Today, over 27,000 children died around the world

Re: Today, over 27,000 children died around the world


This is why... http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

I'm serious. It explains why a story about Britney Spears draws ratings, but a story about poverty in Africa doesn't.

Well, that or the fact that hearing something negative about Britney Spears makes people feel better about thier own lives, where as Africa seems to have the opposite effect.

Centrol
Thanks for the link.
Unfortunately our media mogals are made after money and nothing else.

may or may not be true, I don't really know. what I do know is that the media feeds us what we want to see and hear.

Hard to believe there was a time when the media was considered the fourth branch of government. Nowadays, they don't see a problem with devoting four days of nonstop coverage towards Anna Nicole Smith while a freaking genocide is going on in Darfur

PBS is perhaps the only government subsidy that I do support unconditionally. And there's a good reason for that.

dyslexia
"what I do know is that the media feeds us what we want to see and hear."
I agree. But the media should also strive hard to elevate the interests of the viewers and readers.
Centroles.
I fully share your assessment.
Thanks

Dyslexia, how the hell does the media know what we want to see and hear if they never bother to cover it in the first place because they're too busy covering every aspect of O.J. Simpson's life?

Another problem is the massive media monopolies. Does anyone realize just how many different media outlets Time Warner, Rubert Murdock's News Corp and Disney own?

And even when they're not run by the same freaking people, the degree to which CNN/Time, Newsweek, NBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC News, CBS News cover the exact same fluff pieces (and try to pass that crap off as news), even when there's a freaking genocide going on in the real world, is mindnumbing.

And what's with 24 hour/7 days a week coverage of the court trail every time a white women gets killed or kidnapped. Do you know how many nonwhite women get killed every year? Why not atleast have the decency to stop calling themselves news networks and start calling themselves Court TV?

That atleast would have a tiny smidgeon of honesty.

I feel like starting up a letter writing campaign to Keith Olberman, Cafferty and Anderson Cooper. I know I'm not the only person thats gettign sick and tired of the bullshit. Maybe it'll go away for a few days if someday starts covering the discontent people have about the mainstream "news" media.

P.S. Sorry that I inadvertantly diverted this thread with my rant about my media. To be fair, you asked for the reason why.

What would happen to the world if those 27,000 children survived.

and tomorrows 27,000 children, and the next day and the next.

Rama - I did go to the link you provided. Unfortunately, the site did not provide the detailed breakdown I hoped for.

I am not a medical doctor. There is something about child deaths attributed to starvation that puzzles me, and maybe there are A2Kers with more medical knowledge than I have (that wouldn't take much) can provide some education. There has to be some level of nutrition required that allows a woman to conceive and carry a fetus to term. How is there enough food for the woman to be healthy enough for some time before conception, and then through pregnancy, and yet 10 or 20 months later the food is so scant the parents cannot feed their child?

I am also curious how many of these deaths are caused by malaria. This has to be at least part of the problem, or I wouldn't be seeing commercials on television asking for donations to buy nets to protect people while they are sleeping. Is it time to re-evaluate if the human lives saved by using DDT outweight the ecological damage caused by using DDT?

It disgusts me too.

But I think things are better than they used to be so maybe we'll solve it one day. As long as we keep putting the pressure on.

Everytime you see OJ or BS on TV or in the rags just laugh.

Laugh the silly ****ers off the airwaves.

As dadpad says---

What would happen to the world if those 27,000 children survived.

and tomorrows 27,000 children, and the next day and the next.


Now lets see.... 10 days is 270.000... say a quarter of a million every 10 days, now if that quarter of a millon population starts breeding in 20 years time we would have a increase in population of that quarter of a million population --of?????.
so perhaps limiting the population would be a much more sensible way of solving this problem before we are all standing on each others heads.

Sure it is but not by having kids die.

Jim - that's a good question-how can these women sustain a pregnancy during famine conditions?

I know, from having been pregnant myself that during the first trimester of pregnancy contrary to popular misconception, unless you start out underweight, you don't really need to increase your caloric intake- it is important however to get enough folic acid and other nutrients, so a balanced and nutrient rich diet is important for optimum fetal development. From the beginning of the second trimester on, a woman really only needs 200-300 extra calories per day - the equivalent of a container of yogurt and a piece of fruit.

