Counterplans Inuit Consult cp



Download 0.65 Mb.
Page12/17
Date19.10.2016
Size0.65 Mb.
#3978
1   ...   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17

Arctic Research




1NC Sci Dip Fails

Science diplomacy fails, scientists and policy makers can’t work together


Marlow 12 (Jeffery, Writer for wired.com, “The Promise and Pitfalls of Democracy”, Wired.com, 12/11/12, http://www.wired.com/2012/12/the-promise-and-pitfalls-of-science-diplomacy/, CTC)

On July 17th, 1975, Alexei Leonov and Tom Stafford did something extraordinary: they shared a meal of canned beef tongue and black bread. It may not have been the most delicious culinary experience the men had ever had, but the setting of the meal was slightly more noteworthy: outer space, where two spacecraft had docked and were orbiting the earth at nearly 18,000 miles per hour. The two men and their crews conducted scientific observations, exchanged gifts, and spoke intermittently in English, Russian, and “Oklahomski,” the Soviet commander’s description of Stafford’s drawl. Far below Leonov and Stafford, their political leaders – Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford, respectively – were embroiled in the maneuverings of the Cold War. Diplomatic tensions ran deep, but with the Space Race to the Moon in the rearview mirror, joint missions seemed to operate above the fray of political discourse. The Apollo-Soyuz episode was a unique moment in American space exploration history, a pivot from antagonism and competition to measured cooperation that previewed a similar move toward engagement in the political arena over a decade later. Indeed, crosstalk between members of supposedly clashing countries is a common feature of the scientific enterprise. These sorts of collaborations may not directly solve the issues at the heart of tense diplomatic situations, but they do get parties on either side talking. The very neutrality of the subject matter – the pursuit of “truth” – may actually help the process, allowing mistrust to thaw and preconceptions to crumble while engaging in a shared aim. This notion of science as a diplomatic tool – its use as an entry point to a recalcitrant society that simultaneously breaks down politically steeped preconceptions and offers tangible benefits – is a promising mode of development and a constructive brand of international relations. The Obama Administration understands the value of science diplomacy; last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the expansion of the Science Envoy program, appointing Barbara Schaal of Washington University in St. Louis, Bernard Amadei of the University of Colorado, and Susan Hockfield of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the position. These prominent scientists represent the third class of envoys – the program began in 2009 and has sponsored visits to nearly 20 countries. The philosophy behind the envoy program is noble, but its current directive is a bit vague. As noted in the State Department’s official release, “the science envoys travel in their capacity as private citizens and advise the White House, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. scientific community about the insights they gain from their travels and interactions.” A recent assessment of the program by envoy Elias Zerhouni noted the challenge of following through on initiatives predicated on the personal credibility and contacts of the individual envoys. Leveraging the networks of world-renowned scientists within the framework of a coherent policy of international relations is difficult, particularly when funding for longer-term projects is uncertain. The trust of international partners requires a predictable political and financial environment. When President Obama launched the program during a speech in Cairo, he said that the envoys would “collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops.” Whether these programs are mandated by the executive branch or are the responsibility of the envoys is unclear. A more explicit structure could allow science diplomats to be more effective, building on the strong record of science as an invaluable tool in the soft power arsenal.

Alt-Cause: Science leadership is impossible as long as fracking is prevalent in the U.S.


Magill 13 (Bobby Magill is an award-winning science, environment and energy journalist who is currently the senior science writer covering energy and climate change for Climate Central in New York City. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, Huffington Post, Salon, USA Today, High Country News, New West.net, and daily newspapers throughout Colorado, “Fracking hurts US climate change credibility, say scientists”, The Guardian via Climate Central, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/11/fracking-us-climate-credibility-shale-gas, N.O.)

“As we produce more, we burn more, and we send more CO2 per person into the atmosphere than almost any other country,” said Susan Brantley, geosciences professor and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Pennsylvania State University. “We are blanketing our world with greenhouse gas, warming the planet.”

Several years ago in Pennsylvania, scientists were talking about carbon sequestration in shale formations deep underground, she said.

“However, since 2005, we have been fracking shales and have drilled 6,000 shale gas wells,” she said. “This extraordinary rate of development is good for our country in terms of jobs and energy prices, but bad in that we are not worrying as much about the greenhouse gas problem as we are about exploiting gas with hydrofracking.

“It is hard for us to have credibility in global discussions of greenhouse gas unless we can use this new source of gas a transitional fuel that bridges us from hydrocarbons to renewable, non-carbon fuels,” she said.

