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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  The UN Security Council took center stage in New York today.  The council — chaired by President Obama — passed a resolution aimed at stopping nuclear proliferation.  We’ll have more on that in a moment.  But first, to another story out of New York today.  A federal indictment was unveiled there against Najibullah Zazi.  The 24-year-old Afghan man was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.  Authorities say Zazi was plotting to make homemade bombs and set them off in the United States.  Zazi is a permanent US resident who was living in Colorado.  He worked as an airport shuttle bus driver in Denver.  Bruce Finley of the Denver Post is covering the story.  Now Mr. Zazi has been indicted on charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against persons or property in the US.  What do we know about how strong the evidence is so far?

BRUCE FINLEY: Hi Marco.  Well, the indictment that was unsealed this morning is relatively brief:  two pages.  But the investigators have laid out a bit more of what they have in a memo the government filed in support of their motion to keep Najibullah Zazi detained.  As you know, he was arrested last Saturday, and he’s been held in the Denver County Jail.  Now, it looks as if those proceedings will be dropped and he’ll be moved to New York.  But in that memo, the document says he worked with associates collecting bomb making supplies from Denver area shops, particularly beauty supply stores, cooked ingredients in an Aurora hotel room (Aurora’s a suburb of Denver), and sought help to produce bombs before he traveled to New York September 10^th.  So it begins to show a little bit of what the government may have, and what the FBI agents have described as you say, as a plot to detonate homemade bombs in the United States.

WERMAN: In that supporting memo, were there any other details such as the type of materials, the device, or size of explosion that it might cause?

FINLEY: Yes, this summer in the, Denver area—July and august—he allegedly shopped in various beauty supply shops, purchasing hydrogen peroxide and acetone products.  This document makes reference to surveillance videos and receipts indicating various products:  liquid developer, [PH] cloroxide, and it also contains high concentrations of hydrogen peroxide.  There’s also a reference to records from a nearby hotel in Aurora indicating that Zazi checked into a suite on august 28^th and that suite included a stove.  The government has also said an individual associated with Zazi purchased some of these products around Denver.  The FBI investigators also found that Zazi rented the same hotel suite early in September.  And that subsequent FBI testing revealed the presence of a chemical residue in a vent above the stove.

WERMAN: And when the indictment says “weapons of mass destruction,” they’re talking about bombs, or is it possibly something even larger?

FINLEY: Apparently they’re talking about homemade bombs, that’s the charge in the documents released Sunday.  He’s been indicted by a grand jury, in New York, accused of conspiring to use weapons…but apparently that’s bombs that would be detonated in the US according to the  government..

WERMAN: In a nutshell, who is against Najibullah Zazi?  We know he drives a shuttle bus at the airport. What else do you know about him?

FINLEY: Yes, quite a great team effort in my newsroom.  We actually tracked down Najibullah Zazi last Tuesday and I spoke first with a couple of his relatives, then I interviewed him once face to face in the doorway of his apartment, and later a few times by phone.  But he came from [INAUDIBLE] province in Afghanistan as a boy, To [PH] Kashiwa, the border city in Pakistan, and then as about a 14 year old, he moved to New York.  Queens.  He went to house there in Queens and came out here in January.

WERMAN: And when you stood in the doorway with him for those few minutes interviewing him, did he strike you as a mass murderer?

FINLEY: It was an awkward situation, there.  It was Ramadan, near sunset, he was barefoot, his father was shaving and peering out behind him.  He confirmed a lot of the details that we gleaned from relatives about his family story and insisted he doesn’t have any connection to this terrorism.

WERMAN: Bruce Finley of The Denver Post.  Thank you very much.

FINLEY: Thanks, Marco.  The pleasure is mine.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: The weapons of mass destruction mentioned in the New York indictment today are not nuclear weapons.  But the possibility that terrorists could get their hands on nukes has long concerned world leaders.  President Obama mentioned that scenario today — as he chaired a United Nations Security Council meeting on nuclear disarmament.  The council passed a resolution aimed at stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  The World’s Katy Clark has more on that.

KATY CLARK: For those who believe the only way to keep the world truly safe is to get rid of nuclear weapons, Today’s UN resolution is encouraging.  It calls for stepped up efforts towards preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, increasing disarmament, and reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism.  President Obama described it as a “historic resolution,” and one that enshrines the commitment of member states to work towards the shared goal of a world without nuclear weapons.  That’s a goal Mr. Obama views as crucial to national and international security.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Just one nuclear weapon exploding in a city, be it New York, or Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing, London or Paris, could kill hundreds of thousands of people.  And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.

