Resource Guide
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/business/worldbusiness/17stem.html
This is an article published in the New York Times in 2006 that nicely wraps up the entire issue of stem cell research in Singapore and highlights some of the most important researchers who have left the United States, Japan and Western Europe for the lax restrictions on stem cells in Singapore.
2. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_02/b3915052.htm
This is a link to an article in Business Week (Jan 2005) that talks about not just Singapore, but the rest of Asia and Australia as competing to get ahead in the Biotech industry. It also mentions some of the more groundbreaking research being done in these Asian countries and touches on the relationship between private funding in the United States and public/government funding in Asia.
3. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4568717.ece
This is an article that was run in the London Times in 2008 about the 49 infants who died in the drug trials in India, raising ethical concerns over clinical trials on patients so young and without enough properly trained staff.
4. http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/mar/110309-illegal-clinical-trails-bang-city-news.htm
This is an article published about a month ago on a study that found evidence of illegal clinical trials in India. Three major companies (GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, and Johnson&Johnson) were performing illegal clinical trials and getting away with it since ethical review is practically nonexistent in India. The three trials were for a Breast Cancer drug, a schizophrenia drug and a drug to combat acute mania.
5. http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/globalization/2004/indianguineapigs.html
This is an extensive article put out in 2004 that explains most of the ethical problems relating to clinical trials in India. There are illegal clinical trials and problems with informed consent for patients, as well as problems with a lack of ethical and clinical review boards and problems with corruption in the approval process. It also mentions some other illegal trials that were done in other countries (Mexico, Nigeria, Russia).
6. http://www.soniashah.com/books/details.php?id=3
This is a link to Sonia Shah’s website (author of Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients). There is a summary of the book and links to other articles she has written. Her tagline: “Investigating how science and politics collide in a lopsided world”.
7. http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/mar/010309.disease.html
This is a link to a set of radio broadcasts done on NPR about globalization and the spread of infectious diseases. As countries become closer and international travel more common, diseases are spreading to places they have never been before and new populations are being exposed to diseases they have never seen before-with lethal consequences. For instance, Dengue Fever (thought eradicated in the Western Hemisphere) sickened 100,000 in El Salvador and it probably came from Vietnam via Cuban workers that spread it through the Caribbean. You can listen to the radio broadcasts on the website.
8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sq5SALbqC8
This is a video on YouTube about the impact of science globalization on America’s scientists. America has plenty of scientists, but the United States still imports more post-docs from overseas (Foreign post-docs have grown 52% and American post-docs have grown 9%) since wages can be lower and benefits worse. Now, the US graduates more scientists than they have jobs for, yet continue to import cheap science labor since scientific institutions have unlimited access to H1-B visas and can bring in as many foreign post-docs as they want.
9. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-311X2002000600033&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
“globalization has helped reduce poverty in a large number of developing countries, but it must be harnessed better to help the world’s poorest, most marginalized countries improve the lives of their citizens“. This article explores the greater disparities of health brought about by globalization and what healthy nations can begin to do about it. It also talks about AIDS, arguable the most globalized disease.
10. http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/medical-tourism-danger-our-healthcare-system-and-patients
This is an article about a new phenomenon made possible by globalization-medical tourism. Due to incredibly high costs of healthcare here in the US, many people are opting to have their procedures and surgeries done abroad, in countries that now have the capabilities due to the globalization of healthcare techniques. However, there is danger in this as well because along with the lower cost comes lower standards of care and less stringent rules about medical practices.
11. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-12-30-surrogacy_N.htm
If you thought they couldn’t think of anything else to outsource, this article makes you reconsider. The newest trend is to outsource pregnancies. Couples in the United States, Britain, Taiwan and other places, who can not get pregnant are turning to women in India to be surrogates for them. Where as a surrogate here in the US can cost tens of thousands of dollars, surrogates in India make around $4,500 and undergo all of the risk of childbirth in a country with an extraordinary high childbirth death rate.
In this article, the author argues that the boom of scientists abroad actually helps the US by creating a competitive spirit between countries to push forward scientific research and a collaborative spirit to work together using each others techniques and resources to advance science. Apparently, distribution of scientific knowledge is not only useful for competition, but also in case one country hit’s a “roadblock” or laws prohibiting certain kinds of research [implied Bush here].
13. http://medind.nic.in/ibi/t04/i4/ibit04i4p207.pdf
This article talks about the regulatory and investigative problems with managing clinical trials in India, as well as addressing the quality of data generated from these unregulated trials.
14. http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/180_04_160204/lee10732_fm.html
This\article talks about how health is linked to globalization and how both views of health and globalization have their merits. It talks about cognitive, temporal and spatial changes that result make up globalization. For instance, shrinking the world down and altering it spatially with new ways of travel, diseases can spread quicker. However, so can cures and containment. Outbreaks can be controlled and problems averted now that all countries are tied together in some way or another.
15. http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/gcprogram.taf?function=detail&EvID=919&eventid=GC07
“Globalization opens the problems of the world to great scientists and allows new ways of looking at old problems that will lead to breakthroughs”, This is a link to the summary of a panel that was formed to talk about the globalization of medical research, addressing the ideal ways of handling it and what the pharmaceutical companies should do to about uncertainty in the process and pricing of the drugs.
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