The Plight of the World’s Poor and the Sick!
The New York Times states that the “quest for eternal life, or at least prolonged youthfulness” is now within reach. “In five or six or seven years,” said Christoph Westphal, one of Sirtris’ co-founders, “there will be drugs that prolong longevity.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29aging.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes] How much fun is that? I do applaud every drug discovered that will combat degenerative disease, but am left wondering whether it is the best use of resources at this time while the world’s majority suffocates on a daily income of less than $1 per person? Caring for the world’s poor has never been more necessary, nor is the potential for global disaster more acute. In a Foreign Policy® article by Roger Bate, titled: The Deadly World of Fake Drugs, [Carnegie Endowment, September/October 2008, Page 57]. He states, “Whether it’s phony Viagra or knock off cancer meds, fake drugs kill thousands of people each day, thanks to counterfeiters in China and India who mix chalk, dust, and dirty water into pills sold around the world. With the internet becoming the world’s dispensary, these poison pills could be coming to a pharmacy near you.” Later in his article, he writes also that bad malaria meds kill 200,000 African children every year. The western frontiers of the mid-20th century were Bosnian, or perhaps Mediterranean? However, today’s fault lines are already drawn down the main streets of our cities. As has already been mentioned, C. S. Lewis calls Nature, untrammeled by values, the Magician’s Bargain: whereby people give up their souls bit by bit, in return for power. However, once the soul – that is, the individual self – has been given up, the power conferred does not belong to them.[i] The value we speak of is: Caring for others above ourselves! [MQ, Page 36]
[i] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, A Touchstone Book, published by Simon & Shuster, distributed by Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1996, p. 80
