A fascinating and eye-opening talk by Hans Rosling at the US State Department:

Pretty amazing!

Dr. Peter Kilmarch (Chief, Epidemiology Branch, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, CDC) gave a presentation today on one of CHAMP's amazing StrategyLab conference calls. I didn't make the call, but I did check out the Powerpoint slides the Kilmarch sent out to support his talk, "Assessing the Effect of Antiretroviral Therapy on Risk of Sexual Transmission of HIV." Very useful and interesting compilation of data here. I'm not sure if the slides are public, so I won't republish them here, but I did want to highlight this slide on the hypothetical potential for ARV + Universal testing to dramatically impact the epidemic in South Africa:

Granted, this is highly hypothetical scenario (based on this modelling study) -- requiring a number of assumed phenomenon to be implemented without problem. But the entire set of slides highlights the potential for a combination of testing and treatment to be used as a powerful set of prevention techniques. I've said it once, I'll say it again: these are tried and true tools in our prevention knapsack -- and they seem to rely much less on the needs of behavioral change messages that I believe are often stigmatizing and highly problematic. Though certainly testing / treatment program implementations can come with their own set of problems (treatment adherence, questions over when to begin ARV treatment, etc.)

What we need to make this feasible is certainly generic equivalents -- ASAP. And certainly a rethinking of the "old school" approaches to prevention.

Pretty cool stuff:

Scientists in the U.S. are developing a laser gun that could kill millions of mosquitoes in minutes.

The laser, which has been dubbed a "weapon of mosquito destruction" fires at mosquitoes once it detects the audio frequency created by the beating of its wings.

The laser beam then destroys the mosquito, burning it on the spot.

Developed by some of the astrophysicists involved in what was known as the "Star Wars" anti-missile programs during the Cold War, the project is meant to prevent the spread of malaria.

Lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jordin Kare, told CNN that the laser would be able to sweep an area and "toast millions of mosquitoes in a few minutes."

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people from the bites of female mosquitoes.

Specifically, about 1,000,000 die from malaria each year (80-90% of which take place in sub-Saharan Africa). Killing mosquitos at this scale could have a significant impact in places like Africa -- if the technology makes it that far.

This is fucking ridiculous:

Zimbabwe's troubled central bank introduced $100 billion banknotes Saturday in a desperate bid to ease the recurrent cash shortages plaguing the inflation-ravaged economy.

The bills officially come into circulation Monday, although they were on the foreign currency dealers market Saturday.

As high as they are, though, the bills still aren't enough to buy a loaf of bread. They can buy only four oranges.

[snip]

In January, the government issued bills in denominations of $1 million, $5 million, and $10 million -- and in May, it issued bills from $25 million and $50 million up to $25 billion and $50 billion.

The new bills are actually bearer checks and have an expiration date of December 31. Zimbabwe has not had formal currency since the introduction of bearer checks as a temporary measure in 2003.

Just how bad is it there? Well, for example, a local cell phone call in Zimbabwe today costs about $58,000,000 / min, while international calls can cost up to $1,500,000,000 / minute. Yes, that's anywhere from $58 million to $1.5 billion dollars per minute:

NetOne subscribers now have to part with $58 million a minute for a call to another NetOne subscriber during peak periods.

Calls to subscribers on the Econet network will now cost $60 million, those to TelOne subscribers $63 million and $72 million to a Telecel subscriber.

Regional calls to landlines in Group 1 countries are now pegged at $155 million and $160 million for mobile receivers.

Calling a cell phone in Group 2 and 3 countries will cost as much as $1,5 billion a minute.

Zimbabwe's Dictator-in-Chief since 1980, Robert Mugabe, is to blame. Get him the fuck out of there! What a scumbag. He has singlehandedly destroyed his country's economy and spirit. It's absolutely devastating.

From The New York Times:

A genetic variation that once protected people in sub-Saharan Africa from a now extinct form of malaria may have left them somewhat more vulnerable to infection by H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The gene could account for 11 percent of the caseload in Africa, explaining why the disease is more common there than expected, researchers based in Texas and London say.

The eleven percent figure is interesting -- not quite sure how they came up with that. But it would make sense that a vulnerability of this kind would account for some of the radical disparity in HIV infections in Africa versus other continents.

The variation historically protected against a previous strain of malaria -- not the strain most common today:

The genetic variation, called a SNP (“snip”), involves a change in a single unit of DNA. This particular snip has a far-reaching consequence, that of preventing red blood cells from inserting a certain protein on their surface. The protein is called a receptor because it receives signals from a hormone known as CCL5, which is part of the immune system’s regulatory system.

The receptor is also used by a malarial parasite called Plasmodium vivax to gain entry to the red blood cells it feeds on. Some 10,000 years ago, people in Africa who possessed the SNP gained a powerful survival advantage from not being vulnerable to the ancestor of Plasmodium vivax. The SNP eventually swept through the population and the vivax parasite died out in Africa, to be replaced by its current successor, Plasmodium falciparum.

More than 90 percent of people in Africa now lack the receptor on their red blood cells, as do some 60 percent of African-Americans.

What are the implications here for the disparities in new infections among African-Americans in the United States -- particularly given the data that shows that Af-Am's do not engage in more "risky" sex than their white counterparts? More research is needed here!

This is sad:

Robert Mugabe apparently retained his presidential post Sunday after the opposition candidate dropped out of this week's runoff because, he said, asking Zimbabweans to vote was asking them to risk their lives.

"The courageous people of Zimbabwe, of this country, and the people of the MDC have done everything humanly and democratically possible to deliver a new Zimbabwe and new government," candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said after a closed-door meeting of his Movement for Democratic Change.

Tsvangirai was the first hope for change in Zimbabwe in many, many years. Mugabe is a disgusting dictator whose human rights violations are well documented. Tsvangirai's campaign has been the victim of these attacks as well:

There have been numerous reports from the opposition and from Zimbabwean church groups of kidnappings, torture and other violence, including the deaths of opposition party members. They say the violence targets opponents of Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF.