World Food Crisis

[sp1214]

Where should Gordon Brown put his priorities? He was campaigning on US television for funds to save people in Africa from disease. Many are dying through lack of food or water. Some people say many could be saved if GM crops were planted in Africa but are unable to afford the seeds from firms like Monsanto of the USA. Should they be given free? Others say the problem is made worse by the lack of birth control. Should they be provided with condoms? Or what is the answer?

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?fo rumID=4606&edition=1&ttl=20080414160052

[anotheoldgit]

brachiopod

that there will be no pension or state assistance, and that your only means of support will be your children - how many would you have?

Oh, whilst you decide, do bear in mind that there's a 1-in-5 chance that your child won't make it out of infancy.*

(That's a 20% chance of dying before your fifth birthday, compared with a rate of about 0.6% here in the UK.)

So do you really wonder why they "just don't want to know" about birth control?

Are you really so naive in your thinking that these people are educated enough to consider these matters when they decide to produce multi numbers of off-springs.

Oh dear I have only six, seven or eight children, I better get on producing some more, who is going to look after me in my old age?

And would it be at all feasible to produce multi off-springs to support you in your old age, when it is a present major problem supporting them until this time?

Get real, their sex urges are much different from peoples who are of a certain intelligence. Take some prime examples in this country. No just as in the animal kindom, when they feel like sex then they just go along and have it, regardless of the outcome.

[Kromovaracun]

Get real, their sex urges are much different from peoples who are of a certain intelligence. Take some prime examples in this country

Woah. Woah. I wholeheartedly distance myself as far as possible from the above statement.

The thing about having kids in Africa is that child mortality (and mortality generally) is so high that unless you have plenty of kids you're actually kind of likely to lose a good deal of them. Plus the agricultural stuff they need to do has a need for plentiful labour and, with poverty as it is, the children can get the family some extra income. That's the idea anyway.

And of course they 'consider such things'. They don't sit down and work it out in a notebook, but they've grown up with it - they see it every day. Sorry if that encoraches on your race-based theories of intelligence.

I have to say humanitarian instinct does kind of dictate we should give, as does international relations. But on the other hand I really can see the logic behind opposing the idea of making everyone give their money to Africa. Ideally there'd be a kind of state-run charity functioning on donations. That way everyone who wanted to could give. But that's obviously problematic