Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Donald W Larson
August 22nd, 2002 - 20:00

The references article said:

Meanwhile, resistant strains of malaria have spread across the world, forcing many poor African countries to exchange their cheap and increasingly ineffective drugs for more potent medicine that can cost 10 times as much.

I wonder what would happen if we gave drugs to every person suffering from the diseases. Might a situation arise where more drug-resistant diseases increase? How do we know we would be doing the right thing?

Perhaps if every person in the world survived illnesses, we would have such a huge global population, that more wars for scarce resources, more people dying from famine, more despair would ensue?

Maybe millions of people dying a a year prevents much worse situations?

There is such a thing as the balance of nature, cruel as that often is.

It seems to me that every time humankind tries to overcome natural selection, really bad things follow. I can point to the efforts to alleviate famine in some African countries decades ago that allowed people to live. Those living people created more people, putting additional newborn people at risk. Wars started and so it goes.

Other than the same old “feel good” reasons for helping people, have there been any studies concerning outcomes when everyone lives? I don’t know of any. I think if everyone lived, we would find problems that could have been avoided by natural selection.

If the answer involves every Western government changing their vision to one of a socialist nature, then there will be lots of resistance no matter how much guilt is directed at those governments or their citizens.

It’s a sad set of events facing the world now. Maytbe the world wil make it out of this century and maybe not. I think the world adds to its problems every day in one way or another.

A simpler, kinder, gentler world, is not something I see except in the verbal/written descriptions of some people’s dreams; Mother Teresa was once such leader who lived her dreams. I am nothing compared to her work. When I die, I will have accomplished nothing in the grand scheme of things. That’s how I view most people’s ideas of saving the world too.

Don