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The TrackerNews link suite overview posts are now being folded into the Editor’s blog. —Ed.
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“Smoke This” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
Talk about “low hanging fruit.” Smoking ranks right up there with HIV/AIDs, malaria, TB and flu pandemics as a global public health scourge. In fact, more people die from smoking-related illnesses than HIV, illegal drugs, alcohol, car accidents, suicides and murders…combined. By some estimates, as many as a billion people—two-thirds in the developing world—will die tobacco-laced deaths by the end of this century.
Yet for all the public awareness campaigns and urban smoking bans (good luck, Alexandria!), more people are smoking more cigarettes than ever. In 2002, the tally stood at 5.5. trillion, but it has gone up by at least by hundreds of billions since then.
Smoking rates have leveled off in many parts of developed world, but are exploding in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. According to a recent World Health Organization survey of adult smokers, Russia leads the cigarette pack, with 40% of the adult population puffing their lives away. Indeed, of former Soviet republics, only Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have shorter average life expectancies.
Recently, the Philippines made smoking headlines when a video of an addicted toddler went viral. With the help of loads of “play therapy,” the kid is now down to 15 cigarettes per day from 2 packs. But his exposure to second hand smoke will no doubt still be considerable in a country than ranks as the #2 market in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.
Meanwhile, China boasts more smokers than the entire population of the United States. So keen are the Chinese on tobacco, they have become major players in its production in Africa. Fields that might otherwise be used to grow food are devoted to tobacco, both for export and use in Africa.
With 60% of the continent’s population in its teens, Africa is a particularly attractive market for tobacco companies. Start smoking young and it becomes that much harder to kick the addiction. If current trends hold, Africa’s tobacco consumption will double in 12 years.
The addiction goes beyond the smoke. Countries—especially poor ones—have also become addicted to the tax revenues cigarette sales generates. It is a stick that British American Tobacco (BAT) is currently waving in Kenya in an attempt to reverse smoking bans in public places, arguing that they “restrict trade.”
Counterfeit cigarettes are also big business, estimated at 12% of the global trade. Not only is quality control iffy (more nicotine, tar and god knows what else that combine to become the “4,000 chemicals in every puff”), but $40 billion worth of tax revenues are syphoned off as well.
Chemist Jeffrey Wigand, who famously blew the whistle on Big Tobacco’s culpability on “60 Minutes” (and went on to be played by Russell Crow in the movie, “The Insider”) called cigarettes elegant “nicotine delivery systems.” He may have given his former bosses an idea…
Electronic cigarettes cut to the chase, atomizing nicotine into a vapor even more easily absorbed by the lungs. Battery-powered and comparatively pricey, e-cigarettes have become trendy, complete with Hollywood starlets purring about how safe they are, just as their grandmothers (and grandfathers) did for old-fashioned cigarettes 50 years ago.
Don’t want to lug around an addiction machine? No problem. Now you can get melt-in-your-mouth nicotine-soaked strips that even come in flavors, including chocolate and bubblegum. In a recent brief to the FDA, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, which makes a gum to help smokers kick the habit, characterized the strips as health hazards. Manufacturers fired back that the strips could help smokers quit cigarettes, so Glaxo’s concerns were more about market share than health.
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At TrackerNews, we are constantly impressed by innovations for delivering better health care, cheaply. From diagnostic “chips” made of paper and a syringe design that breaks the cold chain for vaccine delivery, to better vaccines, bioengineering malaria-proof mosquitoes and, of course, everything imaginable with a cell phone, the commitment to improving the quality of life, especially for the poorest “bottom billion,” is inspiring. It is humanity at its best. The parade of inventions at the TED, Poptech, the m-Health Summit and other conferences is impressive. But there is rarely anything on how to combat the global smoking pandemic.
Nothing comes up when you search “smoking” on the Rockefeller Foundation website. Not a single grant. Nor is it on Google.org’s radar. The Gates Foundation has a better track record, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly for public awareness campaigns and policy initiatives. Yet even that substantial contribution is dwarfed by the billions of dollars spent collectively and cumulatively by the multinational tobacco companies.