Even among advocates for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, there is disagreement about what the U.S. role as chief oil and gas producer means for America’s credibility on climate change.



“Those who already see the U.S. as a major bad actor will continue to do so, and cite this hydrocarbon boom as further evidence,” said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force. “By contrast, if the U.S. took a more progressive global stance on overall emissions control, increased domestic production would be probably irrelevant; the world would be relieved to see U.S. leadership.”

2NC Sci Dip Fails

Science diplomacy isn’t a substitution for regular diplomacy


Dickson 10 (David, Director of SciDev.net, “Science in diplomacy: ‘On tap but not on top’ ”, SciDev.net, 28/6/2010, http://scidevnet.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-place-of-science-in-diplomacy-%E2%80%9Con-tap-but-not-on-top%E2%80%9D/, CTC)

There’s a general consensus in both the scientific and political worlds that the principle of science diplomacy, at least in the somewhat restricted sense of the need to get more and better science into international negotiations, is a desirable objective. There is less agreement, however, on how far the concept can – or indeed should – be extended to embrace broader goals and objectives, in particular attempts to use science to achieve political or diplomatic goals at the international level. Science, despite its international characteristics, is no substitute for effective diplomacy. Any more than diplomatic initiatives necessarily lead to good science. These seem to have been the broad conclusions to emerge from a three-day meeting at Wilton Park in Sussex, UK, organised by the British Foreign Office and the Royal Society, and attended by scientists, government officials and politicians from 17 countries around the world. The definition of science diplomacy varied widely among participants. Some saw it as a subcategory of “public diplomacy”, or what US diplomats have recently been promoting as “soft power” (“the carrot rather than the stick approach”, as a participant described it). Others preferred to see it as a core element of the broader concept of “innovation diplomacy”, covering the politics of engagement in the familiar fields of international scientific exchange and technology transfer, but raising these to a higher level as a diplomatic objective. Whatever definition is used, three particular aspects of the debate became the focus of attention during the Wilton Park meeting: how science can inform the diplomatic process; how diplomacy can assist science in achieving its objectives; and, finally, how science can provide a channel for quasi-diplomatic exchanges by forming an apparently neutral bridge between countries. There was little disagreement on the first of these. Indeed for many, given the increasing number of international issues with a scientific dimension that politicians have to deal with, this is essentially what the core of science diplomacy should be about. Chris Whitty, for example, chief scientist at the UK’s Department for International Development, described how knowledge about the threat raised by the spread of the highly damaging plant disease stem rust had been an important input by researchers into discussions by politicians and diplomats over strategies for persuading Afghan farmers to shift from the production of opium to wheat. Others pointed out that the scientific community had played a major role in drawing attention to issues such as the links between chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere and the growth of the ozone hole, or between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. Each has made essential contributions to policy decisions. Acknowledging this role for science has some important implications. No-one dissented when Rohinton Medhora, from Canada’s International Development Research Centre, complained of the lack of adequate scientific expertise in the embassies of many countries of the developed and developing world alike. Nor – perhaps predictably – was there any major disagreement that diplomatic initiatives can both help and occasionally hinder the process of science. On the positive side, such diplomacy can play a significant role in facilitating science exchange and the launch of international science projects, both essential for the development of modern science. Europe’s framework programme of research programmes was quoted as a successful advantage of the first of these. Examples of the second range from the establishment of the European Organisation of Nuclear Research (usually known as CERN) in Switzerland after the Second World War, to current efforts to build a large new nuclear fusion facility (ITER). Less positively, increasing restrictions on entry to certain countries, and in particular the United States after the 9/11 attacks in New York and elsewhere, have significantly impeded scientific exchange programmes. Here the challenge for diplomats was seen as helping to find ways to ease the burdens of such restrictions. The broadest gaps in understanding the potential of scientific diplomacy lay in the third category, namely the use of science as a channel of international diplomacy, either as a way of helping to forge consensus on contentious issues, or as a catalyst for peace in situations of conflict. On the first of these, some pointed to recent climate change negotiations, and in particular the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a good example, of the way that the scientific community can provide a strong rationale for joint international action. But others referred to the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit last December to come up with a meaningful agreement on action as a demonstration of the limitations of this way of thinking. It was argued that this failure had been partly due to a misplaced belief that scientific consensus would be sufficient to generate a commitment to collective action, without taking into account the political impact that scientific ideas would have. Another example that received considerable attention was the current construction of a synchrotron facility SESAME in Jordan, a project that is already is bringing together researchers in a range of scientific disciplines from various countries in the Middle East (including Israel, Egypt and Palestine, as well as both Greece and Turkey). The promoters of SESAME hope that – as with the building of CERN 60 years ago, and its operation as a research centre involving, for example, physicists from both Russia and the United States – SESAME will become a symbol of what regional collaboration can achieve. In that sense, it would become what one participant described as a “beacon of hope” for the region. But others cautioned that, however successful SESAME may turn out to be in purely scientific terms, its potential impact on the Middle East peace process should not be exaggerated. Political conflicts have deep roots that cannot easily be papered over, however open-minded scientists may be to professional colleagues coming from other political contexts. Indeed, there was even a warning that in the developing world, high profile scientific projects, particular those with explicit political backing, could end up doing damage by inadvertently favouring one social group over another. Scientists should be wary of having their prestige used in this way; those who did so could come over as patronising, appearing unaware of political realities. Similarly, those who hold science in esteem as a practice committed to promoting the causes of peace and development were reminded of the need to take into account how advances in science – whether nuclear physics or genetic technology – have also led to new types of weaponry. Nor did science automatically lead to the reduction of global inequalities. “Science for diplomacy” therefore ended up with a highly mixed review. The consensus seemed to be that science can prepare the ground for diplomatic initiatives – and benefit from diplomatic agreements – but cannot provide the solutions to either. “On tap but not on top” seems as relevant in international settings as it does in purely national ones. With all the caution that even this formulation still requires.

