The World Health Organization (WHO) has vowed to fight on for a new ".health" Web domain, even though the agency's address request was turned down by the nonprofit group charged with managing Internet standards.

WHO, the United Nation's health services body, prepared an extensive proposal for the new domain and for Web sites that would use the address to offer health information and medical advice. WHO included plans requiring subscriber groups to meet high ethical and quality standards, and would police those online groups.

That proposal was rejected last week -- along with 33 others from a variety of groups -- by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN instead adopted seven other new domains, including ".info" and ".biz," the Associated Press reports.

"WHO is extremely disappointed by the decision," spokesman Gregory Hartl told the AP. "We feel that it would have been a great benefit to consumers for guaranteeing the quality of health and medical information on the Web.

"We are looking into the reasons why the decision did not go in our favor and we will be doing everything to take recourse against this decision."

There are more than 10,000 health-related Web sites, but there is no certification for these groups or any way for Internet users to be sure the posted information is correct.

Under the WHO standards, each ".health" site would be required to meet standards set through consultation with consumers groups, medical associations, governments, the health industry and other agencies.

Full text of the article is currently found at:
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/
001117/09/un-health-internet