Surely, there must be some new ideas out there. Maybe some kind of nicotine vaccine that makes the chemical less addictive? Or a cell phone support network for those trying to quit. Or a campaign that targets teens not with a “this could happen to you” message, but about how they are being cynically manipulated by the over-30 set. Real rebels don’t smoke.
How about an m-banking savings plan where people are encouraged to deposit the money they would have spent on cigarettes into a special perk-filled account? In the U.S., someone spending $5 a day for a pack could save $1,725 in a year. Now add interest.
In developing countries, such as Bangladesh—which was included in a WHO survey of 16 countries that account for more than half the world’s adult smokers—the percentage of personal income is going to be even higher. Hello Grameen! Is there a way to tie together a non-smoking incentive with microfinance?
Smoking is a manufactured scourge. The rare good news is that we can something about it in comparatively short order. Someone who quits immediately begins to feel the benefits, as do those around them, especially children, who no longer have to suck in lungsful of second-hand smoke.
Come on all you science smarties and social entrepreneurs! Let’s nail this. Any thoughts?
— J.A. Ginsburg, editor
- The World Health Organization’s magnificent “Tobacco Atlas”
- “Smoking in Africa” / VOAnews special report
- “Tobacco Underground” - The Center for Public Integrity’s ongoing investigative series on smuggling and counterfeiting
- “Modern Marvels” video segment on what’s actually in a cigarette
- Market research on Philip Morris International’s designs on the lucrative Filipino market
- E-cigarettes: from China to the Letterman show
- India’s call for a jihad against tobacco
- videos of vintage cigarette commercials from the 1940s and ’50s
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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(10/27/10) “Babies & Biodiversity” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
According to the number crunchers, about 200 million women wish they had easy access to family planning. 190 million women become pregnant each year. 50 million opt to abort, legally or otherwise. Tens of thousands die from botched abortions. Millions are maimed.
150 babies are born every minute.
A “demographic bulge” in developing countries means there are more women of child-bearing age than ever before on the planet. Slowing the birthrate will still result in a net increase in global population, but it is key to lessening, if not averting, the otherwise unstoppable planetary disaster of climate change.
Lethal weather and rising seas mean more people living in harm’s way. Rampant loss of natural resources (fresh water, topsoil, forests) means more people forced to make do with less. And more people means fewer other species. Biodiversity is taking it on the chin, with so many species blinking out of existence at such a rapid rate, scientists have dubbed our era, “the sixth great extinction.”
Notably, over 90% of the 40 “least-developed” countries that submitted plans to the Global Environmental Facility (which was created by Organisation the for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to distribute aid to combat the effects of climate change), expressed concern about rapid population growth. Their worries focus less on carbon emissions and more on surviving chronic - and worsening - food and water insecurity and the political instability of hungry populations on the move.
Yet despite successes in Thailand, which cut the average family size from 7 children in 1974 to 1.5 in just 25 years thanks to an aggressive and imaginative long term public health campaign, and in Rwanda, where the average went from 10 or more children per family to 5, the availability of safe, cheap contraception for hundreds of millions of people remains elusive. Contraceptive use in Africa, for example, hovers around 20%.
At TrackerNews, we have covered dozens upon dozens of innovative schemes to improve health care, food supplies, water distribution, housing and power generation. But not a single one of them stands a chance to make a real difference in the long term if the demands they seek to address continually increase.
OF MICE AND MEN
Humans aren’t the only species reproducing in record numbers. Mice, at least in the Twin Cities, are paws up for climate change. Locals cite an earlier spring thaw and later fall freeze for contributing to a bumper crop of the little furries, who are all now rather desperately trying to find refuge indoors. Calls to pest control experts are up 30%.
- Johns Hopkins digital family planning handbook (10 languages)
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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“PopTech 2010” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
It’s that time of year again: The Poptech conference is in full swing in Camden, Maine, an annual fall parade of inspired ideas, sobering realities and copious thinking, with round-robin lunches, acoustically-challenged parties and plenty of traipsing up and down the long stairways of this small town’s signature opera house.