CLARK: President Obama went on to say that the next two months will be critical for non-proliferation efforts.  For one thing, the US and Russia are seeking to renegotiate their 1991 treaty on strategic arms reduction before it expires in early December.  Today, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed his willingness to continue working with the United States and others.  Here’s part of his statement as translated at the UN.

PRESIDENT DMITRY MEDVEDEV: [Via Translator] Today’s meeting is ushering in a time of large-scale and serious work.  Work that I’m convinced will dramatically improve the situation in the world.

CLARK: The resolution passed today expresses particular concern for the fact that some countries continue to flout enforcement treaties.  Among them, North Korea, which has tested nuclear weapons, and Iran, which the west believes is seeking nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear energy program.  President Obama said today’s resolution wasn’t about singling out any one nation.  But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, heard here speaking through a translator, seemed to think it should.

PRESIDENT SARKOZY: [Via Translator] We are saying yes, reductions.  And President Obama himself has said, “I dream of a world where there would be no such weapons.”  And yet right in front of us, two countries are doing exactly the opposite.  Right now

CLARK: Sarkozy said that if the Security Council wants to be taken seriously about its pledge to work towards a world free of nuclear weapons, it has to be willing to impose sanctions on those who violate Security Council resolutions.  China, for one, has been reluctant to take a tougher stand toward Iran.  None of the leaders speaking today seemed to think nuclear disarmament is going to happen overnight.  And it’s hard to imagine complete disarmament even being possible.  But George Perkovich, a non-proliferation expert with The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says it’s worth a shot.

GEORGE PERKOVICH: No one can force the US, or Russia, or anybody else to give up their nuclear weapons.  It’s only going to happen if each of the states that now has these weapons decides it’s in their interest, it’s safe, secure, to get rid of the last ones.

CLARK: Perkovich says if leaders succeed in simply getting close to destroying all nuclear weapons, they would have made the world a much better place.  For The World, this is Katy Clark.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: There’s something striking about all the anti-nuclear talk this week.  It’s coming from world leaders, not anti-nuclear protestors.  The call for a nuclear-free world used to come from the grassroots, not the halls of power.  So, whatever happened to the nuclear disarmament movement?  The World’s Jeb Sharp takes a look.

JEB SHARP: The dangers of nuclear weapons can seem so overwhelming, they could just as well produce passivity as activism.  Jonathan Schell is author of The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.

JONATHAN SCHELL: I think people love not to think about nuclear weapons.  They’re just horrible things that do horrible things.  They oppress the mind, they oppress the spirit.  And especially if you don’t have a belief that they might be gotten rid of it’s very hard to dwell on that. It’s very disagreeable.

SHARP: And yet, Schell says, during the Cold War, the fear of nuclear confrontation was powerful enough to mobilize people.

SCHELL: There was just something about that ever present immediate threat of something like the end of the world, the end of civilization, that concentrated the mind on occasion and brought out a public movement.  When the Cold War ended, that movement ended with it.  And it was just never reconstituted in force.  The public seemed to act for a couple of decades as if the nuclear dilemma had just gone away with the Cold War.  Of course, that was a terrible illusion as we know now.

SHARP: The first people to protest the atomic bomb were actually the scientists who developed it.  Historian Lawrence Wittner is author of Confronting the Bomb, a history of the disarmament movement.

LAWRENCE WITTNER: They had built the bomb as a deterrent to Nazi Germany’s use of the bomb and they were therefore were concerned when they realized that Nazi Germany had been defeated and the US government was moving forward with the bomb program, and apparently planning to bomb Japan.

SHARP: The scientists couldn’t stop the United States from using the atomic bomb against Japan.  But after the war, they were instrumental in forging a growing movement against nuclear weapons. Wittner says those early protests paid off during the administration of President Harry Truman.

WITTNER: During the early Cold War there was an upsurge of protest against nuclear weapons and this led Truman to back off from further use of nuclear weapons.  The movement declined thereafter, but it began to revive with the testing of the hydrogen bomb—the H bomb—and protests against nuclear testing grew to become very powerful and to influence public opinion against testing.

SHARP: Wittner’s book traces how the movement ebbed and flowed over time as it responded to world events and the politics of the day.  He credits the disarmament movement with creating the pressure necessary to bring about the arms control treaties of the 1960s, 1970′s and 1980s.   Wittner says the movement peaked when Ronald Reagan was president.

