Marching To the Beat of a Very Different Drummer

The  Christian's Response To Wuhan Coronavirus

Leaving the medical advice to the professionals, I can still offer one piece of guidance for Christians: Rest in the care of your Creator.

Daniel Torkelson
The Federalist

Watching the nation as it struggles to understand any pandemic has always given me pause to consider whether Christians really know how to think like Christians in a matter such as this. We, as God’s people, seem all too easily carried up in the same speculative panic that rules the minds of many when a crisis such as the Wuhan coronavirus manifests itself.

In the Bible’s book of Matthew chapter 6, Jesus says, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

This seems to indicate Christ does not want us to panic. We have opportunities during this time to model the Christian difference and to demonstrate how this gospel of ours is a better message than any other.

Letter From the UK (About Africa)

Capitalism is Eradicating Disease and Poverty

As the remarkable retreat of malaria across Africa shows, free trade is a very efficient way of spreading medicine and wealth

Daily Telegraph
Fraser Nelson


A Maasai warrior talks on a mobile phone in Kajiado, Kenya Photo: Joseph Van Os / Getty

Did you know that someone dies of malaria every 60 seconds? You may do, if you’ve seen one of the latest Christian Aid posters picturing an African girl staring fearfully at the camera, or a young boy lying on what seems to be his deathbed. They send a powerful Christmas message: while we celebrate in comfort, children are dying for want of a £3 mosquito net. And we could change this, if only we chose to help.

What these adverts don’t tell you, though, is the remarkable extent to which we are helping – and, more importantly, the way in which Africans are helping themselves. Malaria, mankind’s biggest killer, is now retreating faster than at any time since records began.

Earlier this month, the United Nations announced that malaria’s global death toll has more than halved since the turn of the century, saving six million lives. It’s the greatest success story of modern times, yet no one seems interested in telling it.

The Deadly Results of Left-Wing Politics

The Moral High Ground

Jim Lacey

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
September 7, 2011
The Left’s “morally superior” policies kill millions and impoverish billions.

Soon after I published an article questioning the global-warming orthodoxy, the world’s foremost hypocrite, Al Gore, informed anyone who still listens to him that my position is akin to racism. The wise course of action would be to ignore the rants of a man who desperately needs the world to remain fearful of carbon, the element on which all life on earth is based. If that fear were to vanish, how would he continue to rake in the millions needed for the purchase of his next beach house?

But enough is enough. Why should I sit quietly and let myself be branded a racist? In fact, will someone please explain how the Left is always assumed to have the moral high ground in these kinds of debates? I am particularly curious about this, as leftist policies continue to destroy the lives of tens of millions in this country and billions worldwide.

Let’s go through just a small part of the evidence.

Addicted by Choice

Once and Addict, Always an Addict. Yeah, Right.

Long ago the medical and political establishments persuaded themselves that human addictions were diseases. It is easy to see how they came to that conclusion. If it is universally believed, as an article of faith, that the only reality is matter, all human experience and conditions must, in the end, be reduced to electrons and their peculiar behaviour.

If someone is addicted to, say heroin, it is because the electrons are functioning a certain way. To deliver the afflicted addict one has to treat the syndrome, using the same medical methods and disciplines as one would approach the treatment of other corporeal diseases such as heart disease or Alzheimers.

Every so often, however, someone from within the Academy rages against the machine. The latest is Gene M. Heyman, whose book Addiction: A Disorder of Choice has just been published by Harvard University Press. Sally Satel, reviewing the book for The New Republic, commences with these arresting paragraphs:

n 1970, high-grade heroin and opium flooded Southeast Asia. Military physicians in Vietnam estimated that between 10 percent and 25 percent of enlisted Army men were addicted to narcotics. Deaths from overdosing soared. In May 1971, the crisis exploded on the front page of The New York Times: “G.I. Heroin Addiction Epidemic in Vietnam.” Spurred by fears that newly discharged veterans would ignite an outbreak of heroin use in American cities, President Richard Nixon commanded the military to begin drug testing. In June, the White House announced that no soldier would be allowed to board the plane home unless he passed a urine test. Those who failed could go to an Army-sponsored detoxification program before they were re-tested.

The plan worked. Most GIs stopped using narcotics as word of the new directive spread and the vast minority who were detained produced clean samples when given a second chance. More startlingly, only 12 percent of soldiers who were dependent on opiate narcotics in Vietnam became re-addicted to heroin at some point in the three years after their return to the states. “This surprising rate of recovery even when re-exposed to narcotic drugs,” said the epidemiologist who collected the data, “ran counter to the conventional wisdom that heroin is a drug which causes addicts to suffer intolerable craving that rapidly leads to re-addiction if re-exposed to the drug.”

The story of returning Vietnam veterans overturned the conventional wisdom of “once an addict, always an addict.” The data were hailed as “revolutionary” and “path-breaking." Alas, the lesson became a casualty of generational amnesia. “Once an addict, always an addict” has merely been replaced by a newer and more sleekly scientific version of the same concept, namely, “addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease.”

