Category Archives: Poverty and Development

Millions die. Millions more wait to die. All due to our narrow and irrational focus. Man do we suck!

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Another one for the “narrow focus kills millions” department:

Wikipedia on Rotavirus Vaccines, which are improving and will save *millions* of people:

An earlier vaccine, Rotashield by Wyeth-Ayerst, had to be taken off the market in the late 1990s after it was discovered in rare cases to be linked to a severe complication called intussusception. This event was so rare that widespread adoption of Rotashield in developing countries would nevertheless have saved millions of lives, but use of a vaccine deemed unsafe in the U.S. was seen as unacceptable.
Also notable is the fact that the new vaccines are very expensive in USA but heavily subsidized in developing world.  However still it appears too expensive for widespread use.   I remain unclear on how the pharma industry fits into the big picture but it’s a topic I’d like to take on soon as personal research.

When I’ve looked into specifics it generally appears they actually are NOT profiteering from the poor (though certainly they milk the rich like crazy, manipulating people with TV advertising and doctors with freebies). However it seems to me that in developing countries the big pharmas often do the right thing and either give away or heavily discount life saving drugs.  But many activists argue they are the major part of the problem – I think due to big pharma’s opposition to widespread generics.

Unfortunately much of that debate is mired in socialist economic diatribes which often suggest that anything corporate is evil, and therefore not reasonably considered part of a solution, rather than looking for the optimal solution point.

Spinach economy losing $1 million per day. A microcosm of global concern overreaction and stupidity.

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Who’d have thunk that spinach was a pretty big biz. This article suggests that the spinach scare is losing a million per day for California farmers, some of whom are plowing it all under and laying off workers.

Of course if people are spending this million on *other* healthful veggies than the positive affects may wash out the negative, but it seems more likely they are buying something less healthful. If true the scare may have a (small) but net negative affect on health.

I think the overreaction to such small things offers great insight into how defectively we process the big stuff like global health and welfare, and lesser but still significant things like automobile and gun dangers and heart risks. Part of this is simple mental accessibility – “news” outlets report things that people can latch on to easily and we like “easy to digest” news sound bytes. But that’s no excuse. The news attention deficit syndrome is a perilous approach in these troubled times.

As with the ridiculous overreaction to Mad Cow non-disease, the spinach “cure” – basically nobody eating spinach for weeks or even months – combined with economic problems from the loss of milions of pounds of the crop, layoffs, and hardships in the agriculture sector, is likely going to have a more negative health impact than the problem itself.

When you expand this defective type of analysis to the overreaction to Global Warming and the underreaction to AIDs, Malaria, and Rotaviral diseases in underdeveloped world that kill millions per year the future looks … ummm….. green and leafy?

Clinton Global Initiative

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The Clinton Global Initiative is tackling the world’s major problems. It’s a great effort with the backing of one of the world’s most effective superpower schmoozers, Bill Clinton. Although I’d suggest that the Copenhagen Consensus is a more rational way to prioritize spending, Clinton’s group is far more likely to bring big money and big corporations and Government interests to the table.

Today’s announcement is that Richard Branson will donate 3 billion towards reduction of Global Warming via the Clinton Global Initiative. Although I’d much rather see the group put more towards current catastrophes at least this donation is consistent with the notion that big providers of greenhouse gasses like Branson’s many transportation interests should do the most to alleviate the effects of those gasses on the environment.

Perhaps my friend Linda was right to suggest that some people will support Global Warming initiatives in ways they won’t get behind those confronting global poverty. If we can do it all that’s great and for the first time in my life I do think there is a great, driving force on the part of most people, policy makers, and even Governments to initiate “Global Improvements”. Let’s do it!

Senator Smith of Oregon. The President is wrong and you need to tell him.

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I just sent this off to Senator Smith. Here in Oregon we have excellent representation from Senators Smith (R) and Wyden (D). Both are bright, ethical guys with a global vision. This letter is about the reckless spending and the ill-concieved idea that terrorists should be treated with techniques that most of the world views as torture. Maybe they should, but both our current terror spending and terrorist interrogation practices appear to be counterproductive.

Dear Senator Smith,

First, thank you for your excellent efforts on behalf of our wonderful state. I want to express my opinion on two items related to the war on terror:

* The President is wrong about treatment of terrorists. They *deserve* death in most cases and he’s right we may have a right to harsh interrogations, but world opinion and the opinions of Sen. McCain and Powell should be respected by the President as we face even more global condemnation. We are not an imperial power but we are seen as such because the President has such poor sense of marketing and presentation. He’s leaving a legacy of mistrust and global condemnation we’ll feel for an entire generation, and you must stop this at the Senate level and stop it now.

