India Mars Orbiter: Red Planet triumph, but at home red tape binds space firms

As India celebrated becoming the first Asian nation to reach Mars, S.M. Vaidya, head of business at conglomerate Godrej’s aerospace division that made the spacecraft’s engine and thruster components, sounded surprisingly downbeat.

The mission was, indeed, a major achievement, he said, and one of which the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) should be proud.

But a single trip to Mars was not enough to sustain a promising yet relatively small industry, he added, and ISRO should be doing more to foster it.

“Unless they fly more, they will not buy more from us,” Vaidya told Reuters, shortly after news broke on Wednesday that Mangalyaan, Hindi for “Mars craft”, had entered into orbit around the Red Planet about 10 months after launching.

“How many Mars missions are you going to have?”

India’s successful mission, completed on a shoestring budget of $74 million, has boosted its prestige in the global space race and, back on Earth, raised the profile of Indian companies involved in the project.

But Godrej and some other firms are frustrated at what they say is the slow execution of projects and lack of government support, which are hampering India’s efforts to compete with China and Russia as a cheaper option for launching satellites.

ISRO did not reply to questions for this article.

The Mangalyaan was built in 15 months with two-thirds of its parts manufactured by domestic firms such as Godrej & Boyce and India’s largest engineering company, Larsen & Toubro.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he wants to expand India’s 50-year-old space program. The government has increased funding for space research by 50 percent to almost $1 billion this financial year.

But the program is still small, and the small number of launches limits the growth potential of private companies that supply them.

Between 2007 and 2012, ISRO accomplished about half of its planned 60 missions, government data showed. The government cited “development complexity” as the reason for the delay in some missions.

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Between 2012 and 2017 the target is 58 missions.

The agency has completed 17 missions so far, and ISRO did not say why the number remained low.

Some company executives and experts do not see that changing any time soon, with the absence of heavy rocket launchers, too few launch facilities and bureaucratic delays hampering growth.

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H1N1: UKs BMJ Report Extreme Doubts over Tamiflu results

UK medical experts from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) are questioning the effectiveness of antiviral drug Tamiflu commonly used against the swine flu virus spreading across the globe, according to a study reported in Britain Tuesday.

An investigation by the British Medical Journal acknowledges that the drug oseltamivir, which trades as Tamiflu, has "a very modest effect in reducing flu symptoms and infectivity in otherwise healthy adults."

But "researchers say there is insufficient published data to know if oseltamivir reduces complications in otherwise healthy adults," the media groups said in a joint statement.

The use of flu drugs like oseltamivir has increased dramatically since the A(H1N1), or swine flu, pandemic began in April 2009, with government rushing to stockpile treatments while persuading people to have vaccinations.

The global death toll since the virus was uncovered in April approached 8,770 in early December, with confirmed infections in 207 countries, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Claims about the effectiveness of drugs like Tamiflu against flu complications have been a key factor in governments' choosing to spend millions of dollars to hoard them, the British Medical Journal said.

The British government has spent about 500 million pounds (813.9 million dollars) on such drugs, they said.

But research on the drugs by scientists from Australia's Bond University was hampered by a "paucity of good data" available from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche that produces oseltamivir.

"As a result, they conclude that they have no confidence in claims that oseltamivir reduces the risk of complications of influenza in otherwise healthy adults, and believe it should not be used in routine control of seasonal influenza."

The researchers called on governments to set up studies to monitor the safety of drugs like Tamiflu, which are called neuraminidase inhibitors.

A team from the University of Birmingham concluded meanwhile that oseltamivir may reduce the risk of pneumonia in otherwise healthy people who contract flu.

"However, the absolute benefit is small, and side effects and safety should also be considered," the statement said.

Professor Nick Freemantle from the University of Birmingham said he saw "very little evidence to support the widespread use of oseltamivir in the otherwise healthy population who are developing signs of influenza-like illness."

"We have remarkably few resources in this country to spend on pharmaceuticals on health and it's surprising to see such widespread use of oseltamivir," he said.

British Medical Journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee warned that the review left unresolved important questions about effectiveness of the drugs.

"Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge," she said.

Roche has estimated sales of 1.6 billion pounds this year alone from the drug, the statement said.

H1N1: UKs BMJ Report Extreme Doubts over Tamiflu results

Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has confirmed that the antiviral oseltamivir, is only effective in reducing by 1 day, the time people have symptoms. It also confirmed that there was no evidence that oseltamivir prevented the most fatal complications, pneumonia.

It comes after the Government and GPs failed to reach an agreement on the swine flu vaccination programme for under-fives, with health visitors and district nurses now set to be asked by local NHS managers to step in.

The BMJ research has questioned the validity of research from Roche, the pharmaceutical giant that makes Tamiflu.

More than a million courses of antivirals including Tamiflu have been given out to people across Britain since the start of the swine flu pandemic.

A review of 20 existing studies was carried out by a team led by experts from the Cochrane Collaboration, which last reviewed the evidence in 2005. Their updated study found Tamiflu "did not reduce influenza-related lower respiratory tract complications".

The drug was found to induce nausea while evidence of adverse reactions to the drug were "under-reported", they said.

Tamiflu was claimed to be effective in treating people preventatively, i.e. after they had come into contact with somebody who was infected, and shortened the length of symptoms in those with swine flu.

But the study criticised some of the evidence available and said Roche had not been able to "unconditionally" provide the information needed. As a result, the team dropped eight trials that were included in their earlier review because they were unable to independently verify the findings.

This leads to further speculation that the mass innoculation of peoples is commercially based, adding to the profits of the pharmaceutical companies, without there being sound medical evidence to back it up.

The power of the pharma lobbyists is such that this conspiracy to defraud the public has extended into the medical and political hierarchy and large incentives are being offered to executives, politicians and medical authorities that support the exploitation of this pandemic.