COMMENTS: 69
Infected Planet
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Twenty-five years later, when Laurie Garrett published her nonfiction bestseller, "The Coming Plague," people were waking up to the fact that our own abused planet is perfectly capable of spawning a steady stream of new diseases without any help from alien worlds.
Today, old familiar scourges like tuberculosis, malaria, measles, and diarrhea -- and a newer one, AIDS -- are the world's biggest killers, but they've been joined by a host of newcomers. Indeed, one could get the impression that each year brings a new disease. That's because it does.
Mark Woolhouse, chair of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, has counted 38 new pathogens (disease-causing biological agents) that have moved into the human population from other animal species in just the past 25 years. In a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last month, Woolhouse noted that we're under assault not only from those novel species, but also from new genetic variants of pathogens that have been with us for a long time.
A recent tally identified 1,415 disease-causing microbes in humans, including bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasitic worms. We share fully 61 percent of those pathogens with other animal species. Of the total, 175 cause "emerging diseases" -- ones not known until recently in humans. Of those, 75 percent came out of other animals to invade Homo sapiens.
The impact of species-jumping pathogens varies. Hendra virus moved from fruit bats to horses in 1994 and is known to have killed a total of only three people. Since the 1970s, the Ebola virus has incited some horrifying outbreaks that, so far, have failed to blow up into epidemics. Influenza viruses usually cause a lower mortality rate but hit far more people; currently, an H5N1 "bird flu" strain threatens to break that pattern by staging an encore of the 1918-19 killer flu pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people. HIV/AIDS is both chronically widespread and deadly, now accounting for almost a fourth of infectious disease deaths.
But have "emerging" species-jumping diseases actually been with us for millenia, identified only when medical research achieves sufficient precision in detecting and identifying microbes? Durland Fish, professor at the Yale School of Public Health, says that better research is part of it, but there still appears to be a faster rate of disease appearance these days. He told me, "Dr. Woolhouse makes an interesting point: that 'emerging disease' is a new concept but a very old process. Humans have always acquired new diseases." We're being hit more frequently today than in previous eras, he says, partly because "transportation, trade, human population growth, and environmental change are going on at unprecedented rates."
They don't show up uninvited
Scientists have seen associations between human activites, which have burgeoned in the past quarter century, and diseases that gained prominence during those same years. Some examples:
The chances of the potentially catastrophic flu virus H5N1, and others like it, emerging from interaction between wild birds, domestic animals and people may have been enhanced by loss of natural wetlands in southern China. That has led infected migratory birds to alight more often on farms and other populated areas. There, they come into contact with denser populations of chickens, ducks and pigs destined to satisfy an increasing rate of animal-protein consumption per person.
Ticks transfer the bacterium that causes Lyme disease from infected mice and deer to people. First described in New England in the 1970s, Lyme disease is now a chronic problem in parts of the United States. Reforestation in eastern states, but by a less diverse ecosystem than the one that was destroyed during original white settlement two to three centuries ago, has brought large populations of deer, mice and ticks into much closer contact with suburb-dwelling humans.
Mad cow disease is believed to have resulted from the ecologically suspect practice of feeding processed livestock remains to naturally vegetarian cattle. Scary little protein fragments called prions that appear to be responsible for the disease are not destroyed when meat is cooked. They can and do strike humans, causing the debilitating and inevitably fatal condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Perhaps the biggest threat from new genetic strains of old, familiar pathogens is the onslaught of bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics. Livestock are now a widely recognized source of drug-resistant strains of salmonella, E. coli and other bacteria. Heavy feeding of antibiotics to cattle, swine and poultry (often even when they're not sick) in the overcrowded, filthy conditions of gigantic feedlots, animal-confinement facilities and meat-packing plants provide ideal incubators for bacteria resistant to the drugs. Meat coming out of such ecological horror houses can contain animal feces bearing the newly evolved "superbugs." Of 10 organisms listed by the U.S. Public Health Service as the most serious threats in this country, seven are carried by meat and dairy products.
The most catastrophic of the recent emerging diseases so far has been AIDS. The route by which HIV jumped to humans is still a matter of speculation, but encroachment into forests and the resulting increased contact with other primate species is widely believed to have been involved.
Destruction of forest habitat in Asia has driven several species of fruit bats infected with Nipah virus into increasing contact with pigs and humans, and both are susceptible. Nipah is an especially nasty virus, causing severe headache, fever, nausea and seizures. In seven outbreaks since 1999, in Malaysia, India and Bangladesh, it has killed one-third to three-fourths of its victims. A series of Bangladesh cases in 2004 indicated possible human-to-human transmission -- an ominous sign.
When severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) broke out in Guangdong province of China in 2002-03, the virus that causes it was also found in palm civets. Soon, the small wild mammals -- a traditional food in the province -- were being targeted for killing by the thousands. Some scientists decried the slaughter as unnecessary ecological disruption. Now it appears that bats, not civets, are the reservoir for the virus. And experts are saying that bat extermination programs would be no more effective than civet killing as a way to curb SARS, Nipah or other bat-harbored diseases.
