Toronto Bioethics: Developing Countries in Biotechnology

At first glance, Peter Singer's new article in Nature Biotechnology (a special supplement) on the role of biotechnology in the developing world (and vise versa) might appear to be a strange kind of bioethics paper. The paper is complex enough as a business report to have been published in any major biotech business journal, and contains a full-on economic analysis of the development of new specific drugs and techniques in smaller and poorer nations, tools that both help indigenous populations deal with problems that would likely have been missed by developed world pharmaceutical companies, and that contribute themselves to exactly those companies.

Personally, I think it is great that a bioethics group did this, and it is all-too-obvious that only this kind of analysis can really jump-start a major discussion of the ethics of promoting developing world biotechnology.

Singer et al conclude:

The key findings underline the importance in developing countries of 1) focusing on local health needs ("necessity becomes opportunity"), 2) the role of the private sector in commercialization, 3) widespread collaboration, 4) specializing in a niche, and 5) long-term government support.

"The study offers a variety of 'lessons learned' that can help other countries build a local biotech sector that brings local health benefits. They may also be of relevance to industrially advanced nations," says Dr. Singer.

Development of biotech industries in developing countries is essential, he added. Because markets for drugs in industrialized countries are much more lucrative, the creation of health products for people in the poorer parts of the world has lagged badly behind. Of 1,393 new drugs marketed between 1975 and 1999, only 16 were for tropical and other diseases predominantly affecting developing countries -- and three of the 16, were for tuberculosis, which affects countries worldwide. More than 175 new drugs were developed for cardiovascular disease in the same period.

The Most Influential Philosopher Alive?

Marvin Olasky says it is Peter Singer. Boy does he ask Singer some strange questions.

What's Up Roundup

Not enough organs in Scotland, and fewer are going to be available.

More about how the world will end, or at least it will feel like that in Wisconsin, if the state doesn't kick up its stem cell spending.

Wisconsin should be more worried about New Jersey, whose new acting governor is going to be asking voters to approve borrowing "hundreds of millions of dollars" to fund embryonic stem cell research.New Jersey's last governor, in early retirement, is being eulogized all over the place for his role in advancing stem cell research there.

A new novel from Jodi Picoult examines purposeful birth for organ donation and Courtney Devores likes it. AJOB will have a review; anybody want to do it?

Seattle PI discusses moral surprise in the election.

Go figure that fewer people want hormone replacement therapy after a study showed that they might harm women. Who would have guessed?

I love this piece in OregonLive about the Seventh-day Adventists' role in Operation Whitecoat, the long-running biologic research program between 1954 and 1973. The courage of these who were exposed to all sorts of horrific germs is interesting. Moreno is quoted.

I love university fluff about professorial accomplishments, because it means that the university recognizes that it actually has a faculty. Here's a nice piece about Bob Levine's appointment to the CDC vaccine task force.

Speaking of university press, this short one by a Princeton undergrad looks at Peter Singers' class' visit to a NICU. Singer visits a NICU. What does he say in his ethics consults??

Leave it to an evangelical to coin a new bioethics term: the bioethics porkfest.

A Paraplegic's View on Stem-cell Research

This month it has been a seller's market for bioethics "talks" on stem cell research. Every organization in the nation seems to be inviting ever bioethics scholar in the nation, and more than a few dozen ministers and lobbyists and politicians (including many who cannot spell 'pluripotent') to address group after group on hES and the election. On a weekend that Peter Singer (of Princeton) was protested at University of Vermont - giving the Dewey lectures - for discussing stem cells and disability, it seems important to note the perspective often adopted by several of the disability organizations and many with disabilities: stem cell research debates, and perhaps the research itself, can lead to odd and pernicious views of disability, it is argued. Kelly Hollowell offers one such view in the WorldNet.

The Ethics of George W. Bush

I will admit that I was a bit reticent about a quickie ethics book about Bush and his moral compass. Or perhaps jealous that one can do such a thing once one has tenure, even at Princeton. But an interview of Peter Singer in The Nation concerning his new The President of Good and Evil is pretty impressive, frankly one of the better attempts to put a moral philosopher back on the map of contemporary election-cycle politics.