Richard Tren | 31 Mar 2009 | Canadian Medical Association Journal
Paracelsus, the 16th-century Swiss physician, cottoned onto an important concept that has served humanity well: "The dose makes the poison." Most of us unknowingly accept this important observation as we drink our first cup of coffee in the morning or drink a beer at the end of the day.
Roger Bate | 19 Feb 2009 | SciDev.Net
Insecticides are the most important preventative tool against malaria, dengue and filariasis. Even for yellow fever, where a vaccine exists, insecticides are needed to control common outbreaks.
Jasson Urbach | 16 May 2008 | Sowetan
Jasson Urbach reports on AFM's recently released study: Antimalarial Drug Quality in the Most Severely Malarious Parts of Africa - A Six Country Study in South Africa's newspaper the Sowetan.
Richard Tren | 07 Apr 2008 | Center for Global Development
I think that Sabot and Feachem raise some excellent points and it is vital to ensure that there is ongoing debate about elimination and eventual eradication in this way - which is to say a constructive and positive way. I have a few comments on specific points and then want to make a couple of larger, overarching points.
Jasson Urbach | 06 Nov 2007 | Business Day (South Africa)
There has been much written and said in the media recently about the successful development of a malaria vaccine and, considering the human misery and economic costs the disease continues to cause, the developments should be welcomed. The vaccine showing the most promise (known by its laboratory name of RTS,S) was first formulated more than 20 years ago and has been used in trials since 1992, but due to the tricky nature of the parasite, which is constantly evolving, outwitting modern medicine and the human immune system, the development of a successful vaccine has been a slow process of trial and error.
Roger Bate | 05 Nov 2007 | American.com
Malaria is as old as mankind and still going strong, infecting hundreds of millions (and killing between one and three million) each year. A cure was known in 17th-century Europe. But because it was brought to the continent by Catholic missionaries (who actually learned of it from South American natives), many malaria sufferers, included Oliver Cromwell, thought the medicine was part of a "Popish plot" and refused to take it. Cromwell died of the disease in 1658. It took his death, and the subsequent curing of King Charles II, to shift public opinion in favor of "quinine," as the anti-malaria agent is now called.
Jasson Urbach | 15 May 2007 | Health Policy Unit
The latest attack on DDT for indoor residual spraying purposes merely amounts to yet another smear campaign. Nowhere does the paper acknowledge the millions of lives that it has help to save and finds inconclusive evidence that DDT is harmful to human reproductive health.
Richard Tren | 10 Aug 2006 | Business Day (South Africa)
A new study published by the American Enterprise Institute calls for an end to tariffs on medicines and to the corruption that often accompanies them.
Roger Bate & James Driscoll | 27 Feb 2006 | Wall Street Journal Asia
Anyone in Asia who cares about the health of the world's poor should warmly endorse the proposal to remove import tariffs on essential medicines that is being tabled at the World Trade Organization today by the U.S., Singaporean and Swiss governments.
Jennifer Zambone | 15 Oct 2004 | National Review Online
Malaria-vaccine research is good — but we need to help the dying, now.