Showing posts from category global health.
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Testosterone: The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction?
›March 1, 2009 // By Will Rogers
“The ultimate weapon of mass destruction—and perhaps of economic destruction—is the testosterone molecule,” quipped Malcolm Potts at the February 11, 2009, discussion of his new book, “Sex and War: How Biology Explains War and Offers a Path to Peace,” which explores the pivotal question, “Why do human beings systematically and deliberately kill our own species?” Potts, the Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, was joined Science magazine’s Ann Gibbons, a leading correspondent on human evolution, who examined whether aggressive human behaviors are evolving in response to changing social structures.
Testosterone: Risky Business
“In 1987, some anthropologists and sociologists made a statement at UNESCO that it is scientifically incorrect to say we’ve inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors,” said Potts. “I think that that is wrong.” Evolutionary psychology suggests that humans have inherited certain predispositions that “help us adapt to find food, select mates, avoid danger, and compete for resources in a hostile world,” said Potts. Men compete for women, so it is logical, from a reproductive standpoint, that men would take more risks than women, he argued.
In addition, “there’s strong evidence that there is a genetic tendency for men in the prime of life to attack and kill their neighbors,” Potts noted, while emphasizing that this does not mean that men are preordained to fight one another. “Such predispositions are extraordinarily flexible,” and respond well to peaceful cultural norms.
The Pill Is Mightier Than the Sword
“Once we recognize our violent origins, then we need to ask not ‘why do wars break out?’ but ‘why does peace break out?’” posed Potts. “Judged on the basis of same-species killing,” the violent 20th century may have been the most peaceful in human history, he claimed.
“In the whole of recorded history, I cannot find a single example of women banding together spontaneously and then going out to attack a neighboring group,” maintained Potts. He argued that increasing women’s individual freedom and collective power in civil society and government is the best way to achieve a more peaceful world. More specifically, slowing population growth and promoting more balanced age structures by giving women access to family planning will contribute not just to their own autonomy, but also to long-term peace, he argued.
Evolving To Become Less Aggressive?
“Humans are capable of incredible acts of kindness but also despicable acts of terror,” said Gibbons. “We murder, slaughter, barbeque, and even eat our own species, and we’ve been doing it for a long time.” But it is difficult to determine whether this propensity for aggression is an ancient trait or has more recently evolved. “There are no other human species alive to show us different models for male aggression…so we have look at fossils, DNA, and our closest relatives—the chimpanzees and gorillas,” Gibbons said.
Human aggression may be continuing to evolve. As Gibbons explained, “researchers, as they look at the human genome project—the HapMap Project—have discovered there are many, many genes that have come under natural selection that have evolved in the last 100,000 years, since modern humans spread out of Africa.” Therefore, as warfare becomes less necessary to our daily survival, our species might evolve to become less aggressive. “Are we seeing, in our sexual selection, mates being chosen that are a little less aggressive?” Gibbons asked. “We are still evolving,” she emphasized. “The story isn’t over yet.”Photos: From top to bottom, Malcolm Potts and Ann Gibbons. Courtesy of Dave Hawxhurst and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
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East Africa PHE Network: Translating Strong Results Into Informed Policies
›February 24, 2009 // By Rachel Weisshaar“The road to inaction is paved with research reports,” said Marya Khan, our Population Reference Bureau facilitator, opening today’s East Africa Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Network workshop on bridging the research-to-policy gap.
At the Environmental Change and Security Program, we know all too well that even the best program or most dramatic research findings don’t stand a chance of being implemented unless they are communicated to policymakers in succinct, persuasive formats. Yet researchers often neglect to convey their results to decision makers and donors, assuming they won’t be interested or won’t appreciate their methodologies, explained Khan. Furthermore, researchers are often hesitant to draw out the policy implications of their findings, believing this is policymakers’ responsibility, while policymakers tend to think this is researchers’ duty—so these critical implications are often never explored.
Today’s sessions aimed to empower the PHE working groups from Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya to develop their own strategies to bridge the research-to-policy gap. The groups brainstormed policy communications objectives they wished to achieve—such as officially launching their country PHE network—as well as concrete outcomes that would contribute to accomplishing those objectives—such as convincing representatives from various national government ministries to join their network.