* ROI is far too low and spending should decrease immediately and dramatically. All scenarios involve risk and we need to absorb more risk to save trillions over the next decade, trillions that can save millions of lives using high ROI means.

You (we) are spending at levels that cannot be sustained, and this “war”‘ will go on for decades. It’s not even clear the current spending has a positive ROI. I think the neoconservative mindset is “stuck” on the idea that the potential threat of a major attack justifies virtually all available resources. This is not true. The EPA and DOT make this type of decision all the time, and appropriately place monetary values on human lives of approximately 5 million per life saved, to justify spending on safety measures. This type of equation should also be used to determine spending on terrorism threats but I get the idea it is not.

University of VA Professor gets coal in his stocking – and likes it!

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Laurie David, Global warming crusader, is very right to challenge professors that take corporate contributions. Her Huffington Post post entitled A Conflict of Interest in the Halls of Academia suggests that taking money from companies that benefit from weaker environmental regulations may bias the science.   Good point, and worth follow up.
But she fails to point out a similar problem, but also one that should be of great concern to the clear minded. This is the fact that grant funding from the US Government may also have political strings attached. They are not as direct but funding does relate to the emphasis, direction, and scale of research.

It’s obvious (and appropriate) that big money grants for research on potentially catastrophic things is far more likely to go through, than, say, a grant to fund research into the basket weaving habits of pliocene hominids.

This is hugely important because bias can easily creep into this equation in the form of exaggerating the peril of the topic under scrutiny – not so much in the peer reviewed studies which are subjected to close methodological scrutiny – but in the quotes of scientists and the lack of concern by scientists when the popular press spouts alarmist nonsense about their research often interpreting anecdotal observations associated with the science or reviews of the science by non-scientists as part of the research.

I’m actually looking for a way to test this hypothesis scientifically.  Something along the lines of “scientists describe their own research topics as more life threatening than their own research suggests.”

Common sense suggests it is going on around us all the time, especially now with the dramatic difference between the actual science aboout Global Warming that suggests it’s a bad thing but unlikely to be catastrophic versus the popular alarmist concerns that suggest the tipping point is here and planetary peril is paramount.

If planetary health is at the top of your agenda the answer to the clear minded is obvious:

* Invest our tax money and time heavily in current catastrophic things like Malaria, AIDs, and Poverty. This type of work clearly has the highest ROI by any reasonable human measure.

* Decrease massive military spending in favor of infrastructure spending here and in developing nations and invest heavily in marketing the USA as helping and not crusading.

* Invest in Global warming remediation schemes that have a high ROI but don’t buy into all the catastrophe mongering going on.  It’s deflecting attention from actual catastrophic conditions we affluent type first world people tend to simply … ignore.

Put your hands in the air and drop that bag of Spinach!

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The FDA warns that there is a potential for e-coli tainted spinach in many states, and everybody should be tossing the salad spinach before they toss their salad thanks to e-coli poisoning.

What always strikes me about the drama of these warnings is that today in the USA about 100 people will die from Car accidents, and another 50+ from fatal gunshots, and hundreds more from preventable heart disease, smoking, etc, etc.    Shouldn’t we have warnings about these far greater dangers to our health?

People often say about, for example, malaria deaths globally or traffic deaths in USA  “that’s not news”, but I’ve met no people who can cite the statistics for preventable death in the USA, let alone the world.  Doesn’t that make it news to them?    Also, the huge numbers of deaths from what many call “not newsworthy” causes dwarf those of the “newsworthy” causes.

I call that fact alone ….. newsworthy.

Akeelah and the Bee * * * *

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This is a rich, wonderful film about meeting, and overcoming, the challenges faced by inner city American youth. You’ll recognize Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) and Angela Bassett, both are great as the teacher and the parent of Akeelah, a gifted young girl who seeks the national spelling title. Keke Palmer is superb in the title role. This is a fantastic and uplifting movie yet it avoids the common hollywood pitfall of pandering to politically correct or stereotypical charicatures of African American Culture. (note a few language and minor references to drugs and gangs which are totally appropriate in the context of the film).

Make Marketing, not War. Allocate 25% of military spending to a strategic global marketing initiative.

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Yesterday I learned that the USA is the top donor to 1) Sudan and 2) Palestinian Territories.
(I already knew we were the top funder of the U.N.) This did not surprise me, but I’m always struck by how generous our Government is in areas where we are despised.