When people in the American Midwest began falling ill in 2003 with monkeypox (a disease similar to human smallpox), investigators quickly discovered that all of the victims had been in contact with that beloved North American native, the prairie dog. The pox virus had entered the country in infected African rodents legally imported by pet stores, where they had passed it on to the highly susceptible prairie dogs.
Since its first detection in the United States -- in New York in 1999 -- West Nile virus has become an annual threat in many U.S. regions. The virus kills 5 percent to 15 percent of those infected, and more than one-third of elderly patients who are infected die from it. It's known to infect more than 200 species of birds, but unlike bird flu, it doesn't depend primarily on migratory fowl to get around. It's passed to humans by mosquitoes, and many human activities make mosquito populations more mobile. For example, the Asian Tiger mosquito, one of at least 43 species known to carry West Nile, has been reaching U.S. ports since the 1980s in water that collects in used tires imported from Asia. However, it is still not known how the virus first reached this country. (One also wonders why we're importing used tires.)
You play, you pay
Modern human plagues aren't a result of mysterious forces. It's not, as Kurt Vonnegut has put it, that "the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us." Diseases have concrete, often mundane causes. The necessary species and genetic variants are everywhere, and whether we mean to or not, we're relentlessly seeking them out and inviting them to do their worst.
To cause human disease, a pathogen first has to come into contact with people. As with bird flu, Nipah and lyme disease, environmental disruptions like habitat destruction or distorted reforestation serve that purpose well. Or, as with monkeypox and SARS, the exotic-pet or exotic-food industries can introduce pathogens to their new home.
However, every new disease-of-the-year doesn't blow up to the catastrophic scale of HIV, which was first recognized two decades ago and is now estimated to be killing almost three million people a year. The impact of most new diseases is ghastly for victims but very small for humanity as a whole. How do a few microbial species go on to cause widespread illness and death, while others don't?
Like any organism entering a new environment, the microbe population either must have within it some genetic variants that are somewhat well-adapted to their new human host, or, once in the host, it has to throw up new, better-adapted forms quickly through mutation or by scavenging genetic material from other strains or species. That's probably why a large proportion of new human diseases are RNA viruses, which mutate and scavenge more readily than DNA viruses, bacteria or other pathogens.
Chance mutations that improve an organism's ability to thrive are extremely rare, even among viruses. This year, the world is watching and waiting to find out if the H5N1 bird-flu strain is capable of producing mutants that can spread directly from person to person. Two years ago, we were wondering if SARS would beat the odds and go global. But it's not all up to the pathogen; as its hosts, we help determine its success.
Given enough opportunities, even highly improbable events have a way of eventually happening. Twenty-first-century humanity does everything in a big way, and much of what we do gives microbes the multiple chances they need to make the improbable unavoidable. Rare, better-adapted genetic combinations may not succeed in the first or fifth or 50th person they've infected -- but give them enough opportunities, and they'll be off and running.
In a 2005 paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Mark Woolhouse and two colleagues described the mathematical hurdles a species-jumping germ must clear before it can sort out or produce the necessary mutants, spread through a population and cause an epidemic. The lucky pathogen that finds itself in a human body gets a boost over those hurdles, because of the sheer scale of civilization.
When people crowd into high-density cities, sprawling slums and hospitals; consume insufficient or bad food and polluted water; travel widely and often; ship vast quantities of products worldwide; make sex an industry; damage their immune systems by disease, chemotherapy, transplant-facilitating drugs or environmental toxins; or are plunged into the chaos of war, the pathogen has a much bigger field of play.
Some efforts to economize through greater resource efficiency can give pathogens the boost they need. In "The Coming Plague," Laurie Garrett noted that in the 1980s, airlines began saving fuel by drastically cutting the rate of cabin air turnover, and that large numbers of people now live and work in "energy efficient settings" that also restrict outside air flow. Groups of people repeatedly rebreathing the same air have a better chance of getting sick.
Some pathogens, like West Nile virus, don't have to work out a genetic system for direct person-to-person transmission because they've evolved to be transferred by mosquitoes or other vectors. And any ecological disruption that creates favorable conditions for disease-carrying species of insects or ticks favors the disease as well.
It's not surprising that descriptions of humanity's attempts to fight off microbial assaults often involve military imagery. In his 2001 book, "War and Nature," Edmund Russell describes how malaria-laden mosquitoes were often equated with America's Japanese enemies in World War II-era propaganda, while pesticides used to fight the insects had originated in the chemical weapons industry. Our war with mosquitoes has produced no winner. Despite the vast quantities of insecticides sprayed in the years since, malaria still kills 1.2 million people a year.
And then there's global warming, the grandaddy of all ecological threats. What effect will it have on human disease? Many predictions are dire, because warmer conditions have the general effect of increasing biological activity. There is concern, for example, that tropical insect species will bring pathogens into now-temperate regions.
Yale's Durland Fish downplays the specter of pestilence: "We don't have a lot of convincing evidence that global warming will result in epidemics. So far, health alone is not a sufficient reason to reduce CO2."