Turn – science diplomacy empirically causes conflict – poor cooperation mechanisms – anthrax accident proves

Smith the 3rd 6/17 | Dr. Frank L Smith III is a lecturer in the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney with a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago, Advancing science diplomacy: Indonesia and the US Naval Medical Research Unit published in Social Studies of Science, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/16/0306312714535864.full.pdf, 6/17/14, Accessed 6/27/14, CCHS-AY

Just as the goals or ends of science diplomacy can vary, so too might its actual effect. The conventional wisdom is that science diplomacy creates positive externalities or spill- over effects that facilitate greater cooperation. The possibility that it might cause conflict is rarely considered, even by potential critics. Tim Flink and Ulrich Schreiterer argue that science diplomacy is ‘no panacea’, and they conclude that ‘exploiting science for politi- cal purposes ... makes little or no sense’ (Flink and Schreiterer, 2010).1 Similarly, David Dickson claims that science and politics ‘occupy different universes’, and so there is ‘only so much science can do’ (Dickson, 2009). Dickson acknowledges that innovation can cause upheaval, while Flink and Schreiterer note that there are tensions or tradeoffs between scientific cooperation and competitive advantage. However, they all stop short of saying that science diplomacy itself may heighten conflict or reduce trust and transparency.¶ Therefore science diplomacy is assumed to be at worst ineffective but never harmful. Yet this assumption is doubtful because the effects of science diplomacy are variable. Again, the anthrax accident at Sverdlovsk is illustrative: one consequence of Soviet deception through science diplomacy was to reduce trust and transparency, thereby threatening peace talks with the United States (Hoffman, 2009: 350). More troubling is the long and complex history of scientific, technical, and medical exchanges as instru- ments of imperialism and justifications for colonialism (e.g. Headrick, 1988; MacLeod, 2000; Vaughan, 1991). What we now call science diplomacy is not new, nor has its impact always been benign.¶ Unfortunately, even when the intent is benign, the outcome may still be harmful or interpreted as such. For instance, Iran once detained an American scientific delegate in order to suggest that ‘science exchanges are not a good thing’ (Badger, 2009). How could this happen if everyone benefits from science diplomacy? Though not diplomacy per se, similar questions arise when science and technology are applied to aid global health. In 1994, ‘effort by humanitarian actors to restore health to at least one million Rwandan refugees’ in Zaire ‘had the unfortunate effect of helping to restore the capacity of Hutu militias to fight’, according to Sara Davies, ‘precipitating the escalation of the war’ (Davies, 2010: 94). The positive or neutral effects of medical, scientific, or technical assistance and exchange cannot be taken for granted.¶ Finally, the mechanisms through which science diplomacy creates international cooperation are underspecified, providing little confidence that it will not backfire. Science diplomacy is related to public diplomacy, but merely citing public opinion polls about the popularity of science and technology does not explain how this attraction is leveraged to build goodwill abroad. While their products might be popular, are scientists and tech- nicians typically movers and shakers of mass public opinion? Maybe, but this seems unlikely when they are compared with celebrities or other public figures, especially if we consider variation in the public understanding of science and efficacy of science com- munication. In addition, like propaganda, public diplomacy that aims to improve mass public opinion can have the opposite effect and inadvertently undermine trust (Goldsmith