Rachel Weisshaar is attending the meeting of the East Africa PHE Network in Kigali, Rwanda. She will be posting daily updates on the New Security Beat throughout the week (see yesterday’s post).
Photo: Members of the Kenya PHE Working Group discuss communications strategies. Courtesy of Rachel Weisshaar. -
New Director of National Intelligence Assesses Climate, Energy, Food, Water, Health
›February 18, 2009 // By Rachel WeisshaarIn the annual threat assessment he presented last week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, new Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair named the global economic crisis—not terrorism—the primary near-term threat to U.S. national security, prompting accusations of partisanship from the Washington Times. Yet as the U.S. Naval War College’s Derek Reveron notes, “the economic turmoil of the early 20th century fueled global instability and war,” and today’s economic collapse could strengthen extremists and deprive U.S. allies of the funds they need to deploy troops or increase foreign assistance to vulnerable regions.
Further down the list of potential catastrophes—after terrorism, cybersecurity, and the “arc of instability” that stretches from the Middle East to South Asia—the assessment tackles environmental security threats. The four-page section, which likely draws on sections of the recent National Intelligence Council report Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, summarizes the interrelated natural-resource and population challenges—including energy, food, water, demography, climate change, and global health—the U.S. intelligence community is tracking.
The world will face mounting resource scarcity, warns Blair. “Access to relatively secure and clean energy sources and management of chronic food and water shortages will assume increasing importance for a growing number of countries. Adding well over a billion people to the world’s population by 2025 will itself put pressure on these vital resources,” he writes.
Drawing on the conclusions of the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on the impacts of global climate change to 2030, Blair portrays climate change as a variable that could place additional strain on already-stressed agricultural, energy, and water systems: “We assess climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure in any state out to 2030, but the impacts will worsen existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions.” Direct impacts to the United States include “warming temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and possible increases in the severity of storms in the Gulf, increased demand for energy resources, disruptions in US and Arctic infrastructure, and increases in immigration from resource-scarce regions of the world,” writes Blair.
Africa, as usual, is the last of the world’s regions to be analyzed in the assessment. Blair notes that “a shortage of skilled medical personnel, deteriorating health systems, and inadequate budgets to deal with diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis” is threatening stability in sub-Saharan Africa, and explains that agriculture, which he rightly calls “the foundation of most African economies,” is not yet self-sufficient, although some countries have made significant improvements in infrastructure and technology. He highlights ongoing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, and Somalia as the most serious security challenges in Africa. He fails to note, however, that all four have environmental/natural resource dimensions (see above links for details). -
Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick Piques Interest With “Peak Water”
›February 12, 2009 // By Rachel Weisshaar
Bringing clean water and improved sanitation to the billions who lack them is “not a question of money, it’s not a question of technology, it’s a question of governance, of commitment, will—all of those things. And that, in many ways, is the worst part of the world’s water crisis,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, at the February 4, 2009, launch of The World’s Water 2008-2009: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. Gleick began by showing No Reason, a short video produced by the Pacific Institute and Circle of Blue for this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which examined water issues in several sessions.
What is the Water Crisis?
According to Gleick, the global water crisis comprises many problems, including:- The failure to meet basic human needs for water, which leads to diseases like cholera and typhoid;
- Local water scarcity and resource depletion;
- Contamination by industrial and human wastes;
- The effects of climate change and extreme events;
- Reduced production of food, goods, and services caused by water scarcity, poor water quality, or inequitable water allocation;
- Ecosystem degradation and destruction; and
- Threats to international, national, and subnational security posed by conflict over water.
Because water is a largely renewable resource, we will not completely run out of water. However, Gleick warned that non-renewable water sources such as fossil aquifers are limited. Thus, “peak non-renewable water” could occur if we use fossil groundwater faster than it is recharged; by some estimates, 30-40 percent of today’s global agricultural production comes from non-renewable water, which will become increasingly difficult to extract, said Gleick. “That’s a real challenge from a food point of view, especially in a world that is going from 6.5 billion to 7 billion to 9 billion people.”
Eventually, we will also run up against the ecological and economic flow limits of renewable water sources, which include streams and rivers, Gleick said. And before either non-renewable or renewable peak water, we could reach “peak ecological water,” which occurs when using additional water “causes more ecological damage than it provides human benefit, and the total value of using more water starts to decline,” he explained.
