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In its November 1997 issue, Scientific American reports the US Department of Agriculture is preparing a $200 million proposal to study the DNA of plants, animals and microbes in an effort to better understand and perhaps improve the species human beings rely on for food.

Kelley A. Eversole, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association which is pushing the proposal, claims funding the program could increase agricultural production by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

Some critics, however, are concerned by the NCGA’s involvement and worry that the effort would be excessively focused on corn rather than other crops. Mark E. Sorrells of Cornell University is among those who fear that because of genetic peculiarities of corn, any findings about its genome will have only limited applicability to other crops.

The Population Reference Bureau notes that in 1996 three countries were added to the list of those where total fertility rates were at or below the 1.2 level, bringing to five the number of nations far below their replacement level. The nations and their TFRs are:

Nation	TFR
Spain	1.15
Latvia	1.16
Czech Republic	1.18
Bulgaria	1.24
Italy	1.24

(Total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have in her lifetime if the birth rate of a particular year remained constant).

Not content with donating a billion dollars to the United Nations, the Federalist reports Ted Turner recently proposed convening a global conference to consider adopting China’s one-child policy worldwide to slow population growth. For those unaware, in the late 1970s China adopted a policy of limiting families to one child and requiring prospective parents to obtain birth permits to have children.

Largely ignored in rural China, the main effect of the policy has been to encourage the abandonment of large numbers of children, mainly female. In some urban areas where the Chinese government had more control over women, it does seem to have led to forced abortions. Turner, however, insists any one-child policy must be “voluntary.”

Maybe he’s using the Chinese Communist Party’s dictionary!
Ironically while Turner was proposing that the world adopt China’s hideous policy, his wife, Jane Fonda, was speaking out against efforts by the U.S. government to reduce the level of illegitimate births in the United States. Fonda, who is a spokeswoman for “Truth for Youth” which promotes condom use on behalf of condom distributor Durex Consumer Products, was angry that the US government is planning to spend $50 million to promote abstinence prior to marriage.

As Fonda put it, “Most Americans don’t want it. Abstinence until marriage is based on an unreal world that isn’t out there.” Maybe she could get that message across to her husband while she’s at it.

A recent Scientific American article, “Access to Safe Drinking Water,” reveals just how complicated the answer to that question is. In historical terms, water supplies today are extraordinarily safe in much of the developed world. As the opening paragraphs put it,

In 1848 and 1849 up to a million people in Russia and 150,000 in France died of cholera, the classic disease of contaminated water. Typhoid fever, another disease transmitted through water, was most likely responsible for the deaths of 6,500 out of 7,500 colonists in Jamestown, Va., early in the 17th century; during the Spanish-American War, it disabled one fifth of the American army.

Today waterborne disease is no longer a major problem in developed countries, thanks to water-purification methods such as filtration and chlorination and to the widespread availability of sanitary facilities. But in developing countries, waterborne and sanitation-related diseases kill well over three million annually and disable hundreds of millions more, most of them younger than five years of age.

It is ironic that while environmentalists in the West obsess over the effects of trace elements of chemicals in the water supply that hundreds of millions of people face conventional risks which have been wiped out in the West.

Five months after a military coup and subsequent looting of food reserves, up to 200,000 people face starvation in the African nation of Sierra Leone according to the United Nations World Food Program.

In a November 7 report by Agence France-Presse, Paul Ares, West Africa director for the program, said, “The situation gets worse each month. Our stocks are diminishing, and we have to decide who eats this month and who will go hungry.”

The report noted that security concerns have prevented distribution of food since the coup, as a raging civil war and regional economic embargoes have taken their toll.

When technology finally makes it cheap enough to do so, methane present under sediment in the Western Atlantic will provide an enormous source of energy. A new estimate of methane under the Blake Ridge shows just how much.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and other institutions published the most accurate estimates to date in the January 30, 1997 issue of Nature. Using new pressure core sampler technology the researchers estimated 35 billion tons of carbon lies under the ridge, with 15 billion tons inside solid hydrates and 20 billion tons in gaseous form just under the solid hydrate layer.

The confirmation of such large deposits will likely spur additional research into solving the various technical problems associated with extracting and transporting methane from underneath the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.