iqwsf

ACROSS the United States, thousands of federally financed stimulus projects are under way, aimed at bolstering the economy and putting people to work. The results so far have not been spectacular. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with the idea of fiscal stimulus itself. We need more stimulus, not less — but we need to focus much more on actually putting people to work. Two friends of mine, both economists, came upon a stimulus project recently that illustrated the problem. On a Wyoming highway they saw a sign that read “Putting America to Work: Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” and prominently featured a picture of a worker digging with a shovel. Out on the road, there was plenty of equipment, including a gigantic asphalt paver, dump trucks, rollers and service vehicles. But there wasn’t a single laborer with a shovel. That project employed capital, certainly, but not many human beings. Like many such stimulus projects, it could be justified if you accept the idea that gross domestic product, not jobs, is central — a misconception rooted in economic theory, or at least in the way that Keynesian economic theory has evolved. The conventional concept of “recession” has been defined in terms of G.D.P., not unemployment, 传世私服 which is perceived as a “lagging indicator.” It is widely assumed that jump-starting “the economy,” as measured by G.D.P., is the most fundamental move we should make. Stimulate the economy, so the theory goes — get that economic engine humming — and it will provide plenty of rides for the unemployed, and good rides too, as healthy businesses expand. In addition, focusing on increasing the G.D.P. rather than on creating jobs is related to the notion that we need real jobs, jobs that are not make-work, jobs with a future. And there is something to this: We would not want to see teams of laborers with shovels at construction sites that could operate more efficiently without them. Yet unless we take new measures, we face the prospect of protracted unemployment. In June, the unemployment rate stood at 9.5 percent and the rate of long-term unemployment, defined as joblessness for at least 27 weeks, was 4.4 percent — its highest level since 1948. Both Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, recently said that high unemployment was likely to persist for years. This would have an enormous human cost, and it is especially worrisome for people who are young or otherwise vulnerable and may be inclined to give up and drop out entirely. Ultimately, of course, this will show up in the traditional measures of G.D.P., as well. So here’s a proposal: Why not use government policy to directly create jobs — labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, public health and safety, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation, arts and letters, and scientific research? Would this be an effective use of resources? From the standpoint of economic theory, government expenditures in such areas often provide benefits that are not being produced by the market economy. Take New York subway stations, for example. Cleaning and painting them in a period of severe austerity can easily be neglected. Yet the long-term benefit to businesses from an appealing mass transit system is enormous. (This is an example of an “externality,” which the market economy, left to its own devices, will neglect.) Such benefits are hard to measure precisely because there is no current market price for them. Cost-benefit analysts tend to be in endless debate about such programs, and so the social impetus for them often becomes blurred. Keep this in mind, though: Whatever the merits of specific programs, the cutoff that we choose for classifying a project as “good” or “bad” should be adjusted downward in periods of widespread unemployment. Some researchers have expressed doubts, for example, that “throwing more resources” at students — providing more teachers and aides — is cost effective, in terms of objective measures of educational outcome. In a period of severe joblessness like this one, however, someone who is sitting unemployed who would rather be working at a modest salary as a teacher’s aide should be given a chance, at least until the economy improves. In other words, the unemployment rate itself should be a major factor in evaluating such programs. In 1936, John Maynard Keynes made much the same point: “Thus we are so sensible, have schooled ourselves to so close a semblance of prudent financiers, taking careful thought before we add to the ‘financial’ burdens of posterity by building them houses to live in, that we have no such easy escape from the sufferings of unemployment.” PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S New Deal, though no more than partly successful, was much more focused on job creation than our current economic stimulus has been. It seems that the New Deal was also more successful at inspiring the American public. Consider one of the most applauded of Roosevelt’s programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, from 1933 to 1942. The program was open to young men, initially those 18 to 25, a group that was quite vulnerable economically. The C.C.C. 传世 emphasized labor-intensive projects like planting trees. The public appreciated the tree planting because the projects addressed big problems that had been ignored. Major dust storms in and around Oklahoma raged from 1930 to 1936, denuding whole regions of agricultural land. The storms were vivid evidence of an externality that environmentalists had warned about for years, to little avail. Unregulated farming and lumbering had allowed pervasive soil erosion. Aside from the environmental benefits, the C.C.C. encouraged a sense of camaraderie, taught young men new skills and gave its workers a sense of participation in something historic. Congress has recently set plans for tripling the size of AmeriCorps, the modern counterpart of the C.C.C., which now takes both sexes and has no age cap. At its peak, the C.C.C. employed 500,000 young men. Under current plans, AmeriCorps would top out at 250,000 people in 2017, even though the nation now is two and a half times larger. We ought to be bolder. Big new programs to create jobs need not be expensive. Suppose the cost of hiring a single employee were as high as $30,000 a year, several times typical AmeriCorps living allowances. Hiring a million people would cost $30 billion a year. That’s only 4 percent of the entire federal stimulus program, and 0.2 percent of the national debt. Why don’t we just do it?

