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4 | NewScientist | 3 December 2011 MARK MOFFETT/MINDEN PICTURES IF THE battle to eradicate polio were an action movie, this would be the part where the good guys have racked up spectacular victories – but you know a final hurdle is just around the corner. Spectacularly, polio may be gone in India. Of the four countries where polio remained entrenched, India was expected to be the last bastion. Yet its most recent case was in January this year. The virus isn’t even turning up in sewage in India, says Oliver Rosenbauer, at the World Health Organization. The victory is down to repeated, coordinated vaccination drives, and the use of a more efficient vaccine that only targets circulating strains. Yet as long as polio persists somewhere, India must keep vaccinating. Experts meeting at the WHO in Geneva this month warned if eradication fails now, Final showdown it will be “the most expensive public health failure in history”. In Nigeria, cases jumped fourfold compared with last year, to 43. But the real worry is Pakistan, where polio persists and spreads from Karachi, Quetta and the north-west tribal area. So far this year 145 people have been infected, up from 113 in 2010. In the first two Pakistani regions the key will be local leadership, bolstered with a new vaccination initiative, says Rosenbauer. The north-west will be harder – especially as the WHO’s polio campaign, as ever, is short of cash. HIV gel failure DISAPPOINTING news in the fight against HIV this week: the US National Institutes of Health has halted a trial of a vaginal gel containing tenofovir, a drug that fights HIV, as it was found to make no difference to infection rates. The result is a setback following a positive result in 2009, when women using a similar gel cut their risk of infection by 39 per cent compared with a placebo. The VOICE trial, which began two years ago in South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe, has failed to repeat this success. Of 2000 women participating, 6 per cent have been infected with HIV regardless of whether they were using the gel or a placebo. The way women applied the gel might be a factor. In the halted trial, women applied the gel once a day. In the earlier trial, women applied it before and after sex. “It could be that women weren’t using it close enough to the sex act itself,” says Patrick Kiser at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “It’s not the end of the line for gels, but we do need to explain the latest result to inform what to do next.” Alien ants vanish IF ONLY all ecological pests were so easily dispatched. The Argentine ant (Linepithema humile, see left), one of the world’s worst invasive species, is disappearing from New Zealand – without any human intervention. The alien ant arrived in New Zealand in 1990 and has since marched across the nation’s two main islands. Dealing with the pest was projected to cost NZ$68 million (£33 million) per year. –Hot engine– –Quitter critters– Going, going… gone YOU can buy anything on the internet – even, until recently, a rocket engine. NASA has since confiscated the engine, which contains technology that could form the basis of missiles as well as spacecraft. But the incident highlights security concerns at the space agency. Called the RL-10, this type of engine powered NASA’s Saturn-I rocket in the 1960s. That was a precursor to the larger Saturn-V, which took astronauts to the moon. In a recent report, NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) described how in July, it confiscated an RL-10 from a man who had put the engine up for sale on an internet auction site. The agency sometimes sells surplus space hardware to the public, but it seems this engine left NASA without permission. The person trying to sell the engine told investigators he bought it from someone, who in turn got it from a NASA employee, says the report, which does not describe how the NASA employee acquired it. The engine is worth about $200,000. Rocket engines are supposed to be under particularly tight control at NASA: the US is keen to avoid its rocket technology winding up in the hands of countries with which it has a tense relationship, such as China. “Security at NASA is not adequate in my opinion,” says Joseph Gutheinz, a former investigator for OIG. Robert Pearlman, who runs collectspace.com, reckons the recovered engine is the same one that appeared on eBay in 2010. “If polio eradication fails now, it will be the most expensive public health failure in history” NASA UPFRONT
