At a tempestuous hearing Thursday, one House member after another criticized a growing campaign to lift the ban on American tourists traveling to Cuba. The move would reward a regime that oppresses its own people, lawmakers declared, pointing to the recent assault on Yoani Sánchez, a Cuban blogger and government critic, by suspected state security agents.
The beating showed that "the Cuban regime has not unclenched its fist," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Now is not the time to change policy and start appeasing and funding the Castro clan," said Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), citing Sánchez's case.
There was just one problem with making Sánchez the poster child for the travel ban: She opposes it.
Halfway through the hearing, the committee's chairman, Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), produced a letter he had received from the prominent blogger. "An opening of travel for Americans could bring more results in the democratization of Cuba than the indecisive performance of Raúl Castro," she wrote, referring to Cuba's president.
With Cuba having receded as a Cold War security threat, the country's human rights record is now at the center of U.S. policy toward the island. But as Thursday's hearing showed, lawmakers and even Cuban dissidents appear sharply divided on how to bring about change in the hemisphere's oldest dictatorship.
Supporters of lifting the travel ban think the move would loosen the communist government's grip by bringing in a flood of American tourists spreading democratic ideas. That argument was advanced Thursday by a prominent supporter of Cuban political prisoners, Miriam Leiva, testifying from Havana.
"Many thousands of Americans visiting Cuba would benefit our society," Leiva said, her face appearing on two video screens that loomed over the room in the Rayburn House Office Building. "Firstly, through the free flow of ideas, and further, by pressing the government to open up self-employment to provide goods and services, such as renting rooms, because the capacities in the hotels would be surpassed."
In the audience, a group of older men, wearing fist-size white buttons showing how many years they had spent in Cuban prisons, shook their heads and muttered. Berta Antúnez, the sister of a longtime Cuban political prisoner, rejected Leiva's arguments.
"For years, European, Canadian and Latin American tourists have traveled to Cuba without having any impact on the Cuban reality" but still filling government coffers, said Antúnez, who testified in person. She sat at a table with witnesses including James Cason, a former chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba who favors the ban, and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a Clinton administration anti-drug official who wants it scrapped.
Berman says those who support lifting the ban have their best chance in years to get rid of it, thanks to Democratic control of the White House and Congress and backing from a wide range of business, agricultural and other groups. He says the House may act on legislation by the spring.
But many lawmakers -- including Democrats -- say they fear such a change could help prop up the Castro brothers, Raúl and his predecessor, Fidel.
Source: washingtonpost.com/
Cuba Twitter,this blog offers users news social, economic, political, sports and cultural developments that take place in Cuba and in third world nations,Cuba Twitter
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Engaging Cuba on Human Rights
Normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba was widely seen as exactly the kind of high-value, low-hanging fruit that would be ideal for a president elected under the banner of "change." But a scathing new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, "New Castro, Same Cuba," will make lifting sanctions against the Castro regime—on travel, remittances, trade—more difficult for President Obama.
Sadly, the human-rights situation on the island remains dismal, despite new leadership. According to HRW, the Raúl Castro government has harassed and imprisoned dissidents using an Orwellian provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that punishes "dangerousness." Authorities can lock up individuals on the suspicion that they may commit a crime in the future, or for engaging in behavior that is "antisocial" or contrary to "socialist morality."
Among the activities the government has deemed "dangerous" are: handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, failing to attend pro-government rallies, or simply being unemployed. In its report, based on more than 60 interviews carried out in Cuba without official permission or by phone from abroad, HRW documented more than 40 cases of dissidents who have been sentenced for "dangerousness."
Cuban law is replete with laws like the "dangerousness" provision that may be used to punish anyone seen as critical of the government. Human-rights defenders, journalists, political activists and others charged with breaking such laws find themselves at the mercy of a system that violates virtually every due process right.
Political detainees are denied access to legal counsel and family visits. They are subjected to abusive interrogations, and they may be detained for months or even years without being charged. Trials are pure theater, mostly conducted behind closed doors and finished in minutes.
Once in prison, abuse is commonplace. On Dec. 10, 2008—Human Rights Day—a political prisoner tried to read aloud to fellow prisoners from a book his wife had brought him called "Your Rights." In response, a guard came into his cell and told him to eat the book. When the prisoner refused, he was beaten and later sentenced to six more years in prison for "disrespecting authority."