With pressure mounting on the federal government to find new revenues, Congress is considering legalizing, and taxing, an activity it banned just four years ago: Internet gambling. On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill that would effectively legalize online poker and other nonsports betting, overturning a 2006 federal ban that critics say merely drove Web-based casinos offshore. The bill would direct the Treasury Department to license and regulate Internet gambling operations, while a companion measure, pending before another committee, would allow the Internal Revenue Service to tax such businesses. Winnings by individuals would also be taxed, as regular gambling winnings are now. The taxes could yield as much as $42 billion for the government over 10 years, supporters said. The two measures — which are backed by banks and credit unions but have divided casinos and American Indian tribes — are far from becoming law. A bill to legalize online poker sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, has not yet had a hearing. The Congressional timetable has little spare room before the midterm elections, and the Obama administration has not taken a position. But the vote suggests a willingness by Congress to look for unconventional ways of plugging holes in the budget and comes as struggling states have also been looking to extract revenue from the gambling industry, which took a hit as consumers cut back on travel and entertainment during the recession but continues to reap billions of dollars in annual profits. The committee vote Wednesday was 41 to 22, with seven Republicans joining most Democrats on the panel in favor of the measure. Last year, Colorado expanded casino hours, raised maximum-bet limits and permitted roulette and craps, while Missouri eliminated a $500 loss limit at riverboat casinos. Delaware and Pennsylvania have weighed proposals to allow the conversion of slots parlors into full-service casinos, making further inroads into the eroding Atlantic City gambling industry. Opponents, who only four years ago, when Congress was controlled by the Republicans, secured a law that banned the use of credit and debit cards to pay online casinos, said they were aghast. “People sometimes resort to drastic things when they are strapped for cash,” said Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, who called the new proposals “unfathomable.” Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Financial Services Committee, has been the legislation’s champion. “Some adults will spend their money foolishly, but it is not the purpose of the federal government to prevent them legally from doing it,” Mr. Frank said. The committee’s top Republican, Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, noting 传奇私服 the passage of far-reaching changes in financial regulation this month, said that “after all the talk last year about shutting down casinos on Wall Street,” he was incredulous that members would vote to “open casinos in every home and every bedroom and every dorm room, and on every iPhone, every BlackBerry, every laptop.” Mr. Bachus said lobbyists had spent “tens of millions” to overturn the 2006 law. “They’ve had quite a bit of success in turning votes,” he said. Supporters of legalization said fiscal considerations played a role in their thinking. “I was looking for the money,” Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said in an interview. He sponsored the companion measure to allow taxation of Internet gambling; he wants to dedicate the money to education. Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, said in an interview that the money was an attractive source of financing for other programs. “We will not pass an Internet gaming bill,” Mr. Sherman predicted. “We will pass a bill to do something very important, funded by Internet gaming.” He added, “Forty-two billion dollars over 10 years has an effect.” The legal status of online gambling has long been murky. The Justice Department asserts that the Wire Act of 1961 prohibits it, but prosecutors have largely left individual gamblers alone. To crack down on the activity, a 2006 law — inserted at the last minute into an unrelated bill in one of Congress’s last actions before Democrats took control — banned financial institutions from transmitting payments to and from gambling operators. In the same year, the authorities arrested David Carruthers, a British online-gambling executive, as he changed flights at a Texas airport. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison for racketeering. Last year, the authorities ordered four banks to freeze the accounts of online payment processors that owed money to some 27,000 people who had used offshore poker sites. But the enforcement actions have barely put a dent in the industry, experts say. Gamblers have used online payment processors, phone-based deposits and prepaid credit cards to circumvent the ban. By some estimates, American online gambling exceeds $6 billion a year. “Today, any American with a broadband connection and a checking account can engage in any form of Internet gambling from any state,” Annie Duke, a professional poker player, testified in May on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance, which hired a former Republican senator from New York, Alfonse M. D’Amato, to lobby for the bill. Michael Brodsky, executive chairman of YouBet.com, an online site for parimutuel horse racing, said, “As with Prohibition, illegal online gambling is thriving as an underground economy.” Banks and credit unions said the 2006 law was poorly drafted — so much so that the Obama administration delayed, to June 1 of this year, the deadline for banks to comply with the law, to address concerns about its enforceability. In 1999, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission urged the prohibition of Internet gambling. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has said he would not support efforts to legalize online gambling, a view shared by most state attorneys general. “Because Internet gambling is essentially borderless activity, from a money-laundering and terrorism-financing perspective, it creates a regulatory and enforcement quagmire,” said James F. Dowling, a former special agent with the Internal Revenue Service. And Mr. Bachus released a November letter from the F.B.I. in which Shawn Henry, the assistant director of the cyber division, said it would be difficult for companies to verify the age and location of their customers. The bill contains measures intended to protect minors and combat compulsive addiction. It would allow states and Indian tribes to “opt out,” so players from those states and reservations would not be able to make online bets. But those governments would have a potentially lucrative incentive to allow the activity since they could then collect taxes from Internet casinos. Before voting, the committee approved amendments to delegate enforcement duties to states and tribes, continue a ban on betting on sporting events, ban marketing aimed at children, and prohibit companies that violated the 2006 ban from obtaining licenses.

The White House sought to reassert control over the public debate on the Afghanistan war on Monday as political reaction to the disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his war strategy. On Capitol Hill, a leading Senate Democrat said the documents, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, would intensify Congressional scrutiny of Mr. Obama’s policy. “Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent,” said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and has been an influential supporter of the war. The disclosures landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy. In Congress, the House could vote as early as Tuesday on a critical war-financing bill, the same day a Senate panel is set to hold a hearing on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan. Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort. “We don’t know how to react,” one frustrated administration official said on Monday. “This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood.” Mr. Obama is facing a tough choice: he must either figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit — a harder sell given that the war is lagging — or move more quickly to a far more limited American presence. As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup. Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Afghan war effort came down to a matter of American national security, in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note on Monday in responding to the documents, which WikiLeaks made accessible to The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel. “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” 传世私服 Mr. Gibbs said. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.” Several administration officials privately expressed hope that they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure the government of Pakistan to cooperate more fully with the United States on counterterrorism. The documents seem to lay out rich new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. Three administration officials separately expressed hope that they might be able to use the documents to gain leverage in efforts to get more help from Pakistan. Two of them raised the possibility of warning the Pakistanis that Congressional anger might threaten American aid. “This is now out in the open,” a senior administration official said. “It’s reality now. In some ways, it makes it easier for us to tell the Pakistanis that they have to help us.” But much of the pushback from the White House