China: Water Challenges Writ Large
China’s stunning economic growth in recent years has come “at an enormous environmental cost…to their air quality, to human health, and especially to water resources,” said Gleick. China’s water is over-allocated, poorly managed, and severely polluted by industrial and human wastes. Desertification in northern China is increasing rapidly, due to deforestation and the excessive withdrawal of groundwater. According to Gleick, some companies have cancelled plans to build plants in China because they cannot obtain sufficient water of high enough quality.
Public protests over environmental degradation in China are becoming increasingly common. According to Gleick, there have been as many as 50,000 protests over environmental issues in a single year, with the majority of these relating to water quality or allocations.
Solutions to the Water Crisis
Gleick recommended a series of actions:- Develop more water sources, while ensuring that environmental and community concerns are addressed;
- Improve water infrastructure, including the installation of low-flow toilets and efficient drip-irrigation systems;
- Improve water-use efficiency;
- Update the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act to include new contaminants, and actively enforce the standards already in place;
- Price water more accurately, with the understanding that water is a human right and should be subsidized for basic human needs;
- Improve and expand public participation in environmental decision-making; and
- Strengthen water institutions and improve communication between them.
For more information, including a webcast of this event, visit ECSP’s website. To receive invitations to future events, e-mail ecsp@wilsoncenter.org. -
Global Public Health: An Agenda for the 111th Congress
›February 11, 2009 // By Gib Clarke
This is an exciting time to be working global public health, with more attention and money going to the field in the last decade than perhaps ever before. In the past, the struggle has been to direct more money and attention to these issues, but recent efforts have focused more on maximizing funds’ impact—by strengthening health systems, focusing on prevention, and finishing so-called “unfinished agendas” in maternal health, child mortality, and family planning. In my remarks at a recent panel on foreign policy challenges facing the 111th Congress, I focused on four issues: infectious diseases, neglected health issues, funding, and capacity building. -
In the Wake of Conflict, Gaza Faces Severe Public Health Challenges
›February 4, 2009 // By Lauren Herzer Risi
An 18-month blockade, three weeks of intense bombardment, and continuing sporadic violence are setting up the Gaza Strip for a “devastating humanitarian crisis,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. As of January 31, 1,380 Palestinians had been killed and 5,380 had been injured in the conflict, including many civilians. Additionally, the World Health Organization recently warned that…
Enduring [health] risks include complications and excess mortality in patients with chronic diseases as a result of the suspension of treatment and delayed access to health care during the conflict; diarrhea outbreaks from water-borne and food-borne diseases as a result of the lack of access to clean water and sanitation and the weak public health surveillance system; as well as long-term mental health problems as a result of the conflict.
Slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C., with a population of 1.5 million people, the Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated regions in the world. Gaza’s high population density has likely compounded residents’ vulnerability to white phosphorus, a highly flammable chemical that provides smoke screens for troop movements. The outrage provoked by its use by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stems from the intense, uncontrollable fires it causes. The IDF has admitted to using white phosphorus in Gaza against Hamas and is investigating whether it also used it against residents, which is prohibited by the 1980 Convention on Conventional Military Weapons.
In 2008, prior to the war, the UN Relief and Works Agency reported that despite the humanitarian assistance flowing to Gaza, 51.8 percent of households were below the poverty line, and unemployment was at an unprecedented high of 45.3 percent. Prior to the recent conflict, 80 percent of the population was dependent on aid from the United Nations.
Although the current ceasefire has allowed for a slight increase in access to Gaza, humanitarian agencies and aid workers still struggle to get supplies into the territory. Day after day, truckloads of supplies—everything from food, clothing, and baby formula to blankets, plastic tarps, and technical equipment to draw water from the ground—sit at border crossings in Egypt, waiting for permission to enter Gaza. While Egyptians blame the Israelis for limiting access, Israeli officials claim that the Egyptians have not done enough to coordinate the flood of aid. Regardless of who is to blame, it is clear that limiting the access of humanitarian workers and supplies is having dire consequences for the residents of Gaza.