Dissidents are subjected to public "acts of repudiation," in which crowds gather outside of their homes, throwing stones, shouting threats, and sometimes physically assaulting them. Those labeled "counterrevolutionaries" are fired from their jobs, monitored, threatened and prevented from traveling. The beating of dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez by two men she says were Cuban agents in civilian clothes in Havana just two weeks ago is further proof of this regrettable state of affairs.
Without outside pressure, the human-rights situation in Cuba will not improve. But outside pressure—sadly absent today, in the case of Europe or Latin America—has proved insufficient. At the same time, the U.S. embargo policy has been a unmitigated failure.
The logical route to follow is the one HRW and others have suggested: The U.S. should shift from a policy of regime change to a policy of human-rights promotion. The Obama administration should approach the European Union and the Latin American democracies and offer to lift the embargo on the condition that these countries join the U.S. in pressuring Cuba on a single demand: the release of all political prisoners, including those incarcerated for "dangerousness."
Once the U.S. government has secured this commitment and a multilateral coalition is in place, the U.S. should end its failed embargo policy. Cuba should be given a brief and specified period—the report recommends six months—to release all of its political prisoners.
If the government of Raúl Castro complies, it will set in motion a process whose ultimate goal is the full normalization of relations with the U.S. and the EU, as well as compliance with the democratic standards of the Organization of American States. If it does not, this multilateral coalition should enact targeted sanctions directed at the leadership of the Castro government.
The Castro brothers know that nothing would be more threatening to their half-century monopoly on power than the end of the U.S. embargo, which they use as a justification for their ongoing abuses. Indeed, they appear to be deliberately sabotaging normalization by making the human-rights situation worse.
This is why a multilateral approach is crucial. According to the Spanish daily El País, President Obama asked Spanish Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero three weeks ago to "Tell the Cubans we are taking steps, but if they don't take them too, it will be very difficult for us to continue." The Obama administration gets it. Now, if only we could get more Latin American countries to stop countenancing Cuba's human-rights violations and play a constructive role.
Mr. Castaneda, a professor at New York University and fellow at the New America Foundation, was Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003.
Source: wsj.com/
Sadly, the human-rights situation on the island remains dismal, despite new leadership. According to HRW, the Raúl Castro government has harassed and imprisoned dissidents using an Orwellian provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that punishes "dangerousness." Authorities can lock up individuals on the suspicion that they may commit a crime in the future, or for engaging in behavior that is "antisocial" or contrary to "socialist morality."
Among the activities the government has deemed "dangerous" are: handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, failing to attend pro-government rallies, or simply being unemployed. In its report, based on more than 60 interviews carried out in Cuba without official permission or by phone from abroad, HRW documented more than 40 cases of dissidents who have been sentenced for "dangerousness."
Cuban law is replete with laws like the "dangerousness" provision that may be used to punish anyone seen as critical of the government. Human-rights defenders, journalists, political activists and others charged with breaking such laws find themselves at the mercy of a system that violates virtually every due process right.
Political detainees are denied access to legal counsel and family visits. They are subjected to abusive interrogations, and they may be detained for months or even years without being charged. Trials are pure theater, mostly conducted behind closed doors and finished in minutes.
Once in prison, abuse is commonplace. On Dec. 10, 2008—Human Rights Day—a political prisoner tried to read aloud to fellow prisoners from a book his wife had brought him called "Your Rights." In response, a guard came into his cell and told him to eat the book. When the prisoner refused, he was beaten and later sentenced to six more years in prison for "disrespecting authority."
Dissidents are subjected to public "acts of repudiation," in which crowds gather outside of their homes, throwing stones, shouting threats, and sometimes physically assaulting them. Those labeled "counterrevolutionaries" are fired from their jobs, monitored, threatened and prevented from traveling. The beating of dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez by two men she says were Cuban agents in civilian clothes in Havana just two weeks ago is further proof of this regrettable state of affairs.
Without outside pressure, the human-rights situation in Cuba will not improve. But outside pressure—sadly absent today, in the case of Europe or Latin America—has proved insufficient. At the same time, the U.S. embargo policy has been a unmitigated failure.
The logical route to follow is the one HRW and others have suggested: The U.S. should shift from a policy of regime change to a policy of human-rights promotion. The Obama administration should approach the European Union and the Latin American democracies and offer to lift the embargo on the condition that these countries join the U.S. in pressuring Cuba on a single demand: the release of all political prisoners, including those incarcerated for "dangerousness."
Once the U.S. government has secured this commitment and a multilateral coalition is in place, the U.S. should end its failed embargo policy. Cuba should be given a brief and specified period—the report recommends six months—to release all of its political prisoners.