This year’s theme: “Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs”
- livestream to conference, October 21 - 23, 2010
- Poptech blog
- Slide show of “Alphachimps” Peter Durand’s idea visualizations
- Interview with with Durand
- Intro to SPARK campaign to get young people interested in science
- Editor’s blog post: “Getting there: The Tao of Poptech?”
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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“Plants, Bugs & Drugs” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
When wild ecosystems are disturbed, an intricate, interconnected and stable series of relationships developed over long periods of time change quickly. It can be both a moment of both great opportunity and great loss, depending on one’s point of view.
For parasites and pathogens, it can mean escape - an opportunity to meet and conquer new species and territories (see Lyme disease, ebola, et al). But for those more interested in curing diseases, it is pretty much a complete disaster. Not only is the loss of of biodiversity intrinsically tragic, it is karmically idiotic as well.
The interplay between predators and prey, up, down and across the food chain, has led to an unfathomable level of innovation ranging from diabolical defenses and genius strategies to chemical compounds by the gazillion that can do almost anything.
An estimated 80% of people who live in developing countries depend on traditional medicines made mostly from plants and fungi. As for the rest of us, the majority of commercial drugs brought to market over the last 25 years were either refined from or modeled after natural compounds. From aspirin to artemisinin (malaria) to AZT (HIV/AIDS), nothing beats Nature’s pharmacy.
Yet according to a massive new survey spearheaded by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, 20% of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction. We have even blown the rather meager goal of simply trying to slow down the rate of the catastrophe by 2010 - this year.
When you lose the forest - or the coral reef - you lose more than the majestic trees and the charismatic furred, feathered and finned. You also lose the less colorful and sometimes literally creepy supporting cast that keeps the whole production humming. Fungi and soil microbes, insects and worms, snakes and slime: Without them, there’s no us. It’s just that simple.
- J. A. Ginsburg, editor
Links include articles and videos on:
- ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s work at the Amazon Conservation Team (2010 Tech Museum laureate - his @Google talk is fascinating)
- a paper from the journal, “Biotropica” co-authored by Mongabay.com’s Rhett Butler on biodiversity and health
- an interview with Butler’s co-author, Dr. Chris Herdon
- ethnobotanical databases
- “Breakthrough to Cures” a new game by Institute for the Future’s Jane McGonigal designed to find better ways to bring drugs to market
- MSF’s “Hands Off Our Drugs” campaign to keep the EC from imposing rules that would discourage the production of cheap generics in India
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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“Vaccines!” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
Few things bring as much “bang for the buck” in global public health as vaccines. It is simply a lot cheaper to prevent a disease than to pay for treatment and the cascade of downstream costs (orphaned children, food for people too ill to farm or keep jobs, etc.) Yet in the current economic downturn, funding cuts have forced even high profile programs such as polio eradication and HIV vaccine research to make some fraught decisions about which initiatives to pursue and which to drop.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of money vaccines. Sales jumped nearly 30% between 2007 to 2009, from $18.5 billion to $26 billion, with flu jabs accounting for $5 billion, and Gardasil, Merck’s controversial vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer, hauling in just over $1 billion. Per year.
Some vaccines provide subtle but significant side-benefits. Use of vaccines against diarrheal and pneumococcal diseases, for example, have led to a decrease in antibiotic resistance in local populations. Fewer antibiotics overall are needed, which cuts down on the opportunities for resistance genes to evolve. Those who need antibiotics are more likely to actually benefit from them.
Likewise, GALVmed’s focus on livestock and poultry vaccines not only benefits animals, but also the hundreds of millions of rural poor in developing countries who rely on them for food and income. A measly 5% of international aid goes toward agriculture, yet it is much cheaper to help people grow their own food than to ship stockpiles of emergency grain.
Breakthroughs in vaccine delivery and storage have significantly increased the effectiveness of immunization programs. Breaking the “cold chain” has become a rallying cry for a raft of new technologies. Traditionally, vaccines have had to be kept chilled throughout the entire journey from high-tech lab to off-the-grid clinics. A new bi-chambered syringe, which keeps the vaccine in a freeze-dried form until needed, may change that.
Vaccines with longer shelf lives should also cut down on costs. An estimated $260 million worth of swine flu vaccine had to be thrown out in the U.S. when it hit its expiration date over the summer.