The overall forecast may indeed be cloudy, but for specific diseases there is very good evidence that more people would fall sick in a hotter world. Outbreaks of cholera in Asia and Latin America have been shown to happen when coastal ocean temperatures rise, as they do during El Niño events. Cholera bacteria lying dormant in the bodies of microscopic marine animals called copepods are stimulated by the warmer temperatures to become active, multiply rapidly and cause local outbreaks.
Heading off future pandemics
The modern better-living-through-chemistry approach is unlikely to do us much good in the face of new pathogens or new, more virulent forms of old ones. Especially against viruses, existing drugs are rarely very effective, and pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to make the huge investment of time and money to develop new drugs until a new disease is already a widespread problem.
As Laurie Garrett explained last year in a comprehensive review of the bird flu threat, we should not expect companies to develop an effective vaccine in time. For one thing, vaccines are much less profitable and more risky than are drugs. In a more recent piece, Garrett argued for a public-health approach that involves monitoring wild bird and virus movements and protecting domestic fowl when the virus is expected to hit a particular area. She even called on the world's bird watchers to help in the effort.
As long as our species continues making the planet a friendlier place for microbes that can infect us, we'll never see the end of potential public-health emergencies. When I asked Durland Fish if he was placing bets for or against a bird flu pandemic, he wouldn't venture any guesses; rather, he made this prediction: "Sooner or later, whether it's H5N1 or another strain, a pandemic is inevitable -- like an earthquake in California."
When new diseases show up, we have no choice but to deal with them. But in the meantime, we need to reverse the ecological damage that makes us increasingly vulnerable. Doing that would also help reduce the already huge and largely unnecessary death toll from existing infectious diseases. That toll currently stands at about 12 million per year worldwide, chiefly in the most severely impoverished parts of the planet. The World Health Organization weighed in late last year with its contribution to the global Millenium Ecosystem Assessment project. In a summary of its report, WHO saw people's health as closely tied to the health of the planet:
Measures to ensure ecological sustainability would safeguard ecosystem services and therefore benefit health in the long term. Where a population is weighed down by disease related to poverty … the provision of [shelter, food and water] should be the first priority for public health policy. Where ill health is caused, directly or indirectly, by excessive consumption … substantial reductions in consumption would have major health benefits while simultaneously reducing pressure on life-support systems.This is not a "war" that can be "won." We can't command viruses to stop swapping RNA or order birds to stop migrating. And among the many species that humans are known to be driving to extinction, none are microscopic. No matter how cruel some of those microbes can be when they manage to invade our bodies, the only long-term answer is to live and let live.
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Posted by: greentime on Mar 21, 2006 3:30 AM
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Fun creatures though we may be, creative, spiritual, and curious, we are the ones plaguing the planet.
We now recognize our beginings as a small band roaming out of Africa some 2000 generations ago. What we don't fully realize is the extent of our success as a species. Or should we say, excess?
We are voracious feeders and hard users of the environment. We are highly successful breeders as well. So is it any wonder that our inability to evolve soon enough to save ourselves (and earth) has set the planet's organisms in a race to limit us?
We have acted upon this garden and each other as if it is "us or them" and now the earth's organisms are stepping up the game. Can we learn to limit ourselves?
Are we so enamored of ourselves that we have only one choice - to replicate ourselves ad-infinitum? Can we think beyond ourselves to include others? Other people, other species, the environment(s)? Do we need a big sales campaign to convince us to buy brand healthy earth instead of brand end of life as we know it?
We have reached the edge of every continent and body of water and we are so busy super sizing ourselves and taking our big grab and big gulp of every resource that we don't even look at the trail of destruction we leave in our own wake.
Now we only have to turn around and look back at the trails we made because they are now the road ahead. These are the same trails we must travel now on the return trip. We now know we are all related - great. Maybe that will make us rethink nuclear aniliation. Now we know we need a healthy planet. Maybe that will make us rethink who we are to the rest of life on earth.
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» RE: Modern Human Plague
Posted by: alterme
» RE: Modern Human Plague
Posted by: greentime
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Posted by: mwildfire on Mar 21, 2006 4:13 AM
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It is not possible for the human race to continue expanding until there are fifteen billion of us, using up every bit of Sol's energy bounty after exterminating all competing species. An Earth with fifteen billion humans and nothing else is not a viable ecosystem. We've already gone beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth, and our numbers will fall drastically and soon. It could happen through warfare--conventional, nuclear or biological. Or it could be a natural or engineered plague. The latter is much the most desirable, because it would have the least impact on other species--and because it's at least somewhat democratic (like everything else, plague hits the poor harder--but no one is safe, and there could actually be advantages to not being coddled). It would also tend to eliminate the weakest among us, restoring some of the selective pressures we have missed for a long time now.
Okay, fine--theoretically, we could solve this problem rationally and without a massive die-off. We could: 1-- suddenly, drastically and universally reduce our population to one child per woman; 2--eliminate meat-eating which creates a lot of the ecological hazards described above, is an inefficient use of agricultural resources and has an enormous environmental impact; 3--stop wasting our resources on warfare and use them instead to clean up poverty, create universal public health, get rid of nuclear and biological weapons stocks, and convert to a renewable energy economy. If we could do all that in an unprecedented burst of collective rationality, we could probably avert the "coming plague." Anyone want to take bets on that happening?
