Day: September 4, 2003

Tolerance Idiocy

The local paper has an article today about public schools teaching and emphasizing “tolerance.” The problem is that the article, like the “tolerance” efforts by the schools, are so intellectually flabby and in some cases downright absurd that I doubt they really have any long-term effect.

A good example is the first on a long list of truisms that the paper presents in a sidebar as the sort of things I should be teaching my child in order to cultivate tolerance in her,

Make a conscious strategy for teaching kids not to judge others — don’t assume it will happen on its own

Are they insane? Of course I want my child to regularly judge others on a regular basis. She should also regularly be judging herself as well.

The bizarre thing is the folks advocating this nonsense don’t even see the obvious problems. For example, here are two separate quotes from the same expert on diversity, Herbert Smith, cited by the newspaper,

We need to be taught who we are. A human being without values is a very frightening object, and we are the only species without a sense of innate behavioral direction.

. . .

Teach them [children] to look at the person [who may be behaving in a way parents disagree with] for who they are — and not what they’re doing. Say that they’re choosing a different lifestyle . . . without necessarily judging. There’s so much pluralism in society that it’s difficult to come up with a consensus of what’s appropriate.

So my child’s going to be frightening if she grows up without values, but on the other hand I can’t tell her that some behaviors are wrong because, well, those are just different lifestyle choices.

One of the major problems the article reveals is that this view of tolerance blurs civility and acceptance. So it is not enough that people simply learn to be civil to people they may not like or may fundamentally disagree with, but rather they are told they must have an open mind and accept any “lifestyle choice” as valid.

Of course, this means that this is just another lifestyle choice, no better or worse than this.

I just can’t imagine seriously teaching my daughter something that stupid.

Source:

Teaching tolerance. Michelle Miron, Kalamazoo Gazette, September 4, 2003.

Revisiting the Space Shuttle Tragedy

After I made this post about the change in formulation of the foam that caused the Space Shuttle disaster, some people thought I was being paranoid by implying that NASA might remove potentially embarassing documents from its web site (“A 1999 NASA press release on the matter has been yanked off the web . . .”) It turned out that the press release in question had just been moved, but it also turns out that at least one NASA employee had the same thought I had.

According to the Associated Press,

NASA braced quickly for the intense investigation into the Columbia disaster, according to newly disclosed e-mails that include one proposal by a midlevel employee at headquarters for a “complete scrub” of the agency’s safety office Web site to remove outdated or wrong information.

. . .

“Has none done a complete scrub of the Code Q (safety division) Web pages to make sure they are current?” [NASA employee Wilson] Harkins wrote in a Feb. 6 e-mail. “Out-of-date or erroneous information is like chum in the water to reporters and congressmen. . . We wouldn’t want to be sucker punched by someone based on something we have posted.”

To its credit, NASA rejected such an obviously stupid suggestion.

As for whether or not the reformulation of the foam — done to comply with an EPA mandate for a foam that had fewer ozone-depleting chemicals — had anything to do with the accident, that remains an open question. As far as I can tell, the recently released report on the shuttle tragedy doesn’t address that matter at all, preferring a misguided focus on NASA’s internal culture (which is merely a symptom of the much larger problem of the way space exploration is mismanaged).

Source:

NASA worker proposed ‘scrub’ of web site. Ted Bridis, Associated Press, August 29, 2003.

South Africa Reverses Course — Will Distributed Anti-HIV Drugs

South Africa’s cabinet met in a special session in August and decided to finally distributed anti-HIV drugs . . . after it finishes a “detailed operational plan” to handle the distribution of such drugs. The decision was announced to coincide with the conclusion of an AIDS conference in South Africa.

Currently less than 30,000 South Africans take anti-retroviral drugs, though the government’s own report suggested that close to 500,000 could benefit from the availability of the drugs.

South African AIDS activist Zakie Achmat preferred to take a cautious approach to the announcement, telling the BBC,

We will wait to see the actual operational plan before celebration. But for all of us living with HIV in South Africa, and our families, this is the first sign of hope.