WITTNER: Reagan was a strong supporter of the development of new nuclear weapons by the United States.  He certainly didn’t plan on supporting arms control and disarmament measures when he came to power and yet as he saw unprecedented protests against nuclear weapons as he saw the largest demonstration in American history in June of 1982.  When he saw that the nuclear weapons freeze campaign had support of 70 to 80 percent of the public, Reagan began to shift.

SHARP: Reagan became a believer in the end, but the breakthroughs he and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev made in the late 1980s still left huge arsenals on both sides when the Cold War ended.

SCHELL: The great tragedy of it all…

SHARP: That’s Jonathan Schell again…

SCHELL: …was that the end of the Cold War was at the same time the most golden opportunity to actually get hold of these weapons and drown them in the bathtub, get rid of them, but unfortunately interest in them dropped at exactly that moment of the greatest opportunity, and so we lost the chance for the time being.

SHARP: Schell points out though, that in the years since, the ideas of the movement have survived, and even seeped into mainstream national security policy.  The threat of nuclear terrorism and a growing number of nuclear states means that you now find presidents calling for a nuclear weapons-free world, not just the anti-nuclear demonstrators of old.  For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  When Iran’s president Mahmood Ahmedinejad spoke before the UN General Assembly last night, he did not mention Iran’s nuclear program.  Still, it’s been a key topic of conversation at the UN all this week.  The US and its allies have given Iran an October 1st deadline to respond to demands to halt its nuclear pursuits.  Iran maintains its program is for producing energy—not weapons.  But that hasn’t stopped other countries in the Middle East from pursuing their own nuclear ambitions.  The world’s Aaron Schachter reports from Beirut.

AARON SCHACHTER: The list of Middle Eastern countries looking for nukes might give you pause:  Yemen, Syria, Sudan.  In the past few years these countries have publicly expressed interest in building nuclear reactors.  Some have actually signed contracts with western firms.  All say they’re pursuing only nuclear power.

GARY MILHOLLIN: In no case, I think, does it make sense for a country in the Middle East that does not have a reactor now to get one.

SCHACHTER: Gary Milhollin heads the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control based in Washington.  For him, what’s going on in the Middle East is clear; everyone’s afraid in one way or another of a nuclear Iran.

MILHOLLIN: Generally speaking, you can divide the countries in the Middle East into two groups: one group has oil and doesn’t need a reactor; and the other group doesn’t have oil and therefore cannot afford to pay for a reactor.  And unfortunately if you look at history, you see that many countries have tried to hide a nuclear weapon program under the guise of a civilian power program.

SCHACHTER: Milhollin puts Iran in that group.  He says unless Iran is stopped soon, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will be impossible to contain.  But Kristian Alexander, a Political Scientist at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed University, says the so-called “nuclear arms race” in the Middle East is more puffery than fact.  He says outside of Iran, no one’s actually building anything.

KRISTIAN ALEXANDER: I really think it’s more for domestic consumption, to claim a status that you’re somewhat of a powerhouse in the region.  But there’s a lot of talk and not a lot of action.

SCHACHTER: But From Iran, there’s talk and action.  Its president is issuing hateful rhetoric and the country is developing nuclear power, possibly nuclear weapons.  Even so, Alexander doesn’t think Iran would actually use The Bomb, against Israel or anyone else.  Ronen Bergman agrees.  He’s an Israeli journalist and author of The Secret War with Iran.  He says Iran wants nuclear weapons for bargaining power.  That worries Israel and Sunni Arab countries, which wouldn’t want to kowtow to a nuclear-armed Shiite country and its proxies.  Bergman says this has already created some unlikely alliances.

RONEN BERGMAN: There has been an ongoing intimate connection between Israeli and Arab intelligence services trying to fight the support of the Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups and the attempts to acquire nuclear Armageddon weapons.  We are talking about Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco.

SCHACHTER: Lawrence Rubin, with the Dubai Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School, says he doesn’t know whether Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons or not.  But he thinks all sides of the debate need to stop and take a breath.  Rubin says there’s nothing inherently wrong with Iran or other countries pursuing nuclear technology, as long as the pursuit’s transparent.

LAWRENCE RUBIN: If they sign various international agreements regarding nuclear technology, then they’re entitled to the sharing of technology.  And these are agreements that the international community, and especially the United States supports.  And these are obviously some of the agreements the United States and the international community have been trying to work out with Iran for a long time.