Satel claims that Heyman's book is a "devastating assault on the brain-based model of addiction". While it is certainly true that drugs cause changes in the brain's functioning and behaviour--changes which can be measured and observed--it is most certainly not true that drug addiction is in the same category as genuine disease. The reason is that taking drugs remains a voluntary act, whereas Alzheimer's clearly is involuntary. How do we know that?

Heyman’s answer is that "voluntary activities vary systematically as a function of their consequences, where the consequences include benefits, costs, and values.” Take, for example, the case of addicted physicians and pilots. When they are reported to their oversight boards they are monitored closely for several long years; if they don’t fly right, they have a lot to lose (jobs, income, status). It is no coincidence that their recovery rates are high. Via entities called drug courts, the criminal justice system applies swift and certain sanctions to drug offenders who fail drug tests—the threat of jail time if tests are repeatedly failed is the stick—while the carrot is that charges are expunged if the program is completed. Participants in drug courts tend to fare significantly better than their counterparts who have been adjudicated as usual. In so-called contingency management experiments, subjects addicted to cocaine or heroin are rewarded with vouchers redeemable for cash, household goods, or clothes. Those randomized to the voucher arm routinely enjoy better results than those receiving treatment as usual.

Contingencies are the key to voluntariness. No amount of reinforcement or punishment can alter the course of an entirely autonomous biological condition. Imagine bribing an Alzheimer’s patient to keep her dementia from worsening, or threatening to impose a penalty on her if it did. This is where choice comes in: choosing an alternative to drug use. Heyman realizes how odd this might seem. How can otherwise rational people choose self-destruction unless they are diseased? This question was raised in colonial America. Dr. Benjamin Rush, also known as the father of American psychiatry, was among the first to promote the notion that alcoholism was a disease. And he did so not on the basis of medical evidence, Heyman reminds us, “but rather [upon] the assumption that voluntary behavior is not self-destructive.”

The classic mistake of Dr Rush and his (now) legion of followers was to assume that human beings will not willingly choose death and destruction--as a lifestyle choice. Their naive model dismissed the existence of human sinfulness. "Those who hate Me," says the Lord, "love death". Dr Rush said that could not possibly be the case. If someone acted so as to destroy himself, it must be against his will; it had to be involuntary; it had to be a clinical disease.

It may strike some as insensitive to insist that addiction is a disorder of choice. “I have never come across a single drug-addicted person who told me [he or she] wanted to be addicted," Nora Volkow, the current director of NIDA says. Exactly so. How many of us have ever come across a person who wanted to be fat? So many undesirable outcomes in life are achieved incrementally. In a choice model, full-blown addiction is the triumph of feel-good local decisions (“I’ll use today”) over punishing global anxieties (“I don’t want to be an addict tomorrow”). Let’s follow a typical trajectory. At the start of an episode of addiction, the drug increases in hedonic value while once-rewarding activities such as relationships, job, or family recede in value. Although the appeal of using starts to fade as consequences pile up—spending too much money, disappointing loved ones, attracting suspicion at work—the drug still retains value because it salves psychic pain, suppresses withdrawal symptoms, and douses intense craving.

At some point, however, even these benefits come to be outweighed by adverse fallout. The balance shifts and the addict tips into recovery. The idea is to accelerate the process by, as Heyman says, “chang[ing] … conditions that markedly reduce the value of the drug relative to the nondrug alternative.” This can be achieved through treatment, imposing credible threats—recall the case of impaired pilots and physicians—or the development of new modes of gratification that compete with drugs.

In treating addictions a fundamental watershed is to recognise its voluntary character at root. If the addict wants to change, then there is something to work with. The objective then is to help the addict discover those things which are more valuable, more important than the "benefits" of the drug and which the drug will destroy (career, community respect, love of family, etc.) The underlying theme always has to be, "You are responsible. You make the choices. The buck stops with you." Ironically it is a message underpinned with a belief in human dignity and freedom, whereas the consensus view of the Academy is a message of slavery and tragedy. Instinctively we all know that one can be both dignified and heroic in succumbing to a genuine involuntary disease--and whilst battling a genuine sin, in the case of a voluntary addiction.

But there is nothing dignified and heroic in succumbing to alcoholism or heroin addiction.

What a Hoot

The Daleks are Coming

We knew this was coming. When a culture turns away from the Living God it ends up seeing demons everywhere. It becomes fear-riven. Superstitions and phobias begin to abound.

Now there is a deep logic in this. When a culture spurns the Lord, it is left with the dominion of demons; it is face to face with a cruel, malicious, and hostile world. Bad things happen. The world becomes a scary place. Every piece of technology, every engineering advance is feared as a threat, liable to harm and damage humans.

The latest? Wind turbines. It turns out those things are damaging and harmful to human beings--taking their place alongside cancer causing cellphones and high tension wires, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, etc. A new syndrome has been discovered, as reported in the Independent.

Living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation, according to groundbreaking research to be published later this year by an American doctor.

Dr Nina Pierpont, a leading New York paediatrician, has been studying the symptoms displayed by people living near wind turbines in the US, the UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada for more than five years. Her findings have led her to confirm what she has identified as a new health risk, wind turbine syndrome (WTS).

