Godfrey Tangwa AKA "Rotcod Gobata"

GLANCING BACKWARD 4

Two giant steps backward from the CANTAM Workshop of 27 September to 01 October, 2010, take me first to the CAMBIN General Assembly which took place at the University of Buea in the South West Region of Cameroon on 17 July 2010. CAMBIN is the Cameroon Chapter of the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN) whose creation (CAMBIN’s that is) I initiated in 2005. It is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political, non-discriminatory, multidisciplinary association whose official seat is in Yaounde.

GLANCING BACKWARD 3

Some 3 weeks or so before the 17th (ordinary) session of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) in Paris, scheduled on 26 and 27 October 2010, to which I was invited to make a presentation on the Ethics of traditional medicine, I had been involved, as the chairperson of the Cameroon Bioethics Initiative (CAMBIN), as coordinator of the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) Sub-Hub (ASH) in Yaounde nestled in CAMBIN, and as an expert in my own right, in the organization and facilitation of a workshop on Health Research Ethics for Members of Ethics Review Committees and National Regulatory Authorities of Central Africa.

Book Review: Ethics and AIDS in Africa: The Challenge to our Thinking

Anton A. van Niekerk, Loretta M. Kopelman (eds). Ethics and AIDS in Africa: The Challenge to our Thinking. Johannesburg: New Africa Books, 2005. [ISBN: 0-86486-673-9]

The devastating AIDS pandemic in Africa poses daunting medical, social, and economic challenges, placing local, regional, national, and international communities at a moral crossroads. This book, the first to systematically examine the ethical implications of the AIDS pandemic for Africa, examines such pressing questions as:

How do we deal with the uncertainties surrounding AIDS statistics?
Is it really too costly to provide people highly active antiretroviral therapies in Africa? What is the relationship between AIDS and poverty?
Is the political leadership in South Africa doing what is right and prudent to meet the challenge of AIDS?

The HIV/AIDS pandemic, African traditional values and the search for a vaccine in Africa

By Godfrey Tangwa

Culled from Anton A. van Niekerk, Loretta M. Kopelman (eds). Johannesburg: New Africa Books, 2005. ISBN: 0-86486-673-9(Chapter 11, pp. 179 - 189)

Traditional African values have a lot to offer in an approach towards fighting HIV/AIDS. In this chapter Godfrey B. Tangwa argues that values such as empathy and unpaid assistance for those in genuine need will do more to curb the pandemic than the first world's market-driven, profit-oriented practices have done. He also outlines what he believes to be some encouraging research done in Africa towards an AIDS vaccine.

Click here to read, print or download entire article in PDF format

Malaria Research: What has Ethics Got To do With It?

By Godfrey B. Tangwa, PhD

What has Ethics got to do with state-of-the-art malaria research and control efforts, let alone in Cameroon? If the word “Ethics” brings to your mind only images of churches and other places of worship, holy books and religious injunctions, priests, pastors and other preachers, all of which may seem rather far removed from science, let alone research, then this surely, is a pertinent question for you. Of course, religious people, religious discourse and religion generally are concerned with ethics or morality generally. But ethics or morality is quite distinct from religion and is or should be the concern of all human beings, be they religious or not.

Colony of genes, genes of the colony: diversity, difference and divide

Henk J Van Rinsum & Godfrey B Tangwa

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 1031–1043, 2004

ABSTRACT
In this article we propose an ideal typology of reactions to genomics—the study (in complex transnational organisational research arrangements) of the genome, the sum total of the genetic material in any particular organism—from the point of view and perspective of communities that find themselves in marginal positions. Genomics is a particularly important part of ‘technoscience’—science mingled with technology. Within genomics the concepts of diversity and difference are paradoxically intermingled. Genetically speaking, the difference between human beings and nature is fading.

BIOETHICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE: A VOICE FROM THE MARGINS

By Godfrey Tangwa

Developing World Bioethics ISSN 1471-8731 (print); 1471-8847 (online) Volume 4 Number 2 2004

One of the most remarkable things about the world in which we all live, localised here on planet Earth, is its biodiversity (the enormous variety of its living forms). Another is its cultural diversity (the enormous variety of its different human cultures). Equally remarkable is the variety of different forms, heights, weights, shapes, sizes and complexions with which individual human beings, even within the same culture and locality, come from the hand of God/Nature. I perceive great positive value – if you would permit the emphatic tautology – in this differentiated diversity and variety.

ART and African sociocultural practices: worldview, belief and value systems with particular reference to francophone Africa

GODFREY B. TANGWA

Culled from Current Practices and Controversies in Assisted Reproduction. Report of a meeting on "Medical, Ethical and Social Aspects of Assisted Reproduction". WHO Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland, 17–21 September 2001

Although it is often controversial or misleading to make generalizations about Africa, one of the safest and less controversial of such generalizations is that human procreation is highly valued in African cultures. This should not, of course, be interpreted to mean that there are parts of the world or cultures where procreation is not valued. Procreation is a value for human beings in general and within all human cultures. But the ways and manner in which this value is manifested and expressed differs from place to place, from culture to culture, and these differences can be used as a rough gauge of the extent or magnitude to which the value is affirmed or upheld against competing values. There is no part of Africa where children are not greatly valued and where, as a consequence, large families do not exist or polygamy is not practised.