Research continues on “edible vaccines,” a.k.a. “plant-based pharmaceuticals,” a.k.a. “molecular farming.” Although not quite the headline-darling they were five years ago, in large part due to concerns over GMOs, 20 years of research has more than proved the concept. It is possible to snack one’s way to immunity.
Since human researchers have yet to invent anything Nature doesn’t already do at some level (see “jumping genes), it begs the question whether foods naturally provide a degree of vaccination. For example, could this be a contributing factor for why not everyone gets sick drinking contaminated water? Is it possible that plants, which are known to take up pathogens via water (e.g., e.coli in lettuce), slurp up low levels of local germs, triggering an antibody response in those who eat them?
Of course, this is just speculation. But if anyone out there knows of any research, or is inspired to do the research, please keep us posted at TrackerNews. We love this sort of thing. Nobody does balance better than Nature.
- J.A. Ginsburg, editor
Links include articles and videos on:
- Breaking the “cold chain” with a smarter syringe
- Malaria vaccine possible by 2015
- Vaccinating the middle man: protecting robins against West Nile and mosquitoes against plasmodium
- Dengue trials for an all-four-strains vaccine in Australia
- Why the money might run out before polio does
- Hurdles slowing down progress on TB jab
- Fungus to fight fungus - vaccinating trees
- Is eradication futile?
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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“Water!” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
For the 10th anniversary of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals this week, TrackerNews is not focusing on any one of the eight goals, but rather on an issue that affects them all: water.
Without clean water for drinking and for irrigation, there is no hope of eradicating poverty, much less disease. Who can focus on fighting for an education or for gender equality when thirst is a constant shadow? Although MDG Target #3 of Goal #7 is certainly laudable (“Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”), it completely misses the point that clean water is essential for irrigation, which is critical to our increasingly fragile global food system. Spray dirty water on crops and e.coli and salmonella outbreaks will follow.
Water management is one of the key tests - if not the key test - of the 21st century. Beyond the political disputes over who gets what when dams divert flow, or evaporating glaciers, or the debate on whether water is a commodity or a right, our collective reliance on “fossil” water from ancient, non-replenishable aquifers is a ticking time bomb. To use another metaphor, we are taking money out of the bank to pay today’s escalating bills without any possibility of replacing the funds.
It is a global issue not only because aquifers from China and Iran to Mexico and the U.S. are hitting new lows, but also because a wheat crop that fails in Nebraska, the result of an Ogallala aquifer-fed well gone dry, will affect global supply just as surely as Russia’s drought and fire-toasted harvest of 2010 has. Prices will rise.
The situation has been exacerbated by the global rush to use a water-intensive, aquifer-spoiling natural gas-mining technique called “fracking.” Pioneered in Texas (with the help of a Bush-Cheny era exemption from the Clean Water act), fracking has spread to parts of the U.S. east coast and Europe (Poland). India is looking into it.
A new study from Columbia University’s Earth Institute points to another, long-overlooked issue: Fossil water adds new water to the atmospheric water system. This results in local cooling (which could reverse in a hurry once the water dries up), a slight rise in rain totals downwind, and possibly an impact on monsoon cycles.
On a more hopeful note, Michael Pritchard’s “Lifesaver” water bottle filtration technology, demonstrated at TEDGlobal in 2009, offers the potential to go beyond disaster relief to pioneer a re-think of a more sustainable, cheaper water infrastructure.
Links include articles and videos on:
- Michael Pritchard’s TEDGlobal video - the best infomercial ever!
- Chris Anderson’s post on a field test of Pritchard’s Lifesaver tech in Pakistan
- Annie Leonard & Free Range Media’s “The Story of Bottled Water”
- New study linking irrigation’s effects on climate change
- How shortsighted World Bank policies led to growing asparagus in the driest place on earth and the collapse of aquifers in Peru
- Desalinization in China
- A water fight at the University of Minnesota over new documentary highlighting Big Ag’s contribution to problems on the Mississippi
- Kopernik’s review of PATH’s study comparing household water filtration systems for low income families in India
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
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“Who’s Hungry?” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
According to UN-FAO, 925 million people are malnourished and starving in this world. That stat, however mind-boggling, is a reduction from the 2009 estimate of 1.2 billion. But the numbers are likely to rise again soon. The extreme weather of 2010, coupled with a resurgence of crop blights, have taken a toll on the global harvest. Meanwhile, demand is on the rise, boosted by inexorable population growth and an expanding urban middle class in China and India. Supplies of basic commodity crops can barely keep in the best of times. And the best of times may now be behind us.