No impact to science diplomacy – cooperation is limited to science

Dickson 9 | David Dickson was the founding director of SciDev.Net and spent many years at Nature, as its Washington correspondent and later as news editor. He also worked on the staffs of Science and New Scientist, specializing in reporting on science policy. He started a career in journalism as a sub-editor, following a degree in mathematics, The limits of science diplomacy, 6/27/14, http://www.scidev.net/global/capacity-building/editorials/the-limits-of-science-diplomacy.html, Accessed 6/27/14, CCHS-AY

Using science for diplomatic purposes has obvious attractions and several benefits. But there are limits to what it can achieve.¶ The scientific community has a deserved reputation for its international perspective — scientists often ignore national boundaries and interests when it comes to exchanging ideas or collaborating on global problems.¶ So it is not surprising that science attracts the interest of politicians keen to open channels of communication with other states. Signing agreements on scientific and technological cooperation is often the first step for countries wanting to forge closer working relationships.¶ More significantly, scientists have formed key links behind-the-scenes when more overt dialogue has been impossible. At the height of the Cold War, for example, scientific organisations provided a conduit for discussing nuclear weapons control.¶ Only so much science can do¶ Recently, the Obama administration has given this field a new push, in its desire to pursue "soft diplomacy" in regions such as the Middle East. Scientific agreements have been at the forefront of the administration's activities in countries such as Iraq and Pakistan.¶ But — as emerged from a meeting entitled New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy, held in London this week (1–2 June) — using science for diplomatic purposes is not as straightforward as it seems.¶ Some scientific collaboration clearly demonstrates what countries can achieve by working together. For example, a new synchrotron under construction in Jordan is rapidly becoming a symbol of the potential for teamwork in the Middle East.¶ But whether scientific cooperation can become a precursor for political collaboration is less evident. For example, despite hopes that the Middle East synchrotron would help bring peace to the region, several countries have been reluctant to support it until the Palestine problem is resolved.¶ Indeed, one speaker at the London meeting (organised by the UK's Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science) even suggested that the changes scientific innovations bring inevitably lead to turbulence and upheaval. In such a context, viewing science as a driver for peace may be wishful thinking.¶ Conflicting ethos¶ Perhaps the most contentious area discussed at the meeting was how science diplomacy can frame developed countries' efforts to help build scientific capacity in the developing world.¶ There is little to quarrel with in collaborative efforts that are put forward with a genuine desire for partnership. Indeed, partnership — whether between individuals, institutions or countries — is the new buzzword in the "science for development" community.¶ But true partnership requires transparent relations between partners who are prepared to meet as equals. And that goes against diplomats' implicit role: to promote and defend their own countries' interests.¶ John Beddington, the British government's chief scientific adviser, may have been a bit harsh when he told the meeting that a diplomat is someone who is "sent abroad to lie for his country". But he touched a raw nerve.¶ Worlds apart yet co-dependent¶ The truth is that science and politics make an uneasy alliance. Both need the other. Politicians need science to achieve their goals, whether social, economic or — unfortunately — military; scientists need political support to fund their research.¶ But they also occupy different universes. Politics is, at root, about exercising power by one means or another. Science is — or should be — about pursuing robust knowledge that can be put to useful purposes.¶ A strategy for promoting science diplomacy that respects these differences deserves support. Particularly so if it focuses on ways to leverage political and financial backing for science's more humanitarian goals, such as tackling climate change or reducing world poverty.¶ But a commitment to science diplomacy that ignores the differences — acting for example as if science can substitute politics (or perhaps more worryingly, vice versa), is dangerous. ¶ The Obama administration's commitment to "soft power" is already faltering. It faces challenges ranging from North Korea's nuclear weapons test to domestic opposition to limits on oil consumption. A taste of reality may be no bad thing.¶ David Dickson¶ Director, SciDev.Net

The positive effects of scientific diplomacy are contestable; the potential to backlash is always present, results are unpredictable, and scientists have limited ability to influence politics


Smith 14 (Frank, Professor at the Centre of International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, “Advancing science diplomacy: Indonesia and the US Naval Medical Research Unit”, Sage Journals , June 17, 2014, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/16/0306312714535864.full N.O.)