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» Wow! You said it!
Posted by: O.B.Server
» RE: Wow! You said it!
Posted by: JimTheAnarchist
» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: WitchyNy
» Oh goodness...did you just exorcise Jimbo from the progressive religion?
Posted by: ABetterFuture
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: mwildfire
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: kelly.nickell
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: WitchyNy
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Shehova
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Asmodeus
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: mwildfire
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Posted by: drricklippin on Mar 21, 2006 4:23 AM
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Key paragraphs is " When people crowd into high-density cities, sprawling slums and hospitals; consume insufficient or bad food and polluted water; travel widely and often; ship vast quantities of products worldwide; make sex an industry; damage their immune systems by disease, chemotherapy, transplant-facilitating drugs or environmental toxins; or are plunged into the chaos of war, the pathogen has a much bigger field of play"
My opinion is the biggest mistake that the contemporary infectious disease western medical speciality has made is failure to sufficiently study human host resistance factors like the impact of population density and enviromental degradation. These reductionists are so busy with their reductionistic microscopes trying to understand and deconstruct the organisms they largely ignore the "macroscopic" issues of great concern noted in this excellent essay.
Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com
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» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: There's too many of us...OUCH! LIONHEAD-INHUMANE RHETORIC
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: There's too many of us...OUCH! LIONHEAD-INHUMANE RHETORIC
Posted by: Asmodeus
» RE: THINNING THE HUMAN HERD-OUCH!
Posted by: drricklippin
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Posted by: Sparks56 on Mar 21, 2006 4:34 AM
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Malthas was right. Sooner or later, one way or another, human population will be reduced to a number that is tolerable to the organism we live on; planet Earth.
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Posted by: rsaxto on Mar 21, 2006 4:45 AM
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Posted by: lu on Mar 21, 2006 5:27 AM
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We need to wake up to the realization that food and water are fundamental to the health and survival of human beings on earth. They are too vital to life to be abandoned to amoral market forces. Unless we wish to self-destruct, we must re-assert control over these unbridled corporations and remind them that they will be held responsible for the health and safety of the products they bring to market.
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» RE: Luise Light, Ed.D.
Posted by: woody
» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» I thank you for this!
Posted by: greentime
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Posted by: karyse on Mar 21, 2006 5:58 AM
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The planet has its own way of protecting itself, and even though we are murdering each other in great numbers, apparently its not at a fast enough rate to suit the universe.
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Posted by: Iconoclast421 on Mar 21, 2006 6:31 AM
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Normal flu kills thousands every year.
Is it any wonder there's all this hyperinflated talk of bird flu pandemic and people like Rumsfeld are making millions off a flu vaccine that doesn't even work? It's just another disgusting scam.
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» RE: It's just scare tactics--but they're effective
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: It's just scare tactics--but they're effective
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: dankorn on Mar 21, 2006 7:00 AM
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When people crowd into high-density cities, sprawling slums and hospitals... the pathogen has a much bigger field of play.
But then it says:
...deer, mice and ticks into much closer contact with suburb-dwelling humans.
and
...encroachment into forests and the resulting increased contact with other primate species...
and
Destruction of forest habitat in Asia has driven several species of fruit bats infected with Nipah virus into increasing contact with pigs and humans...
Taking all these statements together, it seems that the benefits of isolating human populations in cities seem to outweigh the "benefits" of reduced-density suburbs and sprawl. In fact, I would argue that density, along with controlled population growth, is the key to our future survival. It's necessary if we're going to minimize our impact on the environment. Otherwise, we're forced to consume ever-more resources just to get around in our daily lives.
But other than a vague reference to hypermobility, "travel[ing] widely and often," the article seems to mostly overlook the factors that transportation choices play in the destruction of our planet's ecosystem. In fact, the one word that's strangely left out of this article is "automobiles." The closest it gets to talking about our over-dependence on these machines is this quote:
(One also wonders why we're importing used tires.)
Let's talk more about how automobile dependence factors into all this, as a primary cause of many of the other factors listed in the article, including global warming, air and water pollution, and war. I submit that cars are a bigger, and faster-growing, part of the problem than overuse of antibiotics, eating meat or even overpopulation.
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» RE: Density
Posted by: janten
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Posted by: Roverton on Mar 21, 2006 7:01 AM
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That would be stupid, and humans are too smart for that.
Right?
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Posted by: Steve Adair on Mar 21, 2006 7:17 AM
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» You first
Posted by: lionhead
» FWIW
Posted by: ethanay
» RE: You first
Posted by: Steve Adair
» RE: You first
Posted by: Kari
» RE: You first
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: DaftAida on Mar 21, 2006 7:28 AM
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"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill ... all these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviours tht they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself" Alexander King Founder of The Club of Rome - The First Global Revolution.