Links include articles and videos on:
- “Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations” by Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas
- “How to Feed the World,” a 9-minute animated video on the foibles of the global food network by Denis van Waerebeke
- “Food Security: Feeding the World in 2050” - overview and links to new research published by the Royal Society
- Flood stories from the frontlines in Pakistan by TED’s Chris Anderson
- “Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal” by Tristram Stuart
- Four top chefs creating gourmet banquets from cast-off food
- “Trees, Food, Pakistan & the Lessons of Medieval Monks: How Ecosystems Thinking Can (Still) Save the World” by J.A. Ginsburg (TrackerNews editor’s blog)
- WHO’s fears for 500,000 pregnant Pakistanis; New study on cognitive decline in people who, in utero, were starved during the Nazi blockade of the Netherlands
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
On twitter: @TrackerNews
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“Century of the City” - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
Urbanization is the driving force shaping our planet. Over half the global human population now lives in cities. One billion people live in slums / shantytowns / favelas / informal settlements. Within a couple of decades, it will be two billion. An estimated 130 people-per-minute are going urban - and most of them are moving into slums. China and India alone will account for 2/5 of global urban growth over the next 20 years.
The implications are staggering. Slums - characterized by Robert Neuwirth as “the cities of the future” - are vibrant, resilient, innovative neighborhoods and the communities most vulnerable to natural disasters and disease.
Stanford economist Paul Romer looks out a plane window and sees plenty of “uninhabited land” on which to build prosperous “charter cities.” Yet urbanization is one of the leading causes of what has been dubbed the sixth great extinction. As many as 200 species per day are literally biting the dust (plants, insects, birds, mammals). If the land is indeed uninhabited, it will have been us that made it uninhabitable.
The natural environment is critical to the success of the built environment. The tragedy of the Pakistan flood, for example, was made exponentially worse due to rampant deforestation. As planners and policy-makers grapple with unprecedented urban growth, they would do well to invite ecologists and wildlife biologists onto the team. Nature has a way of “batting last.” It pays to be on her team.
Links include articles and videos on:
- mega-urbanization and the return of the city-state (the lead article in a stunning package of stories published in Foreign Policy (FP)
- UN-HABITAT’s latest “state of the world’s cities” report
- TED talks from Robert Neuwirth and Paul Romer
- Mike Davis’ book “Planet of Slums” / review
- maps on urban sprawl and “anthromes”
- slum-TV
- a special from-the-archives Tom Leher video (“Pollution”)
- and more…
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
On twitter: @TrackerNews
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“Afri Can & Does! - New suite of links on TrackerNews.net
The second annual Maker Faire Africa - a celebration if innovation, ingenuity, art, craft and genius - just wrapped up this weekend in Nairobi, Kenya. If you missed it, some highlights, stories and leads.
Links include articles and videos on:
- the Makers of Maker Faire
- an interview with curator Emeka Okafor
- Fablab Kenya West / Fablab worldwide network list
- links to book and excerpt of “Making Do: Innovation in Kenya’s Informal Economy”
- Village Telco, “mesh potatoes” & the DIY phone company
- “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind”: the book, the TED talk and now the movie!
All links become part of the TrackersNews’ searchable archive.
For additional background and analysis on health and humanitarian issues, check out the Editor’s blog.
On twitter: @TrackerNews
"Connect the dots...Follow the links"
The TrackerNews' beat covers health (micro to macro), humanitarian issues and technology relevant to both.
Stories are grouped for contextual relevance and include breaking news, research papers, blog posts, websites, book reviews - print, audio, video). Eventually, everything ends up in a searchable database.
curated by J. A. Ginsburg / incubated at InSTEDD.org
contact: editor (@) trackernews.net
twitter: @TrackerNews