Finally, the mechanisms through which science diplomacy creates international cooperation are underspecified, providing little confidence that it will not backfire. Science diplomacy is related to public diplomacy, but merely citing public opinion polls about the popularity of science and technology does not explain how this attraction is leveraged to build goodwill abroad. While their products might be popular, are scientists and technicians typically movers and shakers of mass public opinion? Maybe, but this seems unlikely when they are compared with celebrities or other public figures, especially if we consider variation in the public understanding of science and efficacy of science communication. In addition, like propaganda, public diplomacy that aims to improve mass public opinion can have the opposite effect and inadvertently undermine trust (Goldsmith and Horiuchi, 2009).



No Solvency: Sci Dip

The USA is incapable of projecting leadership beyond its own hemisphere


Mearsheimer 10 (John, Professor of Political Science at University of Chicago, “The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia”, 2010, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/4/381.full, N.O)

When people talk about hegemony these days, they are usually referring to the United States, which they describe as a global hegemon. I do not like this terminology, however, because it is virtually impossible for any state—including the United States—to achieve global hegemony. The main obstacle to world domination is the difficulty of projecting power over huge distances, especially across enormous bodies of water like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The best outcome that a great power can hope for is to achieve regional hegemony, and possibly control another region that is close by and easily accessible over land. The United States, which dominates the Western Hemisphere, is the only regional hegemon in modern history. Five other great powers have tried to dominate their region—Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union—but none have succeeded.

AT Medicine

Ocean exploration for medical use non-unique


Palmer 14 [Brian, writer for the Washington Post, “Deep sea creatures shed light on the future of medical imaging” –April 1, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/01/neurobiology-atlantic-ocean-bioluminescent-medical-imaging, LS]

In July, a team of scientists organised by the American Museum of Natural History will dive 300 metres below the Atlantic Ocean's surface about 160km off the coast of New England. Among their goals: to find bioluminescent creatures – such as the dinoflagellates that make their own light, causing the ocean to glow – that they hope will offer clues for creating the next generation of medical imaging. The right combination of molecules – a protein that can make light and another compound to serve as the light's fuel – may allow us to map brain activity to a new level of detail. This advance may someday give quadriplegics new ways to interact with the world. Though it seems futuristic, the back story for this line of research began 50 years ago. In the early 1960s, a Japanese marine biologist named Osamu Shimomura isolated a protein from the crystal jellyfish. When blue light is shined on the creature, this protein absorbs it, changes its wavelength and emits a green light. It is called green fluorescent protein, or GFP. "That single protein literally changed the course of biology," says Vincent Pieribone, a neurobiologist at Yale. It also won Shimomura a share of the2008 Nobel Prize in biochemistry. Most of the structures inside a cell are clear, which makes observation a challenge. Biologists eventually realized that they could attach GFP to virtually anything inside a cell, then shine a blue light on it to observe its movements and activities. In the 1990s, geneticists spliced the jellyfish's GFP gene into mice and other lab creatures, essentially turning their bodies into living museums. They could express the protein in their muscle cells, brain cells or other organs. By shining the right wavelength of light on to the animal, scientists could watch cancer spread or the immune system fight viruses. For all its incredible applications, GFP has a major shortcoming: it needs an external light source. Blue light doesn't penetrate far, so we have trouble seeing deep into a complex organ. The inner workings of a mammalian brain, for example, are nearly impossible to observe using GFP, because it's too difficult to shine a light in there. In addition, hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells, absorbs blue light differently depending on how much oxygen is present. This complicates the delivery of the blue light and the detection of green light from the cells. We need a method that enables us to work in darkness. If only there were creatures that emitted their own light. You've probably seen one such creature in your own backyard, as night begins to fall in summer: the firefly. Lampyridae is, indeed, one of the few terrestrial creatures capable of producing its own light. As with fluorescent animals, bioluminescent creatures rely on a protein to shine their lights, so it's appealing to think that we could just extract the protein and attach it to proteins in mammalian cells. But there's an extra piece involved in bioluminescence that makes it a more complex process. "The chemical reaction has two parts," Pieribone explains. "The protein is the engine. But it requires fuel – a small molecule that is produced by the animal and burned." It's easy enough to insert the firefly's protein into other animal cells, or even to force other animals to manufacture it, but researchers haven't been able to get the fuel source in place. None of the fuel molecules used in known bioluminescent creatures can be produced in the cells of a mouse, dog or primate. What we need instead is a bioluminescent creature that relies on a fuel that's already present in mammalian cells. Glucose and adenosine triphosphate, for example, are high-energy molecules in ample supply in mammals. The medical applications of a bioluminescent compound are potentially enormous. With them we may see, for example, how electrical impulses translate into muscular actions. Using a machine that can interface with those signals, a quadriplegic could merely think about picking up a fork, and a robotic arm would execute the command. That's where July's deep-diving expedition comes in. A team of scientists will each don diving gear called an exosuit, which looks something like a costume piece from a superhero movie. Its pressure-resistant body and finely tuned joints permit a person to descend to 300 meters and still move smoothly. It is equipped with thrusters on the feet and specialized hand attachments that can grasp interesting objects or collect specimens with a vacuum device. Researchers on the surface can see what the diver sees through the four cameras mounted on the suit. Do they have any reason to believe that they'll find a glucose-powered bioluminescent creature lurking off the Atlantic coast? Not exactly, says Pieribone, but that's exploration. "It's a bit of a fishing expedition, but we have our hooks in a really rich pool," he notes. "Let's get into a genetically rich environment and observe with our eyes."