If the government of Raúl Castro complies, it will set in motion a process whose ultimate goal is the full normalization of relations with the U.S. and the EU, as well as compliance with the democratic standards of the Organization of American States. If it does not, this multilateral coalition should enact targeted sanctions directed at the leadership of the Castro government.
The Castro brothers know that nothing would be more threatening to their half-century monopoly on power than the end of the U.S. embargo, which they use as a justification for their ongoing abuses. Indeed, they appear to be deliberately sabotaging normalization by making the human-rights situation worse.
This is why a multilateral approach is crucial. According to the Spanish daily El País, President Obama asked Spanish Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero three weeks ago to "Tell the Cubans we are taking steps, but if they don't take them too, it will be very difficult for us to continue." The Obama administration gets it. Now, if only we could get more Latin American countries to stop countenancing Cuba's human-rights violations and play a constructive role.
Mr. Castaneda, a professor at New York University and fellow at the New America Foundation, was Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003.
Source: wsj.com/
Cuba film institute founder looks back on 50 years
HAVANA — Fidel Castro was 32 and building his new government on the fly.
He nationalized Cuba's U.S.-run telephone company, tapped Che Guevara as head of the National Bank and claimed he was no communist to every interviewer — later maintaining he hid his true political convictions to keep from antagonizing Washington too soon.
And he created a state-run film industry, founding the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematography on March 24, 1959 — just 82 days after his bearded rebels' revolution.
As the institute celebrates its 50th anniversary during the Havana film festival beginning Dec. 3, its founder, Alfredo Guevara, a college friend of Castro's, provided written answers to questions from The Associated Press.
"Cinema was the great communicator and Fidel knew it. We were inspired protagonists and accomplices in the urgency of the revolution," said Guevara, who is not related to Che.
Guevara, 82, stepped down as institute head in 2000, but remains one of the government's behind-the-scenes power-brokers. He was a communist who went into exile in the 1940s but returned to Cuba in 1951 and became a public face of the party long before Castro did.
Castro grasped that movies, especially quality ones with mass appeal, could be his government's best public-relations weapon. He turned to Guevara, who had written screenplays but was more of an intellectual than movie buff, and was willing to defend the revolution at all cost — even when it meant advocating state censorship.
"I'm not a rebel, or at least not a professional rebel," Guevara said, "I'm a revolutionary."
But Guevara says the film institute is not in the propaganda business.
"We have a mission, an end we always work toward," he said. "It's not ideology, it's idealism."
The institute has produced more than 300 films, winning international acclaim and helping keep the Castro government hip in intellectual circles — despite its bans on free speech, expression, assembly and press.
In 1961, Castro defined free expression as "within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing." Many intellectuals and artists were imprisoned or hounded into exile. Censorship closed all nongovernment media and halted publication and promotion of literature, academic work and art.
Then, between 1971 and 1976, the so-called "five gray years," many artists and writers were fired or fled Cuba as "counterrevolutionaries."
Despite those obstacles, the institute produced powerful, unfiltered looks at Cuban reality — especially the work of late director Tomas Gutierrez Alea, whose films include the fall-over funny satire of crippling Cuban bureaucracy, 1966's "La Muerte de un Burocrata," or "Death of a Bureaucrat," and "Memories of Underdevelopment," "Memorias del Subdesarollo," a story of post-revolutionary disillusionment.
"There is a level at which most Cuban films, or at least the pinnacle of accomplishment, were always operating on some sort of allegorical level. I think there is a balance between what is implicitly stated and what is actually stated," said Mariana Johnson, a professor of film studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who is writing a book on contemporary Cuban cinema. "There's a double-voice in a way that does not go unnoticed to a Cuban audience."
Just as he has at times argued in favor of nipping anti-government expression in the bud, Guevara also has sometimes used his stature within the government to protect brilliant but critical films.
"The socialist revolution gave me authenticity at any price," Guevara said.
Still, films sometimes got a little too authentic for the government's liking.
"Alicia en el Pueblo de las Maravillas," or "Alice in Wondertown" used fantasy to satirize the incompetence of Cuba's government and its top officials' exploitation of ordinary islanders. It debuted to huge crowds in 1991, but was yanked from theaters after four days. Guevara later publicly "forgave" the film, but it was not widely rereleased.
Movies are one of the many things Cuba's government subsidizes and are shown in crumbling, 1950s theaters for less than an American dime.
In 1996, "Guantanamera," Gutierrez Alea's comedy about a corpse that travels from one end of Cuba to the other amid prohibitions on hearses crossing state lines, prompted this rebuke from Castro during a speech: "Transmitting the notion that the revolution and all socialism is bureaucracy and poverty tarnishes the ideas of the country."
