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| Africa: West | |
| West Africa impedes polio eradication | |
| 2003-12-20 | |
| Sometimes you just want to sit down and weep... West Africa represents the biggest obstacle to completely eradicating polio on a global scale, the head of the United Nations' Children's Fund UNICEF warns. Carol Bellamy is calling on west African leaders to have all children in the region vaccinated by the end of next year to curb the fast spread of the disease. "Children need vision and decisiveness from their leaders to stop polio before the disease spreads out of control," she told the annual summit of the Community of West African States. Polio has become a political issue in Nigeria, where the central government is having to cope with hostility from Muslim religious leaders to a vaccination campaign in the three northern states of Kano, Kaduna and Zamfara.
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| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #12 Lu Baihu It is post #5 in "Saddam arrest upsets Yemenis" in today's Rantburg. I will give it some more development here. 1) In Inquisition days the secular courts routinely used torture. Judicial torture was in those days accepted as a legitimate way of searching truth. In fact until torture was discouraged by eclesisatic courts for centuries. It was accepted in 1252, due to influence of ancient Roman law, on the condition that it should cause no permanent harm or death. Still, Nicolas Eymerich in his manual of inquisition tells it has to be used only in extreme cases and warns about false confessions. And the reality on the ground? I have no numbers for medieval inquisition but I have some for the Spanish inquisition: before 1500 in Toledo there were five uses of torture on 300 trials, in Valencia on the fifty years between 1480 and 1530 there were twelve uses of torture (that is one every four years) in 2000 trials. 2) Fairness: The accusee was allowed a lawyer, produce favourable witnesses and to name persons who had grudges with him so their testimony would not be taken by the court. In 1235 at Narbonne (France) the regional council asserted that a verdict of guilty could only be pronounced after formal confession or undeniable proofs. It also asserted "better relax a guilty one than condemn an innocent". 4) Death penalty. At the height of the cathar heresy inquistor Bernard Guy pronounced 42 sentences of death. In fifteen years of activity, that is under three a year. That is for medieval inquisition. For the Spanish inquisition. Its creation was in no small way due to the initiative of converted Jews like Pablo de Santa Maria who were tired of being held in suspicion of practcing Judaism secretly. The mission of Spanish inquisition was NOT to go after Jews but after heretic christians and false converts. Most sentences were pretty light (Saint Teresa's grand father who was a converted Jew was sentenced to walk around Toledo's churchs for seven Fridays). Gustav Heningsen studied 50,000 inquisititorial trials and found only 1% death penalties. The "Revue d'etudes juives" (Magazine of Jewish studies) found that the court of Badajoz (Spain) had pronounced around 20 death sentences on 106 years. All in all and for the whole of Spain the number of executions was around 12,000 in 300 years (40 a year). Notice that in protestant Europe there were 50,000 exexcutions and lynchings for witchcracy in 40 years (1250 a year). Now you can consider that the whole idea of prosecuting people for their religious ideas is barbaric but in Medieval Europe this didn't seem so. And you also have to remember that in several countries of protestant Europe catholic priests were sentenced to death until well into the 19th century. |
| Posted by: JFM 2003-12-20 5:15:15 PM |
| #11 What I don't understand is the parents allowing themselves to be bullied (?) by the religious leaders into NOT protecting their children. - Sam3 I cannot see how any religion could possibly be against eradicating that kind of suffering. - OP It's easy. They - the Islamists - have TOLD us, time after time. To them, life on Earth is a punishment, death is a Reward. The sooner you die, preach the clerics, the sooner you reach Paradise and your eternal pleasuring. (Of course, committing suicide to get there sooner is cheating, unless you suicide to kill more of Islam's enemies. In which case, you're rewarded.) Ed Becerra |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-12-20 3:33:40 PM |
| #10 JFM, might you link me to this post and comment(s) of yours? I'm particularly interested ... |
| Posted by: Lu Baihu 2003-12-20 1:27:33 PM |
| #9 I went to school with a friend who had polio, and who had one leg permanently in a metal brace. Polio "season" - from early April through November in Louisiana, was always a time of anxiety. Our school was one of the "test sites" for the "new" Salk/Sabin vaccine, and my parents saw to it that my brother and I "volunteered". My first overseas Air Force assignment was to Panama, where polio was one of a handful of deadly diseases that had to be guarded against. I cannot see how any religion could possibly be against eradicating that kind of suffering. I'm also reminded of the words of Christ: "Whosoever does unto these (speaking of children) does also to me." Unnecessary suffering is not a calamity, it's a crime. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-12-20 12:13:44 PM |
| #8 Idiots always find a way to weed themselves and their followers out of the gene pool. Good riddance. |
| Posted by: badanov 2003-12-20 11:41:50 AM |
| #7 Sawmll In a post about another subject I discussed the falsifications made by Protestants and enlightened philosophers about Catholic church in the Dark Ages. |
| Posted by: JFM 2003-12-20 11:10:35 AM |
| #6 What I don't understand is the parents allowing themselves to be bullied (?) by the religious leaders into NOT protecting their children. I kind of agree with Raj when he said to let them die ... as is their wish; except for the children who have made nor cannot make any decision on their own future -- that is the crime that I think the "religious leaders" will have to take to their grave and their afterlife. Also, there have been some comments about Islam being like the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages. I would like to say, as a practicing Baptist, that I shudder at the excesses of the Church during those times, and I shudder at the white-washing that has gone on in our times; but I still feel that the Church is largely, and at its core, a stalwart beacon of hope for the world. Unfortunately, Islam, from all the history I have read, has been bloody at its edges since its inception -- the only reason anyone has focused on its bloodiness in the past couple of generations has been because of oil and the wealth and influence it provides. If it weren't for the $$$$ from oil, the Saudi, Yemini, and Iran questions would be given the same international headlines as West Africa or Nigeria. |
| Posted by: SamIII 2003-12-20 10:54:11 AM |
| #5 300 |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-12-20 9:26:21 AM |
| #4 Polio is endemic in chimpanzees, at least in East Africa. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2003-12-20 1:53:39 AM |
| #3 Isn't polio naturally occuring in India, which makes it hard to stop, even with a good vaccination program? |
| Posted by: Pete Stanley 2003-12-20 1:48:27 AM |
| #2 India has at least 30x Nigeria's population, and the same number of infected persons. I'm tired of playing games with idiots. Let them die of |
| Posted by: Raj 2003-12-20 12:27:33 AM |
| #1 As a doc I will weep. Just about each of the biggest, best things that have happened in medicine the past 300 years have been in public health. It ain't rocket science folks -- clean water, clean food, sweep up the garbage, process the sewage, quarentine the contagions and vaccinate the population. We got rid of smallpox this way, and we've largely fixed the major infections that were killing people in the Western world in 1903 this way. The Indians are trying at least, but there's no excuse for Pak-land and for West Africa. None. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-12-20 12:25:42 AM |