Government

            In a time of profound interdependence and amazing technological developments, one could imagine a better quality of life for the majority of the world's people. And yet, growing gaps exist between rich and poor, between peoples of the North and the South. We are now on the verge of a new divide. With the release of The Report of the Advisory Committee on Health Research on Genomics and World Health by the World Health Organization, attention will turn to growing inequities in the distribution of benefits from genome-related biotechnologies.[1] An appropriate response by the world community "governments, citizens, and experts from industry and academia "would be to foster global dialogue and provide a forum for shaping the necessary governance framework through a commission on genomics and global health.Technology is a powerful tool for development. The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2001: Making New Technologies Work for Human Development makes the case that technologies present boundless opportunities for those who create them but often end up shaping a world of inequity.[2] With the introduction of information technologies, our vocabularies expanded to include the concept of a digital divide. Similarly, advances in agricultural biotechnology, with the promise to the developing world of increased crop yields, additional nutritional properties, and solutions to pest control and drought, were subject to the creation of a biosafety regime designed by the North. The next wave of technology "genome-related biotechnologies in health "does not have to follow that pattern.There are stark disparities in health around the globe. In industrialized countries like Norway and Australia, life expectancy is around eighty years and rising. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is forty years and falling, largely as a result of HIV/AIDS. Many in the developing world die of "pedestrian- (malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia) but persistently devastating infectious diseases.