Cuba's film institute also coped with economic hardships — especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its annual subsidies to the island.
In 1993, the institute produced just two full-length features, one a classic about repression and friendship, Gutierrez Alea's "Fresa y Chocolate," or "Strawberry and Chocolate." Guevara also noted that Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo sparks shortages of everything from high-intensity light bulbs to movie projectors.
"Looking back, its a miracle we still exist," he said.
Still, from the 1990s on, many Cuban filmmakers know their work may never get completed without securing extra financing from Europe.
"They have to think less about the Cuban government and more about what is going to play to foreign investors," Johnson said.
More recent frank films include Suite Habana, a 2003 documentary that follows the lives of 13 Havana residents, including a 79-year-old retiree who supplements her tiny pension selling peanuts on the street. "Broken Gods," "Los Dioses Rotos," retells the tale of a famous Havana pimp from a bygone era — but uses modern-day "jineteras," or young Cuban women who sell their bodies to rich tourists.
Today, young Cuban filmmakers are producing shorts for the Internet, bypassing Guevara's institute altogether.
"You see much more critical voices coming out of those short films," Johnson said. "They don't have to worry about getting it out in wide distribution. They just put it online."
After a half century, Guevara said he is satisfied with the institute's work, but acknowledged it may be losing touch with young Cubans.
"If we succeeded in being better and learning to listen to (young people) it would be an achievement," he said. "In some areas, we haven't made it out of grade school."
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrmZWovxIvrTz6PYT69UGLtcIqxwD9C535UO5
He nationalized Cuba's U.S.-run telephone company, tapped Che Guevara as head of the National Bank and claimed he was no communist to every interviewer — later maintaining he hid his true political convictions to keep from antagonizing Washington too soon.
And he created a state-run film industry, founding the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematography on March 24, 1959 — just 82 days after his bearded rebels' revolution.
As the institute celebrates its 50th anniversary during the Havana film festival beginning Dec. 3, its founder, Alfredo Guevara, a college friend of Castro's, provided written answers to questions from The Associated Press.
"Cinema was the great communicator and Fidel knew it. We were inspired protagonists and accomplices in the urgency of the revolution," said Guevara, who is not related to Che.
Guevara, 82, stepped down as institute head in 2000, but remains one of the government's behind-the-scenes power-brokers. He was a communist who went into exile in the 1940s but returned to Cuba in 1951 and became a public face of the party long before Castro did.
Castro grasped that movies, especially quality ones with mass appeal, could be his government's best public-relations weapon. He turned to Guevara, who had written screenplays but was more of an intellectual than movie buff, and was willing to defend the revolution at all cost — even when it meant advocating state censorship.
"I'm not a rebel, or at least not a professional rebel," Guevara said, "I'm a revolutionary."
But Guevara says the film institute is not in the propaganda business.
"We have a mission, an end we always work toward," he said. "It's not ideology, it's idealism."
The institute has produced more than 300 films, winning international acclaim and helping keep the Castro government hip in intellectual circles — despite its bans on free speech, expression, assembly and press.
In 1961, Castro defined free expression as "within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing." Many intellectuals and artists were imprisoned or hounded into exile. Censorship closed all nongovernment media and halted publication and promotion of literature, academic work and art.
Then, between 1971 and 1976, the so-called "five gray years," many artists and writers were fired or fled Cuba as "counterrevolutionaries."
Despite those obstacles, the institute produced powerful, unfiltered looks at Cuban reality — especially the work of late director Tomas Gutierrez Alea, whose films include the fall-over funny satire of crippling Cuban bureaucracy, 1966's "La Muerte de un Burocrata," or "Death of a Bureaucrat," and "Memories of Underdevelopment," "Memorias del Subdesarollo," a story of post-revolutionary disillusionment.
"There is a level at which most Cuban films, or at least the pinnacle of accomplishment, were always operating on some sort of allegorical level. I think there is a balance between what is implicitly stated and what is actually stated," said Mariana Johnson, a professor of film studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who is writing a book on contemporary Cuban cinema. "There's a double-voice in a way that does not go unnoticed to a Cuban audience."
Just as he has at times argued in favor of nipping anti-government expression in the bud, Guevara also has sometimes used his stature within the government to protect brilliant but critical films.
"The socialist revolution gave me authenticity at any price," Guevara said.
Still, films sometimes got a little too authentic for the government's liking.
