Little-Acorn
04-21-2010, 11:00 PM
Watching "American Idol Gives Back" tonight. They went to Africa, and are doing some sort of expose' on how rough people have it there. Doesn't take much producing or acting - they DO have it very rough.
And the most shocking statistic is one they recited near the beginning of the show: Every 30 seconds, someone dies from malaria in Africa. And 90% of all malaria deaths worldwide, occur in Africa.
A death every thirty seconds, is more than a MILLION deaths per year.
And it's not from something like cancer, which no one knows how to prevent or cure. It's from malaria... a disease that has been all but eradicated in many parts of the world. It's spread by the Anopheles mosquito, which carries the germ, and infects a human when the mosquito bites him.
That mosquito has been all but eliminated in the United States and most other modern countries. Thorough spraying with the insecticide DDT has effectively eliminated the threat of malaria in all those countries. Various environmental whackos tried to stop it, naturally, predicting disasters of various magnitudes, but none of their predictions ever came true (this is always the outcome of the whackos' predictions).
But now we find that DDT has been banned, when countries like Africa have people dying by the millions from a disease that DDT could control! And why? Because of fears that a few birds might be harmed! And not even the birds, really - the whackos are worried that the shells of their egg might be the wrong thickness, and a greater percentage of baby birds die than ordinarily do.
Let me get this straight.
These people think that millions of people dying, men women and children, is not too great a price to pay for keeping birds' egg shells the right thickness???
I haven't studied this as much as I usually study things, and I have to believe I missed something that justifies the withholding of a known cure for malaria, with relatively mild side effects, from people who are literally dying for it.
Someone PLEASE tell me what I've left out here.
PLEASE.
And the most shocking statistic is one they recited near the beginning of the show: Every 30 seconds, someone dies from malaria in Africa. And 90% of all malaria deaths worldwide, occur in Africa.
A death every thirty seconds, is more than a MILLION deaths per year.
And it's not from something like cancer, which no one knows how to prevent or cure. It's from malaria... a disease that has been all but eradicated in many parts of the world. It's spread by the Anopheles mosquito, which carries the germ, and infects a human when the mosquito bites him.
That mosquito has been all but eliminated in the United States and most other modern countries. Thorough spraying with the insecticide DDT has effectively eliminated the threat of malaria in all those countries. Various environmental whackos tried to stop it, naturally, predicting disasters of various magnitudes, but none of their predictions ever came true (this is always the outcome of the whackos' predictions).
But now we find that DDT has been banned, when countries like Africa have people dying by the millions from a disease that DDT could control! And why? Because of fears that a few birds might be harmed! And not even the birds, really - the whackos are worried that the shells of their egg might be the wrong thickness, and a greater percentage of baby birds die than ordinarily do.
Let me get this straight.
These people think that millions of people dying, men women and children, is not too great a price to pay for keeping birds' egg shells the right thickness???
I haven't studied this as much as I usually study things, and I have to believe I missed something that justifies the withholding of a known cure for malaria, with relatively mild side effects, from people who are literally dying for it.
Someone PLEASE tell me what I've left out here.
PLEASE.