UPSC Daily Current Affairs- 10th May 2023 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Ecuador’s government recently pledged to spend about $18 million annually for two decades on conservation in the Galapagos Islands.

About Galapagos Islands:-

• The Galápagos Islands are a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean.
• They are part of the country of Ecuador, in South America.
• There are thirteen major islands and a handful of smaller islands that make up the Galápagos archipelago.
  • The largest of the islands is called Isabela.
• Repeated volcanic eruptions helped to form the rugged mountain landscape of the Galápagos Islands.
• The Galápagos Islands are located near the equator, yet they receive cool ocean currents. 
  • This makes for a strange mix of tropical and temperate climates.
• British naturalist Charles Darwin came to the Galápagos in 1835, on a ship called the HMS Beagle.
  • His observations of wildlife on the island inspired his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Wildlife:-

• It contains aquatic species such as manta rays and sharks which have been endangered by commercial fishing.
• It also hosts a wide array of aquatic wildlife, including marine iguanas, and waved albatrosses. 
• Also, the giant tortoises found here – ‘Galápagos’ in old Spanish – give the islands their name.
•  Many species are endemic.
  • Endemic: they are not found anywhere else in the world.
  • These include the giant Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra), the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), the flightless cormorant (Phalacrocoraz harris), and the Galápagos penguin.
  • Galápagos penguin, Galápagos fur seal and Galápagos sea lion are critically endangered.
  • The Galápagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) is the only penguin species to live in the Northern Hemisphere.

Protection Status:-

• Ecuador made a part of the Galapagos a wildlife sanctuary in 1935.
  • The sanctuary became the Galapagos National Park in 1959.
• In 1978, the islands became UNESCO’s first World Heritage Site.

Source: Indian Express

Rabindranath Tagore

Why in News?

Prime Minister recently paid tributes to Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary.

About Rabindranath Tagore:

• He was a world-renowned poet, litterateur, philosopher and Asia’s first Nobel laureate.
• He was born in Kolkata on May 7, 1861. 
• He was the son of Debendranath Tagore, a prominent philosopher and religious reformer. 
• He was popularly known as Bard of Bengal, and people used to call him Gurudev.
• He introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit.
• He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and vice versa.
• In 1913 he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• He was also an influential artist and musician. He wrote around 2230 songs and painted 3000 paintings. His songs are known as Rabindra Sangeet.
• Rabindranath Tagore wrote India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. He also wrote Amar Sonar Bangla, the national anthem for Bangla The Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work.
• He was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he repudiated it in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar (Jallianwalla Bagh) Massacre.
• Viswa Bharti University, which was known as Shantiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore.
• Major Works:
  • Tagore’s most notable work of poetry is Gitanjali: Song Offerings, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. 
  • Other notable poetry publications include Sonar Tari and Manasi.
  • He wrote novels, plays, and short stories in both languages, including the plays Chitra and The Post Office.
  • He is credited with pioneering the short story form in Bengali literature, with some of his best work collected in The Hungry Stones and Other Stories and The Glimpses of Bengal Life.

Source: The Hindu

Why in News?

Amid recent reports of suspicious infrastructure upgrades at Myanmar’s Coco Islands, an MQ-9 drone leased by the Indian Navy was recently seen reconnoitring the nearby areas of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

About Coco Islands:

• They are a small group of islands located in the Bay of Bengal.
• Great Coco Island, the largest in the group, lies just 55 km from India’s strategic Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 
• They are part of the Yangon Region of Myanmar. 
• It is geologically an extended division of the Arakan Mountains or Rakhine Mountains, submerges as a chain of islands in the Bay of Bengal for a long stretch and emerges again in the form of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 
• They are part of the same topography as India’s Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
• History:
  • In the early 19th century, the British government in India established a penal colony in the Andaman for the convicts in the Indian subcontinent, and the Coco Islands were a source of food for it.
  • The British government had reportedly leased out the islands to the Jadwet family of Burma.
  • The leasing of control of the Coco Islands resulted in poor governance of the islands, which made the British government in India to transfer its control to the government of Lower Burma in Rangoon.
  • In 1882, the islands officially became part of British Burma.
  • The islands became a self-governing crown colony even after Burma was separated from British India in 1937.

Source: The Hindu

GS-II

Drug Recall Law in India

Why in News?

Recent failures of Indian manufactured drugs overseas (like the Gambia incident) have brought attention to the issue of absence of a drug recall law in the pharmaceutical industry in India. 

What is a Drug Recall?

• Recall is an action taken to withdraw/remove the drugs from distribution or use including corrective action for which deficiencies are reported in quality, efficacy or safety. 
• The defective products related to quality include Not of Standard Quality, Adulterated or Spurious drugs. 