"Alicia en el Pueblo de las Maravillas," or "Alice in Wondertown" used fantasy to satirize the incompetence of Cuba's government and its top officials' exploitation of ordinary islanders. It debuted to huge crowds in 1991, but was yanked from theaters after four days. Guevara later publicly "forgave" the film, but it was not widely rereleased.
Movies are one of the many things Cuba's government subsidizes and are shown in crumbling, 1950s theaters for less than an American dime.
In 1996, "Guantanamera," Gutierrez Alea's comedy about a corpse that travels from one end of Cuba to the other amid prohibitions on hearses crossing state lines, prompted this rebuke from Castro during a speech: "Transmitting the notion that the revolution and all socialism is bureaucracy and poverty tarnishes the ideas of the country."
Cuba's film institute also coped with economic hardships — especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its annual subsidies to the island.
In 1993, the institute produced just two full-length features, one a classic about repression and friendship, Gutierrez Alea's "Fresa y Chocolate," or "Strawberry and Chocolate." Guevara also noted that Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo sparks shortages of everything from high-intensity light bulbs to movie projectors.
"Looking back, its a miracle we still exist," he said.
Still, from the 1990s on, many Cuban filmmakers know their work may never get completed without securing extra financing from Europe.
"They have to think less about the Cuban government and more about what is going to play to foreign investors," Johnson said.
More recent frank films include Suite Habana, a 2003 documentary that follows the lives of 13 Havana residents, including a 79-year-old retiree who supplements her tiny pension selling peanuts on the street. "Broken Gods," "Los Dioses Rotos," retells the tale of a famous Havana pimp from a bygone era — but uses modern-day "jineteras," or young Cuban women who sell their bodies to rich tourists.
Today, young Cuban filmmakers are producing shorts for the Internet, bypassing Guevara's institute altogether.
"You see much more critical voices coming out of those short films," Johnson said. "They don't have to worry about getting it out in wide distribution. They just put it online."
After a half century, Guevara said he is satisfied with the institute's work, but acknowledged it may be losing touch with young Cubans.
"If we succeeded in being better and learning to listen to (young people) it would be an achievement," he said. "In some areas, we haven't made it out of grade school."
Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrmZWovxIvrTz6PYT69UGLtcIqxwD9C535UO5
CUBA: World Class Pharma that Puts People First
HAVANA, Dec 1 (IPS) - Cuban biotechnology and pharmaceutical products are already among the country's major exports, and the industry is on course to continue developing while maintaining a firm focus on making a real difference to the health of all Cubans and of people in the numerous countries where Cuba provides medical assistance.
The existence of market forces is a reality that has to be reckoned with because of production costs, but health decisions cannot be governed by business considerations alone, said Agustín Lage, head of the Centre for Molecular Immunology (CIM), whose anti-cancer product Nimotuzumab is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States.
Lage and other Cuban scientists presented the strategy and results obtained by Cuba's biotechnology industry at the Global Forum for Health Research, held mid-November in Havana. The biotech industry, which began to develop in Cuba in the 1980s, now holds some 1,200 international patents.
Cuban pharmaceutical research centres had to adopt policies on intellectual property and protect their inventions with patents in order to generate export revenues, as otherwise a high-tech sector like this could not exist, Lage explained. "At the CIM, about 60 percent of the patents are used commercially in some way," he added.
According to official reports delivered at parliamentary sessions in late 2008, biotech export sales increased by 20 percent last year compared with 2007.
Export sales totalled 340 million dollars in 2008, according to estimates by academics.
Luis Herrera, head of the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), said the development and sustainability of the industry is based on its "closed circle" approach, which deals with the full life cycle of its products, from research to production and marketing. "Without this approach, we would not have got the same results," he said.
Another key element is cooperation and exchange between all the institutions. "From the start we realised that we were too poor to indulge in competition with each other," said Herrera, who added that as well as integration, the industry is characterised by a "vocation" for applied research in line with national interests. "A result is not a result until it has a positive impact on the health system," he said.
The CIGB, the leading institution of Cuba's biotech industry, founded over 20 years ago, has recently produced a vaccine against hepatitis B, a synthetic vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae type B, and Heberprot-P, regarded as the only effective treatment in the world for diabetic foot ulcers.
CIGB scientists take pride in showing how all Cubans have benefited from their research, one way or another. Eight years after the hepatitis B vaccine came into use, there has not been a single case of the illness in children under five on the island, Herrera said.
When this Caribbean island nation plunged into economic crisis in 1990, triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc, the government decided to carry on developing the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, creating new facilities in what is known as the West Havana Scientific Pole.
