Credit: Courtesy of Tim Kenney Design Partners

As well as adding to your kids' growing mass of stuffed, cuddly toys, buying the latest Beanie Baby®—available in stores this month—could also benefit HIV positive women and children around the world, since profits from its sale will be donated to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The new toy was created in memory of Elizabeth and Paul Glaser's daughter, Ariel, who died from the disease in 1988.

The Foundation uses its funds to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mother to child and is currently trying to raise $12 million to buy the vertical transmission-blocking drug, nevirapine, to treat the estimated 2.4 million infected pregnant women worldwide (Nature Med. 5, 1093; 1999).