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4A - Thursday, April12, 2007

OPINION

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at
the University of Michigan since 1890.
413 E. Huron St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
tothedaily@umich.edu

KARL STAMPFL
EDITOR IN CHIEF

IMRAN SYED
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

JEFFREY BLOOMER
MANAGING EDITOR

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles
and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Localwarming
State must do its part to win the war on warming
S now over Easter weekend isn't normal. As a story in the
Detroit Free Press this week pointed out, it doesn't take
a scientific consensus to discern that global warming is
quickly becoming much more local. New scientific studies from
the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest
that Michigan has reason to be especially worried about both the
effects of global warming and its own contribution through carbon
emissions to making that issue a pressing concern. With the state's
majestic Great Lakes and wildlife at stake, lawmakers and citizens
must work together to counteract global warming and help Michi-
gan become a leader in going green.

We are just as innocent today
as we were back then.
- David Evans, one of the Duke University Lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting a stripper last year, after the
charges were thrown out yesterday, as reported on nytimes.com.
JOE LUCAS
P, A T' ~
pe w
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What eacle will look likfe

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The effects on Michigan's ecosystems
by a warming planet would be crippling.
Demand for freshwater from the Great
Lakes will increase sharply as sources of
water in the Southwest dry up, potential-
ly causing a drastic dip in water levels at
Michigan's shores. Cherry crop revenues
would take a hit if growing seasons were
altered by freakish spring cold spells like
the one we're in now.
Various species of animals would face
extinction, disrupting sensitive ecosystems
and bringing aboutnew and deadly diseases
like the west Nile Virus. Even Michigan's
winter tourism industry would suffer if the
winters become routinely mild. There are,
however, reasonable steps that can be taken
to prevent these problems
The Environmental Protection Agency,
per last week's Supreme Court ruling, is
now required to deal with greenhouse
gases as environmental pollutants. It can't
stop there. It needs to address its cur-
rent regulations for the auto industry and
outdated power plants, two things that
Michigan has a lot of. The EPA has the
opportunity to be the bridge between a
stubborn White House and a stubborn auto
industry, and that bridge will be especially
vital in Michigan.

Most critical is the willingness of the
automakers in Detroit to listen to demands
for higher fuel standards. The Big Three
can no longer resist tougher fuel regula-
tions as Toyota beats them in both sales
and emissions. However, it also falls upon
the Bush Administration to stop waffling
on the issue and impose meaningful feder-
ally mandated emissions standards before
it's too late.
Most importantly, Michigan residents
should do their part. Simple acts of con-
servation can go a long way in reducing the
state's overall carbon emissions. Purchas-
ing efficient light bulbs, turning off unused
computers, turning down thermostats or
reducing water use are all easy changes
that make a huge difference. The minor
effort involved in replacing one average
light bulb with an efficient spiral bulb saves
150 pounds of carbon annually. Residents
can pressure Detroit and other cities for
wider use of mass transit too if they dan-
gle their votes under the collective nose of
those desperate state politicians.
Michigan's future is as rooted in fight-
ing global warming as any state in the
country. Voters must act to convince law-
makers that the state's future is at stake.
Because it is.

There is a column that I have
wanted to write ever since
made the decision to write for
the Daily. A column on a topic that I
thought I would write reams about but
onlywroteon once: Israel and Palestine.
Seeing that this will be my final column
for this newspaper, what better way to
go out than with a little controversy?
I've heard con--
stant bickering
between pro-Israel
activists and their
pro-Palestinian w
counterparts on
campus since I got
here four years ago.
From the shouting
matches on the Diag JARED
to the back-and- GOLDBERG
forth name-call- - -
ing on these pages, it just never stops.
When all is said and done, however, the
end of the conflict will come as all good
compromises do: with sacrifice.
The two camps on campus are so
repellent in their ideology that this com-
promise seems like a pipedream. The
pro-Israel side, while at times begrudg-
ingly admitting that the country has
made mistakes,prefers toglorifyitsgood
qualities while overlookingits problems.
Granted Israel affords more rights to its
minorities than any of its neighbors, but
that doesn't alleviate Israel of its respon-
sibility to eliminate the discrimination
of those minorities, the Israeli Arabs in
particular. Unfortunately, the pro-Israel
camp has few if any solutions regarding
disparities in education, civilservice and
socioeconomic status.
In addition to dismissing Israel's dis-
crimination against its owncitizens, the
pro-Israel camp also ignores the real-
ity of the occupation. The occupation,
meaningthe presence of Israeli soldiers