Wind turbines--hitherto promoted as the great white hope to manumit our from slavery to carbon--now (apparently) attack and damage human beings. The list of afflictions is sobering indeed:

They cause problems ranging from internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, a compulsion to flee, chest tightness and tachycardia – increased heart rate. Turbine noise can also trigger nightmares and other disorders in children as well as harm cognitive development in the young, she claims.

We would suggest that all of these afflictions are of the heart, phobias--which have actual physiological consequences. When you hate the Lord, demons can end up stalking the mind.

We just know how this is going to play out. There will be dark mutterings about all the vested interests who will be portrayed as lining their pockets from wind turbines. Governments will be seen as colluding with big business. Supporters of wind turbines will be accused of funding biased "research" to mask the dangers. So, Dr Piedmont:

There is no doubt that my clinical research shows that the infrasonic to ultrasonic noise and vibrations emitted by wind turbines cause the symptoms which I am calling wind turbine syndrome. There are about 12 different health problems associated with WTS and these range from tachycardia, sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, nausea, visual blurring, panic attacks with sensations of internal quivering to more general irritability.

The wind industry will try to discredit me and disparage me, but I can cope with that. This is not unlike the tobacco industry dismissing health issues from smoking.

We look forward to seeing Greenpeace anarchists chained to wind turbines, protesting their damaging deprivations of the human race. We confidently expect that Sue Kedgley will be calling for a bans on wind turbines within twelve months (after Copenhagen, of course). The construction and commissioning of wind turbines will be cocooned rapidly in rules, regulations, and stipulations that will cause the cost of constructing and maintaining the archaic things to sky rocket, making their already marginal economic value permanently negative.

Nah. Too extreme, we hear you say. Really.

Campaigners have consistently argued that much research hitherto has been based on written complaints to environmental health officers and manufacturers, not on science-based research. But in Denmark, Germany and France, governments are moving towards building new wind farms off-shore because of concern over the potential health and environmental risks. In the UK there are no such controls, and a growing number of lobbyists, noise experts and government officials are also beginning to query the statutory noise levels being given to councils when deciding on planning applications from wind farm manufacturers. Lobbyists claim a new method of measuring is needed.

The wind turbines are coming to a place near you. They will turn out to be the Daleks of our age. They will be a perpetual reminder, memorial stones, of the demonic powers which haunt the mind of the Unbelieving world.

How Did It Come to This?

Medical "Researchers" Plumb New Lows

There is a scene in the movie trilogy, Lord of the Rings where Theoden, the venerable king of Rohan has taken refuge in Helm's Deep with the remnants of his army, awaiting the onslaught of the forces of Isengard. As he and his people face annihilation, he wonders out loud, "How did it come to this?"

It seems that the longer the liberal-academic-media complex holds society in its thrall, the more ignorant and foolish academics become. How did it come to this?

Recently The Lancet carried a piece on Global Warming. Now The Lancet used to be a pretty prestigious medical journal, often at the forefront of medical research. This particular article was based on a report by medical researchers from the University College of London. These Wormtongues (to continue with Tolkien motifs) for the liberal-academic-media complex were at pains to tell us that global warming constitutes the biggest threat to human health in this century. They want their august voices to be added to the siren calls to reduce carbon emissions.

A major new report from doctors at University College, London, and medical journal The Lancet claims that climate change “is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Their solution means permanent recession, more famine and more disease.

Killer heatwaves, insect-borne “tropical” diseases, flooding and hurricanes will affect billions over the next 100 years as global temperatures soar, they say. With this report published last Thursday, doctors are adding their powerful voice to calls for deep cuts in carbon emissions to stabilize global temperatures.

The "scientists" are predicting a widespread outbreak of malaria as a result of rising temperatures.

Yes. Hot climates kill people, as do cold climates. But how has it come to pass that academics such as these are so ignorant of the history of their own profession? How has so much knowledge been lost or forgotten? How can they be so stupid? We find ourselves shaking our heads along with Theoden.

Paul Reiter, an expert on insect-borne diseases and contributor to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said “there is no evidence that climate has played any role” in malaria. Reiter points out that malaria was endemic in Britain until the second half of the 19th century, when improved agricultural practices, drainage and housing caused a spontaneous decline of the disease because mosquitoes had fewer opportunities to bite people . . .

Malaria used to be a problem in Britain. Economic development, access to more capital, better houses, and better farming practices got rid of it as a problem. Threatening us all with plagues because temperatures are supposed to rise is nothing more than alarmist poppycock. Yet these people are serious--and they are taken seriously by the liberal-academic-media complex. They are little more than snake oil hucksters standing on a bully pulpit.

The report also claims global warming will lead to more deaths from heatwaves as the sick and elderly struggle with high temperatures. But Bill Keatinge, an expert on human physiology at London University, has shown that deaths do increase in the first few days of a heatwave but most of the victims were likely to die shortly anyway. The data show that average mortality actually decreases during the later stages of heatwaves.

Moreover, humans have developed a range of ways of coping with high temperatures, from adaptation to siestas to air conditioning. Ask the Tuareg nomads of North Africa.

In fact, cold weather is far more harmful because of the increased risk of respiratory infections, heart attacks and strokes. Britain, for example, with a temperate climate, has only 1,000 heat-related deaths every year, compared with 20,000 cold-related.

