Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride...

A recent "Update" from the World Bank has caused widespread media celebrations of "drastic" progress against poverty in the 2005-10 period. But no such progress is visible in the data on undernutrition provided by the FAO. This paper discusses the discrepancy and, more broadly, better ways of...

The estimates of the extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty provided in the World Bank's World Development Reports for 1990 and 2000/01 are neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line unrelated to any clear conception of what poverty...

Prompt and affordable access to essential medicines is a component of almost all domestic and global public health models. As is now well known, the availability and costs of both brand and generic drugs is a function of traditional patent law incentives. Less known, however, is that generic...