over the past two days has been to stress that the connection between the ISI and the Taliban was well known. “I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the U.S. government, for quite some time,” Mr. Gibbs said during a briefing on Monday. While agreeing that the disclosures were not altogether new, some leading Democrats said that the new details underscored deep suspicions they have harbored toward the ISI. “Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee. During a visit to Pakistan this month, Mr. Levin, who has largely supported the war, said he confronted senior Pakistani leaders about the ISI’s continuing ties to the militant groups. The White House appeared to be focusing some of its ire toward Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, the Web site that provided access to about 92,000 secret military reports spanning the period from January 2004 through December 2009. White House officials e-mailed reporters select transcripts of an interview Mr. Assange conducted with Der Spiegel, underlining the quotations the White House apparently found most offensive. Among them was Mr. Assange’s assertion, “I enjoy crushing bastards.” At a news conference in London on Monday, Mr. Assange defended the release of the documents. “I’d like to see this material taken seriously and investigated, and new policies, if not prosecutions, result from it,” he said. The Times and the two other news organizations agreed not to disclose anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations, and The Times redacted the names of Afghan informants and other delicate information from the documents it published. WikiLeaks said it withheld posting about 15,000 documents for the same reason. Pakistan strongly denied suggestions that its military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency. A senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under standard practice, sharply condemned the reports as “part of the malicious campaign to malign the spy organization” and said the ISI would “continue to eradicate the menace of terrorism with or without the help of the West.” Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, dismissed the reports and said that Pakistan remained “a part of a strategic alliance of the United States in the fight against terrorism.” While Pakistani officials protested, a spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said that Mr. Karzai was not upset by the documents and did not believe the picture they painted was unfair. Speaking after a news conference in Kabul, Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, was asked whether there was anything in the leaked documents that angered Mr. Karzai or that he thought unfair. “No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Omar said.

As Tropical Storm Bonnie dissipated to a mere area of low pressure over the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, a drilling rig and about a dozen other ships that had been working to repair BP’s blown-out oil well reversed course and began heading back to the well site. Workers scrambled on Friday to pack up their gear and move out of the storm’s projected path, after BP and the Coast Guard decided to suspend response operations. “We are going to continue to play a cat-and-mouse game,” Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal spill response, said at a briefing on Saturday. “It’s just one of the things we have to manage.” The drilling ship had sailed back to the well site by Saturday afternoon, and technicians were preparing to return to work. It will take at least a week before drilling can begin again on the relief well, which has been scheduled to be completed by mid-August. The relief well is considered likely to be the final plugging of the runaway well, which has been capped for over a week. Once the drilling rig sets a section of steel casing into the well bore of the relief well, BP has been given permission to start pumping heavy mud into the leaky oil reservoir with the hope of killing the well in early August, before the relief well 传奇私服 is complete. Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters that the weakening storm system had produced modest waves of three to five feet in the area around the well and that the waves would grow only a bit more as it moved through. She expressed optimism that the system would dissipate the oil in the gulf, leading to faster biodegradation of it. “The beaches may look cleaner,” Ms. Lubchenco said. But she also cautioned that storm surges could push oil farther into some bayous and marshes. “Different shorelines will see different impacts from the storm.” Two ships operating underwater robots around the well never had to leave the area. But other ships may take longer than the drill ship to return because they took refuge up the Mississippi River.