Just another brilliant idea folks from those guys who've raided your taxes, stolen your Government and have finally convinced you that you might just as well allow them to continue the cull, because you are stupid and worthless. Why don't you just load the gun, pull the trigger and beat them to it, whilst you still have firearms before FEMA confiscate them.They've certainly succeeded in changing attitudes and behaviours, haven't they? Meanwhile, they continue to profit from plundering Earth's resources and making billions whilst making us feel guilty for a crime we have not committed. Consider what living might possibly be like without these parasitical, useless entities leaching our lives? I can only imagine but it sure looks good.
WAKE UP AMERICA, you don't have time for this any more. Would the author of this article and all the brainwashed greenies colluding with this erroneous and suicidal view please take a group enema to clear their perceptions.
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» Wake up America?
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: Wake up America?
Posted by: DaftAida
» RE: Same Old ...
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: ...mmm...paranoid conspiratorial delusions....
Posted by: ethanay
» RE: ...mmm...paranoid conspiratorial delusions....
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: kathat on Mar 21, 2006 8:40 AM
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» RE: Widely thought
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: Sojourner on Mar 21, 2006 8:47 AM
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Our species has labored for centuries to be able to comprehend the big picture. Only to deny what what's there?
DaftIda ought to be DenyIda. Overpopulation and it's dire consequences ain't going away, folks. Wishing ain't enough.
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» RE: We are consuming the Earth's biology 20% faster than it can replace it.
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: garyinthailand on Mar 21, 2006 9:25 AM
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Maybe bird flu will break out someday and become an actual human plague. But the signs are thin on the ground. So far, it's an avian epidemic that in rare cases infects humans.
I understand why neocons and pharmaceutical companies want to sell us a bill of goods, but I'm dismayed when the 'progressive' press chimes in on such a transparent piece of panic-mongering.
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» RE: not just bird flu
Posted by: ethanay
» That's what Reagan said about AIDS in the 1980s
Posted by: Sojourner
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Posted by: chasaturn on Mar 21, 2006 10:33 AM
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Posted by: AdamSelene40 on Mar 21, 2006 11:04 AM
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The DISNEY Version: the sky IS falling. Moral: "You just never KNOW -- be afraid."
Yet ... as we see in this thread ... any agenda that can't be advanced by an appeal to fear of TERRORISTS can be advanced by an appeal to fear of PLAGUE.
In this case Tamiflu sales increased by 1/3 this season, not counting various governments' stockpile purchases. More people got their influenza vaccines this year than ever before.
And, oh yes, a certain amount of resources were thown into 'pandemic' planning -- which can't be a BAD thing, after all.
Yet, the Avaian H5N1 Flu is an agricultural pest. There are very good reasons (if you believe the mechanics of evolution work the way the biologists say they do) why it will REMAIN a bird-killer and leave people alone.
Why I don't get is why 'our' Enviros and Foodies have to jump on the Frear Bandwagon along with Big Pharama.
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Posted by: drricklippin on Mar 21, 2006 1:51 PM
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» To keep from crying.
Posted by: Sojourner
» RE: To keep from crying.YUP SOJOURNER-THANKS!
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: To keep from crying.
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: macdon1 on Mar 21, 2006 2:41 PM
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Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Mar 21, 2006 6:27 PM
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Sure, bad human policy leads to the spread of disease - as in the 1918 spanish swine flu, whose spread was greatly exacerbated by WWI hospitals and poor hygiene. Stopping a bioterror attack or an epidemic relies on having a trained and well-supported medical staff and a good public health system including lots of emergency rooms and contingency plans. There is plenty of historical precedent here to work off of (witness the campaign against polio). Given the abysmal government response to Katrina, I seriously doubt whether they are prepared for any epidemic.
It makes me wonder if someone is trying to justify yet another Bush-era corporate ripoff of the American public as a 'justified response to a modern human plague'. Keep in mind, this 'bird flu' could have 'jumped species' a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now - viruses can do that kind of thing, after all. As an 'imminent public threat' it is just another Bush cabal scare tactic, and a profitable one at that (Gilead jumped from $35 to $47 a share after all this).
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Posted by: Gregor on Mar 21, 2006 6:50 PM
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Posted by: wli on Mar 21, 2006 7:31 PM
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Various national security documents (NSSM 200, Global 2000) and right-wing officials have pushed the eugenical line. Witness Kissinger's "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." More directly eugenical, witness Roger Pearson's advocacy of eugenics and also acting as frontman for the far right-wing Heritage Foundation.
To understand why this is viewed as desirable by the right wing, one must recall the racist and eugenical heritage of the right wing in conjunction with the disparate impact of the right-wing economic policies. The disparate impact is quite intentional and furthermore a motivator for them. Nixon is even on record describing the War on Drugs as having an intentionally disparate impact on blacks and that effect as beneficial for his purposes. After all, what is the "Southern Strategy?"
As far as the First World and bird flu and other such shams go, it's a total fraud. Ordinary flu kills off tens of thousands annually with zero fanfare. Diabetes, heart problems, etc. likewise. Car crashes are even more fearful. First World standards of hygiene simply preclude most diseases and pandemics, and those that remain take a far higher toll than any about which pandemic scares have been fomented by the mainstream media. And the pattern remains constant despite such, as the toll from those diseases is primarily among the impoverished elderly, who are doubtless viewed by the right wing as parasites on the Social Security dole.
