- Email: [email protected]
Reducing alcohol intake across Europe
cases before the commission. The commission concerns itself only with medical cases that involve the action of public as opposed to private medical service providers, given that in formal legal terms human rights can be denied only by a government, not by private entities. The commission uses its investigatory powers to determine the facts and merits of cases brought before it. Many cases are resolved through voluntary action. If a complaint is : found meritorious but voluntary remedial action is not forthcoming, the commission may issue a recommendation to the institu- : tion in question. Thus, though a governmental body, the commission acts as an intermediary between Mexican citizens and their government, providing a more streamlined and mediation-oriented complaint process than conventional judicial litigation. : One evident shortcoming in the application of human rights standards to
medicine is the lack of specificity of the relevant rights, a problem not peculiar to Mexico. The Commission has been engaged in research and writing on human rights and medicine, both on its own and in conjunction with the Autonomous National University of Mexico and the Mexican National Academy of Medicine. La Responsabilidad Profesion- : al del Medico y los Derechos Humanos : (ISBN 968-6954-51-1), a report on a 1994 conference jointly sponsored by the commission and the two other aforementioned organisations, is one product of this effort. The report contains papers and related commentaries on professional responsibility, codes of conduct, the rights of patients, the role of the National Commission on Human Rights in medicine, and other topics. :
PEOPLE
Prof Levi-Montalcini is also associated with Researchlife, a small company based in Castelfranco Veneto in Northern Last month the company’s researchers reported that a cannabinoid receptor
tively, of
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Thomas Carothers
Italy.
Reducing alcohol intake across Europe A report on the reduction of the adverse effects of drinking alcohol recognises that no one solution will suit all member states of the European Union, and calls for new initiatives on fiscal policy, drinking and driving, advertising, treatment, and drinking in the workplace. Counterbalancing the Drinks Industry by Eurocare, an alliance of non-statutory alcohol-abuse organisations (1 The Quay, St Ives, Cambs PE17 4AR, UK), draws on the WHO European Alcohol Action Plan, which has been endorsed by all EU member states and which advocates a 25% reduction in alcohol consumption by the year 2000. Europe-wide harmonisation of excise duties should set its sights at the countries with higher existing tax rates, says the report. Such a "social welfare" tax would be used to protect society and as a public health measure, the principle being that alcohol should pay its way in terms of its social and health costs. The tax level should be aimed at alcohol content, not type of beverage, since no one drink is "worse" than another. Fiscal policies will have to address cross-border shopping, which the report says is "grossly abused and encourages fraudulent importation". Eurocare advocates a policy for all EU member states of a legal blood-limit for drivers of 20 mg/dL, random breath-testing to increase the perceived risk of being apprehended, and mandatory disqualification for at least a year for drivers who are over 50 mg/dL. The report also calls for a Europe-wide statutory code of advertising
Among the six new foreign members (and 40 new fellows) installed at the Royal (CB2) was expressed on mast cells. Society in London last week was Nobel The sensitivity of CB2 to palmitoylPrize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini, profesethanolamide differs from that to anansor of neurobiology at the CNR Institute . damide, which antagonises the central of Neurobiology, Rome. She shared the CBreceptor. These findings suggest that Nobel Prize for medicine with Stanley palmitoylethanolamide might be able to Cohen in 1986 for their discovery of nerve antagonise local autacoid inflammation, growth factor (NGF) and, despite her 86 thus offering a new approach to antiyears, Prof Levi-Montalcini is actively inflammatory therapy that does not : involve inhibition of prostaglandin continuing her research. Over the past ten years, she has pubsynthetase and is free from the side-effects lished a steady stream of papers with her associated with non-steroidal anti-inflamcolleague Luigi Alao and others on the matory drugs. It is understood that practice. wider role of NGF. They have shown that the company is patenting several related Early intervention programmes in primast cells are able to bind NGF and compounds that they are going to call mary health-care settings should be availrecently they described how these cells are aliamides (alia=autocoid local inflammaable to all those with alcohol-related also able to synthesise, store, and release tion antagonism). , problems or their families, and should this factor (11’roc Natl Acad Sci USA 1994; 91: 3739-43).:
EU
policy on orphan drugs
France has called on its 14 Union partners to establish a
policy agreed
on
European common:
orphan drugs, including and funding
definition
an
i
for
research. France, which holds the EU Presidency until the end of this month, presented European health ministers with a memorandum on orphan drugs that took up many of the ideas in a report published earlier this year by the Institut de la Sante et de la Recherche Médicale (see
LancetJan 14, p 115).
:
David B Jack
orphan-drug research and development thanks to government initiatives intro: duced in 1983 and 1993, respectively. It added that the low gains pharmaceutical firms were likely to make discouraged them from investing in orphan-drug research, a reluctance that France claims could be overcome by various financial incentives. Drug makers could also be encouraged to enter this field by fast track registration, technical assistance from the European Pharmacy Committee, guaranteed patent protection, and ensuring reimbursement for patients, France : contends. France also wants the EU to set up a European institution to track rare
France argued there was a "real public: health need" for an EU policy to boost orphan-drug research and development, diseases, improve public information, and and that common action would allow run an epidemiological data bank listing Europe to "mobilise significant financial location and frequency of outbreaks. : resources". European action would also allow the EU to catch up with the United States and Japan, which were far ahead in Sara Lewis
i
1500
include treatment and support. Eurocare calls on the European Commission to fund non-governmental organisations in those member states whose governments fail to provide adequate services. Impairment in the workplace because of alcohol consumption and inappropriate drinking at work are also targeted by Eurocare, which says that employers and employees’ organisations need to develop alcohol
policies. In some respects, Eurocare’s report is a reaction to the drinks-industry lobby, whose "front" organisations (the Amsterdam Group in Europe and the Portman Group in the UK) have seized the publicrelations initiative.This lobby has attempted to distinguish problem drinkers from other "normal" drinkers. Eurocare fights back by saying that there is a spectrum rather than a distinct dividing line. Eurocare aims at whole-population responses rather than measures aimed at heavy abusers of alcohol.