AT Disease Impact

Diseases won’t cause extinction – burnout, vaccines, quarantine



York ‘14

Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and Pathogenesis Branch, Influenza Division at the CDC, former assistant professor in immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor immunity (UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology (Guelph), “Why Don't Diseases Completely Wipe Out Species?” 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-diseases-completely-wipe-out-species#THUR

But mostly diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one, the most dangerous diseases are those that spread from one individual to another. If the disease is highly lethal, then the population drops, and it becomes less likely that individuals will contact each other during the infectious phase. Highly contagious diseases tend to burn themselves out that way. Probably the main reason is variation. Within the host and the pathogen population there will be a wide range of variants. Some hosts may be naturally resistant. Some pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end up with infected individuals who survive. We see this in HIV, for example. There is a small fraction of humans who are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I type. And there are a handful of people who were infected with defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to disease. We can see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain many instances of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the whole population. Those all started off as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to the carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.

No global pandemics – international actors will contain spread



Wayne ‘14

Alex, syndicated columnist on US health policy, “Global Effort Signed to Halt Spread of Infectious Disease,” Bloomber, 2/13, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/global-effort-signed-to-halt-spread-of-infectious-disease.html#THUR



The U.S. won commitments from 25 countries and the World Health Organization to work together on systems to better detect and combat outbreaks of infectious diseases such as H7N9 avian flu and Ebola virus. The Obama administration plans to spend $40 million in 10 countries this year to upgrade laboratories and communications networks so outbreaks can be controlled more quickly, Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said today in an interview. President Barack Obama will seek another $45 million next year to expand the program. Infectious diseases account for about 1 in 4 deaths worldwide, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. While diseases such as Ebola and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome haven’t posed a threat to the U.S., lapses in other countries may allow an outbreak to spread rapidly, Frieden said. “No country can protect itself solely within its borders,” Frieden said. “We’re all only as safe as the weakest link out there. This is an effort to essentially make the U.S. safer and make the world safer, to improve countries’ capacity to better find, stop and prevent health threats.” Frieden and Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. health secretary, held a videoconference today with the partners in the effort. While no other country made a specific financial commitment today, Frieden said, all the nations at the conference including China, Russia, France and the U.K. agreed to “accelerate progress and address not just the health sector but include security in health in new ways.” First Consensus “For the first time, really, we have a consensus on not only what are the threats, but what do we have to do to address them,” he said. As an example, Frieden said Turkey’s government agreed to host a WHO office to respond to outbreaks in its region. The agreement will also target emerging infections such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The 10 countries in line for the U.S. investment, which will be funded by the CDC and the Department of Defense, weren’t identified. The CDC plans to build on test projects last year in Uganda and Vietnam, where the agency helped the two nations’ health officials improve systems to detect and combat outbreaks of dangerous pathogens that include drug-resistant tuberculosis, Ebola virus and exotic flu strains. In Uganda, CDC officials helped the country’s Ministry of Health upgrade laboratories where tissue samples would be tested in the event of an outbreak, and developed a system for local doctors to report cases of illness by text message, according to an article published in the CDC’s journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Uganda now is able to quickly transport tissue samples from rural outbreaks to a high-security lab in the capital, Kampala, by motorcycle courier and overnight mail, Frieden said. A mobile phone network-connected printer then texts lab results back to rural hospitals, he said. “Ultimately every country in the world should have this kind of system,” Frieden said. The $40 million, he said, “is certainly enough to make a good start.”




Download 0.65 Mb.

Share with your friends:
1   ...   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17



The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message
    Main page
foreign ministers
present form