Development

Developing Countries/Backward (gnipoleved!) economies: What should be done??

Computers, AIDS, the Aquaduct trike, and Malaria

I realize "Third world" is as backward a term as the countries they describe, these days. It still works for me, though. LDC's or less or least developed countries might be more in vogue. Developing countries, or emerging economies is the term, I suppose. Backward also works for me. I am of the opinion that countries hardly exist, anymore, anyway. Personally, I am aghast at the global inequality, evident in people walking to fetch unclean water throughout the world, and the American highway, filled with an endless stream of new and expensive cars guzzling expensive, limited in supply, polluting gas. There is most definitely something wrong here. We are not living in the best of all possible worlds, I would say. What's the graph over time of average global happiness?

Valentine's day is a poet's holiday. Sara and I both enjoy poetry. She's even published. I still haven't read it, though. I love to read. People aren't reading as much as they used to. When I have a child, I will read to him or her. I hope they enjoy reading, and make it a lifelong habit. TV rots brains. We should not export our mindlessness to the rest of the world. One-laptop-per-child is a nonprofit organization I support, that will link up the world's poor to the vast database of information online, which should include most books, in my opinion. MIT scientists have designed an inexpensive (around $150) machine that uses 80% less power, has a display visible in sunlight, cut the cost of manufacture of the screen down from $100 to $40, lasts 5 years, and whose price will fall below $100 by the end of '08. Even so, the manufacturer will make a profit. This is good stuff, I feel. If we want to support democracy around the world, we have to also support education. An uneducated voter probably doesn't help much, in general. America talks big about democracy, but we give the cold shoulder to democratically elected regimes we don't like. Let the people rule! Empower them with books, or books they can read on computer.
Bush is going to Africa. America (and Bush) isn't looked upon as poorly there, and our PEPFAR program has helped with the AIDS crisis there. I have no clue what the pep thing stands for, but you can't spell Shiva without HIV.

I would like to contribute to the wellbeing of others, and thusly, my own. The more developed LDC's are, the less children they'll have. Of course, policies like China's 2 children per family works, too. The solution to overpopulation is to help them, not kill them. Earning more money = less kids. I believe in helping out through micro-loans to help entrepeneurs who need relatively small amounts of startup capital to get on their feet throughout the world. You can go to websites like kiva.org, microplace.com, and opportunity.org. The internet is an awesome thing.
We can do a lot more. The more inventions that help developing countries, the better. People invent so much junk- we should invent things that help the most people possible.

One invention that helps is the Aquaduct, "a pedal powered vehicle that stores, filters, and transports water." It uses materials readily available in developing countries. Check it out on utube. 1.1B people don't have access to clean water. This is also a basic human right. Americans don't have it sometimes, too. I could see survivalists wanting one. An excess of 5,000 people die from water related diseases each day. So get up and go have yourself a fresh glass of pure water, and remember how lucky you are, and recall "to whom much is given, much is expected."

Bill Gates is doing good work with malaria, I think. Some people say he's spending too much money on it. I wrote an essay on it, based on the Newsweek article around 1993. It went like this: Malaria, A Third World Disease.

The third world is home to inhuman poverty and glaring inequality. As part of their suffering, developing-country populations wage a constant battle against poor health. They are poorly armed. Malnutrition and preventable disease threaten families daily in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, to an extent entirely outside of many of our comfortable life-experiences. Diseases are far too frequent; deaths far too fast. One disease unique to the "South", (I had just read a book by The South Commission), threatening 40% of the world's population, is malaria.

Malaria spread from Southeast Asia to Africa and Europe, and then to Latin America with the Europeans. Hungry mosquitoes deposit the threadlike parasite into the bloodstream, where the bacteria attacks red blood cells and reproduces exponentially. Its early symptoms are aches, fever, and often vomiting, followed by sweats and chills. Non-lethal cases are followed by months or years of anemia (characterized by pallor, weakness, and breathlessness) and periodic fevers.
People living in extremely malarial areas develop partial immunity by struggling through countless bouts of the illness. Ironically, many also have sickle-cell anemia to protect them. Foreigners, immigrants, and babies are especially vulnerable. Malaria is usually treatable, and the vast majority of today's deaths are needless, resulting from a lack of cheap, simple interventions. There are four common strains, with the most dangerous Plasmodium falciparum striking down vulnerable children. When a young child gets this particularly virulent strain, ravaged blood cells lethally clog capillaries that provide oxygen to the brain. During pregnancy, anemia slows the growth of the fetus and initiates premature delivery of dangerously underweight babies. In some areas, 80% of first-time mothers are anemic.

