African National Congress member Barbara Hogan took over last week as South Africa's health minister. She replaces the controversial Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who had sparked international outrage by proposing that HIV be treated with garlic and beetroot.

AIDS activists welcomed the appointment, made by the government of new president Kgalema Motlanthe. Hogan is on the advisory board of the Amandla AIDS Fund, which provides grants for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes.

But the South African parliament also quietly passed a law that gives the minister sweeping authority over the approval of new medicines and a remit to regulate traditional medicines alongside conventional pharmaceuticals. The bill created a body — the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority — to oversee the approval of medicines.

Crucially, the agency's chief executive, who will be appointed by the health minister, will be accountable not to a board, as the existing Medicines Control Council is, but only to the minister. Critics of the bill fear that it may lead to conflicts of interest in the public-health system, and that it risks diluting the scientific basis behind making new treatments available.