Inter Press Service - October 1, 2002
Stephen Leahy

It would also ensure those countries do not fall behind the rest of the world, as they did with information technology (IT) and during the 'green revolution', they add.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics (JCB), the study identifies 10 genomic and other biotechnologies with the greatest promise of improving global health within a decade, particularly in the world's poorer countries.

The challenge will be to find ways to fund them, says Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, a special adviser to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Already, 90 per cent of all medical research is targeted at problems affecting only 10 per cent of the world's population. That gap is predicted to widen with genomics - the study of the genome, the set of chromosomes that contains all of the body's genes - producing even greater disparities in health.

"There is a tremendous under-investment by donor countries in new technologies that could make a profound difference for the poor," Sachs told IPS. Essentially that is because there is no sizeable private market and no public funding in the developing world, he adds.

Sachs says the investment gap is not the result of improper governance or inappropriate intellectual property laws, as many have suggested, including the U.S. government. "Even in the U.S. you can't get the kind of vital science we need without substantial public investment."

Sachs says the North just needs to change its priorities.

Money for research "could come from the 100 billion dollars that's about to be spent on the war with Iraq", he says. "We seem to have no capacity to find any money for billions of poor people but when it comes to this war, we hear from the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, that there is no problem at all spending 100 billion dollars."

The researchers say their biotechnologies list is an important first step to avoid a looming "genomic divide" between rich and poor countries.

The "technology foresight exercise" involved 28 scientists working in genomics and health issues around the world. It follows the World Health Organization (WHO) report, 'Genomics and World Health', which identified the growing genomics gap between north and south.

Biotech research costs millions of dollars in equipment alone and the few biotech drugs currently being marketed in developed countries are amongst the most expensive - as much as one million dollars per year per patient, acknowledges Abdallah Daar, co-author of the report and a director of the JCB.

"With huge problems like HIV or malaria, there will be a need for global public-private partnerships like the global partnership to develop malarial and HIV vaccines," he says.

Some technologies, once developed, need not be expensive to use, adds Daar. For example, simple hand-held testing devices could conduct rapid, low-cost checks for a variety of infectious diseases, such as HIV and malaria.

Researchers have made breakthroughs already with these technologies, using them in Latin America to diagnosis leishmaniasis and dengue fever.

The report offers many possible ways that biotechnology could address health problems prevalent in the South, says JCB director Peter Singer, a co-author of the study and program leader of the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health.

These include: genetically-engineered vaccines that could be cheaper, safer and more effective than current vaccines, and which hold new promise in fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; edible vaccines incorporated into potatoes and other vegetables and fruits to protect against hepatitis B, cholera, measles, and other ailments.

Other promising biotech tools are: genetically modified bacteria and plants that can clean up contaminated air, water and soil; vaccines and vaginal microbicides to allow women to protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections, and genetically modified staple foods such as rice, potatoes, corn and cassava with enhanced nutritional value.

But biotech critics like Brian Tokar, a social ecologist at Goddard College in Vermont, warn that genetic engineering has already "severely distorted the research agenda" in the North by over-emphasising the role that genes actually play in disease.

Critics agree it is important to understand the molecular make up of organisms, but lament, "in today's world of high-tech medicine, the problem is nearly always believed to lie in one's genes".

In Africa, a continent of over 340 million people who live on less than one dollar a day, concerted efforts are underway to close the growing genomic divide.

In a newly released study, the Ethiopia-based Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), recommends developing African biotechnology policies, increasing investment in modern biotechnology research and promoting public/private sector partnerships.

K.Y. Amoako, ECA's executive secretary, acknowledges the serious risks involved with the new technology, but "the greatest risk of all is for us to do nothing, letting the biotechnology revolution pass Africa by", he says.

Earlier this year, seven African countries established the African Genome Policy Forum to lobby northern governments for more biotechnology-related research funds.

Genome Canada, a not-for-profit Canadian government funding and information resource helped organise the group and offered 6.3 million dollars to fund it.

"The challenge now is for African governments to pool their resources together and put up regional institutions," Onesmo Ole MoiYoi, director of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Nairobi, was reported to have said on SciDev.Net.

"When this is done, individuals who are highly gifted can come back (to Africa from abroad) and work in these institutions where they can grow professionally and make contributions in terms of seeking solutions to problems in Africa," he added. (END/IPS/NA/DV/HE/SC/SL/ML/02)

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