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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS ... THE ECONOMIC RATIONALISM OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE without explicit laws to protect their rights. Intellectually disabled men and women, incapable of giving consent on their own behalf, are being included in the trials which are largely aimed at getting new drugs to the US and European markets. Pharmaceutical companies are paying private doctors up to A$6,000 for every patient they recruit, but patients don't have to be told of the financial arrangement. The number of drug trials being conduct- ed in Australia has risen 20-fold since 1990, and many never result in approval for the drug being trialled. Some trials are abandoned after reports of side-effects and deaths, either here or overseas, or because the drug simply does not work. A Sydney Morning Herald investigation found that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) was obliged to review directly only two of the 1,712 clini- cal trials done in Australia last year. Trials have included experiments on dementia patients, the testing of hormone creams on menopausal women, and the administration of new vaccines in children. Professor John Simes, director of the National Health and Medical Research Council's clinical trial centre, says the lack of a publicly accessible central trials regis- ter in Australia means that there is no accu- rate way of knowing what trials are being done and by whom. Global pharmaceutical companies have rushed to Australia at a time when debates have arisen over similar trials in Europe and the USA, and because of the relative cheapness and ease of getting approval. (Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, /3 February 2001, www.smh.com.au) bigail Wood, a vet and researcher for the Wellcome Trust at the University of Manchester, says that foot-and-mouth disease "is rious to animals as a bad cold is to human beings" and asks, "So why the concern?" "Foot-and-mouth has gained a grip on this nation—and fear of the disease seems as powerful as the disease itself. We recognise foot-and-mouth not by its symp- toms, but by what we do to control it: the restrictions on movement, the slaughter of animals, the burning of carcasses. From the panic and the headlines, you would imagine that this is a most dreadful disease. Yet foot-and-mouth very rarely kills the animals that catch it. They almost always recover, and in a couple of weeks at that. It almost never gets passed on to humans, and when it does it is a mild infection only. The meat from animals that have had it is fit to eat. In clinical terms, foot-and-mouth is about as serious, to animals or to people, as a bad cold. "Why, then, the concern? And why the policy of wholesale slaughter? The con- cern, of course, is economic. This is financial issue, not an animal welfare issue nor a human health one. No one abroad will take our meat if it might be infected with foot-and-mouth. And that worldwide exclusion zone stems from British policies of the past. It was we who, in the late 19th century, decided that foot-and-mouth should not be lived with, but should be eliminated, shut out through the cordon Sanitaire; it was we, in the 1950s, who encouraged first the Continent, then the rest of the world, into following suit. Now it is we who must live with the results of that policy. "Foot-and-mouth disease does reduce the productivity of an animal: its milk yield, its rate of putting on of flesh. There are no figures for how much it reduces these things; part of the reason for that is that no one since the 1920s in Britain has seen the disease take its full course. Any animal infected with it has been immediately slaughtered. That reduction in productivi- ty, that fear of small economic loss, is what lies behind the elimination policy—and the huge economic costs that are now being incurred. "It need not have been like that. The animal control policy was the result of economics rather than biology. Under TRACK AND CONTROL YOUR CAR WITH GPS & THE INTERNET Hester ase Immobiliser Inc. is introducing the world's first over-the- counter wireless vehicle tracking and control system using both the Internet and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. The new product, called GPS Vision, will allow vehicle owners from anywhere in the world to be able to track and control their vehicle over the Internet. It has the power to track and control a vehicle with just the click of a mouse. Car owners receive the vehicle's street address location, digital mapping, car speed and direction in seconds via the Internet. Doors can be remotely unlocked or locked, the engine can be turned on or off, and you can even be notified via pager/cell- phone if your car alarm is activated—all from anywhere in the world. The next time your car is stolen, you can dial it up on your cellphone, obtain its location, relay this info to the police, then turn off the car engine, lock the doors and wait. (Source: Wireless Developer Network, 5 February 2001, www.wirelessdevnet.com/ news/2001/35/news5. html) a LK tence SS / EAIRCT HARMLESS / | Bot THERE MIGHT ul € Preers eRom go, Fe Oop ie SY flr wr | Ye "s el 8 = NEXUS APRIL —- MAY 2001 www.nexusmagazi ne.com