It ain't overpopulation that's to blame! ->Re: Overpopulation's self-correcting mode?

Posted by lanecove on July 27, 2003 at 05:39:15:

In Reply to: Re: Overpopulation's self-correcting mode? posted by DocN on May 01, 2003 at 08:51:18:

DocN,

It helps to have numbers to hand when thinking of things like this. Scary as SARS was (is?), it killed less than 1,000 people; diseases like AIDS, malaria, and TB kill many times that number every day. While SARS was terrible for those affected, directly or indirectly, the good news is that it was brought under control in less than one year.

In terms of public health, the size and density of population are, at best, second or third order contributors; we (humanity) already 'know' how to dramatically reduce the incidence of all infectious diseases.

So, why do we still have such terrible death tolls? Some reasons:
- 'just say no' and 'don't take drugs'; better to work with human nature than to try to change it; decent drug rehab programs would have a huge impact on disease transmission
- corruption, esp in many developing economies
- war and strife; it's hard to implement health programs in places like Liberia and the Congo, yet in an interconnected world, failures in places like this have health impacts far beyond the areas of immediate turmoil
- stupidity; like the failure of governments and health authorities everywhere to implement antibiotics use policies that take account of evolution (nature and speed of development of resistance)
- greed; look at the drug companies' policies on AIDS drugs (until recently)

Regards
lanecove

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Follow Ups: (Reload page to see most recent)

• Re: It ain't overpopulation that's to blame! ->Re: Overpopulation's self-correcting mode? -- lanecove 7/27/03 (0)
• Re: It ain't overpopulation that's to blame! ->Re: Overpopulation's self-correcting mode? -- DickT 7/27/03 (3)
  • Bjorn Limborg? -- lanecove 8/01/03 (2)
    • Re: Bjorn Limborg? -- DickT 8/01/03 (1)
      • Re: Bjorn Limborg? -- lanecove 8/02/03 (0)

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