SCHACHTER: But Rubin concedes even when everything’s on the up and up, you never know when a civilian nuclear program will lead to building a weapon.  For The World, I’m Aaron Schachter in Beirut.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: As you heard earlier in the program, President Obama and other world leaders discussed nuclear disarmament this morning at UN headquarters in New York.  Now it’s off to Pittsburgh, and the G-20 summit.  The meeting gives leaders of the globe’s 20 biggest economies a chance to focus on the global economy.  For people and businesses in Pittsburgh, it’s their moment in the international spotlight, as The World’s Jason Margolis explains.

JASON MARGOLIS: It’s rare that cities get a chance like this: 20 of the most powerful leaders in the world in one place, at one time, along with hundreds of support staff, and thousands of reporters and camera people.  It’s a fleeting chance for local businesses to press as much flesh as is humanly possible.

MATT HARBAUGH: I wouldn’t call it pressure; it’s a great opportunity.

MARGOLIS: Matt Harbaugh is the chief innovation officer with the group “Innovation Works.” It’s a public-private partnership that provides seed money to Pittsburgh-area businesses like Ephiphany Solar Water.

MATT HARBAUGH: Dirty water comes in one end, through tubes, gets put through a solar-thermal heating system that purifies the water, and drinkable water comes out the other end. This is great technology for use in developing countries.

MARGOLIS: Like most every ambitious business-minded person in Pittsburgh, Harbaugh is hoping for just a few minutes of time from a visitor this week to brag about his business.

That was the idea behind the trade expo organized by Pennsylvania state representative Jake Wheatley.  It was held in Pennsylvania’s Hill District, about a mile-and-a-half from the Convention Center where the G-20 summit was taking place.  Wheatley’s assistant Chuck Tyler ran the show.

CHUCK TYLER: Major events of this magnitude are the Super Bowl champions, the Stanley Cup champions.  But no, there’s definitely a buzz throughout Pittsburgh.

MARGOLIS: The building where the Trade Expo was held is a community center.  It normally hosts afterschool programs for children, daycare, and services for seniors.  Expo organizers rolled out the red carpet – a spread of chicken kabobs, meatballs, and cups of macaroni and cheese.  But 30 minutes into the two-hour event, nobody had touched the buffet.  Tyler kept glancing towards the entrance as we spoke.

TYLERWorst case scenario would definitely be if we all just sat around and ate some great food and chit-chatted among ourselves.  The average outcome would be more folks like yourself coming in here and talking to the exhibitors and getting their stories out that way.  Optimum outcome would be a G-20 country rep coming in, actually engaging with a business and saying, “You know what, I need to take notes, I need to take your card, your company should be able to do business with my country.”

BUD LATEEF: We are a company focused on medication security products.  We have medication containers that are lockable.

MARGOLIS: Bud Lateef laid out his merchandise on a table.  His small company is called Lockmed Medical Products.  We chatted for close to 15 minutes; I wasn’t taking him away from any potential customers.  There were none.  But Rina Liu-Balshe strolled over and joined us.  She manages the International Trade Program with the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission.  Her job is to help people like Lateef grow their businesses.  I asked her if the lack of visitors at the expo was disheartening.

RINA LIU-BALSHE: Actually, it is.  The reason I think, with all the security, all the things, probably logistically, make the organizing a little more difficult.  Because if you’re not from Pittsburgh it’s pretty difficult…. How did you find this place?

MARGOLIS: GPS.

LIU-BALSHE: Oh, GPS, well now, you brought GPS, but a lot of people probably didn’t drive.

MARGOLIS: Nobody at the Expo was expecting Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy to personally walk through the doors.  But the lack of any foreign visitors couldn’t help but breed some cynicism that big international conferences like the G20 take place in hermetically-sealed convention centers.  

I spoke with one woman from a local chamber of commerce who asked not to be identified by name.  She said she wasn’t surprised nobody came.  She asked me:  “What would you do if you were a foreign visitor with a couple of days in Pittsburgh?  Go to a party thrown by the Brazilians or a trade expo in the poor part of town?”  

I stayed the full two hours at the Expo to see if anybody arrived.  I started to feel as anxious as organizer Chuck Tyler looked, like we were somehow in this together.  In the end, nobody showed up.  And I was the only member of the media.  I asked Tyler for his reaction.