Whaaat! Global warming is likely to result in better health. How embarrassing.

But when we get to the real vectors of killing diseases, the intellectual larceny of the doctors becomes more manifest. They studiously ignore the link between economic growth and better health outcomes. Apparently, that's just filthy lucre, beneath the dignity of higher mortals like the good doctors to consider. They also ignore the link between restricting carbon emissions and the permanent global recession that would result. You can almost see the twitching nostrils as they turn away from the malodour of such an inconvenient truth.

But truth it be.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions, however, would be very bad for human health.

According to calculations by Lombard Street Research in the UK, any global treaty that would stabilize the climate at today’s temperatures would cost a total of ￡8 trillion (US$12.4 trillion) — 45 percent of the world’s current annual economic output, causing permanent economic depression.

Economic growth is an absolute pre-requisite for improved health. One study has shown that if economic growth in the developing world had been a mere 1.5 percent higher in the 1980s, at least 500,000 child deaths could have been prevented.

This is because much of the disease burden in developing countries is a direct result of poverty. Diarrhea, chest infections from burning wood and dung indoors, water-borne infections and malnutrition are the biggest killers of children, killing millions regardless of any changes in the climate.

How could so-called educated people, trained to think within the scientific method, have become so ignorant of the causes of disease and the link with poverty? Ah, but writing about such realities probably will not get you published in Lancet. Not getting published is career limiting, after all. One has to give the liberal-academic-media complex what it wants if one is to get another notch on the CV.

Britain eliminated malaria as a side-effect of increasing prosperity: glass windows, separate barns for cattle and better land management, depriving the mosquito of feeding and breeding opportunities. It is no coincidence that malaria is currently confined to the poorest parts of the world, because they are the least able to afford such improvements.

The doctors’ call for cutting carbon emissions would be a betrayal of the sick in the world’s poorest regions, because it would undermine the one mechanism — economic growth — that allows people to move beyond the primitive living conditions that encourage disease.

Prosperity also removes the doctors’ apocalyptic vision of social turmoil and mass migration as millions flee flood or drought: growth allows adaptation and protection. If doctors are concerned about the effect of climate on health, they should not advocate hobbling the global economy and preventing the poor from getting richer.

The astonishment remains. How could such educated and trained professional scientists be so wilfully dumb? All they have done is defamed a noble and vitally important profession. They, and Lancet, have demonstrated that the medical profession is rapidly devolving back to a form of blood-letting as the universal cure for human distempers.

How could it have come to this? There are no doubt many reasons and causes. But one thing we are very sure of: such wilful ignorance is evidence of a Divine curse. Athens is being given up to live under the curse of its own lies.

Seeing the Light

When Solutions Create Worse Problems

These days when you go into a “government” building (schools, hospitals, WINZ offices etc) you are likely to find that all the electric bulbs are now CFL (compact fluorescent lightbulbs) because it is the politically correct thing to do. The government has announced that it is going to ban incandescent bulbs by October next year; the CFL bulbs are supposed to use less energy and every New Zealand household will be forced to use these light bulbs. It will help save the planet, whatever that means.

It now turns out that these bulbs contain inhalable mercury vapour. Mercury is one of the most toxic poisons known to man; it attacks the neural nervous system. There are no “safe” levels of mercury. It is accumulative in the body. The bulbs don't work without the mercury.

When these bulbs break, the mercury spills out in vapour form. It gets into carpets, clothes, footware, curtains, and other surfaces. Every time a vacuum cleaner is used it picks up the mercury particles, which are very small, and sends them out into the air again. The vacuum cleaner acts as a mercury recycling spraying device. Eventually, it gets into humans, and commences its insidious work.

In those work places, where the bulbs are now in wide use, the occasional breaking of a bulb due to accident or malfunction is inevitable. In fact, some users have complained that they appear to be very fragile and break easily. Consequently, people working in those buildings are at risk of exposure. The mercury does not go away.

Below are the current US Environmental Protection Agency recommended “clean-up” procedures in a house if a CFL bulb breaks.

Before Clean-up: Air Out the Room

Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage area on their way out.
Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.

Clean-Up Steps for Hard Surfaces

Carefully scoop up glass pieces and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.

Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.

Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place towels in the glass jar or plastic bag.

Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.

Clean-up Steps for Carpeting or Rug

Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.

Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glass fragments and powder.

If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the area where the bulb was broken.

Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag or vacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.

Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding and Other Soft Materials

If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage.

You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed to the mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing when you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into direct contact with the materials from the broken bulb.

If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.

Disposal of Clean-up Materials

Immediately place all clean-up materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area for the next normal trash pickup.

Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing clean-up materials.

Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in your specific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they require that broken and unbroken mercury-containing bulbs be taken to a local recycling center.

Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming

The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.

Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window open for at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

Our advice:

1. If you are working in a building which uses CFL bulbs, insist that they be removed immediately, and replaced with incandescent bulbs. Make it a “health and safety” issue. At the very least, make sure that any accident with a CFL bulb goes into the incident register. Then ensure that the surrounding area is tested for mercury contamination. If there is contamination, insist upon full industrial cleanup of the entire work environment, including, if necessary, a refit of all carpets, curtains, and other furnishings and fit-out; then re-test for mercury levels, once complete. Sue the company for exposing their staff to hazardous substances—in this case, one of the deadliest poisons known to man.

