Originally Posted by bhutocracy

Actually.. Cuba's biotech is so advanced that the US admin are fear mongering about them making bio-weapons when really they are just providing income for Cuba in Bio-med exports like any good old US bio-med company.


"When Marxist revolutionary Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, most of Cuba's resources were ploughed into developing education and health systems. In the mid-1980s, with aid from the Soviet Union, Cuba started to invest heavily in science and biotechnology.

Although it is a small country with only 11 million people, it now boasts 52 scientific research institutes in the capital and more than 12,000 scientists on the whole island.

Cuba's health indicators - the infant mortality rate is 6.4 per 1,000 and life expectancy is 75 years - put it in the same league, health-wise, as the US and Britain. The quality and efficiency of its comprehensive, and free, health-care system contrasts sharply with the sluggish and inefficient state-controlled economy.

Cuba pulled off its first scientific coup with the discovery of a new vaccine for meningitis B in the late 1980s. The vaccine controlled epidemics at home, and obtained good results abroad especially in Argentina and Brazil.

Havana's Carlos J. Finlay Institute has entered into a deal that allows major drug multinational GlaxoSmithKline to license its discovery in order to facilitate the first entry of a Cuban medical product into the more lucrative Western market. "