Nostalgia for Y2K

 Was it only a quarter of a century ago? Almost. Remember the preparation for the big 2000 celebration and how Y2K bonded us? Communism was defeated and Naziism gone, but we had wised up about pie in the sky humanism. Both U.S. parties believed in and advocated for "western style democracy" as the best method to raise 3rd world people out of poverty and to defeat totalitarianism.

GW Bush was naive and thought we could impose western values on tribal cultures, allowing people to vote, liberating women and supporting an endless war. At home BH Obama wanted to reduce our next generation and poverty through abortion, take over the largest sector of the economy with socialist medicine, and pay back the sins of the past with old family feuds by imposing on 21st century white Americans, the discrimination and laws of the 19th century that hurt black Americans.

With Biden and his blue state cronies we have the worst of the first 2 administrations of the 21 century. Wars, death, destruction but with inflation, gnosticism, higher taxes, millions invading at our borders, and more tribalism at home.

Biden's cronies as Obama 2.0 have brought back the totalitarianism, slavery (both labor and sex), discrimination, endless wars, and tribal battles that we had hoped had been eliminated by "western democracy."

The algorithm game in the search engines

It's no secret. I'm a one issue voter. After I check off the pro-life issues, I can go from there--conservative candidates, environment, education, local issues, etc. But I also use the internet to research these issues because there aren't just 2 sides--there may be 10, and I also use the ballot funding record as a guide. Deep pockets, dark money, bad dudes like Soros and Son. You've heard that Google, Bing, Duck duck go, and Brave have algorithms which push the Democrat/Progressive/Socialist media and organizations to the top, and most people will only look at the top 3 or 4 (which will all agree).

So here's my last search. I was looking through the articles written by Suzanne Bell, quoted in JAMA, about the nearly 9,800 lives saved with the TX heartbeat bill. (She was against it and has done a lot of research in developing countries.) Since it's almost impossible to do any political issue without Trump's name popping up, I started following the term, Global Gag Rule. This refers to a 1984 bill preventing U.S. tax dollars from going to foreign NGOs if they offer abortion services used in foreign countries. It's the "Mexico City" rule, and it was used under Reagan, GHW Bush, GWBush and Trump; it was rescinded for Clinton, part of Obama terms, and Joe Biden. Of course, it was referred to as Trump's Gag Rule by angry pro-aborts. Anyway. That's not the point.

 
I went through perhaps 15 pages with 10-15 articles on each page, and found the same articles all the way through: The Guardian; Guttmacher; NPR; Reproductive rights; NCAC; Center for American Progress; Planned Parenthood; KFF; ACLU; Salon.com; Democracy now; Huffington Post; Open Society; Vogue; and so forth. In other words, it's not just a few swings to the left, it was ALL pro-abort arguments, with inflammatory words, data, medical articles, NGOs, politicians, sad stories, opinions, etc.

 
Not a single word defending a policy that keeps American colonial invasion dollars out of the wombs and families of third world women.

 
There are lots of issues here if you look closer. Why can't foreign NGOs survive without that small piece of American aid? What else is U.S. dollars controlling in their "aid." Is this tied to military bases in that country? Are there any journalists coming out of U.S. colleges and universities, or grad schools that are conservative, or are they eliminated before they ever get into the job market? If one or two slip through are there any corporations or businesses that would hire them if their ESG score isn't desirable. There is no diversity of thought or values now in the education system or job market. DEI is DIE.

So you see, an algorithm isn't just an algorithm. It's life from the beginning to end affecting thousands.

Reflections on health and the economy

This winter/spring in treatment for shingles (face and eye) I've had a lot of medical appointments. Some days it was my only time out of the house. Today I sat in the parking lot to read because I was a little early, and I counted the health related buildings around my ophthalmologist's location. Ten. I'm not sure I'd ever been in that area of our suburb before 2 months ago, and we've lived here 50 years.  The buildings all appeared to be 10-20 years old--health is a booming business.  I was reading Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal." Buy it for your children.  You need to know about illness, hospitals, hospice and death, and how much it costs.

The evening before surgery the father and daughter talked. She was a palliative care specialist, but it's hard to talk to your own parent and she realized they'd never had that "what if" conversation. It's like the "where babies come from" talk with your kids, only more complicated.  His neurosurgeon told him if they didn't remove the mass he had a 100% chance of being a quadriplegic; if they did remove it, a 20% chance. What makes being alive tolerable, the daughter asked. "If I'm able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV then I'm willing to stay alive," was the shocking answer of this professor emeritus. She had no idea he even watched football. For the rest of the story, p. 184-185.

Dr. Gawande's book was published in 2014. He reported changes in health care and said 1/2 to 2/3 of the global population would be middle class by 2030 and they would be facing (or already are) many of the same problems as the West. So I checked that (he gave no citation). I was surprised to see in a Brookings Report that figure had already been surpassed by 2016. Max Roser reports in 1820 the share of the global population living in poverty was 94 percent while 84 percent lived in "extreme" poverty. By 1992, the poverty rate had dropped to 51 percent, while the "extreme" poverty rate had dropped to 24 percent. Using a different measure of international poverty, the rate has dropped from 53 percent in 1981 to 17 percent in 2011 – representing the most rapid reduction in poverty in world history. 

