The controversy regarding President Zuma and his extramarital (and unprotected) sexual capers heated up significantly today. I was greeted this morning with the Cape Times headline: ZUMA DEFENDS LOVE CHILD. The growing media coverage, some speculative,...

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki famously denied that HIV causes AIDS, and affirmed that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was really just a ploy by pharmaceutical companies to squeeze money out of African countries. He supported 'rogue scientists' who...

It is an old saying that disasters bring out the best and the worst in people. The idea makes sense: extreme events provoke extreme reactions. As far as 'the worst' goes, a disaster makes a country vulnerable, and creates opportunities for exploitation...

This does not look like it will be pretty. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced this week that it plans to launch an investigation into the global response to the H1N1 pandemic. The organization interest in such an investigation is not neutral...

The corks from the New Year's celebrations have hardly even been swept up, and already we have the first ugly bioethics conflict of the new decade. It about the concept of dignity, and more specifically whether the concept is coherent and useful in...