TYLER: I’m going to use President Obama’s grading scale.  This was an A-minus.  We engaged small and medium enterprises.  We allowed them to network.  And we had great folks like you.  So we did generate some type of external attraction to our events.  And so, A-minus.

MARGOLIS: Or, as local businessman Fred Neumeyer said as he was packing up his display…

‘

FRED NEUMEYER: Ahh, there’s always tomorrow!  [LAUGHS]

MARGOLIS: For The World, I’m Jason Margolis in Pittsburgh.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH   Boston.  A vaccine to prevent HIV infection may be tantalizingly closer today.  Researchers have announced that an experimental vaccine appears to reduce the rate of HIV infection by a third.  The effect, if real, is relatively modest.  But it’s the first time any AIDS vaccine trial has shown any protective effect.  The World’s Laura Lynch has more.

LAURA LYNCH:  The search for an AIDS vaccine has been long, frustrating .and mark by failure.  Most recently, one study was halted in 2007 after failing to prevent infection.  Five years ago, some scientists were suggesting this study was a waste of time.  But researchers in Thailand, sponsored by the U.S. military, carried on.  They found 16 thousand people there willing to take part.  Thanat Yomah signed up after seeing relatives infected with HIV.

THANAT YOMAH: [Via Translator] The reason I volunteered is because I really want the world to find a way to prevent HIV and AIDS.  I live in a place that’s been facing a pandemic.  Some years ago, many people in our families and community died of AIDS.  So when this trial came to us, I really wanted to help.

LYNCH: For this trial, scientists combined two earlier vaccines that hadn’t worked on their own.  Eight thousand Thais between the ages of 18 and 30 were given the vaccine, the other eight thousand received a placebo.  After three years, the rate of HIV infection was a third lower in the vaccinated group:  51 people infected compared with 74 in the placebo group.  Dr Joseph Chu is a representative of the US Army Surgeon General who’s been involved in the trial.  He calls it a significant breakthrough.

DR. JOSEPH CHU: some people thought maybe we’ll never get to an HIV vaccine.  But the data from this study shows that perhaps we can find an HIV vaccine, finding a safe and efficacious vaccine is possible.  However, we still need to do a lot more work.

LYNCH: Dr. Kate Hankins, the Scientific Advisor to the UN Program on AIDS, is also encouraged by the result.

DR. KATE HANKINS: The numbers are small, and the sample size at 16 thousand is probably less than what would have been required for a resounding result.  But nonetheless it shows that we’re moving in the right direction.  The possibility that this occurred through chance alone is low:  less than five percent.

LYNCH: Dr. Evan Harris is taking a special interest in all of this.  The British Member of Parliament participated in an unsuccessful HIV vaccine trial in 2000.  Some have raised questions about whether the U.S. military was using Thai volunteers as guinea pigs.  Harris rejects that.

DR. EVAN HARRIS: So, this isn’t a question of “Vaccination Colonialism,” and experimenting on people in the developing world.  A lot of the early treatments, early studies, particularly the safety studies, were done on British subjects like me.  In fact, British Parliamentarians like me.  So, this isn’t a question of testing something unsafe in the developing world.  It’s far more relevant to test it on the sorts of virus subtypes that one sees in areas of high prevalence.

LYNCH: And in this case, the vaccine was tailored to combat the strain of HIV most common in Thailand.  That suggests the vaccine might not achieve similar results in other parts of the world with different strains, like Sub-Saharan Africa, given all the uncertainties.  Kate Hankins says it’s still necessary to emphasize other ways to prevent HIV infections.

HANKINS: We have other things that are more efficacious like male circumcision.  That’s not got the coverage it needs as yet.  We’ve got more to do on getting people to use condoms correctly and consistently.  We’ve got a lot of work do to on prevention to increase coverage while we’re trying to sort out this vaccine issue.

LYNCH: Sorting it out will take time.  Probably years of testing.  Joseph Chu admits he has no idea when or if there will be a vaccine.

CHU: I can’t tell you how long it will be but it’s certainly a lot closer than before we started this trial.  The thing that we’ll have to do right now is go back to the laboratory and find out what factors  actually help prevent the infection and  see whether we can improve on them

LYNCH: It will need a lot of improving.  Most health authorities won’t consider licensing a vaccine for use unless it’s at least 70 to 80 percent effective.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Jon Cohen is the author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for the AIDS Vaccine.  Jon, do you see this news today as a breakthrough?