But after the baby is born, and is no longer nourished by the mother through the placenta- caloric intake needs to increase drastically:
0-5 months- 650 calories
5-12 months-850
1-3 years- 1300
and then over 1800-2000 as a child and into adulthood.
And as small children, these calories need to be protein dense for brain development and carbohydrate dense for energy.

But I think you ask a good question, how do these women remain fertile to even become pregnant- if they're living in famine conditions to begin with.

But as far as the children being at greater risk after birth, they're vulnerable to begin with. They haven't had optimum developmental conditions within the womb, and their mothers probably don't have strong immunities to pass on to them ( a baby's iron store and immune system is usually only as strong as its mother's), many of them probably don't go full term in the womb, so they have the deck stacked against them from the beginning- especially in the sense that to alot of people they're just another 1 of 27,000 or 30,000 that the world can't afford to support anyway.

Aidan - thank you for your posting. I learned a lot from it.

I do believe that humanity needs to maintain a stable population worldwide. But starvation is not the way to do it.

Jim - You're welcome.
It'll be interesting to see if global warming and its effects (which either you believe is a reality or you don't- I do) in terms of displacing millions of people all over the world, will have any effect on how this problem is approached.

And by that I mean, once these children who are dying at such a geographical remove from the rest of the developed world, and thus are easier to view as anonymous and somehow intangible, begin to move into, or try to move into, the spaces where we'll have to acknowledge them as realities and human beings instead of unfortunate occurrences somewhere on the opposite side of the world-will our attitudes toward their circumstances and our responsibilities toward them change at all?

Because we do have the resources to feed everyone in the world (or at least that's what I've read). And you only have to walk around any mall in the US to see that people over here are literally killing themselves from overconsumption, and the reality here is that more and more babies are born with the lifelong tendency to develop diabetes and heart disease because their mothers eat too many calories during pregnancy.
I wonder if we were all on the same continent if we'd learn anything from each other or not- or maybe the natural order of things is that we just keep f***ing up.

*My own personal belief is that the solution lies in making both birth control and adoption more socially acceptable and viable, affordable and available (in concept and reality) around the world.

Aidan - how much population increase is due to lack of access to birth control, and how much is due to cultural factors?

I worked in Saudi Arabia 15 years. One convenient thing about living there were the pharmacies (seedleyah). You could buy just about anything within reason without needing a prescription. Condoms were always available and on display in plain sight. And yet Saudi Arabia has one of the highest birthrates in the world.

That's what I meant by saying 'socially acceptable'- I guess I meant 'culturally viable' within societies as well. I know that a big part of the problem in some societies is the religious and cultural aversion to the use of birth control, thus limiting the birth rate. Also needing to be addressed is the role of women within a society. As it stand right now- if they're not there to breed- what exactly is their purpose?

I saw in the news that a reporter in Africa got circumcised on camera in an effort to show that that's a responsible thing for men there to do (to inhibit the spread of AIDS). He was roundly condemned by his cultural peers. Although, I have to say that that was a good and educational use of the media-I wonder if it will be suppressed within his own country though.

I guess it's all about education. But will anyone ever listen? I mean even the scientists here have had a hard time convincing educated people in developed countries to change their behaviors in an effort to save our very planet for goodness sakes. To a certain extent, I guess I think people will do what they've been taught to do is right- or what they feel like doing - until all signs point to the fact that it's not going to be able to happen that way anymore- and by the time they'll finally make the change because they have no other choice - it's usually too late.

I'm relatively sure that the Bush policy of eliminating birth-control has little or not effect on 3rd world nations.

I am reading all the views.
Thro' this thread I tried to corner/confront the media .
I will follow your valuable views .
Thanks

Dys wrote


No, I don't either. I'm talking about birth rates in nondeveloped nations where there is not the agriculture or infrastructure to support the people
who are being born.

In the US, I think the issue is more about conspicuous consumption, and how that is affecting the rest of the world, and there, yes, I do think Bush's policies have had some negative effects - although the American people have to take responsibility for their own choices - and I don't mean just the one that involved electing Bush as president.

*Please tell Diane I hope she's feeling better - she's always seemed like a nice woman.