Status of Drug Recall Law in India

• India has been considering the creation of a mandatory recall law for substandard drugs since 1976, but still no law exists that mandates such medicine be removed from the market.
• In 1976, the Drugs Consultative Committee (DCC), discussed the issue of drug recalls with the various state regulators, however, none of them resulted in amendments to the Drugs & Cosmetics Act  to create a mandatory recall mechanism.
• In 2012,  the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) proposed a set of draft recall guidelines but the national regulator lacks the power to convert guidelines into a binding law. 
• The issue of recalls resurfaced in 2016 at meetings of the DCC and at another committee, called the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB).  Nothing changed on the ground. The same issue came up again in 2018 and 2019 at the meetings of the DCC, but India still lacks a recall law, 46 years on.

Reasons for not having the Law?

• Complex Drug Regulatory Issues: The Drug Regulation Section of the Union health ministry is simply not up to the task of tackling complex drug regulatory issues due to a combination of different factors including apathy, lack of expertise in the area, and a greater interest in enabling the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.
• No Centralised Regulatory Authority: India is a highly fragmented regulatory structure, with each state having its own drug regulator. Both the pharmaceutical industry and state drug regulators have resisted greater centralisation of regulatory powers. 
• Fear of Public Scrutiny: Every month, dozens of drugs fail random-testing in government laboratories. Ideally, these drugs will be mandatorily recalled in a transparent manner, with the people being informed of the failures. But if this were to actually happen in India, the people at large would be flooded with alerts on an almost daily basis, which would then increase the pressure on drug regulators to institute extensive reforms.

Present Laws Regulating the Drugs and Pharmaceutical Sector in India 

• Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation: It is the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) of India.  
  • The Drugs & Cosmetics Act,1940 and rules 1945 have entrusted various responsibilities to central & state regulators for regulation of drugs & cosmetics. It envisages uniform implementation of the provisions of the Act & Rules made there under for ensuring the safety, rights and well being of the patients by regulating the drugs and cosmetics. 
  • CDSCO along with state regulators, is jointly responsible for grant of licenses of certain specialized categories of critical Drugs such as blood and blood products, I. V. Fluids, Vaccine and Sera.
• The Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940: It regulates the import, manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs in India.
• The Pharmacy Act,1948: It is meant to regulate the profession of Pharmacy in India.
• The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act, 1954: It provides to control the advertisements regarding drugs; it prohibits the advertising of remedies alleged to possess magic qualities.
• The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985: It is an act concerned with control and regulation of operations relating to Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
• National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority: It is an organization of the Government of India which was established, inter alia, to fix/ revise the prices of controlled bulk drugs and formulations and to enforce prices and availability of the medicines in the country, under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 1995. 
  • The organization is also entrusted with the task of recovering amounts overcharged by manufacturers for the controlled drugs from the consumers. It also monitors the prices of decontrolled drugs in order to keep them at reasonable levels.

Way Ahead

• To create an effective recall mechanism, the responsibility of recalling drugs has to be centralised, with one authority that has the legal power to hold companies liable for failures to recall drugs from across the country, and further, to also search and seize batches of failed medicine.
• If India is a single market for drugs then it should have one regulator. If not, the incompetence of a regulator in just one state can lead to adverse effects for patients in other states, whose citizens have no influence or electoral power to demand accountability of that regulator.

Source: The Hindu

Why in News?

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently flagged 32 fresh cases of misleading ads and claims by Food Business Operators (FBOs). 

More about the news

• In contravention of the Food Safety and Standards:
  • The concerned advertisements were found to be in contravention of the Food Safety and Standards (Advertisements & Claims) Regulations, 2018. 
• Who are these violators? 
  • FSSAI confirmed that they scrutinised products in varied categories such as health supplements, organic products, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) products and staples, each endorsing certain health and product claims. 
  • The alleged violators include manufacturers and/or marketers of nutraceutical products, refined oils, pulses, flours, millet products, and ghee.

Regulations

• Entity-specific regulations:
  • FSSAI uses the Food Safety and Standards (Advertisements & Claims) Regulations, 2018 which specifically deal with food (and related products) 
  • Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA)’s regulations cover goods, products and services.  
• Broadcasting regulations:
  • The Programme and Advertising Codes prescribed under the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 stipulate that advertisements must not draw inferences that it has “some special or miraculous or supernatural property or quality, which is difficult to be proved.” 
• Consumer Protection Act, 2019:
  • The Consumer Protection Act was enacted to deal with matters relating to violation of consumer’s rights, unfair trade practices, misleading advertisements, and all those circumstances which are prejudicial to the consumer’s rights.
• Prohibitions:
  • Product claims suggesting suitability for prevention, alleviation, treatment or cure of a disease, disorder or particular psychological condition is prohibited unless specifically permitted under the regulations of the FSS Act, 2006. 
• Punishments:
  • Making deceptive claims or advertisements are punishable offences under Section-53 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. 

