Archives: Morning Breakouts

Author Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this Foreign Policy opinion piece that the announcement that researchers from Norway and the U.S. have developed a supercontagious variety of bird flu "has highlighted a dilemma: How do you balance the universal mandate for scientific openness against the fear that terrorists or rogue states might follow the researchers' work -- using it as catastrophic cookbooks for global influenza contagion?" She continues, "Along with several older studies that are now garnering fresh attention, [the research] has revealed that the political world is completely unprepared for the synthetic-biology revolution" and notes "there are no consistent, internationally agreed-upon regulations governing synthetic biology, the extraordinarily popular and fruitful 21st-century field of genetic manipulation of microorganisms."

CBC News examines the roles of Canadian humanitarian organizations and the government in helping Haiti rebuild nearly two years after a massive earthquake rocked the country. "Haiti needs long-term solutions, says Nicolas Moyer, a spokesman for the Humanitarian Coalition," which includes Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec, CARE Canada, Plan Canada and Save the Children, the news service notes.

The National Federation of Independent Business asked the Supreme Court to add two additional plaintiffs to its health law challenge after the initial plaintiff in the case filed for bankruptcy.

The U.N. "has received alarming reports of malnutrition in two Sudanese border states where the army is fighting insurgents," according to Valerie Amos, U.N. under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Reuters reports. Since fighting broke out in June in the South Kordofan and Blue Nile states near the border of the newly independent South Sudan, "U.N. agencies and aid groups have only been able to keep small teams of local staff on the ground and the government has stopped any aid workers visiting areas where there has been fighting," the news service writes. Amos "urged Sudan to lift a ban on international U.N. staff traveling to both border states" so the agency could ensure it has staff with the correct skills on the ground, according to Reuters (Laessing, 1/4).

News outlets report on how GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is being targeted by Republican rivals and the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann exits the primary race, and Rick Santorum, fresh from his Iowa caucus finish, draws headlines.

"New HIV cases and AIDS deaths are both going steadily down in British Columbia, according to data released last week," the New York Times reports. Julio Montaner, director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said, "We're particularly pleased to see that our treatment-as-prevention strategy has taken off big-time," the newspaper notes, adding that the strategy, which aggressively identifies and treats people with HIV, "lowers by 96 percent the chances that they will infect others." The New York Times writes, "Montaner said he is frustrated that rich countries will not donate enough money to roll out the strategy in poor countries with huge HIV epidemics" (McNeil, 1/2).

Speaking this week at "the 99th Indian Science Congress, the country's largest annual gathering of scientists," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "said the occasion demanded looking anew at the role of science in a country 'grappling with the challenges of poverty and development'" and "emphasized that 'the overriding objective of a comprehensive and well-considered policy for science, technology and innovation should be to support the national objective of faster, sustainable and inclusive development,'" SciDev.Net reports. "Singh also underscored the need to use innovations creatively for social benefit," the news service writes.

In a new report from the American Cancer Society, researchers indicate that cancer death rates in the United States fell 1.8 percent in men and 1.6 percent in women each year between 2004 and 2008, but those gains weren't as pronounced in young adults.

In Nepal, "a child malnutrition epidemic described by humanitarian organizations as a 'silent emergency' is claiming the lives of thousands of infants each year," Agence France-Presse reports. "According to government statistics 1.7 million children -- nearly half of all under-fives -- suffer from chronic malnutrition, a long-term condition also known as stunting," the news service writes, adding, "Acute malnutrition, a condition known as 'wasting' blamed for half of Nepal's infant deaths, is thought to affect 18 percent."

This week's selections come from The New York Times Magazine, National Review, Salon and American Medical News.

IRIN examines how a lack of sanitation facilities and access to clean water, as well as the onset of the rainy season, are increasing the risk of waterborne diseases in rural areas of Zimbabwe. A 2009 survey, "compiled by the government and U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), listed diarrhea as one of the major causes of infant mortality resulting in around 4,000 deaths in Zimbabwe annually" and "showed a 20 percent increase in under-five mortality since 1990," IRIN writes.

"The quest for a vaccine against AIDS is gaining momentum, with research published Wednesday identifying promising new candidates that protected monkeys against a powerful strain of the virus and that soon could be tested in humans," the Wall Street Journal reports (McKay, 1/5). Researchers treated different groups of rhesus monkeys with several different two-stage vaccine combinations and then exposed them to a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that was different than the one used to make the vaccines, according to Nature (Callaway, 1/4).

In this Huffington Post "Impact" blog post, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes that she will be visiting Bangladesh to "lear[n] even more about two of the biggest killers of children -- pneumonia and diarrhea," and says "Bangladesh has made incredible progress in recent years, reducing the number of childhood deaths by 65 percent since 1990." She writes, "As I reflect back on what I learned this year about the progress and the challenges in women's and children's health, I'm struck by the fact that we don't need to wait for the solutions," including "[t]hings like life-saving vaccines, contraceptives, healthy practices for mothers and newborns and good nutrition."