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Technology Posts

Technology

Subsidies for the rich in poor countries

Champions of local production see it as a way of decreasing transport costs, providing local jobs, increasing expertise, cutting dependence on foreign suppliers--thus lowering prices and magically improving access to drugs. But subsidies, protectionism and political criteria open the door to all sorts of bad policies and all sorts of bad medicines.

Medicines for the poor: not the Oxfam way

Registration of new medicines fell sharply in the last year in the USA, while Oxfam calls for a compulsory pricing structure and backs the compulsory licenses sought by Thailand and threatened by Brazil and Indonesia. There are indeed other problems facing pharmaceutical companies but the campaign against patents is a major one: when Big Pharma gives up investing in innovation, where will new medicines come from? The price of punishing Big Pharma is to punish the poor harder.

WHO's got its facts wrong?

The World Health Organisation makes great sport of taking the pharmaceutical industry to task for its inability to provide everyone in the developing world with the drugs they need. This so-called market failure is being used at negotiations in Geneva this month to bring research and patents under official control, managed by the WHO--but the WHO has trouble managing itself.

Patents - protecting your money and your life

Downloading pirated songs from the internet is cool. Dying from counterfeit medicine is not. But the pirates and the slack law enforcement that give you the first also give you the second. And many Governments and humanitarian groups will tell you this is a good thing.

Pesticides are good for you

Scare stories about the health risks of pesticides often make the headlines with little or no proof, undermining public trust in science and in modern agricultural technologies. But these techologies have ensured the regular delivery of cheap and nutritional food to billions; without them only the rich could afford a healthy life-prolonging diet.

The real threat to European R&D

It is governments, who undermine property rights and drive investment and business out of Europe, that are to blame for the falling levels and quality of European R&D, not new competition from the fast-growng countries of Asia.

Africa needs its own Green Revolution

Agricultural technologies that could save millions of lives are being held back from Africans because of the opposition of environmental NGOs and other interest groups.

Net loss

In spite of its harmless name, "net neutrality" would damage important innovation and hamper investment into broadband across Europe and possibly elsewhere.

GM food and the harm of hysteria

European consumer panic and European Union regulations about genetically modified foods threaten millions of starving Africans, who need cheap and reliable crops.

If the internet ain't broke, don't fix it

While the US wants to release the agency charged with managing the World Wide Web from federal oversight, the UN wants to bury it under layers of bureaucracy.