This is quite a turnaround from the same government whose Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has recently taken to suggesting that rather than anti-retrovirals, what AIDS patients in South Africa need to do to boost their immune systems is consume large quantities the African sweet potato, hypoxis. The few studies of large scale consumption of hypoxis, however, suggest that if it had any effect at all it would likely be a deleterious one for people suffering from HIV.

Sources:

SA activists hail AIDS drug U-turn. The BBC, August 9, 2003.

S. Africa to distribute AIDS drugs. CNN, August 8, 2003.

New WHO Chief Pledges to Make Polio Eradication a Priority

Newly installed World Health Organization director-general Jong-wook Lee pledged to step up efforts to eradicate polio by 2005, but the WHO might not have the funds to follow up on Lee’s pledge.

In a July press release, Lee said,

Polio eradication is a top priority. I want to see this disease gone once and for all. We have eliminated it from almost every country in the world. Now is the time to boost our action and resolve, and wipe it out everywhere. I am immediately upgrading WHOÂ’s capacity to support India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt in their efforts to immunize every child against polio.”

Lee appointed SARS expert David Heymann to head up WHO’s polio eradication efforts who noted the dangers of not eradicating polio as soon as possible,

Just as with SARS, polio knows no boundaries. In January, a child was paralyzed by polio in Lebanon for the first time in ten years. That virus travelled from India. Unless we stop transmission in the remaining polio-endemic countries, polio will spread to other countries and paralyze children, potentially reversing the gains already made.

But the WHO is also begging for money, claiming that it needs an additional $210 million for polio eradication efforts or it might have to scale back its efforts to fight the disease.

In 2002, there were less than 2,000 reported cases of polio worldwide and the disease is only present in seven countries. Lee argues it would be well worth the money to eradicate the disease worldwide once and for all.

Source:

WHO faces $210M shortfall in polio fight. Jonathan Fowler, Associated Press, July 29, 2003.

WHO steps up polio fight. The BBC, July 29, 2003.

New WHO Director-General steps up global polio eradication effort, as polio threatens other countries. Press Release, World Health Organization, July 29, 2003.

World Health Organization seeks eradication of polio by 2005. Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, July 29, 2003.

Largest Childhood Malaria Vaccine Trial Ever Underway

In July, the Malaria Vaccine Initiative announced that it would begin the largest malaria vaccine trial ever conducted in children. The vaccine trial was to take place in Mozambique.

The vaccine in question — RTS,S — has already gone through initial safety testing with human volunteers and appears safe enough. In addition, testing in adults found that the vaccine was effective in preventing malaria in about 71 percent of adults who received it.

An open question, however, is just how good it is at preventing malaria in young children. To that end, the vaccine will be administered to 2,500 children in Mozambique. Final results for the vaccine will be available in about 18 to 24 months.

If the vaccine proves effective there, research will then move on to see if it could be safely and effectively administered to infants, who face the highest death rate from malaria.

Sources:

Clinical Trial of Advanced Malaria Vaccine Candidate to Begin in Mozambique. Press Release, Malaria Vaccine Initiative, July 8, 2003.

Two thousand kids to get experimental malaria jab. Tom Clark, Nature, July 9, 2003.

Malaria Vaccine Trial To Start In Mozambique. United Nations Wire, July 8, 2003.

Malaria vaccine trial begins. The BBC, July 8, 2003.

South Africa’s Population Continues to Grow Despite the AIDS Crisis

South Africa released its official census in July which found the population of the country managed to increase by a meager 10 percent from 1996-2001 despite the ever increasing toll that the AIDS epidemic is taking on that country. South Africa’s population rose from 40.5 million in 1996 to 44.8 million in 2001.

The census report painted a very odd economic picture for South Africa. On the one hand, the report claimed that many key measures of economic progress had improved dramatically since 1996. For example, the census claimed that 70 percent of South African homes had electricity in 2001 compared to only 58 percent in 1996. Similarly, South Africans had better access to education, clean water and other goods.

On the other hand, the census reported that South Africa’s employment rate sits at a whopping 42 percent. The government tried to explain part of that away by explaining that people in agriculture and those working outside the formal economy might have marked themselves as unemployed. Of course if South Africa’s informal economy is that big that’s a major problem in and of itself.

Source:

S. Africa grows despite AIDS. The BBC, July 9, 2003.