I’m not opposed to generosity – in fact I think we should send more money to poor and war-torn areas even if it means raising my already usurous income taxes, but it pisses me off that we don’t get a lot more credit for it because credit for all this generosity is deserved and, far more importantly, it is a strategic imperative in the fight against those who fight against us. I doubt the Palestinian or North Korean kids eating food provided by the USA are even aware of the source. They should be.

Given that the results of the “wars on terror” all over the globe are yielding dubious results – perhaps even solidifying the resolve of a new generation of “America Haters” – I propose we do what any good business would do at a time like this. We should reallocate our dubious spending toward something more likely to yield positive results.

My proposal is to establish a highly funded global marketing campaign by reallocating military spending to something that works better. The campaign’s goal will be to restore to the USA the type of international respect we had back in the 60’s. Then, Peace Corps folks would go into the hut of an African or Indonesian villager and find a poster of JFK rather than an arms cache. Why? Obviously not a simple equation, but the 1960’s villager saw the USA’s prosperity and and global influence as a blueprint for their own future prosperity and freedom. Now, a generation later, that villager is more likely to see the USA as exploiting him far more than offering hope.

The sad irony is that exploitation of poor countries is largely a mythology concocted by left wing intellectuals to justify their narrow world view that corporations don’t work well to raise the standards for most of the participants in societies that embrace the corporate capitalist model of development. Corporations do raise standards, and excellent examples abound of the contrast between non-corporate and corporate models of development.

The South Korean villager did in fact become very prosperous and lives in a society with a very high standard of living and reasonable freedoms, while his brother in North Korea struggles just to eat. The poverty in Africa is characterized by a *lack* of corporate capitalist participation, not by an excess amount of it as we’d expect with a “USA as exploiter” world view.
Cuba? Isn’t that the same guy in charge who has been there for forty five years? Has Cuba thrived by pulling themselves out of the corporate capitalist game for half a century? Hardly.

This is not to suggest that there is not exploitation by US corporations. There are plenty of examples, and one person’s exploitation may be seen by someone less fortunate as a road to prosperity. However I’d suggest that most forms of “capitalistic exploitation” are the exception not the rule, partly for the entirely selfish reason that the capitalist model seeks higher profits and this requires more consumers living at higher standards. Global prosperity is not a zero sum economic game, and in this fact lies the key to the success of the corporate capitalist model of development and the bankruptcy of most socialist paradigms.

Thanks to forces of “negative marketing” from self-serving and corrupt Governments, combined with many legitimate grievances against the USA’s imperial stance in global politics, the USA’s reputation appears at an all time low. Strategically this is leading to more terror and more terrorists. If we continue to respond militarily we 1) continue to kill innocent people, our own soldiers, and destroy infrastucture and 2) expend resources that could be put to better use.

Better use? Marketing the USA as a friend not an enemy.

Budget: $109,825,000,000   (25% of proposed 2007 military spend of 439.3 billion)

The US Military approach has failed to win the hearts and minds of the globe, and this puts us at increasing strategic risk.    We live in the world’s most sophisticated marketing empire and it’s time we acted like it.   Let’s just do it.

Global Warming Guilt

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Fresh from a great trip in the California Wilderness I feel guilty as usual for challenging Global Warming alarmism from folks I respect and admire and who seem to spend a lot more time than I do on this topic, such as Al Gore and a lot of respected scientists participating in the IPCC.

However it’s really hard for me to view the catastrophe claims without feeling that 1) the major concerns don’t come from the science, rather from emotion and narrow focus and 2) clearly poverty, hunger, and disease are far more pressing human concerns – all being present catastrophic human conditions, solvable with simple technologies and at relatively low cost.

Of course humans are not the only thing to worry about when you’re looking at problems on our earth. However the case for expensive Global Warming “remedies” vs other methods of protecting the environment seems to get much weaker the farther you go from the human consequences. For example Kilauea in Hawaii could care less about GW. In fact Volcanos spew considerable CO2 into the atmosphere naturally (though not as much as humans, contrary to some GW denier claims).

SO…. maybe the best way to figure this out is to take a little more time to carefully examine the main catastrophe claims and compare them to what the actual research suggests. Luckily, the Climate Crisis website, a companion to the film “An Inconvenient Truth” gives us a clear starting point in our quest with these catastrophes they clearly feel are 1) a big deal and 2) looming on the near horizon:
If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.
Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

…. TO BE CONTINUED ….