The Carlos J. Finlay Institute for vaccine development opened in 1991, the National Biopreparations Centre, which ramps up production for the biotech institutions, in 1992, and in 1994 the CIM was established, for research and development and production of monoclonal antibodies.
Monoclonal antibodies are produced in laboratories and bind to specific target molecules (like proteins) on the surface of, for instance, cancer cells.
Each monoclonal antibody preparation recognises only one target protein or antigen.
Later on, biotech research spread throughout the country and at present 12 provinces have so-called "scientific poles", which integrate the efforts of researchers, university professors, business experts and innovators, among others, according to Cuban academics Betsy Anaya Cruz and Mariana Martín Fernández.
A study by the two authors underlines that vaccine development has led to the eradication of diseases like polio, diphtheria, measles, German measles and mumps in Cuba, and drastic reductions in the incidence of meningococcal meningitis type B and hepatitis B, thanks to the mass vaccination programme for children.
"This scientific development is due to political will, and is an expression of a conception of human rights in which resources and investment are devoted to the welfare of the country's people as well as that of other countries," Concepción Campa, the head of the Finlay Institute, told IPS.
VAMENGOC-BC, the only vaccine in the world effective against meningitis caused by type B meningococci, was developed in the Finlay Institute's laboratories. A production plant opened in partnership with Brazil in 2007 is making 50 million doses of the vaccine this year to fight meningitis in over a score of African countries, Campa said.
The joint Cuban-Brazilian production of the vaccine supplies the needs of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which says 400 million people in 21 African countries are at risk from meningitis. "The incidence is more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 population during outbreaks," Campa said.
The plant has been enlarged for future production of other vaccines, such as the anti-pneumococcal vaccine which will undergo clinical trials in 2010.
Pneumococcus is a disease organism that affects humans nearly exclusively, causing infections such as pneumonia, sinusitis and peritonitis as well as severe invasive processes like pneumococcal meningitis and septicaemia.
Among CIM's most recent products is a vaccine for therapeutic treatment of advanced lung cancer. Registered in 2008, it has proved effective in prolonging patient survival and improving quality of life.
In mid-2009, the Canada-based drug development company YM Biosciences obtained a licence for clinical trials in the United States of the monoclonal antibody Nimotuzumab (CIMAher), for the treatment of advanced tumours of the head, neck and brain, another achievement of Cuban biotechnology.
YM Biosciences owns 80 percent of CIMYM, the company holding the rights to Nimotuzumab in North America, Europe, Japan and other regions. The remaining 20 percent is owned by CIM, as developers of the vaccine. Trials are expected to last three or four years.
If the drug trials are successful, changes will be needed to the U.S. embargo, which bans all trade with Cuba, before it can be sold in the United States. Previously, pharmaceutical companies SmithKline Beecham and CancerVax obtained licences for experimental trials of the vaccines against meningitis and for treating lung cancer, although they decided not to continue with clinical trials.
Political stumbling blocks aside, Cuba's biotech industry has proved to be a resounding success in every way: by generating new products, and due to their impact on public health, the number of patents registered, the volume of exports and the returns on investments, according to Cruz and Martín Fernández.
The industry is presently enjoying steady growth, and even higher economic returns are to be expected in future, the study says. (END/2009)
Source: ipsnews.net/
The existence of market forces is a reality that has to be reckoned with because of production costs, but health decisions cannot be governed by business considerations alone, said Agustín Lage, head of the Centre for Molecular Immunology (CIM), whose anti-cancer product Nimotuzumab is currently undergoing clinical trials in the United States.
Lage and other Cuban scientists presented the strategy and results obtained by Cuba's biotechnology industry at the Global Forum for Health Research, held mid-November in Havana. The biotech industry, which began to develop in Cuba in the 1980s, now holds some 1,200 international patents.
Cuban pharmaceutical research centres had to adopt policies on intellectual property and protect their inventions with patents in order to generate export revenues, as otherwise a high-tech sector like this could not exist, Lage explained. "At the CIM, about 60 percent of the patents are used commercially in some way," he added.
According to official reports delivered at parliamentary sessions in late 2008, biotech export sales increased by 20 percent last year compared with 2007.
Export sales totalled 340 million dollars in 2008, according to estimates by academics.
Luis Herrera, head of the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), said the development and sustainability of the industry is based on its "closed circle" approach, which deals with the full life cycle of its products, from research to production and marketing. "Without this approach, we would not have got the same results," he said.
