Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infection between Provider and Patient: A Quantitative Analysis of Risk

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Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Raven Press (New York) in "Modeling the AIDS Epidemic: Planning, Policy and Prediction" Kaplan EH, Brandeau ML, eds.
Authors
Douglas K. Owens

Federal and Private Roles in the Development and Provision of Alglucerase Therapy for Gaucher Disease

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The effort to discover and develop new pharmaceuticals is a risky and costly enterprise. For diseases that affect few patients, the barriers to development maybe especially great, since the drugs' small markets may make it difficult for firms to recoup their initial research and development investments. The Federal Government has sought to reduce these barriers through incentives first adopted in the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 (Public Law 97-414). The transfer of technology from Federal laboratories such as the National Institutes of Health to the pharmaceutical industry can also reduce the cost and risk of drug development for firms. Although such incentives may result in important new therapies, their price to patients and insurers may still be high.

As part of our assessment, Government Policies and Pharmaceutical Research and

Development, requested by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its

Subcommittee on Health and the Environment and the Subcommittee on Antitrust,

Monopolies, and Business Rights of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, OTA

commissioned researchers at Stanford University to examine the development and provision of alglucerase, an important new treatment for Gaucher disease. Gaucher disease is a rare inherited disorder in which the body lacks an enzyme necessary to break down fats. This background paper describes the development of alglucerase, illustrates the role that both the Federal Government and private sector can have in making new therapies available for orphan diseases, and lays out some of the tradeoffs that can exist between developing new medical technologies and controlling health care costs.

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Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office
Authors
Number
OTA-BP-H-104
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