The effort to advance a major climate change bill through the Senate this summer collapsed Thursday even as President Obama signed into law another top Democratic priority — a bill to restore unemployment benefits for millions of Americans who have been out of work for six months or more. Bowing to political reality, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, said the Senate would not take up legislation intended to reduce carbon emissions blamed as a cause of climate change, but would instead pursue a more limited measure focused on responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and tightening energy efficiency standards. “We know where we are,” Mr. Reid told reporters after reviewing the state of energy legislation with Senate Democrats and administration officials. “We know that we don’t have the votes.” The decision was a major disappointment to conservation groups and lawmakers who had invested months in trying to negotiate legislation. The House last year passed its own climate change bill, a proposal that has created a backlash for some politically vulnerable Democrats. The outcome was also viewed as a setback by some utility executives who had hoped that Congress would set predictable rules governing carbon pollution. Carol M. Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, who appeared with Mr. Reid and Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is a chief author of the climate bill, said the Obama administration was not happy but would support Mr. Reid’s decision. “Obviously, everyone is disappointed that we do not yet have an agreement on comprehensive legislation,” she added. “We will continue to work with the senators to craft important comprehensive legislation, but in the meantime the leader has suggested that there are steps we can take today, important steps, and we support his decision.” Congressional and White House officials said the decision was a pragmatic move that could produce some legislation rather than bogging down the Senate over a bill that had no chance given strong opposition from most Republicans and some Democrats in coal-producing and manufacturing states. They noted that the White House had acted on its own to raise fuel efficiency standards and had pushed the development of alternative fuels. Democrats said the slimmer package would ensure that BP would pay for the cleanup of the gulf oil spill, and would promote further production of natural gas as well as the manufacturing of natural gas vehicles, especially big trucks. They said it would also tighten household energy efficiency requirements and increase financing of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. But even the Senate’s ability to pass a bill with significant bipartisan 传世私服 elements before its scheduled August recess was in doubt given the intense focus on the November elections. While Senate Democrats revised their energy plans, the House voted 272 to 152 to send Mr. Obama a $34 billion six-month extension of unemployment pay for Americans who had exhausted their standard 26 weeks of aid. Signing the measure hours later, Mr. Obama said it would “restore desperately needed assistance to two and a half million Americans who lost their jobs in the recession.” The bill had become the subject of a fierce partisan battle in Congress, with Democrats saying that the economic crisis amounted to a fiscal emergency that justified deficit spending, while Republicans argued that cost of the aid should not be added to growing federal red ink “We want to help those who are struggling with the current economic slowdown,” said Representative Charles Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican. “But we also agree with the American people that new spending must be paid for.” In the final vote, 31 Republicans joined 241 Democrats in supporting the measure. Voting against it were 142 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Democrats called the Republican opposition shameful given the financial struggles of many families. The measure had been stalled since late May, and the logjam in the Senate was broken this week only with the arrival of a new Democratic senator to succeed the late Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. “It shouldn’t have been so hard,” said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California.

With an AIDS vaccine still out of reach, two rigorous new studies have found different ways to sharply cut H.I.V. infections among women and schoolgirls, who make up a majority of the newly infected in sub-Saharan Africa. After two decades in which researchers searched fruitlessly for an effective vaginal microbicide to block H.I.V., South African scientists working in two AIDS-devastated communities of South Africa, one rural and one urban, say they have finally found something that shows real promise. Women who used a vaginal microbicidal gel containing an antiretroviral medication widely used to treat AIDS, tenofovir, were 39 percent less likely over all to contract H.I.V. than those who used a placebo. Those who used the gel most regularly reduced their chances of infection 54 percent, according to a two-and-a-half year study of 889 women by Caprisa, a Durban-based AIDS research center. Broader trials are needed to confirm the results, and it will most likely be years before the product is publicly available, but if produced on a large scale the gel would cost less than 25 cents per application, the lead investigators estimated. Because the trial was relatively small and the gel was nowhere close to 100 percent effective, AIDS scientists and public health officials wanted to see another trial get similar results before they undertook the large fund-raising and public education efforts that would be needed to make billions of doses of the gel, as well as the applicators, which are more expensive, and then to persuade women to use them and governments of poor countries to adopt them. Dr. Bruce Walker, a Harvard Medical School professor who was not involved in the study, said a cheer erupted when researchers unveiled their findings to a small group of scientists last month in Durban. “This is the first time that there’s been a tool that women can use to protect themselves from becoming infected,” he said. “It’s a game changer.” In Vienna, where the meeting of the International AIDS Society just opened, leaders of the global fight against AIDS said they found the results of the microbicide trial very impressive. The study was published online on Monday by Science magazine. “This is very encouraging,” said Michel Sidibé, executive director of Unaids, the United Nations AIDS agency. “It can be controlled by women, and put in 12 hours earlier, and that is empowering. They do not have to ask the man for permission to use it. 