Another key element is cooperation and exchange between all the institutions. "From the start we realised that we were too poor to indulge in competition with each other," said Herrera, who added that as well as integration, the industry is characterised by a "vocation" for applied research in line with national interests. "A result is not a result until it has a positive impact on the health system," he said.
The CIGB, the leading institution of Cuba's biotech industry, founded over 20 years ago, has recently produced a vaccine against hepatitis B, a synthetic vaccine against Haemophilus influenzae type B, and Heberprot-P, regarded as the only effective treatment in the world for diabetic foot ulcers.
CIGB scientists take pride in showing how all Cubans have benefited from their research, one way or another. Eight years after the hepatitis B vaccine came into use, there has not been a single case of the illness in children under five on the island, Herrera said.
When this Caribbean island nation plunged into economic crisis in 1990, triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc, the government decided to carry on developing the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, creating new facilities in what is known as the West Havana Scientific Pole.
The Carlos J. Finlay Institute for vaccine development opened in 1991, the National Biopreparations Centre, which ramps up production for the biotech institutions, in 1992, and in 1994 the CIM was established, for research and development and production of monoclonal antibodies.
Monoclonal antibodies are produced in laboratories and bind to specific target molecules (like proteins) on the surface of, for instance, cancer cells.
Each monoclonal antibody preparation recognises only one target protein or antigen.
Later on, biotech research spread throughout the country and at present 12 provinces have so-called "scientific poles", which integrate the efforts of researchers, university professors, business experts and innovators, among others, according to Cuban academics Betsy Anaya Cruz and Mariana Martín Fernández.
A study by the two authors underlines that vaccine development has led to the eradication of diseases like polio, diphtheria, measles, German measles and mumps in Cuba, and drastic reductions in the incidence of meningococcal meningitis type B and hepatitis B, thanks to the mass vaccination programme for children.
"This scientific development is due to political will, and is an expression of a conception of human rights in which resources and investment are devoted to the welfare of the country's people as well as that of other countries," Concepción Campa, the head of the Finlay Institute, told IPS.
VAMENGOC-BC, the only vaccine in the world effective against meningitis caused by type B meningococci, was developed in the Finlay Institute's laboratories. A production plant opened in partnership with Brazil in 2007 is making 50 million doses of the vaccine this year to fight meningitis in over a score of African countries, Campa said.
The joint Cuban-Brazilian production of the vaccine supplies the needs of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which says 400 million people in 21 African countries are at risk from meningitis. "The incidence is more than 1,000 cases per 100,000 population during outbreaks," Campa said.
The plant has been enlarged for future production of other vaccines, such as the anti-pneumococcal vaccine which will undergo clinical trials in 2010.
Pneumococcus is a disease organism that affects humans nearly exclusively, causing infections such as pneumonia, sinusitis and peritonitis as well as severe invasive processes like pneumococcal meningitis and septicaemia.
Among CIM's most recent products is a vaccine for therapeutic treatment of advanced lung cancer. Registered in 2008, it has proved effective in prolonging patient survival and improving quality of life.
In mid-2009, the Canada-based drug development company YM Biosciences obtained a licence for clinical trials in the United States of the monoclonal antibody Nimotuzumab (CIMAher), for the treatment of advanced tumours of the head, neck and brain, another achievement of Cuban biotechnology.
YM Biosciences owns 80 percent of CIMYM, the company holding the rights to Nimotuzumab in North America, Europe, Japan and other regions. The remaining 20 percent is owned by CIM, as developers of the vaccine. Trials are expected to last three or four years.
If the drug trials are successful, changes will be needed to the U.S. embargo, which bans all trade with Cuba, before it can be sold in the United States. Previously, pharmaceutical companies SmithKline Beecham and CancerVax obtained licences for experimental trials of the vaccines against meningitis and for treating lung cancer, although they decided not to continue with clinical trials.
Political stumbling blocks aside, Cuba's biotech industry has proved to be a resounding success in every way: by generating new products, and due to their impact on public health, the number of patents registered, the volume of exports and the returns on investments, according to Cruz and Martín Fernández.
The industry is presently enjoying steady growth, and even higher economic returns are to be expected in future, the study says. (END/2009)
Source: ipsnews.net/
Cuba Calls for Humanist Development
HAVANA TIMES, Dec. 1 - The solution to the global economic crisis is not “to continue applying the failed neoliberal recipes, but rather to apply focuses that have human beings as their raison d’etre and centre of development, according to the Millennium Development Goals,” affirmed Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment when speaking during the seventh Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) being held in Geneva.
Source: havanatimes.org/
Source: havanatimes.org/
Chill Grill brings taste of Cuba to Lincolnville
Luis Peral and Gilberto Perdemo told Historic City News that they are bringing a taste of Cuba to Lincolnville.
