Rich countries study the diseases that afflict their citizens.
For the ailments of the poor world, they offer sympathy and perhaps a few bucks. And that explains the plight of malaria, a disease that ranks high for death and disability in poor countries but very low in research expenditures among the rich, where it is rare to nonexistent. An effort to break out of that bind recently failed when a group of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies turned down a proposal to establish a consortium of public and private organizations for research on malaria and other tropical diseases. According to a report in Science magazine, the companies begged off on a variety of commercial, legalistic and scientific grounds, with some of them explaining that they're already doing some work on malaria drugs and vaccines. But malaria researchers skeptically note that the disease, which is virulent in many parts of Asia and Africa, offers little potential for long-term profits or even recouping the costs of research.