JON COHEN: Breakthrough’s a big word.  I think it’s certainly a step forward and now the data will be scrutinized closely.  It’s sort of like if you’re shooting for the moon, you have to celebrate the fact when you first break into space.  And this is breaking into space, it’s not a moonwalk.

WERMAN: So maybe not the end of the line for a search for an AIDS vaccine.  But maybe the beginning of the end of the line.

COHEN: I think the findings shocked so many critics of the study that that makes it more interesting.

WERMAN: what was shocking to them about the study?

COHEN: I think they would have bet their houses that these two vaccines together wouldn’t do a thing.

WERMAN: So what is the next question scientists need to ask and will be asking about the study?

COHEN: Researchers really don’t know which immune responses can protect people from HIV.  So this gives them an opportunity for the first time to look at people who are protected and try to tease out what did they do right.

WERMAN: So considering that this area of research had been relatively fruitless for 25 years, if there is something in this vaccine that is protecting people from HIV infection, what then needs to happen?

COHEN: I think there’s a confusion about how vaccines move forward.  I wouldn’t say the research has been fruitless for 25 years.  I think that failure tells you which way to go.  And all the failures that have mounted up have led people in different directions.  And now with a success, modest as it is, what it allows you to do is to start saying, “Okay, if these immune responses are linked to protection, then we can now evaluate in animal studies and in smaller human trials whether you’re getting those immune responses.”

WERMAN: This vaccine was tested in Thailand.  Could the same vaccine be tested in sub-Saharan African or in the US with similar results, do you think?

COHEN: The vaccine actually was designed to be tested in Thailand.  Which means they took strains of the virus circulating in Thailand and put those into the vaccine.  So it wouldn’t really be applicable outside of Thailand.  Could you cassette in strains from other places?  Yes you could. But I don’t think there’s a lot of enthusiasm about taking an AIDS vaccine that has 30 percent protection and using it.

WERMAN: There’s been a concern within the research community that a vaccine, as you said, I mean people were betting their house that this wouldn’t work, just is not possible.  Do you think that this news, though, could bring some degree of hope and encouragement to those working In HIV/AIDS research and could lead to more concrete results, such as, even funding, and more people pursuing   research again?

COHEN: I’ve heard what you said a number of times, and I think it’s a little twisted.  There’s this sort of common wisdom going around that all these researchers thought it was not possible, and now people think it’s possible.  I don’t think that’s the case.  I think a lot of people didn’t believe in these two vaccines combined together, and they firmly believed it’s possible.  So what does this do?  This makes it clear to people that we all have to be really humble about what we know and don’t know.  And at the end of the day, much as science likes to think it understands every last mechanism, empiricism can carry the day.  In other words, just trial and error sometimes is how you move forward in science.  And it’s not really about carefully figuring something out ahead of time about why something should work.

WERMAN: I mean, having written about this for a long time, Jon did you think that the two vaccines together would work, and are you somewhat optimistic now yourself about the way forward?

COHEN: Well, in my book, I spent a long time going through the empirical versus the mechanistic argument.  And I lean toward empiricism.  I think that it ultimately does come down to what happens in humans.  Not what happens in monkeys or what happens test tube studies.  So I was open minded about whether this would work or not work.  The real question in my mind was could the US government afford to conduct this study, which cost 105 million dollars, and what would that take away from other studies?  So it was really a financial question. I didn’t think the vaccines would harm people, and I thought they had a chance of working.  So I’m not knocked off of my rocker about this.  I thought that it was possible.

WERMAN: I think some people, maybe even you, might say some of the results of this study are kind of borderline; they’re not as decisive as a lot of people would like them to be.  Can costs, can further research be justified at this point given the results?

COHEN: It depends on what you want out of a study like this.  If you want a product that can move in to people and save the world from HIV, no you wouldn’t’ say the cost is justified.  But if you want to learn from it to make better products that can make a big impact on the epidemic, I think of course it’s justified.  Yes, these results in terms of statistical significance are right on the cutting edge of significance.  But even if they weren’t statistically significant, they’re still intriguing.

WERMAN: Jon Cohen, a correspondent with Science magazine and author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for the AIDS Vaccine, joining us from his home in San Diego.  Thank you very much.

COHEN: Thanks for having me.