Photo: Humanitarian cargo waits at the Rafah border crossing on the Gaza-Egyptian border on January 9, 2009. Photo courtesy of Ekram Elhuni (World Food Programme) and Flickr user Peter Casier. -
Weekly Reading
›The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century, a report from Chatham House, puts forth 10 proposals designed to make the global food system more resilient, sustainable, and equitable.
Strategic Implications of Global Health, a recent report from the National Intelligence Council, builds on a 2000 National Intelligence Estimate analyzing the links between global health and U.S. national security, but places more emphasis on non-infectious issues like maternal mortality, malnutrition, and chronic diseases.
Bill Gates’ first annual letter about his work at the Gates Foundation includes a chart showing that better overall health is linked to smaller families.
“How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet? The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change,” a discussion paper from Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, examines coverage of the economic debate over the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008.
Population Connection’s February 2009 Reporter features stories on Ghana’s slow progress on reproductive health and Thomas Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, among others.
The Economist examines the connections between failed states and conflict, terrorism, poverty, and disease. Failed states were a major concern of the recent U.S. National Defense Strategy. -
Human Health Dependent on Biodiversity, Argue Scientists
›January 29, 2009 // By Rachel Weisshaar
“There’s such a fundamental misunderstanding that most people have about the environment—that it exists outside of us,” said Harvard Medical School’s Eric Chivian at the January 14, 2009, launch of Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, which he co-edited. This disconnect “is really at the heart of the global environmental crisis, and it’s the reason we wrote this book.” Chivian was joined by the Natural Capital Project’s Michael Wright and the Heinz Center’s Thomas Lovejoy, who called Sustaining Life “a remarkable achievement,” for a discussion of the myriad ways in which biodiversity benefits human health—and how its loss endangers us.
Proof Positive: Biodiversity Supports Health
The most exotic—and unlikely—species can yield valuable discoveries, Lovejoy explained. For example, slime molds on the banks of the Zambezi River repel their enemies with chemicals that can treat cancers resistant to Taxol, one of the main chemotherapy drugs—which is itself derived from the needles and bark of the Pacific yew tree. Chivian offered another remarkable example: The best new pain medication, which is 1,000 times more powerful than morphine, is derived from the toxins of marine cone snails.
Of Polar Bears and Parasites
Polar bears—which new research suggests are likely to be extinct in the wild by 2100 due to the melting of the Arctic ice sheet—may help cure several devastating diseases. Polar bears “den,” or near-hibernate, for five to nine months of each year, yet substances in their blood prevent them from losing bone mass during that time. “Osteoporosis is an enormous public health problem; it kills some 70,000 people in the United States every year, costs the U.S. economy $18 billion dollars a year,” explained Chivian.
When they den, polar bears go for months without eating, drinking, defecating, or urinating. Studying this phenomenon may provide humans with alternatives to dialysis or kidney transplants. Finally, while polar bears are extremely obese, they do not develop Type II diabetes. In contrast, 16 million Americans—6 percent of the population—have obesity-related Type II diabetes, costing the United States $91 billion a year. “Again, polar bears may hold the secret for treating this very difficult and lethal disease,” said Chivian.
Not only can certain species help us treat human diseases, but the loss of biodiversity can increase the prevalence of others. For instance, Lyme disease is more common in degraded environments with low vertebrate diversity. In these environments, the disease spreads more quickly because the white-footed mouse—the best vector for Lyme disease—has fewer predators and competitors for food.
Better Safe Than Sorry
By providing dozens of concrete examples of how we depend on and benefit from the environment, Sustaining Life is “a wonderful rebuttal to people who call conservationists treehuggers,” said Wright. Yet he reminded the audience that the path from species to valuable product is serendipitous and unpredictable. Therefore, he argued, we should endeavor to protect all species in order to save those that may most benefit human health.
Chivian, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the medical dimensions of nuclear war, argued that it is difficult for the public to grasp the threats posed by climate change: “The level of complexity and abstraction is really an order of magnitude—or many times more than that—greater than it is about nuclear weapons…and therefore, it’s even more essential for physicians and public health professionals to describe and discuss these global environmental changes in human-health terms.”
Photo: Eric Chivian of Harvard Medical School. Courtesy of the Wilson Center and Dave Hawxhurst.