“Our goal is the serve our community with affordable meals” Peral said. “I spent years in Miami in the midst of all the hustle and bustle and I wanted a place where I could chill.”
The Chill Grill features a combination of Latino and Italian American cuisine. From Grilled Pork Tenderloin to baked or fried chicken, all meals are served with tasty sides such as black beans and rice, mashed potatoes, yucca and sweet plantains.
The Chill Grill, which is located at 102 Bridge Street in Lincolnville, also has down home favorites such as deep fried chicken livers and gizzards, ox tail and fish, chicken and beef empanadas.
Roger Jolley sent a message to Historic City News, and the members of the Lincolnville & West Augustine neighborhood, reporting that The Chill Grill will offer live music today at 6:00 p.m.
Jolley, who describes the cuisine as “Urban Latin Soul Food”, says that he believes The Chill Grill will be a success since it is close to dorms, apartments and they offer delivery. Jolley portrayed The Chill Grill as “great food by good people.”
Source: historiccity.com/
Alex Cuba, libre
Alex Cuba is making curious inroads into the Canadian music scene.
The Cuban expat now living in a remote corner of British Columbia recently covered a Blue Rodeo song in Spanish – with help from Blue Rodeo.
He also co-wrote most of Nelly Furtado's new Spanish-language disc and sings with her on the title track, "Mi Plan (My Plan)."
On Monday, he won a major industry award for world music. This upcoming Monday he opens for U.S.-born Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto at the Sound Academy.
After two Juno-winning solo albums, he has released a third CD, Alex Cuba, on his own label for distribution in Canada and the United States by EMI. "My best to date because of its simplicity," he says of his latest work in his charming low-key way. "In the beginning, I tended to make music that was complicated, but I have managed to become a better songwriter because of how I live in Canada – simply."
Cuba wears his hair in a retro Afro, and grows sideburns all the way to his mouth. His singing voice possesses a luxurious quality and his guitar playing incorporates jazz, pop and other styles into a recognizably Cuban sound – "a natural progression to everything I've done," he says.
Thirty-five years ago, he was born Alexis Puentes in Artemisa, an hour west of Havana. His father Valentin Puentes was a guitarist specializing in a popular '60s style called "filin," meaning "feeling," a ballad form influenced by blues and jazz.
From an early age, with fraternal twin Adonis, Cuba practiced guitar and other instruments, and in 1995 he travelled with his father's band to play a Cuban solidarity concert at Simon Fraser University. Anthropology student Sarah Goodacre helped organize the event. Within months she and Cuba were married and living in Cuba.
In 1999 they resettled in Canada, first in Victoria, then in Goodacre's hometown of Smithers, B.C., population 5,000, on the road between Prince George and Prince Rupert. The nearest city, Vancouver or Edmonton, is a 14-hour drive away.
"People think that to make a musical career you have to live in the city," Cuba explained by phone recently from a tour stop in Cranbrook, B.C.
"But from early in my time in Canada, I saw that in cities, especially for Latin musicians, you were going to end up playing at the same place every Friday and Saturday.
"You would be fine for about three months," he says. "Then people will get tired of you and you end up finding a daytime job because music will not pay your livelihood."
Living in Smithers – "a beautiful community of musicians and artists" – avoids such dead ends, he says.
The couple has three children. Goodacre serves as business manager and runs their label Caracol Records. Two or three times a year, Cuba plays to a full house at the local 300-seat Della Herman Theatre, and at other times tours with a bass player and drummer as the Alex Cuba Band.
In 2006 and 2008, he won Junos for World Music Album of the Year. At the second ceremony, he was sitting with fellow musician Serena Ryder at a songwriting workshop when he thought he spotted Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy in the audience.
"Yes, that's him," Ryder confirmed.
When his turn came, Cuba sang the Toronto band's 1993 song "Bad Timing" in Spanish. Later, at the band's Toronto studios, Cuddy dug out the original master tracks and sang harmony for Cuba on a Spanish-language single of "Bad Timing."
Cuba met pop star Nelly Furtado through connections in Victoria, where Furtado grew up and where Cuba based himself for a while when he and brother Adonis performed as the Puentes Brothers.
Wishing to record in Spanish, Furtado wrote nine songs with Cuba. Seven ended up on Mi Plan, released in September.
"I put my vocal on the title track as a demo," Cuba says. "She told me, `If it's okay, I'm going to keep your voice in there – I love it.'"
Source: thestar.com/
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