David McNamee
medicine is the lack of specificity of the relevant rights, a problem not peculiar to Mexico. The Commission has been engaged in research and writing on human rights and medicine, both on its own and in conjunction with the Autonomous National University of Mexico and the Mexican National Academy of Medicine. La Responsabilidad Profesion- : al del Medico y los Derechos Humanos : (ISBN 968-6954-51-1), a report on a 1994 conference jointly sponsored by the commission and the two other aforementioned organisations, is one product of this effort. The report contains papers and related commentaries on professional responsibility, codes of conduct, the rights of patients, the role of the National Commission on Human Rights in medicine, and other topics. :
PEOPLE
Prof Levi-Montalcini is also associated with Researchlife, a small company based in Castelfranco Veneto in Northern Last month the company’s researchers reported that a cannabinoid receptor
tively, of
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Thomas Carothers
Italy.
Reducing alcohol intake across Europe A report on the reduction of the adverse effects of drinking alcohol recognises that no one solution will suit all member states of the European Union, and calls for new initiatives on fiscal policy, drinking and driving, advertising, treatment, and drinking in the workplace. Counterbalancing the Drinks Industry by Eurocare, an alliance of non-statutory alcohol-abuse organisations (1 The Quay, St Ives, Cambs PE17 4AR, UK), draws on the WHO European Alcohol Action Plan, which has been endorsed by all EU member states and which advocates a 25% reduction in alcohol consumption by the year 2000. Europe-wide harmonisation of excise duties should set its sights at the countries with higher existing tax rates, says the report. Such a "social welfare" tax would be used to protect society and as a public health measure, the principle being that alcohol should pay its way in terms of its social and health costs. The tax level should be aimed at alcohol content, not type of beverage, since no one drink is "worse" than another. Fiscal policies will have to address cross-border shopping, which the report says is "grossly abused and encourages fraudulent importation". Eurocare advocates a policy for all EU member states of a legal blood-limit for drivers of 20 mg/dL, random breath-testing to increase the perceived risk of being apprehended, and mandatory disqualification for at least a year for drivers who are over 50 mg/dL. The report also calls for a Europe-wide statutory code of advertising
Among the six new foreign members (and 40 new fellows) installed at the Royal (CB2) was expressed on mast cells. Society in London last week was Nobel The sensitivity of CB2 to palmitoylPrize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini, profesethanolamide differs from that to anansor of neurobiology at the CNR Institute . damide, which antagonises the central of Neurobiology, Rome. She shared the CBreceptor. These findings suggest that Nobel Prize for medicine with Stanley palmitoylethanolamide might be able to Cohen in 1986 for their discovery of nerve antagonise local autacoid inflammation, growth factor (NGF) and, despite her 86 thus offering a new approach to antiyears, Prof Levi-Montalcini is actively inflammatory therapy that does not : involve inhibition of prostaglandin continuing her research. Over the past ten years, she has pubsynthetase and is free from the side-effects lished a steady stream of papers with her associated with non-steroidal anti-inflamcolleague Luigi Alao and others on the matory drugs. It is understood that practice. wider role of NGF. They have shown that the company is patenting several related Early intervention programmes in primast cells are able to bind NGF and compounds that they are going to call mary health-care settings should be availrecently they described how these cells are aliamides (alia=autocoid local inflammaable to all those with alcohol-related also able to synthesise, store, and release tion antagonism). , problems or their families, and should this factor (11’roc Natl Acad Sci USA 1994; 91: 3739-43).:
EU
policy on orphan drugs
France has called on its 14 Union partners to establish a
policy agreed
on
European common:
orphan drugs, including and funding
definition
an
i
for
research. France, which holds the EU Presidency until the end of this month, presented European health ministers with a memorandum on orphan drugs that took up many of the ideas in a report published earlier this year by the Institut de la Sante et de la Recherche Médicale (see
LancetJan 14, p 115).
:
David B Jack
orphan-drug research and development thanks to government initiatives intro: duced in 1983 and 1993, respectively. It added that the low gains pharmaceutical firms were likely to make discouraged them from investing in orphan-drug research, a reluctance that France claims could be overcome by various financial incentives. Drug makers could also be encouraged to enter this field by fast track registration, technical assistance from the European Pharmacy Committee, guaranteed patent protection, and ensuring reimbursement for patients, France : contends. France also wants the EU to set up a European institution to track rare
France argued there was a "real public: health need" for an EU policy to boost orphan-drug research and development, diseases, improve public information, and and that common action would allow run an epidemiological data bank listing Europe to "mobilise significant financial location and frequency of outbreaks. : resources". European action would also allow the EU to catch up with the United States and Japan, which were far ahead in Sara Lewis
i
1500
include treatment and support. Eurocare calls on the European Commission to fund non-governmental organisations in those member states whose governments fail to provide adequate services. Impairment in the workplace because of alcohol consumption and inappropriate drinking at work are also targeted by Eurocare, which says that employers and employees’ organisations need to develop alcohol
policies. In some respects, Eurocare’s report is a reaction to the drinks-industry lobby, whose "front" organisations (the Amsterdam Group in Europe and the Portman Group in the UK) have seized the publicrelations initiative.This lobby has attempted to distinguish problem drinkers from other "normal" drinkers. Eurocare fights back by saying that there is a spectrum rather than a distinct dividing line. Eurocare aims at whole-population responses rather than measures aimed at heavy abusers of alcohol.
David McNamee