2. If you have CFL bulbs at home, remove them immediately and replace them with traditional incandescent bulbs. Store the CFL bulbs in a safe place where they will not be broken. Do NOT put them in the trash. That will mean that the mercury just goes into landfills. Call the local council and ask them to remove the bulbs safely and dispose of them according to the protocols for toxic waste.

3. If you are thinking of buying a house and find that it has CFL bulbs, turn around and walk out.

What is not yet clear is whether the bulbs leak mercury vapours in other ways. It is possible that they do. In other words, mercury contamination might occur not only when the bulbs break. We know of no indication that this has actually been tested. The official government position is an acknowledgment that the bulbs do indeed contain mercury, but that the bulbs are safe. To our knowledge, no independent scientific testing has been undertaken on that claim. The government appears to have relied upon the assurances of companies manufacturing the bulbs.

Our recommendation is to have nothing to do with these bulbs until they are tested and scientifically scrutinised by independent verified peer-reviewed analyses that encompasses a bulb “life-cycle”, and certified as safe--or at least all the dangers properly disclosed. The analysis must be conducted by bodies independent of those government and political organs promoting their use as part of their campaign against global warming.

Finally, do we not live in a very strange world when governments get alarmed and take urgent action against lead paint in children's toys, yet are forcing by law the use of CFL's in homes, including nursery and baby rooms, risking exposing children to progressive mercury poisoning. Mercury, like lead, once in the body never leaves.

The S-Files

Dr Robyn Toomath: The Sinister Undertones of an Egregious Appeal to Pity.

Contra Celsum has nominated Dr Robyn Toomath, spokesperson for Fight the Obesity Trust for an S-Award.

Citation:

Dr Robyn Toomath has appeared before the parliamentary committee considering the galactically stupid Public Health Bill. She is quoted as arguing: “People are desperate for Nanny State's help. Parents are desperate for help to get their children to eat healthily.”

She also endeavoured to get everyone's heart to bleed by telling us that she keeps a notebook detailing the patients who were admitted to her hospital ward, suffering severe problems because they were overweight. “I know from my day to day experience how big this problem is.” (We are sure no pun was intended)

She claimed that her patients “were intelligent people who knew they needed to regulate their diet and lose weight, but were overwhelmed by a nutritional environment which promoted high-energy, unhealthy foods.” (NZ Herald, 24th April, 2008)

So, laying aside the unconscionable and completely irrelevant appeal to pity, let us analyse what Toomath is actually saying:

1. People are enslaved and cannot control their own lives.
2. People are fundamentally irresponsible.
3. Parents cannot train and teach their children to eat appropriate foods.
4. People know what is right, but lack the will power to do it.
5. People are conditioned by the (nutritional) environment so completely they are “overwhelmed”.

Her solution? Nanny state (yes, she actually used the term) needs to step in to help them.

According to Toomath's world-view liberty, freedom, responsibility, and accountability do not exist. Since everyone is enslaved already, the best thing to do is increase the intrusive powers of the state and make our slavery both overt and official.

Now, laying aside the ethical and philosophical and religious problems with Toomath's world-view, let us just address it on a pragmatic basis. Let's just be clear that Toomath's solution will actually make obesity worse. If enslavement has caused the obesity problem, more enslavement will not arrest it; it will make it worse. If people are unable to control their appetites now, when the state makes itself responsible for what they eat, peoples' appetites will enslave them even more. It will then becomes the government's problem that I desire and eat such things.

Secondly, one never ceases to be amazed at the inconsistency of those who argue, on the one hand, that citizens are morally incompetent, yet, in the same breath, argue the moral competence of government and government officials. There is a universal suppressed premise amongst such people that once someone is either elected or goes to work for the state they become morally perfected or escape the moral imperfections of those whom they are required to govern.

But let us be clear. If Toomath is to be taken seriously she must also argue that we entrust our lives in this matter to state officials, legislators, institutions and bureaucrats who:

1. Are enslaved and cannot control their lives.
2. Who are fundamentally irresponsible.
3. Who will be utterly incompetent and unable to teach us and train us to eat the right foods
4. Who will know what should be done to overcome the problem, but will be completely unable to carry it out.
5. Who will themselves be conditioned by the nutritional environment so that they won't be able to do anything about it.

Someone needs to send Dr Toomath a "please explain" notice.

Remember the adage—when governments step in to prevent or lessen a deemed social evil, the inevitable outcome is that the social evil multiplies and becomes worse. Toomath's “ultimate solution” will actually throw petrol on the obesity fire—or, to use a more apt metaphor, will sweeten and enrich the obesity pie.

At Contra Celsum, we suggest a far more Christian solution to this social problem.

