Pinkwashing cancer – Pink Ribbons, Inc. looks at capitalising on hope
Doco examines how devastating disease became shiny pink marketing dream diverting donations away from organisations doing most of the work towards organisations with better PR. Is this the best use of donors’ money? And what about all the non-pinkified cancers?
Directing cancer research
Medical research, and cancer research in particular, is the recipient of charitable funding in a way that few other areas of research are.
Disease eradication: polio and guinea worm
The world continues to inch towards the eradication of two more diseases. The number of Guinea worm cases continues to decline. According to the latest WHO bulletin, in January through September 2011, there were 1,008 cases of dracunculasis reported, compared [...]
The perils of scientific paper retraction
Nature News has a story about one of the most difficult topics in science: paper retraction. For any number of reasons, a published scientific paper are sometimes discovered to be so flawed that they must be withdrawn from publication (which, [...]
An effective malaria vaccine!
This is amazing – a (partially) effective vaccine for malaria. The full scholarly article on the Phase 3 clinical trial is here. In short, the vaccine reduced the incidence of malaria amongst vaccinated children by about half. It’s not a [...]
The responsibilities of advocacy
Clem Bastow has penned an op-ed criticizing Australian of the Year Pat McGorry for not defending the Better Access Program from cuts. But is he really obliged to?
Amy Winehouse and the tragedy of myths
Winehouse’s struggles will have been compounded by the world she found herself in. Her death should stimulate reflection on how myths surrounding mental illness have a cruel hold over real lives.
Rinderpest eradicated
I’d never heard of rinderpest, and I come from cattle country. And, absent human malevolence, the world will never hear of rinderpest again. Absent any cases for a decade, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization will, on June 28th, adopt [...]
Pharmaceutical budget savings
In many ways the Budget was too complex to create a simple narrative. Laura Tingle had an excellent piece illustrating this. In another piece she said that the Budget was actually better than the spin. She was impressed with spending [...]
The biggest, most destructive drinking game of all
There is a ubiquitous, wildly popular pink elephant in the room. The “bad news” about alcohol keeps rolling in, but boy oh boy, it’s a whole lot easier to ignore it. In November 2010, The Guardian reported the results of [...]
Medical research and corporate tax
From the perspective of somebody whose research is (partly) funded through the Australian Research Council, the world of medical research has sometimes looked like a land of milk and honey, where lavish laboratories, full of very expensive machines that go [...]
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