranoia. The result was that it combined to give trade negotiators somewhat of a breather when they met in Doha, Qatar, for the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (wto). The massive street protests that marked the Seattle round were non-existent at the Doha ministerial.