The journey of honey from bee farms to breakfast tables has become complex with time. From wild honey gatherers, honey supply has passed into the hands of cooperatives of individual beekeepers and then to big companies. The cooperatives could have helped beekeepers demand better prices, but they did not last …
The one kg jar of honey on Sangeeta Das’s kitchen shelf has many uses. Every morning she takes out a small quantity and puts it on the breakfast table. Her husband, Indranil, a media executive, likes a little bit of honey on his toast and the couple’s three-year-old son has …
They say you are what you eat. But do we know what we are eating? Do we know who is cooking and serving us the food we take to our kitchens and then into our bodies? The more I dig into this issue it becomes clear that our world of …
A DRUG-RESISTANT bacteria dubbed superbug has triggered a debate. A gene—New Delhi metallo-beta lactamase (NDM 1)— transforms some bacteria found in the gut, like Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, into superbugs. They are resistant to all antibiotics, except tigecycline and colistin, said a study published in the August 11 issue …
Bacteria regularly evolve antibiotic resistance, but little is known about this process at the population level. Here, a continuous culture of Escherichia coli facing increasing antibiotic levels is followed. Most isolates taken from this population are less antibiotic resistant than the population as a whole. A few highly resistant mutants …
CSE laboratory tests find high levels of antibiotics in well-known brands of honey sold in the market. Antibiotics are found in honey largely because they are used in apiculture for treatment of bacterial diseases. Oxytetracycline is commonly used to treat European foulbrood disease (EFB) and American foulbrood diseases (AFB) caused …
Bacteria are amongst the most adaptable organisms on Earth. Long evolutionary timescales, extremely short generation times, exposure to the most diverse and often hostile environments, together with the remarkable power of natural selection have made microorganisms the most resilient of life forms on this planet. In the last few days …
Trade agreements with stiff intellectual property protection requirements combined with buyouts of India’s top generics makers by multinationals threaten to deny affordable medicines to millions of poor. The cost of essential medicines is a major barrier to healthcare, writes LATHA JISHNU. But the Indian government is doing little to control …
In an ideal market economy competition lowers prices of consumer goods. It is just the opposite in the case of pharmaceutical products. More expensive brands sell more. Take Cyclovir, an ointment for treating skin infection caused by herpes. Its therapy cost (cost of one course) is Rs 812, while a …
Patients visiting public health centres in Nagaur district in central Rajasthan these days rarely buy branded drugs. Doctors direct them to the government- run generic medicine stores (GMS) where quality drugs are available at low cost. The district administration of Nagaur has managed to free the public health system from …
Bindeshwari, a scrap dealer in Punjab’s Ludhiana district, was asked to buy Cefzy-250 by the doctor treating his wife. She had delivered a baby in the government civil hospital in June-end. The chemist at the hospital’s Jan Aushadhi Store gave Bindeshwari Ceftazidime, a generic version of Cefzy- 250; both drugs …
MANY diabetics go through the pain of injecting themselves with insulin at least twice a day. The number of times they need to prick themselves to manage their blood sugar level can go up to 120 a month. The fear of pricking themselves often leads to noncompliance, making patients prone …
LATELY things have not been going smoothly for Koel Dutta. A homemaker in Kolkata, the 38-year-old has asthma. Doctors have put her on Pediapred—a class of glucocorticoid steroids—for the past one year. Since January, Dutta was getting fractures easily. Once she tripped on the doorstep and fractured her wrist. The …
If tariffs were the big-ticket issue of trade disputes in an earlier decade, intellectual property rights (IPRs) are making for all the drama, standoffs and skulduggery in international negotiations today. Why are IPRs so crucial to the new economic order? To understand this one needs to come to terms with …
AWAY from the conference rooms of climate talks, developed countries have begun arm-twisting developing countries to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. Sasan, a coal-based project of Reliance Power, almost lost out on funding from a US-based lending agency (See: US bank uses carbon smokescreen). Earlier in the year, power …
THE Union health ministry is pushing for the inclusion of the pentavalent vaccine in the universal immunization programme (UIP) for children. In April, the government tried to convince the Delhi High Court to clear the vaccine by submitting a World Health Organization (WHO) report that said there was no problem …
SEVERAL industrialized countries are negotiating a treaty that could deny developing countries access to low-cost medicines, making them dependent on expensive patented drugs. The pact is very likely to go further than the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) trademark- related arrangements by branding any item suspected of violating patents as counterfeit. …
The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (DPCPTRA), informally known as the ‘Hatch-Waxman Act’, introduced in 1984, modified the Patent Act of 1952 and Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act Section 21 U.S.C. 355(j) to simplify approval process of generic drugs by FDA by filing Abbreviated New Drug …
This article interrogates the claims of intellectual property to be a right. Drawing on the political theory of rights, it argues that information, ideas and knowledge fail to meet the basic test of rights and intellectual property right prevents those who do not own it from accessing and exercising their …
Intrinsic antibiotic resistance has been a fact of bacterium life since long before humans discovered the use of antibiotic drugs. However, the introduction of pharmaceutical antibiotics in the 1940s and explosion in use ever since dramatically accelerated the spread of antibiotic-resistance genes. Today, the problem of antibiotic resistance is so …