1. Let the government declare that “You are what you eat”, that everyone is responsible, and will be made to face the consequences of their behaviour. If you become obese it is highly probable that a short and painful life awaits you.
2. The government to allocate an obesity public health voucher to every New Zealander which will entitle them to limited treatment for a range of notified obesity related health problems.
3. If a person is admitted to a public hospital for treatment for a notified obesity related health problem, and is obese, the cost of treatment will be born by their voucher.
4. Once the voucher is used up, no further publicly funded treatment for obesity related illnesses will be available. The cost will have to be met by the patient or his/her extended family, charity, insurance, or social networks.

Our solution assumes that people are not slaves, they are accountable and they are responsible. Our solution presupposes that people are thereby treated with respect. Our solution dignifies man, rather than degrades him. Our solution represents principled tough love. Moreover, our solution will radically reduce obesity over time.

Dr Robyn Toomath—S-Award Class II for behaviour that is Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied.

Mass Starvation in a World of Plenty

There's a Rampaging Green Elephant in the Room and It's Man Made

There is no shortage of food in the world—only bad policies and governance. Can this really be true? After all, hunger is now on the rise again. Central Africa, for example, is a region where more than one third of people are hungry—that is, they do not get sufficient food. In India and Bolivia between a third and a fifth of the population do not get adequate food—they are malnourished.

Yet, last year saw a record world cereal harvest. Rising food prices will stimulate new investment and even greater production in the future. So, the experts say, there is no shortage of food in the world. (The Economist, 28th March, 2008). But global food prices are telling a very different story—and prices rarely lie.

Food, like any other tradeable good or service, is subject to the normal cyclical market forces of supply and demand. For the past five years, world food stocks have been decreasing, even while production has increased. Why? Well, demand has also increased—and it has increased more quickly than supply. There have been two long term reasons for this.

The first is the gradual, steady rise in world population. While overall population growth has slowed since the mid last century, it is still “ticking over”. The US Census Bureau projects that at current growth rates world population will have doubled by 2050. More mouths to feed mean inevitably a growing demand for food.

The second factor is rising living standards, particularly throughout Asia and the Middle East. As living standards rise, the “first” thing people do is eat more food. The second thing they do is change what they eat. They move from a cereal or starch based diet to a higher protein (Western) diet.

These two factors have led to demand outstripping supply over the past five years. More mouths to feed, and more food being eaten per mouth, as it were. When this happens we can expect the normal market, cyclical market response. Prices rise, leading to a short term lessening of demand. But, a second factor normally comes into play—namely, higher prices lead to greater profits for food producers, which incentivises them to invest more, to produce more—which eventually leads to greater supply. Eventually, of course, the market settles down to a general equilibrium point.

The food aid people tell us that this normal market mechanism appears to be working, and that the supply of food—as measured by the amount of grown—is rising in response to the higher prices. So, we should expect that food prices will eventually peak and track down again. Right? Well, no—at least not anytime soon.

Why? As we have described, the food market was at the critical point of a cyclical re-adjustment. Food stocks were falling, demand was rising, and prices were trending upwards. Farmers got busier and supply started to react, trending upwards. Then came the rogue element. It entered the arena right at the critical moment. This rogue element dislocated the food market, moving what would have been a normal (and gradual) market adjustment of demand, supply, and price to a situation of severe dislocation, which can only be described as a global food shock—as far as we know, the first in human history.

In the past, severe dislocations to the world food markets have occurred due to extreme weather—and they have been relatively short lived. Not this time. Western governments, particularly the EU, the US and Canada have now adopted the view that the world was getting warmer primarily because fossil fuels were being burnt. The world, if it were to be saved, had to move radically and quickly to renewable fuel sources. The age of biofuel had come.

The effect of this has been to turn vast swathes of grain producing land into production hubs for the raw material to produce ethanol. The most commonly used raw material is corn. Consequently, a huge amount of grain has been suddenly removed from the world's food supply. So the world food aid people are right: more food crops are being produced than ever before—and there is theoretically no shortage. That is only half right. Yes, food crops are being grown, but it is being diverted away into ethanol production. Food is no longer food; it is fuel.

At a time when global food supply and demand were tightly stretched anyway, suddenly the world food market has been distorted by a giant politician-cum-green monkey wrench. The result: huge market dislocation and a global food shock.

The relatively recent US Energy Bill legislated a target of producing 20% of fuel via ethanol within fifteen years. To achieve this, it provided a federal subsidy for the production of ethanol, which in turn meant that ethanol plants could pay higher prices for corn. So the price of corn shot up from $2 a bushel to over $6.

There are currently 134 ethanol refineries in the US. There are another 77 presently under construction. In just one year, demand for corn from ethanol distilleries jumped from 54 million tons in 2006 to 81 million tons in 2007. This more than doubled the annual growth in world demand for grain. But, even more insidiously, it removed this amount of grain out of the world food supply chain. This will not abate—it will get worse. It is expected that ethanol production will consume 28% of US grain production in 2008. But this only represents 3 percent of current US gasoline needs. And it will not stop there. We are on a mission to save the planet. Remember the US has legislatively mandated 20% of US gasoline to come from ethanol by 2020's—and that's just a short twelve years away, in case you need reminding.

Add to this situation a further element in the equation: the amount of global arable land able to produce food is pretty much fixed. Most of the arable land in the world is already in food production. So farmers can't simply head to the hills and produce more food. Arable land is now a scarce global resource.