and settlers in the Palestinian territo-
ries, is consistently overlooked. Few
people on the pro-Israel side will admit
thehorrors ofsuchanoccupation, one in
which many innocent Palestinians have
been imprisoned and killed. They will
vigorously defend the separation bar-
rier that Israel has constructed, but they
will dismiss the concerns of the local
Palestinians who are cut off from their
own land as a result of its construction.
And the military checkpoints are an
injustice in and of themselves.
The anti-Israel side has critical
faults too. Many within this camp deny
that the Jewish people are a cohesive
people like the Palestinians. They
assert that Jews are merely a religious
group and therefore do not deserve a
nation-state. They say this while simul-
taneously condoning nation-states for
almost everyone else.
There are even many anti-Israel
activists who want to see Palestine
return to the way it was before 1850.
The "European Jews" would return to
the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and the
"Oriental Jews" would return to the
ghettos of the Middle East. The only
Jews permitted to remain would be
those who know their place as second-
class citizens.
It is a distortion of reality to say the
Middle East was a utopia for the Jews
before the coming of Zionism. Prior to
the establishment of Israel, Jews in the
Middle East lived as second-class citi-
zens. A returnto these conditions is not
peace. It's servitude. This will never
happen, but the fact that many want it
to happen is disturbing itself.
Please note that these characteriza-
tions are for the different ends of the ide-
ological spectrum. Most people fit into
the place that I call home: mutual recog-
nition of the grievances of both sides.

Anyone who understands the
essence of compromise knows what
peace in the Middle East will look
like. It will be two states existing side
by side. Jerusalem will be the capital
of both states. Israel will recognize its
role in the creation of the refugee prob-
lem and provide compensation. How
close this situation will be to Israel rec-
ognizing the Palestinian right of return
is questionable. Either way, a compro-
mise will have to be agreed upon.
What should be clear, however, is
that Israel will most likely not resettle
within its borders the millions of Pal-
estinian refugees living in camps scat-
tered throughout the Middle East. That
The only solution
in the Middle East
is compromise.
may be painful to accept, and for those
who may be so inclined to write letters
to the Daily to express their outrage at
such a conclusion, bear this in mind: If
the world cannot force Israel to end the
occupation - something which even
Israel now acknowledges it cannot sus-
tain - what makes you think the world
will force Israel to resettle the refugees?
With this last column, I sincerely
hope I leave this campus a little more
cooperative, rational and inspired than
I found it. If we as students cannot find
a way to peacefully disagree and coex-
ist, what hope is there for those people
thousands of miles away that we care
so much about?
Jared Goldberg can be reached
atijaredgo@umich.edu.

4

UNIVERSITIES ALLIED FOR ESSENTIAL MEDICINES I VWPI
Michigan's medical mission

The thing about living in an ivgry tower is
that you can't ignore the view. A university
isn't just about learning and knowledge; it's
also about how that learning and knowledge
shapes the landscape.
Unfortunately, depending on where your
gaze rests, the landscape can look rather
grim. Consider Africa. Ninety percent of
people with life-threatening illnesses there
don't get the drugs they need. One major
barrier to accessing these medicines is their
prohibitively high prices on the open mar-
ket. Yale University saw this obstacle as an
opportunity.
In 2001, the pharmaceutical company
Bristol Meyers Squibb declined to lower the
price of the HIV/AIDS drug Stavudine (d4T)
when asked to do so by the international
medical charity Doctors Without Borders.
Students and faculty at Yale - where the
drug was developed, patented and licensed
to Bristol Meyers - caught wind of the affair
and created a public outcry.
Perhaps unexpectedly, their voice was
heard. Yale renegotiated its price and licens-
ing terms with Bristol Meyers, allowing
the production of generics. The price of the
drug quickly fell by 98 percent, from nearly
$4,000 to less than $100 per patient per year,
making it available to thousands who would
have previously been denied treatment.
This success spawned a national orga-
nization, Universities Allied for Essential
Medicines, whose aim is to institute-fairer
technology licensing practices between
universities and industry and to promote
increased university research on neglected
diseases.
The case for equitable licensing is com-
pelling and straightforward. People in poor
countries need drugs. Developing coun-
tries make up only 0.3 percent of the global
pharmaceutical market. They will never be
pharmaceutical companies' bread and butter
because they simply can't afford the sticker
prices. Fair licensing of university technolo-
gies for lower- and middle-income countries
allows generic producers to provide the
drug at competitive and accessible prices
with no substantial losses to universities or
drug companies. We are not talking about
Viagra and Zoloft, but rather technologies
that address prevalent health issues in the
developing world.
Critics argue that only a small number of
drugs needed in developing countries origi-
nate from research at the university level
and that a change in licensing procedures is
merely a drop in the bucket. Yet it only takes
one such innovation to make a difference.
Furthermore, research at the university
level is pluripotent and regularly generates
knowledge with applications that have not
yet been defined. The University of Michi-

