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The
tsunami that struck Asia and Somalia left unprecedented, unfathomable,
unspeakable death and destruction in its wake. It was a shocking reminder
that, for all its transcendent beauty and bounties, Mother Nature still
periodically unleashes awesome powers that threaten our lives, even our
very civilization – and expose the shocking vulnerability of our
Earth’s poorest families and communities.
Equally
unprecedented is the life-giving aid that continues to flow to these
battered regions. It reflects the best that humans are capable of – and
the vital importance of modern technology, medicine, communication and
transportation.
This
monumental natural disaster has seized our attention. But as horrible as
it was, it must not distract us from other calamities that continue to
kill millions in destitute countries around the world, and help keep their
communities impoverished.
These
calamities certainly have their origins in nature. But they can no longer
be called natural disasters, for today we have the knowledge and
technology to solve them. Unfortunately, we lack the moral fiber and
political will to do so. Indeed, in many cases, these disasters have been
prolonged and worsened by the very agencies created to be caregivers for
the world’s poor.
Four
million people a year die from lung infections, caused by constantly
breathing smoke, dust, bacteria and pollutants from wood and dung that
they must burn for cooking and heating – because families don’t have
electricity, and activist groups stymie hydroelectric and other generation
projects. Six million more perish from dysentery and other intestinal
diseases, caused by spoiled food and unsafe water, due to nonexistent
refrigeration and water purification – again the result of not having
electricity.
Eleven
million succumb annually to malnutrition and starvation, because their
nations still rely on primitive farming methods and activists prevent the
introduction of biotechnology that could help farmers grow more nutritious
crops in dry, saline and nutrient-poor soil, and with fewer fertilizers
and pesticides. Millions more are felled by malaria, because infected
mosquitoes are everywhere and pressure groups prevent their countries from
using pesticides.
The
world’s poor justifiably expect aid agencies like the World Health
Organization to help them confront these disasters and counter
anti-technology campaigns by misanthropic groups like Greenpeace, NRDC,
Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network. After
all, the WHO was created to help all people attain “the highest possible
level of health,” improve sanitation, prevent the spread of infectious
disease and save lives. It has a special duty to the well-being of people
whose countries lack the healthcare systems that are practically taken for
granted in developed nations.
Today,
however, the WHO is adrift in a sea of political correctitude. It gives
lip service to Third World needs, but devotes attention to First World
concerns like obesity,
traffic deaths, cancer and global warming.
Asian
children dying of vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition hardly need to
worry about obesity. African villagers are much more likely to be struck
down by sleeping sickness than by an errant car. Indian and Bolivian
mothers, hacking away from tuberculosis or wasting away from dysentery,
won’t live long enough even to get cancer, much less die from it.
As
to conjectural theories of catastrophic global climate change, Danish
environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg calculates that the Kyoto treaty would
slash global economic growth by $150 billion a year – to cut
hypothetical temperature increases by 0.3 degrees by 2050. For half that
amount, he says, we could provide clean water, proper sanitation, quality
education and modern healthcare for every poor person on the planet.
Even
when WHO and its agencies convened an AIDS conference in Bangkok,
attendees spent as much energy extolling sexual freedom and bashing
pharmaceutical companies, patents, President Bush and Uganda’s ABC
program (Abstain, Be faithful and use a Condom), as on devising solutions
that might actually work.
Nowhere,
though, has WHO failed more miserably to carry out its primary mission
than in the case of malaria. This disease makes tens of millions too sick
to work for weeks on end, leaves thousands with permanent brain damage,
kills up to a million children and a million pregnant women every year,
and costs Africa and India alone some $13 billion a year in lost GDP.
Since DDT was banned in 1972, malaria has killed over 50 million people
– including thousands who might have become the next Nelson Mandela or
George Washington Carver.
Six
years ago, the WHO and its Roll Back Malaria campaign promised to halve
malaria rates by 2010. Since then, rates have actually increased by over
10 percent. A primary reason is that WHO and RBM – as well as UNICEF and
the U.S. Agency for International Development – refuse to permit,
promote or fund pesticide use to control mosquitoes, or even acknowledge
the critical role of DDT and other pesticides in preventing malaria.
After
using DDT for years to control the disease, South Africa bowed to
environmentalist pressure, and switched to another, more politically
acceptable pesticide. Within three years, malaria shot from a few thousand
cases a year to nearly 70,000. So the country reintroduced DDT, using it
to spray the walls and eaves of homes. It slashed malaria by 80 percent in
18 months. A year into the program, it began treating seriously ill
patients with the new drug Coartem. In just three years, it cut malaria
rates by over 91 percent!
But
in the face of this astonishing success, these
“doctors for the world’s poor” steadfastly refuse to adopt the South
African program, or even support other countries that want to adopt it.
Intimidated by radical environmentalists, captivated by eco-centric
anti-pesticide policies, they refuse to add pesticides (especially DDT) to
their arsenal.
Even
worse, until a few months ago, these same agencies actively prescribed,
promoted and provided drugs that they had known for years are no longer
effective in treating malaria. In fact, the drugs now fail 50 to 80
percent of the time.
The
agencies have finally switched to Coartem. But without pesticides to
control mosquitoes, hundreds of millions of people will still get malaria,
and providing the drug to all these people – in countries that don’t
have adequate roads, clinics or doctors – is virtually impossible.
As
a result, hundreds of thousands of innocent people are dying every year
who would live if their countries could use DDT, in conjunction
with bed nets, modern drugs and other strategies.
If
healthcare professionals ignored proven technologies for preventing
disease in Canada and the USA – relying instead on nominally effective
methods – they’d likely be fired. If they knowingly prescribed or
provided obsolete drugs to their patients, they’d be jailed for
malpractice and wrongful death.
One
has to wonder if WHO decision-makers and anti-pesticide activists share
the views of Club of Rome
founder Alexander King, who once said: “My chief quarrel with DDT in
retrospect is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”
These
incompetent programs violate malaria victims’ most basic human rights.
They glorify ultra precaution over alleged risks from pesticides – at
the expense of millions of deaths from a disease the pesticides could
prevent. And yet, the bureaucrats and eco-activists are not held to
account for helping to perpetuate the slaughter.
The
unnatural disaster of malaria lacks the drama of massive tidal waves
engulfing sunbathers and resorts, of helicopters aiding survivors. But the
result – two million mothers and children dead from readily preventable
malaria, year after year – are no less horrific.
The
United States sprays pesticides across Dade County, Florida and other
communities, to prevent outbreaks of West Nile Virus – which in three
years has killed a total of 300 Americans. So do Canada and other nations.
For them and the agencies they fund to deny effective pesticides to the
world’s poorest people is hypocritical, and unconscionable.
One can only hope that
the tsunami will bring about a rebirth of compassion, an end to empty
promises, a new focus on programs that work – and a condemnation of
ideologically driven activists and bureaucrats who have benefited so much
from the very technologies they prevent the Third World poor from
acquiring. Whether it’s malaria prevention, electricity generation,
agricultural biotechnology or economic development, the world’s poor
deserve better.
Paul
Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism:
Green Power · Black Death
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