The leading killer of tropical Africa's children, malaria claims 5% of those under 5, roughly a million. Poverty is what actually kills them. The clinics are overcrowded as their limited funds are cut back, filled with sufferers of the deadly Burkitt's lymphoma. Often associated with chronic malaria, this curable cancer with grotesque facial tumors can be treated locally- but for an unreachable $400. In Latin America and Asia, the situation is not as dire, but getting worse. Malaria kills 2M worldwide, yearly. Malaria is in the news now because it is on the rise, in two ways. One way threatens us.

Malaria is on the rise both because people are entering malarial areas and because the disease is growing more resistant to once-curative drugs. To modernize and "develop," Brazilian officials promote the irretrievable destruction of the Amazonian rainforest with loans and taxbreaks for agribusiness and cattlemen, inspiring thousands of vulnerable people to endanger themselves. Claiming land, seeking riches, and fleeing oppression, people are putting themselves at risk by giving mosquitoes a free lunch. More frighteningly, stronger strains of malaria have evolved and experts predict an untreatable superstrain will evolve. Even in the 1950's, some mosquitoes either grew resistant to DDT or learned to avoid it. Drugs only eliminate the most susceptible strains, allowing more resistant strains to flourish, and weakening the antimicrobial effect. Thailand, also suffering from an AIDS epidemic, lies between two batches of the world's deadliest strain. In Myanmar and Cambodia, the resistant falciparum causes infant mortality rates approaching 30%. By returning home, stricken miners might be infecting local mosquitoes, and thereby seeding broader outbreaks. A malariologist, Dr. Adrian Hill of Oxford, suggests the death toll could reach 10M people a year. Malaria is a disease to watch.

Apologies if any facts are wrong, now, 15 years later (which I'm sure some must be, I would imagine).

Here's my theoretical contribution to anti-malarial efforts. You can kill the mosquitoes or you can kill the strain. You can prevent them from wanting to bite or from actually biting. Only the females bite, to feed their young. Garlic wards off vampires. Maybe another animal's blood could be made tastier to them, so they don't bite people. You'd have to know your ecology web for that, to avoid unwanted unintended consequences. You can play with biochemistry inside the mosquitoe's bodies or inside people's. And then there are chemicals outside our bodies, either to kill or cause avoidance. Maybe psychology with mosquitoes could be used, pairing human stimulus with unpleasant response. Maybe some designer genes could be introduced into malarial prone populations. There's nets, of course. I've heard of noise to ward off mosquitoes, too. What about mosquito-eaters? Do those things actually dine on mosquitoes? And don't forget mosquito-proof clothing. What about bug zappers? Alright Bill and company, have at it.

I checked out Bill's website at gatesfoundation.org (malaria backgrounder), and he gave this supplementary information: 350-500M people are infected with malaria yearly, and 1M die, the majority African children. He's spending $515.9M on malaria this year, I guess (286.9 to support the "PATH" Malaria Vaccine Initiative, $165M to the Medicines for Malaria Venture to search for safe, effective, affordable anti-malarial drugs, and $65M to Malaria Control and Education Project in Africa to demonstrate the enormous potential to save lives with existing malaria control interventions). As much as it is about saving lives, I think it is also, possibly more so, about quality of life. Apparently, my 1993 Newsweek figure of 2M dead a year and Gate's current toll of 1M dead a year means we've made some progress.

His webpage also says he has a fourfold plan: 1)to create vaccines, 2)to create treatment drugs, 3)"tools" to decrease transmission, such as insecticide-treated bednets, and insecticides that are safer, more effective, and more affordable. 4)This last one is a bit unclear: "To study ways that drugs now used could also be used to prevent the disease." Does anyone understand that? Malaria IS the disease. I guess he means using existing drugs ON TOP OF his newer ones, or something. You would think he would more clearly communicate.

I am concerned about all this effort on vaccines and drugs. Aren't mosquitoes some of the oldest creatures on earth, evolutionarily? Don't they reproduce fast, and won't they be likely to evolve past any of our medicinal defenses? It seems like they might even get more dangerous, to all of us. Perhaps nets and clothing and electronic humming things would be better? Of course, I only have a few bucks in my bank account, so what would I know.

I couldn't find out what PATH acronyms for, if anything. I was on a park path today, and thought about it. At least it's not just Coke cans, pine needles, cracks in the side of road, rock, bumps, and grass (all drug references). I have a cousin named Pat H. Ack at H.

The U.N., on malaria.