gan, for example, has an important role in
d4T's legacy: The compound was originally
developed at the University in the 1960s.
Investigators at Yale later identified its
potential for treating HIV in the early 1990s.
The d4T case shows us that we can't afford
to address the applications of this research
ex post facto.
Universities are beginning to realize the
importance of their role in access to medi-
cines. Eleven major research institutions,
including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, along
with the Association of American Medical
Colleges, recently agreed to work toward a
system of equitable technology transfer for
their research. The movement is gaining
momentum. As one of the country's lead-
ers in higher education and research, the
University of Michigan must join the move-
ment.
The University spent almost $780 million
on research in 2005, with more than 40 per-
cent goingto biomedical research at the med:
ical school. That's no trivial sum. This isn't a
tangential issue, but rather one that speaks
to the core of our university's mission state-
ment: "...to serve the people of Michigan and
the world through preeminence in creating,
communicating, preserving and applying
knowledge, art, and academic values."
Students and faculty create this knowl-
edge, and the onus falls on us to ensure that
the University lives up to its stated aims for
its dissemination. We have a unique oppor-
tunity to both change the way knowledge is
developed and shared and to dramatically
affect the quality and duration of life of mil-
lions of people.
April 18 is Universities Allied for Essential
Medicines's national day of action. Chapters
at universities across the country are engag-
ing their student bodies and faculty in an
effort to raise awareness about the power of
university licensing and research practices.
Consider this an invitation to get involved
and take ownership of the knowledge you're
helping to create.
Go to www.essentialmedicine.org/cs/ to
express your support for fairer university
licensing practices and increased research
on neglected diseases. Contact us at uaem
info@umich.edu to learn about how you can
be a part of the movement at the University.
We have high hopes. The view from the
ivory tower doesn't have to evoke guilt. It
can elicit change in the way we do business.
Let's live up to our mission statement and
our place in the world. Let's reaffirm why we
create knowledge in the first place.
Jennifer Hasvold, Kate Maurer and Ashwin
Vasan are students in the University Medical School.
They are members of the University's chapter
of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

ALEX MACBRIAR
Innovation worth funding

We all know AIDS is destroy-
ing Africa. The disease ravages the
continent - primarily targeting
children and the working-age popu-
lation - making it impossible for
the African people to escape a dev-
astating cycle of poverty, famine,
war and genocide. I see no point in
belaboring what you already know.
Instead, I'm going to talk about a
simple opportunity for all of us to
help start solving the problem.
I am a founding member of the
student organization Alliance for
World AIDS Relief and Education.
Its mission statement is to fund
research projects that seek to attack
AIDS from inspired and innovative
angles, because traditional methods
are clearing failing. I spent most of
the academic year trying to unearth
research projects that have the
potential to substantially affect the
treatment and prevention of AIDS.
In that search, I have come to a frus-
trating realization: Academia sucks.
The vast majority of socio-political
research that is conducted at institu-
tions like the University of Michigan
is aimed at topics that, while inter-
esting, will never have any practical
application or make the slightest dif-
ference in anyone's lives.
This year, AWARE has selected
political science doctoral candi-
date Derek Stafford for its funding.
His research presentation really
stood out because of its ingenuity

and realistic applicability. He really
does some freaky stuff. Stafford has
studied psychology, political sci-
ence, statistics, behavioral game
theory, network analysis and com-
plex systems. In his spare time, he
reads about neuroscience. He is an
academic who takes his research out
of the realm of the abstract and will
make a difference in the real world.
He is conducting a network anal-
ysis of communities in South Africa
to identify actors who can aid in pub-
lic health education to both prevent
AIDS transmission and encourage
proper treatment. Network analysis
is a brilliant cutting-edge method
for leveraginginformation about the
interconnectedness of social com-
munities that I cannot really explain
in detail in this viewpoint.
When leading humanitarian
and Harvard University Prof. Paul
Farmer came to campus he warned
the us about treating the disease
apart from the social structure of
the community.Essentially, network
analysis is a photo of that structure,
and the research will train public
health workers about how to use the
existing structure to effectively and
efficiently address problems asso-
ciated with AIDS. No one has ever
done anything like this before.
With Stafford's research, public
health officials can better challenge
AIDS misinformation that pervades
African communities. One such

rumor is that sex with a virgin will
cure you of AIDS. Network analysis
can isolate the purveyors of misin-
formation and identify the people
most capable of spreading proper
health education. Additionally, in
South Africa, a country that has
considerable medical infrastruc-
ture, many people avoid hospitals
and clinics because they fear the
stigma associated with AIDS. This
research can help mobilize the com-
munity.
This bringsme back to my original
point: Academia sucks. The timing
of Stafford's opportunity to travel to
Africa and map these communities
is such that he has lost the ability
to apply for funding from the usual
sources. You can help. AWARE is
holding a fundraiser for Stafford in
Angell Hall Auditorium D at 3 p.m.
on Saturday. He will be presenting
much more about network analy-
sis and his research proposal than
I have space to tell you here. Please
come and be part of a solution.
I know you are skeptical, and you
should be. But for those of you who
actually care about this problem, I
promise that if you come on Satur-
day, Stafford will astound you - not
with dramatic pictures and emo-
tional stories, but withthe quality of
his research.
Alex MacBriar is an
engineering sophomore.

Editorial Board Members: Emily Beam, Kevin Bunkley, Amanda Burns, Sam Butler, Ben Caleca,
Mike Eber, Brian Flaherty, Mara Gay, Jared Goldberg, Emmarie Huetteman, Toby Mitchell,
David Russell, Gavin Stern, John Stiglich, Jennifer Sussex, Neil Tambe, Radhika Upadhyaya,
Rachel Wagner, Christopher Zbrozek