globalization

Congress grills pharmaceutical firm Baxter International and the Food and Drug Administration about tainted drugs that killed 81.

For those scared or curious enough to pay attention, this week's hearings offered a jarring look at how globalization is affecting the medicines we take. True, some testimony was predictable: the FDA denied that it could have averted the tragedy with an earlier (and required) inspection of the suspect Chinese factory; Baxter's CEO played the victim card, claiming that his firm's heparin, an anticoagulant, was the target of a deliberate adulteration scheme. (The Chinese government, meanwhile, argued that the faulty ingredients weren't to blame for the deaths.) But the statement of David Nelson, the senior investigator of the committee holding the hearings, sandblasts the varnish off such evasions, especially Baxter's dubious behavior, and is worth a read.

Disneyland is revamping the "It's a Small World" ride to accommodate today's fatter passengers on its boats and, more controversially, to include Disney characters among the anonymous dancing dolls.

The family of the ride's designer, Mary Blair, recently joined fans in protest, sending a letter to the company denouncing the "gross desecration of the ride's original theme."

That theme was common in 1964, when the ride debuted at the New York World's Fair: "an innocent and unified world at peace," depicted by a cast neatly divided by skin color and national costume. Walt Disney guided TV viewers past Dutch children in wooden shoes, an Ireland of shamrocks and leprechauns, "the mysterious dark continent of Africa," and "exotic Asia," the land of minor chords and veiled dancers, flying carpets and the Taj Mahal. Like the Miss Universe pageant's opening ceremony and the International House of Pancakes, "Small World" portrays a happy, colorful internationalism. But, like the Star Trek universe, where intraspecies mating is more common than interracial marriage, it also assumes segregation and stasis. MORE