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MARCO WERMAN: Cuban food impresario Jose Antonio Ortega Bonet died a few days ago in Florida.  He was the founder of a company called Sazon Goya.  That may not mean much to those Americans whose main condiments are salt and pepper.  But if you grew up in a Latino-Caribbean home — you know Sazon Goya.  We’re talking about those small packets of spices and seasonings that bring out big flavor in any dish.  Ortega Bonet came up with that — before partnering with the New Jersey-based Goya Foods Company.  TV chef Daisy Martinez knows a lot about Sazon Goya.  She says she grew up with those orange-colored spice packets.

DAISY MARTINEZ:  The first time that I remember using the little packets of Sazon Goya, or my mother’s using the packets, was back in the sixties.  It was a shortcut in that you didn’t have to make achiote oil, you take the achiote seeds and steep them in oil, or back then sometimes you’d use lard.

WERMAN: Remind us what achiote oil is?

MARTINEZ: Achiote is a seed.  When steeped in olive oil, it imparts a beautiful orange, rusty, gorgeous sunset color.  And there’s a very subtle nutty flavor to the oil that really compliments Caribbean dishes.  The achiote is the poor man’s compromise to saffron.

WERMAN: I love cooking and I love making food that has the feel of the Caribbean, but I’m certainly no specialist, and I’ve got the Sazon Goya in my pantry.  And I always find that if I just wanna get it a little further, I just throw one of those in there.  It’s amazing, it suddenly changes everything!  [OVERLAPPING]

MARTINEZ: [OVERLAPPING] Right.  It’s a very good shortcut, it really is.  I don’t use Sazon Goya because I’m used to the old school way of doing things.  I make my achiote oil from scratch and use my own condiments to come up with a balance, but for a quick fix in a pinch, if you want to give your dish a little extra kick, extra punch, a little packet of Sazon Goya will do you right.

WERMAN: When was the last time you dropped a little packet of Sazon Goya in your food?

MARTINEZ: When I travel.  For instance, I did a cooking class in Maine this past summer.  I went to the supermarket and asked for the Latin aisle.  And….

WERMAN: I bet in Maine, you got blank stares!  [LAUGHS]

MARTINEZ: [LAUGHS] …Among other things.  They thought I was speaking a different language.  But I was able to find, ironically enough, a little box of Sazon Goya, which went a long way to helping me recreate the dishes for my students that I wanted to show them.  And with the proviso, if you cannot find the original ingredients, this will take you where you need to go.

WERMAN: Do you find that most Latinos in the US, when you cook for them, can they tell the difference between real achiote oil and tossing in Sazon Goya?

MARTINEZ: I think for the lay palate, probably not.  For a person who’s more indoctrinated in the kitchen and is palate-conscious, you probably could distinguish a little bit.  I believe there’s a little MSG in the Sazon Goya.  You have four flavors:  bold and sweet, bitter and sour.  And recently this fifth element has come up.  The Japanese call it Umani.  It’s difficult to pin down, but it’s like a satisfying, full flavor on the tongue in the mouth.

WERMAN: I thought The Fifth Element was a movie with Bruce Willis, who knew?

MARTINEZ: [LAUGHS] That’s one of my son’s favorite movies that Milla girl is in it, right?

WERMAN: Right!  Did you ever know Jose Antonio Ortega Bonet?

MARTINEZ: No, I never had the pleasure of meeting him.  I met with Goya back during Daisy Cooks and can honestly say I’ve always been a proponent.  I cook my meals with Goya products. I never received a dime from Goya, so what I’m telling you is the God’s honest truth, hand to the Bible.

WERMAN: And just to be clear, this program is not receiving anything from Goya!

MARTINEZ: [LAUGHS]

WERMAN: However, if you wanna send us a case of guava nectar, I won’t say no!  [LAUGHS]  What is your favorite dish to put Sazon Goya in, if you didn’t have the real achiote oil with you?

MARTINEZ: A pot of white beans with Calabaza.  Calabaza is a Caribbean pumpkin.  It’s delicious!  And if you stew a pot of white beans, in Puerto Rico they have these delicious little white beans, and you make it with Calabaza, and scent it with maybe just little pinch of cloves and you throw in a packet of Sazon Goya.  It gives it a beautiful, vibrant color that goes gorgeous with your yellow rice and again, gives you that full flavor feeling in your mouth.  Really good!

WERMAN: I’m sold!

MARTINEZ: [LAUGHS]

WERMAN: Daisy Martinez, [LAUGHS] host of Viva Daisy on the Food Network.  So good to speak with you.  Thanks a lot.

MARTINEZ: Thank you, thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.