August 27 - Assad's Cynical Attempt to Ally with the U.S.; The Economics of Ebola Treatment; The Record Melting of the World's Largest Ice Sheets

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the cynical efforts by the Syria government to suggest that they could be allied with the United States against ISIS in Syria, and whether the embattled Free Syrian Army that the CIA is supposed to be supporting has sufficient morale and resources to carry that fight to both Assad and ISIS now that the U.S. has suggested it might bomb ISIS in Syria. Syrian-born specialist on the Middle East, Murhaf Jouejati, a Professor of Middle East Studies at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, joins us to discuss the fate of the democratic opposition in Syria who rose up against the Assad dictatorship but now find themselves fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS.

Part 2

Then we examine the economics of Ebola treatment where both big pharma don’t see a sufficient financial incentive to invest in drugs to treat the deadly hemorrhagic fever, and where the victims of Ebola don’t have sufficient funds to buy the drugs to treat it, even if they were available. Kevin Outterson, a co-director of the Health Law Program at Boston University and a founder member of the Center for Disease Control’s working group on antimicrobial resistance, joins us to discuss what incentives can be put in place to get pharmaceutical companies interested in providing cures for what the World Health Organization calls “neglected tropical diseases”.

Part 3

Then finally, with the world’s largest ice sheets melting at the fastest rates ever recorded, we will speak with Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, a Climate Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, about how human-caused climate change is driving the unprecedented glacial melt that is causing the oceans to rise, as well as the shortage of water in California and the west, where groundwater that is thousands of years old, is being drawn out of aquifers at record rates, a depletion of groundwater that will take nature centuries to replace.