Why? Capitalism. And that's why the black clad antifa and anti-American rioters who are burning buildings and harassing police are so scared. Without poverty or the threat of it for leverage they have no power. If children are educated and learn the truth about socialist economies, the anarchists lose their hold on them. They must destroy and lie.

 https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf

 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/amazing-chart-shows-thanks-to-capitalism-global-poverty-is-at-its-lowest-rate-in-history/article/2562224

Vitamin A supplements for preventing mortality, illness, and blindness in children aged under 5

According to the World Health Organization, more than 10 million children die each year, almost all in low-income countries or poor areas of middle-income countries, most from one of a short list of causes: diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and the underlying cause of undernutrition for deaths among children younger than 5 years. Poverty is always given as the culprit, but I say it's the dysfunctional governments in those countries, many with leaders who have great wealth contributed by gullible western governments who've accepted promises the millions in aid payments will be used for roads, schools or clean water. Clean water and nutritional supplementation could solve a lot on this list. DDT could take care of malaria until a vaccine is found. A stable government could also help with the HIV/AIDS problem if millions of men stayed home rather than travel for work.

WHO estimates, for example, among children living in the 42 countries with 90% of child deaths, a group of effective nutrition interventions including breastfeeding, complementary feeding, vitamin A, and zinc supplementation could save about 2·4 million children each year (25% of total deaths). Effective and integrated case management of childhood infections (diarrhea and dysentery, pneumonia, malaria, and neonatal sepsis) could save 3·2 million children each year (33% of total deaths). Breastfeeding is on the list, I assume, because it's dangerous to use formula when you don't have safe water.

I wish I could say I don't understand why black and brown children in developing countries are still being used like lab rats for vitamin studies by westerners when we've known for nearly 100 years the importance of Vitamin A, and how to supplement food with it since the 1930s. This particular data report published in the British Medical Journal which looked at 43 studies says using placebo trials is unethical because of the high mortality rate for the children who didn't get the supplements.

But the mortality figures don't even begin to factor the blindness and other illnesses. American children have been eating vitamin fortified foods since the 30s and 40s, plus mothers have been getting prenatal vitamins at least since I was pregnant 50 years ago, and maybe longer, and children have been receiving vitamin tablets for over 50 years, so why not just give the African or Asian children a multivitamin tablet high in vitamin A and save the cost of the study? Well, there it is. People make a living doing these studies. Research centers publish results in journals which need advertising revenue. Pharmaceutical companies need reasons to provide the testing material. Meanwhile, a lot of children die or are damaged the rest of their lives for want of a tablet that costs pennies a day.

Vitamin A supplements for preventing mortality, illness, and blindness in children aged under 5: systematic review and meta-analysis -- Mayo-Wilson et al. 343 -- bmj.com

How many child deaths can we prevent this year?

Third world children are America's lab rats

Parul Christian, DrPH
Center for Human Nutrition
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
615 N. Wolfe St
Room W2041
Baltimore, MD 21205

Dear Dr. Christian,

Today I read the account of your research done on Nepalese children in the Dec 22/29, 2010 issue of JAMA.

My first pregnancy was in 1961 and I received prenatal vitamins containing iron, and I believe the need for folic acid has been known and added to prenatal vitamins since before 1990. For some years it has been known that the relationship between zinc and iron is iffy, with the benefits of each perhaps cancelling the other.

Why is it ethical to experiment on third world children when we already know the benefits of prenatal supplements, and have known for 50 years or more? The control group will remain behind the supplement group for the rest of their lives. Just looking through other studies on the interaction of zinc and iron, I see Bloomberg is supporting research on poor children in other countries. So was that the real point of this research, to show that zinc is not useful as a supplement?

Norma Bruce
Faculty Emeritus
The Ohio State University

Parul Christian, Dr. P.H., of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues conducted a study to assess intellectual and motor functioning in a group of 676 children, aged 7 to 9 years in June 2007-April 2009, who had been born to women in 4 of 5 groups of a community-based, randomized controlled trial of prenatal micronutrient supplementation conducted between 1999 and 2001 in rural Nepal. Study children were also in the placebo group of a subsequent preschool iron and zinc supplementation trial. Women whose children were followed up had been randomly assigned to receive daily iron/folic acid, iron/folic acid/zinc, or multiple micronutrients containing these plus 11 other micronutrients, all with vitamin A, vs. a control group of vitamin A alone from early pregnancy through 3 months postpartum. These children did not receive additional micronutrient supplementation other than biannual vitamin A supplementation. Through various tests, intellectual (including memory and reasoning), executive (such as processing speed) and motor function (such as manual dexterity and balance) were assessed.

The researchers found that maternal prenatal supplementation with iron and folic acid was positively associated with general intellectual ability, some aspects of executive function, and motor function, including fine motor control, in offspring in a rural area where iron deficiency is prevalent. In general, the differences in test scores between the other intervention groups and controls were not statistically significant.
http://pubs.ama-assn.org/media/2010j/1221.dtl#3

Where are your "green" priorities?

Certainly not with saving lives. We're about to repeat the slaughter of the disastrous malaria resurgence where our western environmentalists killed millions and millions of Africans every year for the last 30 by prematurely withdrawing DDT from the market because a bird egg might die (none have). On the advice of a non-scientist, Rachel Carson.

So now we're going to launch, with the blessings of our global power hungry president and congress, a war against all poor and undeveloped nations. From yesterday's WSJ

"Getting basic sanitation and safe water to the 3 billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion.

By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 TRILLION a year by 2100. These cuts do nothing to reduce the number of people without access to clean drinking water and sanitation." Bjorn Lomberg, WSJ, November 9.