I am right now watching a program on PBS about current world medical
crises and
solutions, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One
thing the
program said is that, for the first time in history, there are now more
overweight
people alive than underweight people -- the U.S.A. being the "leader",
but Mexico
another example they cited.
The program also showed the example of a Johns Hopkins opthalmalogist
who, in the process of trying to alleviate night blindness among children in
poor countries, not only found a very cheap cure (vitamin A), but also
found that giving the vitamin A would not just stop the night blindness but
also save hundreds of thousands from dying of other diseases. The doctor
encountered rejection from the medical establishment because his
discovery was "too good to be true". Finally he did more tests and
the resistence apparently has faded, but now the problem is how to get the
poor children to the cheap vitamin A, in these countries. Early in the
20th century, the program described how another doctor encountered
similar resistence when he proposed that pellagra(sp?) in institutionalized
children in the U.S. south was due to poor diet.
Obviously, all this ties in with the -- so it seems, very laudable --
efforts of
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the health of the world's
poor.
On the other hand, I would *also* like to see Bill Gates experiment with
improving work life for middle class persons in the first world by
transforming Microsoft into an industrial democracy, where the fact that
the co-product of all labor is the conditions of labor of the laborer would
be self-reflectively thematized into the conditions of the workers' labor.
\brad mccormick
Christoph Reuss wrote:
Steve Salmony wrote:
According to the unrefuted data from Hopfenberg and Pimentel, what else
but an even greater global human population explosion is precipitated by
a more fair and equitable distribution of the world food supply?
The concept of using starvation and inequality as a brake on population is
not only inhumane but also illogical, since reproduction rates are highest
in destitute countries (children as a "substitute" for social insurance).
PS: The 5th Earth Day Summit on Human Population occurs this coming
Thursday. Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D. and Jack Alpert, Ph.D. will speak.
Hopfenberg has attempted to provide a (pseudo-)scientific basis for
Daniel Quinn's genocidal nonsense of a gorilla telling humanity how
to abandon civilization ("Ishmael" etc.). A very dangerous crowd, this.
In previous years, Professor Raoul Weiler of the Club of Rome ...
have presented at the event
Weiler worked for the chemical industry and the Club of Rome is presided
by a royal oil sheik. Clearly the right kind of people to tell us how to
save the planet! *shudder*
Chris
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Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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