Well, I hear you say, that's no problem. I don't like cornbread, and I can pass on tortillas. Sorry, four realities make it a problem—a problem that everyone in New Zealand is noticing right now—and we are hardly to be considered vulnerable.

1.The global price of other grains also shoots up, because other grains are suddenly subject to double the normal annual increase in demand. If people can't get corn, they move to rice or soy beans or substitute some other grain. Unexpected rapid increases in demand create severe shortages, leading to sharp price rises. If people in New Zealand are complaining that they can no longer afford food, how do you think millions and millions of people who were already hungry or malnourished are faring? Famine, disease, starvation and death is facing them. And there is no end in sight.

2.Corn is most commonly used in the US to feed chickens and cattle. This is normal in northern hemisphere, colder climate farming regions. With huge rises in the corn price due to the ethanol behemoth “confiscating” food supplies, the prices of eggs, chicken, beef and other grain-fed proteins is rising rapidly.

3.This has produced transfer-demand to other proteins. Hence global prices have begun to rise drastically for dairy products, fish and meat. Demand has transferred across, prices are rising.

4.The price of every food group is consequently rising. This is unprecedented. Normally, when the supply of one food type (rice, or corn) falls leading to price rises, demand substitutes across to other foods, leading to an eventual downward adjustment in the price of that initial food, as the original demand pressure eases. But the world is faced now with price rises in all food types across the board. This is why it is accurate to characterise what is now occurring as a global food shock.

And the reason? It is the ethanol elephant coming into the room. As we noted above world food demand was already rising, stocks were falling. The market was already under pressure. Yet, markets are remarkably robust and there was every reason to have expected that gradually supply, demand, and prices would have adjusted in an orderly and productive fashion. But not this time. The global food market has been dislocated beyond comparison. Into the already tight food supply and demand matrix has come the ethanol elephant and it smashing everything in the room.

So, let's look at the data. According to Lester R Brown of the Earth Policy Institute:

“The World Bank reports that for each 1 percent rise in food prices, caloric intake among the poor drops 0.5 percent. Millions of those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, people who are barely hanging on, will lose their grip and begin to fall off.

“Projections by Professors . . . of the University of Minnesota four years ago showed the number of hungry and malnourished people decreasing from over 800 million to 625 million by 2025. But in early 2007 their update of these projections, taking into account the biofuel effect on world food prices, showed the number of hungry people climbing to 1.2 billion by 2025. That climb is already underway.

“Since the budgets of international food agencies are set well in advance, a rise in food price shrinks food assistance. The UN World Food Programme (WFP), which is now supplying emergency food aid to 37 countries, is cutting shipments as prices soar. The WFP reports that 18,000 children are dying each day from hunger and related illnesses.”

Now, let us be clear. This situation—which will cause people to starve and others to slip into malnutrition leading to sickness, diseases, and death—is a man-made disaster. It has been caused by the folly of mankind—in particular, a knee jerk reaction to a purported threat to the planet and mankind from global warming. It will turn out that the “cure” to what we believe is a fabricated fantastical problem will be far worse and far more damaging than the original imagined malady. Count every child lost, every person slipping into the degradation of poverty and malnutrition and think of Al Gore and his blasted, benighted, demonic Inconvenient Truth.

Give me global warming any day, even if it were true. At least no-one dies from global warming. At least people would have time to adjust. But as a consequence of the megalomaniac madness of modern governments, determined to tilt at climate windmills, all the while slyly seeking party electoral advantage at the expense of genuine needs of their people, human beings can, and are most certainly, dying. But who cares about the poor and wretched of the earth when there is money to be made, elections to be won, and Nobel gongs to be awarded.

Next time you consume a piece of now very (and soon to be more) expensive cheese, think about how our western governments, the EU, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, not to speak of the UN, and all the vested interests that circle around, dancing their dervishes to line their tawdry pockets, have combined to act in a way that is likely to cause the death of millions and millions of people. Hiroshima will be a mere side show. The Holocaust will have nothing on this baby. Stalin will be a mere babe in arms in comparison. We may well see the mass kulakisation of the third world on a grand scale. And, oh, let's not forget—to assuage starvation widespread cannibal activity returned amongst the Kulaks, as Stalin strove mightily to save the world for dialectical materialism. But at least it was all in a good cause. Worth the price, I'd say.

Let's hear it for our wonderful Athenian nobles and overlords. Let's put our bloodied hands together and honour them as they deserve.

Become Obese--Your Government Needs You

Obesity: A Pseudo-Epidemic and Its False Cure

It's official. We have a new epidemic. It's called obesity. The threat is dire. The consequences unspeakable.

Athenian politicians and governments love apocalyptic epidemics. They allow them to take on the patina of being “Great Redeemers”. They are saving us from ourselves.

Recently, the NZ Government introduced an “anti-obesity” bill into Parliament. Yes, the government is going to ban fatness. The Public Health Bill claims to provide new ways for the Cabinet or the Director General of Health to act against the suspected causes of obesity. First it was tobacco. We didn't say anything because, well, tobacco is dirty. Then it was alcohol. That hurt a bit more, but, what can you do? We still did not say anything. The government knows best—and let's not forget all those super educated health professionals (aka highly paid bureaucrat—consultants.) We placidly and supinely let the government restrict, ban, control, and propagandize. We let politicians tell us what to think.