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» RE: EXCELLENT wli! -WE HAVE ALL BEEN DUPED BY BIO-MEDICINE
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: right wing eugenicists, poverty, and squalor-WLI CONTACT ME!
Posted by: drricklippin
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Posted by: KatieOpinion on Mar 28, 2006 3:59 PM
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With love,
Katie
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» RE: Nothing new under the sun..
Posted by: arkface
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Posted by: Artemis3 on Apr 6, 2006 12:35 PM
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I decided a long time ago to not have children and add to the population. I live very simply and only use what I need. I look around at all the folks that are part of the cult of child worship, as if all that matters is bringing forth fruit from your loins, and nothing else.
I lament the loss of animal and plant species; the rain forests, the once-unlimited bounty of the oceans. We have ruined it all, and the earth will take her own back. It's happening now.
And as for being a Christian and liberal? That seems like an oxymoron to me, since Christians believe in the dominion of mankind over the earth; that the earth is there for our use. We will be learning a hard lesson, and soon!
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Posted by: greentime on Mar 21, 2006 3:30 AM
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Fun creatures though we may be, creative, spiritual, and curious, we are the ones plaguing the planet.
We now recognize our beginings as a small band roaming out of Africa some 2000 generations ago. What we don't fully realize is the extent of our success as a species. Or should we say, excess?
We are voracious feeders and hard users of the environment. We are highly successful breeders as well. So is it any wonder that our inability to evolve soon enough to save ourselves (and earth) has set the planet's organisms in a race to limit us?
We have acted upon this garden and each other as if it is "us or them" and now the earth's organisms are stepping up the game. Can we learn to limit ourselves?
Are we so enamored of ourselves that we have only one choice - to replicate ourselves ad-infinitum? Can we think beyond ourselves to include others? Other people, other species, the environment(s)? Do we need a big sales campaign to convince us to buy brand healthy earth instead of brand end of life as we know it?
We have reached the edge of every continent and body of water and we are so busy super sizing ourselves and taking our big grab and big gulp of every resource that we don't even look at the trail of destruction we leave in our own wake.
Now we only have to turn around and look back at the trails we made because they are now the road ahead. These are the same trails we must travel now on the return trip. We now know we are all related - great. Maybe that will make us rethink nuclear aniliation. Now we know we need a healthy planet. Maybe that will make us rethink who we are to the rest of life on earth.
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» RE: Modern Human Plague
Posted by: alterme
» RE: Modern Human Plague
Posted by: greentime
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Posted by: mwildfire on Mar 21, 2006 4:13 AM
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It is not possible for the human race to continue expanding until there are fifteen billion of us, using up every bit of Sol's energy bounty after exterminating all competing species. An Earth with fifteen billion humans and nothing else is not a viable ecosystem. We've already gone beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth, and our numbers will fall drastically and soon. It could happen through warfare--conventional, nuclear or biological. Or it could be a natural or engineered plague. The latter is much the most desirable, because it would have the least impact on other species--and because it's at least somewhat democratic (like everything else, plague hits the poor harder--but no one is safe, and there could actually be advantages to not being coddled). It would also tend to eliminate the weakest among us, restoring some of the selective pressures we have missed for a long time now.
Okay, fine--theoretically, we could solve this problem rationally and without a massive die-off. We could: 1-- suddenly, drastically and universally reduce our population to one child per woman; 2--eliminate meat-eating which creates a lot of the ecological hazards described above, is an inefficient use of agricultural resources and has an enormous environmental impact; 3--stop wasting our resources on warfare and use them instead to clean up poverty, create universal public health, get rid of nuclear and biological weapons stocks, and convert to a renewable energy economy. If we could do all that in an unprecedented burst of collective rationality, we could probably avert the "coming plague." Anyone want to take bets on that happening?
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» Wow! You said it!
Posted by: O.B.Server
» RE: Wow! You said it!
Posted by: JimTheAnarchist
» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: WitchyNy
» Oh goodness...did you just exorcise Jimbo from the progressive religion?
Posted by: ABetterFuture
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: mwildfire
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: kelly.nickell
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: WitchyNy
» RE: in terms of ecology
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» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: Asmodeus
» RE: in terms of ecology
Posted by: mwildfire
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Posted by: drricklippin on Mar 21, 2006 4:23 AM
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Key paragraphs is " When people crowd into high-density cities, sprawling slums and hospitals; consume insufficient or bad food and polluted water; travel widely and often; ship vast quantities of products worldwide; make sex an industry; damage their immune systems by disease, chemotherapy, transplant-facilitating drugs or environmental toxins; or are plunged into the chaos of war, the pathogen has a much bigger field of play"
My opinion is the biggest mistake that the contemporary infectious disease western medical speciality has made is failure to sufficiently study human host resistance factors like the impact of population density and enviromental degradation. These reductionists are so busy with their reductionistic microscopes trying to understand and deconstruct the organisms they largely ignore the "macroscopic" issues of great concern noted in this excellent essay.
Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com
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» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: There's too many of us...OUCH! LIONHEAD-INHUMANE RHETORIC
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: There's too many of us...OUCH! LIONHEAD-INHUMANE RHETORIC
Posted by: Asmodeus
» RE: THINNING THE HUMAN HERD-OUCH!
Posted by: drricklippin
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Posted by: Sparks56 on Mar 21, 2006 4:34 AM
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Malthas was right. Sooner or later, one way or another, human population will be reduced to a number that is tolerable to the organism we live on; planet Earth.
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Posted by: rsaxto on Mar 21, 2006 4:45 AM
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Posted by: lu on Mar 21, 2006 5:27 AM
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We need to wake up to the realization that food and water are fundamental to the health and survival of human beings on earth. They are too vital to life to be abandoned to amoral market forces. Unless we wish to self-destruct, we must re-assert control over these unbridled corporations and remind them that they will be held responsible for the health and safety of the products they bring to market.
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» RE: Luise Light, Ed.D.
Posted by: woody
» There's too many of us...
Posted by: lionhead
» I thank you for this!
Posted by: greentime
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Posted by: karyse on Mar 21, 2006 5:58 AM
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The planet has its own way of protecting itself, and even though we are murdering each other in great numbers, apparently its not at a fast enough rate to suit the universe.
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Posted by: Iconoclast421 on Mar 21, 2006 6:31 AM
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Normal flu kills thousands every year.
Is it any wonder there's all this hyperinflated talk of bird flu pandemic and people like Rumsfeld are making millions off a flu vaccine that doesn't even work? It's just another disgusting scam.
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» RE: It's just scare tactics--but they're effective
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: It's just scare tactics--but they're effective
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: dankorn on Mar 21, 2006 7:00 AM
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When people crowd into high-density cities, sprawling slums and hospitals... the pathogen has a much bigger field of play.
But then it says:
...deer, mice and ticks into much closer contact with suburb-dwelling humans.
and
...encroachment into forests and the resulting increased contact with other primate species...
and
Destruction of forest habitat in Asia has driven several species of fruit bats infected with Nipah virus into increasing contact with pigs and humans...
Taking all these statements together, it seems that the benefits of isolating human populations in cities seem to outweigh the "benefits" of reduced-density suburbs and sprawl. In fact, I would argue that density, along with controlled population growth, is the key to our future survival. It's necessary if we're going to minimize our impact on the environment. Otherwise, we're forced to consume ever-more resources just to get around in our daily lives.
But other than a vague reference to hypermobility, "travel[ing] widely and often," the article seems to mostly overlook the factors that transportation choices play in the destruction of our planet's ecosystem. In fact, the one word that's strangely left out of this article is "automobiles." The closest it gets to talking about our over-dependence on these machines is this quote:
(One also wonders why we're importing used tires.)
Let's talk more about how automobile dependence factors into all this, as a primary cause of many of the other factors listed in the article, including global warming, air and water pollution, and war. I submit that cars are a bigger, and faster-growing, part of the problem than overuse of antibiotics, eating meat or even overpopulation.
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» RE: Density
Posted by: janten
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Posted by: Roverton on Mar 21, 2006 7:01 AM
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That would be stupid, and humans are too smart for that.
Right?
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Posted by: Steve Adair on Mar 21, 2006 7:17 AM
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» You first
Posted by: lionhead
» FWIW
Posted by: ethanay
» RE: You first
Posted by: Steve Adair
» RE: You first
Posted by: Kari
» RE: You first
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: DaftAida on Mar 21, 2006 7:28 AM
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"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill ... all these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviours tht they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself" Alexander King Founder of The Club of Rome - The First Global Revolution.
Just another brilliant idea folks from those guys who've raided your taxes, stolen your Government and have finally convinced you that you might just as well allow them to continue the cull, because you are stupid and worthless. Why don't you just load the gun, pull the trigger and beat them to it, whilst you still have firearms before FEMA confiscate them.They've certainly succeeded in changing attitudes and behaviours, haven't they? Meanwhile, they continue to profit from plundering Earth's resources and making billions whilst making us feel guilty for a crime we have not committed. Consider what living might possibly be like without these parasitical, useless entities leaching our lives? I can only imagine but it sure looks good.
WAKE UP AMERICA, you don't have time for this any more. Would the author of this article and all the brainwashed greenies colluding with this erroneous and suicidal view please take a group enema to clear their perceptions.
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» Wake up America?
Posted by: lionhead
» RE: Wake up America?
Posted by: DaftAida
» RE: Same Old ...
Posted by: Jimbo
» RE: ...mmm...paranoid conspiratorial delusions....
Posted by: ethanay
» RE: ...mmm...paranoid conspiratorial delusions....
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: kathat on Mar 21, 2006 8:40 AM
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» RE: Widely thought
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: Sojourner on Mar 21, 2006 8:47 AM
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Our species has labored for centuries to be able to comprehend the big picture. Only to deny what what's there?
DaftIda ought to be DenyIda. Overpopulation and it's dire consequences ain't going away, folks. Wishing ain't enough.
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» RE: We are consuming the Earth's biology 20% faster than it can replace it.