传奇私服 And the cost of the gel is not high.” In another piece of progress against AIDS, a separate, large study in Malawi sponsored by the World Bank, and made public on Sunday, found that if poor schoolgirls and their families received small monthly cash payments, the girls had sex later, less often and with fewer partners. A year and a half after the program started, the girls were less than half as likely to be infected with the AIDS or herpes viruses than were girls whose families got no payments. The likelihood that the girls would agree to sex in return for gifts and cash declined as the size of the payments from the program rose, suggesting the central role of extreme poverty in sexual choices. “Maybe we can combine these behavioral and biomedical interventions,” said Dr. Tim Farley, a scientist with the World Health Organization involved in H.I.V. prevention research. “We need to pursue both avenues.” At a time of intensifying competition for global health dollars, when the number of people who contract H.I.V. is outstripping those put on treatment each year, pressure is mounting on African countries and donors to focus more heavily on prevention. Male circumcision is one method proven to at least halve a man’s chances of H.I.V. infection. Scientists say the success of the $18 million microbicide trial, largely paid for by the United States Agency for International Development, and the study on cash payments offer hope to girls and women in Africa, who have higher rates of H.I.V. infection than their male counterparts and often less power in relationships to protect themselves. There have been other signs of progress. A new Unaids study found that H.I.V. prevalence among young people had declined by more than 25 percent in 15 of the 21 countries most affected by AIDS. In eight countries, the agency found evidence of positive changes in sexual behavior among young people, for example delaying having sex, having fewer partners and the increasing use of condoms. In the $400,000 trial in Malawi, 3,800 teenage girls and young women, ages 13 to 22, were randomly assigned to two groups. Half the girls received no cash payments. The parents of the other half were paid $4 to $10 a month while the girls themselves received $1 to $5 a month if they attended school regularly. After 18 months, the H.I.V. prevalence among the girls who got the cash was 1.2 percent, compared with 3 percent for the others. “The program empowered these girls to make better choices,” said Berk Ozler, a senior economist with the World Bank’s Development Research Group. While cash programs are already spreading in Africa, the antiretroviral gel will take longer, according to the husband-and-wife team of epidemiologists who led the study. They are Dr. Salim S. Abdool Karim, Caprisa’s director, and Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim, associate scientific director. “I would be very sad if we had to sit around a table three years from now and we don’t have the confirmation and regulations in place,” Dr. Salim Karim said. Dr. Quarraisha Karim noted that, “For women, it certainly is a turning point.” In South Africa, where 5.7 million people are H.I.V.-positive, more than in any other nation, the government is eager to move forward. “As soon as we’re confident it’s a safe and effective product, we should do our best to get it out,” said Derek Hanekom, the country’s deputy minister of science and technology. The women who participated in the study — in the city of Durban and in the rural community of Vulindlela, in the rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal — used the gel up to 12 hours before and after sex. Usually their partners were not aware of it. Tissue biopsies found levels of tenofovir that were 1,000 times what they would have been in the blood if the drug had been taken by pill, the team said. The success follows years of disappointing results in trials of other microbicides that were found to be ineffective, or even to raise a woman’s risk of H.I.V. infection. There are currently other trials under way that use tenofovir in gel and pill forms. Gilead Sciences, the California-based biopharmaceutical company that developed tenofovir, donated 65 pounds of the active ingredient for the study. It has also relinquished any claim to royalties on the gel if it is distributed in Africa and poor countries in other parts of the world. Dr. Howard Jaffe, president of the Gilead Foundation, the company’s charitable arm, said that Dr. Salim Karim — nicknamed Slim — pitched the microbicide idea to company scientists in 2004, to initial reluctance. “Slim is nothing if not charismatic, passionate and intelligent, and we thought it needs to be studied, it will be studied and this may be the best time to do it,” Dr. Jaffe said. In Vulindlela, women have a desperate need for a way to protect themselves. H.I.V. testing of pregnant women in the area has found that one in 10 is already H.I.V.-positive by 16; half are infected by 24. Before antiretroviral treatment became available here, the graveyards were crowded every weekend with funeralgoers. Fewer people are dying now, but many young women are still getting infected. Xoliswa Mthethwa, 26, who was part of the study, said she told her boyfriend about the gel and he was very supportive. If it worked, she said, “I’d be the first person to go buy it.”