Concerns & challenges

• Rising offences:
  • As per the regulator, the cumulative count of such offences has shot up to 170 in the last six months. 
    • It urged FBOs to “desist from making any unscientific and/or exaggerated claims and advertisements to promote their product sales to avoid enforcement actions and in larger consumer interest.”
• Technicalities:
  • Most complaints of misleading were related to the nutrition of a product, its benefits and the ingredient mix not being based on adequate evidence. Issue here is that a lot of claim data is to be based on technical data. 
    • For example, if one says that there is Vitamin D in his/her product, we need evidence to substantiate that there indeed is Vitamin D in your product.
• Need of adequate clinical data:
  • If the claim revolves around the composition of the product, saying that a product with all its elements achieves a certain outcome, companies need to provide clinical data about the outcomes pertaining to the control group, the administered group and the observed period of the claimed outcomes. 

Way Ahead

• What does the regulator expect?
  • FSSAI seeks that the advertisements and claims be “truthful, unambiguous, meaningful, not misleading and help consumers to comprehend the information provided”. 
  • Claims must be scientifically substantiated by validated methods of characterising or quantifying the ingredient or substance that is the basis for the claim.  
• It is extremely important for consumers to be able to distinguish between regular posts and promotional content.
• Any endorsement must reflect the genuine, reasonably current opinion of the individual, group or organisations making such representation and must be based on adequate information about, or experience with, the identified goods, product or service.
• An ideal advertisement can be suggestive and not passively imposing, it should educate the people and lastly, “it should be true!”

Source: The Hindu

GS-III

Why in News?

 Scientists named the recently discovered black hole “Scary Barbie,” after a beloved children’s character.

About Scary Barbie:-

• Scary Barbie is a supermassive black hole that is devouring a star with a thousand times the brightness of a supernova.
• It was first observed in 2020.
  • It was named ZTF20abrbeie.
• It is one of the most luminous, energetic, long-lasting transient objects in the sky.
• It is also extremely far away and in a somewhat neglected corner of the sky. 
• The researchers discovered it using an AI engine called REFITT (Recommender Engine
• For Intelligent Transient Tracking).
  • The AI engine looks through observations from many different telescopes around the World.

Source: Indian Express

Donanemab

Why in News?

 Recently, the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, released the drug donanemab for Alzheimer’s treatment.

About Donanemab:-

• Donanemab is a drug developed for Alzheimer’s by a US pharma company ‘Eli Lilly’.
• It is yet to be approved in the USA.
• Donanemab is not a cure for Alzheimer’s.
• The drug aims to remove the plaques from the brain and slow the progression of the disease.
• It slows cognitive decline by 35%
• Mechanism: It has antibodies that target different forms of amyloid-beta (Aβ) proteins that can clump together to form amyloid plaques in people’s brains, resulting in their cognitive decline.
• It has similar antibody-based therapy like lecanemab, but targets different forms of amyloid-beta (Aβ) proteins.
  • Lecanemab:-
  • It is a drug developed for Alzheimer’s.
  • It is approved in the US.
  • It is still under evaluation by the FDA’s counterpart in Europe, the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
  • Lecanemab trial results showed it slowed cognitive decline by 27%.
• Both donanemab and lecanemab are given intravenously.
• Both donanemab and lecanemab have a high risk of side effects like ‘amyloid-related imaging abnormalities’ (ARIA) which include swelling or bleeding in the brain.

About Alzheimer’s Disease:-

• Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological disorder which causes brain cells to degenerate and die.
  • This leads to loss of memory, problems with words in speaking or writing, poor judgment, changes in mood and personality, confusion with time or place, etc.
• It is a brain disorder that gets worse over time.
• Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia among older adults. 
• Causes:-
  • Alzheimer’s disease is thought to be caused by the abnormal build-up of proteins in and around brain cells.
  • One of the proteins involved is called amyloid, deposits of which form plaques around brain cells and the other protein is called tau.
    • Tau is a protein that when it occurs in tangled formations in the brain of Alzheimer patients, disrupts the ability of neurons to communicate with one another in the brain.
• Alzheimer’s is an incurable disease, as the death of brain cells cannot be reversed.
• Women have a higher risk of having Alzheimer’s disease than men.

Source: The Hindu