GOALS are a good thing, but as with many new year resolutions they sometimes need a hard-nosed reassessment in the cold light of January. Take the World Health Organization’s goal of eradicating polio by 2000. That deadline has been pushed back repeatedly, and now the WHO is not even setting new ones. While the campaign has achieved wonders worldwide, the virus has stubbornly held on in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, most tenaciously, India. Last year, the number of cases in those countries more than doubled.
In the past, the WHO would probably have done the macho thing and thrown more…
