Tagged: Humanosphere

While the battle over drugs in the murder capital of the world intensifies and the U.S. president sends in VP Joe Biden, one Seattle expert worries the whole drug mess in Honduras is becoming a red herring.

Mauricio Vivero, executive director at the Seattle International Foundation, says many parts of Central America are in crisis today because of the combination of poverty, destabilized governments and a disengaged businesses.

There is no Hollywood-action-movie game plan that will fix the problem, he said. If the U.S. government truly wants to put a dent in the illegal drug trade, the first step should be to do whatever it can to promote trust and partnerships between business and local governments.

... but that’s just not as easy as sending guns and money.

Read more on Humanosphere.

This is the first installment of a new series on KPLU's Humanosphere:  “Changemakers” explores how young people, connected and globally aware, are working to change the world.

For Matthew T. Schneider, the struggle to ease the suffering of people afflicted by HIV/AIDS or sickened by malaria is something of a numbers game. Schneider, who since October has worked at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., is sifting mountains of data to understand how to best help sick, impoverished people in developing nations.

Read more on Humanosphere.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation officially calls it the Grand Challenges Exploration program and it was initially launched to fund unorthodox — some might even say "wacky" — scientific research projects aimed at solving problems in global health and development.

This week, the philanthropy is asking for a new round of proposals from all you creative types. In addition to the standard calls to optimize crop yields and improve vaccines, this round adds a new not-so-technologically geeky category into the mix: Advocacy and storytelling.

Read more on Humanosphere.

Two controversial studies on bird flu will once again be reviewed by an expert committee that advises the government on what to do with biological research that could pose potential dangers.

The move is just the latest development in a fierce ongoing debate about genetically altered flu viruses created in laboratories at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

There are many neglected diseases out there but not many as prevalent or as ravaging as visceral leishmaniasis, also known as black fever or kala azar — the ‘parasitic version of AIDS.’

Scientists at Seattle’s Infectious Disease Research Institute will soon begin testing an experimental vaccine they have designed to work against the most deadly form of this common parasitic disease spread by the bite of sand flies.

Read more on Humanosphere.

What do a Seattle-based global real estate firm, trees and Tony Blair have in common with fighting poverty and inequity worldwide? They’re all a part of a new charitable fund-raising initiative called Everyone Gives that launched this week out of Seattle.

Read more on Humanosphere.

To mark the start of the Tibetan New Year, Losar, some of Seattle’s Tibetan community demonstrated downtown against China with colorful flags, angry chants and coffins.

“The situation in Tibet right now is very, very bad,” said Jampa Jorkhang, president of Tibetan Association of Washington and one of the organizers of the protest yesterday.

Read more on Humanosphere.

Seems silly to talk about weaponized chickens, but that’s exactly the kind of talk world leaders have become afraid of.

The latest debate raging among scientists is whether to publish the results of recent experiments done on the bird flu virus. Those experiments have created a super deadly version of the H5N1 virus that could potentially be loosed by chickens (or other birds) and kill many tens of millions of people.

Remember when the CIA did that fake vaccination scheme in Pakistan, the one that many predicted (correctly) would undermine confidence in American health assistance and other aid programs?

Well, there’s another ongoing saga that illustrates the cost of mixing up foreign aid with foreign policy, especially when we use covert means to achieve foreign policy goals.

Read more on Humanosphere.

Attorneys who accuse Greg Mortenson of defrauding readers in his best-selling "Three Cups of Tea" say his case is no different from that of James Frey, who admitted on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" that he lied in his memoir "A Million Little Pieces."

That lawsuit ended in a settlement that offered refunds to buyers of the book.

The high profile fight over Mortenson’s book and questions about his work has aid agencies worried, said KPLU’s global health and development writer Tom Paulson.