Friday, November 04, 2005
pbs is bling bling rupees and shillings
PBS recently aired a 3-part, 6-hour series called "Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge", and I cannot praise it enough. It is not an exhaustive probe into the history of disease epidemics but rather a concise summary of the diseases that have plagued mankind—cholera, smallpox, the 1918 flu virus, and polio—how they work, and how they were eradicated. I had no idea that there were a group of smallpox eradication volunteers, many of them shaggy, long-haired 70s Americans, who traversed India and Africa delivering the vaccine to smallpox victims. I had no idea that the primary reason polio has not been completely eradicated is because in countries like India and Nigeria doctors are facing resistance from conservative Muslims who refuse to take the vaccination for religious reasons. Nigeria is home to 80% of the polio cases that exist in the world today. The program also comments on current epidemics that scientists have not been able to thwart, such as those due to AIDS, ebola, and, though not yet an epidemic, avian bird flu. This mini-series was heavily funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They fund scores of programs like these, not to mention the money they donate to the organizations whose mission it is to reduce or eliminate the prevalence of killer diseases in third-world countries. I'm not sure the argument that Microsoft is the devil incarnate really matters to me anymore.
