From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Mon Jan 27 2003 - 18:43:57 MST
Starving people are sad but apparently an equal problem is malnutrition which often also kills through secondary problems. Also diseases such as AIDS, TB, malaria, cholera etc..
Malnutrition is allegedly now 750 million and has been declining by 100 million a decade.
The immanence of initial longevity/appearance therapies means that we should now logically switch priorities to the prevention of immediate death and cancer, heart disease, respiratory ailments, neurological ailments. I have noticed that this order of priority has begun to be articulated by non-extropians/transhumanists who have heard of generic developments. It is entirely logical as outside of deliberate killing, starvation and diseases such as malaria or TB, these (cancer, heart, lung, brain-nerves) are the major causes of actual death. By the time that telomere degradation etc. becomes a problem for most people more advanced techniques will be available.
Towards Ascension
Avatar Polymorph
34 After Armstrong
In Celebration of the Techno-Rapture
www.paradigm4.com.au/way
Maximum choice and minimum non-consensual force
Avatar Polymorph
Star A Star
Alpha Null
Radiant Era
Neon Orthogenesis
Axiom Flux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
To: "Extropy List" <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 3:58 PM
Subject: More on Doing vs. talking.
>
> I'm going to try and put my words into extropic "action".
>
> The GM cows article from New Scientist contained a quote
> from "Vanessa Atkinson" of "Greenpeace Australia", to the
> effect of:
>
> "The rejection of genetically engineered food is very strong, in countries
> like China as well as the West. And if people don't want to eat it, no
> one will produce it - we've seen that clearly in Europe," says Vanessa
> Atkinson of Greenpeace Australia. It would be important to ensure that
> any GM animal ingredient would be labelled, she says."
>
> Now, I would tend to disagree with the assertion that there is strong
> resistance to GM foods in China (we are talking about the place where
> there is extensive government and VC funding of stem cell research
> as documented in my previous comments abstracted from publications
> in Nature). Bottom line -- people who are poor or starving will be
> happy to consume whatever satisfies their hunger pangs and keeps them
> alive. If GM foods contain more protein, are less expensive, etc.
> then can anyone *really* believe that people (other than those who
> have been "brainwashed" in a religious cult perspective) would reject
> consuming them? The assertion is "irrational".
>
> [The suggestions by Vanessa do raise the question of whether much
> of Europe has indeed been "brainwashsed".]
>
> *So*, in the vein of "talk less" -- "do more" (and I'm well aware
> that "doing" may involve "talking" -- I offer up this URL:
>
> http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/truefood/newsdetail.asp?PRID=345
>
> Which seems to contain some telephone numbers for Vanessa and
> her associates.
>
> Some interesting questions that pop into my mind....
>
> - "Are you aware of how many people die from starvation each year?"
>
> The figure is staggering -- 13-18 million people each year [1]
>
> - "Have you done an analysis of how many people will starve to
> death due to more expensive food costs as a result of the
> policies Greenpeace is promoting?"
>
> - "Do you have any problems going to sleep at night knowing that
> your activities may result in the deaths of millions of human lives?"
>
> (The last one is a bit of a stretch since it assumes the "green"
> perspective will prevail.)
>
> But I'm sure you get the basic idea. Invent your own questions.
> Get creative. Then call Vanessa's office or Vanessa herself.
>
> Be polite. Be "reasonable". But do not be reluctant to
> "raise the issues". After all people will live or die based
> on how *really* extropic we are willing to be.
>
> Robert
>
> Refs:
> 1. "Ending Hunger: An idea whose time has come", Praeger, (1985).
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 02 2003 - 21:26:03 MST