Buying public health: World Bank’s Tanzania experiment via Global bioethics blog
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tearOne for every year he's away she saidSuch a crumbling beauty, Ach there's nothing wrong with her That a hundred dollars won't fixThose are lyrics from Tom Waits' song '9th and Hennepin'. They slipped involuntarily into my consciousness when I read about a World Bank study that is being planned in Tanzania. According to the report in the Financial Times, the study involves 'incentivizing' sexual behavior change by means of cold hard cash. Participants, if they do not pick up sexually transmitted infections during the study period, are told that they will receive $45 for their efforts. The study also will have a comparative control arm in which participants will also be tested for STIs, but will not receive any money. One of the researchers...