Now it is food. It's too late to do anything now. We have already let them in. The doors are wide open now, and they cannot be shut.

What will happen? Well, we will have taxes on obesity-causing food. We will have restrictions on advertising food and drink that cause fatness. We will have endless sermons and lectures and pontifications from politicians, governments, bureaucrats, and other go-gooders. The fast-food industry as we know it will be black-balled. Subsidies will be given to “Tofu Take Out” joints.

Why? It is a simple question. Why is the government engaging in this new evangelical campaign—apart from its own moral self-righteousness? Money. Western governments are concerned about all the collateral diseases that accompany obesity, for which the taxpayer will have to fund treatment. Billions will have to be found for treatment of heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and other diseases that result from obesity.

Enter the fly-in-the-ointment. A recent authoritative, scholarly paper produced in Holland, published in the journal PloS Medicine (“Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure”) has demonstrated that obese people cost the health system less in the long run. We could also add heavy drinkers and smokers to this list.

Why is this? Obese people live shorter lives. Healthy, gym addicted, diet conscious people live longer, but tend to die from longer term degenerative diseases. It turns out that total lifetime health spending is greatest for healthy people. In other words, if the government is successful in making us more healthy in its attempt to reduce the socialised medicine spend, the more the costs of socialised medicine will rise. The government has been, and increasingly will, waste millions of your dollars trying to make you healthy. If it is successful, it will end up spending even more than it otherwise would have.

Ban fit people. Tax gyms. Subsidize fatty foods. Run tobacco education classes in schools to teach children the pleasures of the delightful weed. Become obese. Your government needs you, fat. The taxpayer needs you. Love those rolls. Let's have beautyflab competitions. I can just see the new TV reality shows now.

So, the economics don't stack up. Public health care costs are ballooning because we are living longer and more illnesses and diseases are treatable with increasingly sophisticated procedures. It turns out that trying to make us less obese by controlling what people eat will only make the problem worse.

Athens is stupid. Stupid in the extreme. But some will object. Should not Christians be concerned when people are in poor health? Surely the command, “Thou shalt not kill” requires us to do all we can to assist others to be healthy? Yes and yes. Surely, then, Christians should support socialised medicine and regard the anti-obesity campaign as laudable and do all they can to support it. No and no and no.

There is just a tiny, small matter of responsibility—personal and familial responsibility. Bluntly put, if you eat the wrong food and become obese you will likely die prematurely. Those are the consequences of your decision. If you feed your children garbage, they too are likely to have all sorts of severe health problems. You are responsible. You are accountable. If you want your children to die early, feed them rubbish. You will be allowed to face the consequences of your stupidity and folly. That is the truth. That is the authentic Christian position. The loving thing to do is to work within the rubric of personal accountability and responsibility because people are better off for it.

I can just hear the “tut tutting” Athenian liberals as they take another sip of pinot gris. “There are many who don't know how to take responsibility for themselves. They are victims. They are oppressed. We have to take responsibility for them.”

This is none other than the twenty first century version of the “white man's burden.” It was arrogant paternalism that led western nations into the reckless colonial era. The consequences are still with us today. But taking over control of countries and territories was justified as having a duty to “help them.”

A similar arrogant paternalism of western liberals has lead to a host of institutionalised evils, socialised medicine amongst them. The consequence is that it has encouraged virtually entire generations not to take responsibility for themselves and their dependants. It's always someone else's fault. Parents are now whining about food companies advertising on TV—wanting the government to “do something about it.” That will help solve our children's eating problems.

Try turning the TV off if its that much of a problem. Take responsibility. Take ownership. Be a real parent for a change. Try putting a decent meal on the table and if the kids won't eat it, take it away and tell them the next meal will be in five hours time. Lock the fridge in the meantime.

For too long successive generations have recited daily the modern Athenian liturgy:

High Priest of Athens: “We will fix it. Don't you worry. Just vote for us.”

People: “Right-oh. You fix it then. How much will you fix, by the way?”

High Priest: “Cradle to the grave, mate. Don't you worry. Cradle to the grave.”

Only it never can be sustained. It never works. It only creates bigger and larger problems on a nation wide scale. And they are here now.

The so-called national obesity epidemic is an outward physical manifestation of a widespread spiritual malaise of self-indulgence, irresponsibility, and a hand-to-mouth gratification. It is a vivid picture of the best that Athens can do. Generations have been taught to believe that others are going to run around them and their children, making things right for them. Cradle to the grave. Omni-competent, infinitely resourced governments will do the trick. We will love you. We will care for you. Just vote for us.

But Jerusalem says, that way may seem right to you, but its end is death. Stop it—now—for your own sake, and the sake of your children. You—yes, you—own the problem. Take ownership. Fix it. Be a real parent, for a change, not just a playactor. If you and your children are going to survive there are some things that are going to have to happen on your watch—and one of them is that you and your children are going to have to eat decent food—that is, if you want them to survive.

Who loves more? Jerusalem or Athens?