Posts tagged “crude”
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Sonia Shah in Foreign Affairs on private corporations’ effect on global health
November 9, 2011
“The problem is that the companies most active in global health projects today hail from a narrow range of industries, many of which are under fire for their negative impact on public health. These private firms are playing a double game: disrupting local communities with one hand and writing big checks to ostensibly help them with the other. Often, their core financial interests are directly at odds with the business of improving the health of the poor, in ways that are distorting the global health agenda.”
Tags: crude, editorials, foreign affairs, public health, sonia shah
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Sonia Shah in The Wall Street Journal
September 21, 2011
“Mr. Perry, Time magazine’s Africa bureau chief, is a wonderful observer of the uneasy interactions between Westerners and Africans: In one scene, the director-general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, wipes angry tears from her face while berating Ugandan health officials for failing to meet anti-malaria targets.”
Tags: alex perry, book reviews, crude, mosquitos, sonia shah, the wall street journal
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Sonia Shah on the link between climate change and cholera outbreaks
February 23, 2011
Historically and in the modern popular imagination, cholera has been considered a disease of filth carried in sewage. And yet, over the past decade, research on cholera’s natural habitat and links to the climate have revealed a revolutionary new understanding of the disease as one shaped just as much by environment, hydrology, and weather patterns as by poor sanitation. And as temperatures continue to rise this century, cholera outbreaks may become increasingly common, with the bacteria growing more rapidly in warmer waters.
Tags: cholera, climate change, crude, sonia shah, yale
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Sonia Shah to deliver college address on malaria
February 16, 2011
The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years is only the latest of the many books and articles Shah has written on the interactions of science and policy in an unequal world. Her exposé of the drug industry, The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients (New Press: 2006), was described as “a tautly argued study… meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence” by Publisher’s Weekly, while her book Crude: the Story of Oil (Seven Stories Press: 2004) was praised as “brilliant… beautifully written” by The Guardian, and described by The Nation as “required reading.”
Tags: carleton college, crude, sonia shah, speech
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Sonia Shah: TED conference lecturer exploits African women & children
March 9, 2010
From Sonia Shah’s article at Ms. about Nathan Myhrvold and the idea of using lasers to eliminate malaria in Africa:
… At the annual techno-hip TED conference in February, Myhrvold decided to up the ante, tapping into the misery of millions of rural African women and their families to wrap his business in a cloak of moral urgency. “Every 43 seconds a child dies of malaria,” he told the crowd. And current anti-malaria interventions, many of which target the rural African women and children who are malaria’s main victims, don’t work that well, he said. Insecticides can be environmentally dangerous and some people use anti-mosquito bednets to catch fish instead.
That’s why Myhrvold came up with his latest invention: A mini-”Star Wars” weapons system that tracks mosquitoes in the air and shoots them down mid-flight–with lasers, of course. Like a Death Ray. All you need to make one is a Blu-ray player and a laser printer, plus a few months of processing time on a supercomputer, and voila!: you’re on your way to eradicating malaria in Africa for good.
Oh. My.
Tags: africa, articles, crude, death ray, malaria, ms, sonia shah
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Sonia Shah: Low-level pesticide exposure leads to evolutionary die-offs
January 8, 2010
From Sonia Shah’s article at Yale Environment 360 on low-level pesticide exposure:
Neonicotinoids came into wide use in the early 2000s. Unlike older pesticides that evaporate or disperse shortly after application, neonicotinoids are systemic poisons. Applied to the soil or doused on seeds, neonicotinoid insecticides incorporate themselves into the plant’s tissues, turning the plant itself into a tiny poison factory emitting toxin from its roots, leaves, stems, pollen, and nectar.
In Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia, beekeepers’ concerns about neonicotinoids’ effect on bee colonies have resulted in a series of bans on the chemicals. In the United States, regulators have approved their use, despite the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard method of protecting bees from insecticides — by requiring farmers to refrain from applying them during blooming times when bees are most exposed — does little to protect bees from systemic pesticides.
“The companies believe this stuff is safe,” says U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) entomologist Jeff Pettis.
Tags: articles, crude, environment, pesticides, sonia shah, yale
“crude” Posts
- Nov 9, Sonia Shah in Foreign Affairs on private corporations’ effect on global health
- Sep 21, Sonia Shah in The Wall Street Journal
- Feb 23, Sonia Shah on the link between climate change and cholera outbreaks
- Feb 16, Sonia Shah to deliver college address on malaria
- Mar 9, Sonia Shah: TED conference lecturer exploits African women & children
- Jan 8, Sonia Shah: Low-level pesticide exposure leads to evolutionary die-offs