Posted by: DaftAida
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Posted by: garyinthailand on Mar 21, 2006 9:25 AM
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Maybe bird flu will break out someday and become an actual human plague. But the signs are thin on the ground. So far, it's an avian epidemic that in rare cases infects humans.
I understand why neocons and pharmaceutical companies want to sell us a bill of goods, but I'm dismayed when the 'progressive' press chimes in on such a transparent piece of panic-mongering.
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» RE: not just bird flu
Posted by: ethanay
» That's what Reagan said about AIDS in the 1980s
Posted by: Sojourner
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Posted by: chasaturn on Mar 21, 2006 10:33 AM
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Posted by: AdamSelene40 on Mar 21, 2006 11:04 AM
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The DISNEY Version: the sky IS falling. Moral: "You just never KNOW -- be afraid."
Yet ... as we see in this thread ... any agenda that can't be advanced by an appeal to fear of TERRORISTS can be advanced by an appeal to fear of PLAGUE.
In this case Tamiflu sales increased by 1/3 this season, not counting various governments' stockpile purchases. More people got their influenza vaccines this year than ever before.
And, oh yes, a certain amount of resources were thown into 'pandemic' planning -- which can't be a BAD thing, after all.
Yet, the Avaian H5N1 Flu is an agricultural pest. There are very good reasons (if you believe the mechanics of evolution work the way the biologists say they do) why it will REMAIN a bird-killer and leave people alone.
Why I don't get is why 'our' Enviros and Foodies have to jump on the Frear Bandwagon along with Big Pharama.
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Posted by: drricklippin on Mar 21, 2006 1:51 PM
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» To keep from crying.
Posted by: Sojourner
» RE: To keep from crying.YUP SOJOURNER-THANKS!
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: To keep from crying.
Posted by: kelly.nickell
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Posted by: macdon1 on Mar 21, 2006 2:41 PM
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Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Mar 21, 2006 6:27 PM
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Sure, bad human policy leads to the spread of disease - as in the 1918 spanish swine flu, whose spread was greatly exacerbated by WWI hospitals and poor hygiene. Stopping a bioterror attack or an epidemic relies on having a trained and well-supported medical staff and a good public health system including lots of emergency rooms and contingency plans. There is plenty of historical precedent here to work off of (witness the campaign against polio). Given the abysmal government response to Katrina, I seriously doubt whether they are prepared for any epidemic.
It makes me wonder if someone is trying to justify yet another Bush-era corporate ripoff of the American public as a 'justified response to a modern human plague'. Keep in mind, this 'bird flu' could have 'jumped species' a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now - viruses can do that kind of thing, after all. As an 'imminent public threat' it is just another Bush cabal scare tactic, and a profitable one at that (Gilead jumped from $35 to $47 a share after all this).
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Posted by: Gregor on Mar 21, 2006 6:50 PM
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Posted by: wli on Mar 21, 2006 7:31 PM
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Various national security documents (NSSM 200, Global 2000) and right-wing officials have pushed the eugenical line. Witness Kissinger's "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." More directly eugenical, witness Roger Pearson's advocacy of eugenics and also acting as frontman for the far right-wing Heritage Foundation.
To understand why this is viewed as desirable by the right wing, one must recall the racist and eugenical heritage of the right wing in conjunction with the disparate impact of the right-wing economic policies. The disparate impact is quite intentional and furthermore a motivator for them. Nixon is even on record describing the War on Drugs as having an intentionally disparate impact on blacks and that effect as beneficial for his purposes. After all, what is the "Southern Strategy?"
As far as the First World and bird flu and other such shams go, it's a total fraud. Ordinary flu kills off tens of thousands annually with zero fanfare. Diabetes, heart problems, etc. likewise. Car crashes are even more fearful. First World standards of hygiene simply preclude most diseases and pandemics, and those that remain take a far higher toll than any about which pandemic scares have been fomented by the mainstream media. And the pattern remains constant despite such, as the toll from those diseases is primarily among the impoverished elderly, who are doubtless viewed by the right wing as parasites on the Social Security dole.
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» RE: EXCELLENT wli! -WE HAVE ALL BEEN DUPED BY BIO-MEDICINE
Posted by: drricklippin
» RE: right wing eugenicists, poverty, and squalor-WLI CONTACT ME!
Posted by: drricklippin
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Posted by: KatieOpinion on Mar 28, 2006 3:59 PM
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With love,
Katie
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» RE: Nothing new under the sun..
Posted by: arkface
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Posted by: Artemis3 on Apr 6, 2006 12:35 PM
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I decided a long time ago to not have children and add to the population. I live very simply and only use what I need. I look around at all the folks that are part of the cult of child worship, as if all that matters is bringing forth fruit from your loins, and nothing else.
I lament the loss of animal and plant species; the rain forests, the once-unlimited bounty of the oceans. We have ruined it all, and the earth will take her own back. It's happening now.
And as for being a Christian and liberal? That seems like an oxymoron to me, since Christians believe in the dominion of mankind over the earth; that the earth is there for our use. We will be learning a hard lesson, and soon!
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