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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)



On 6 Dec 1996 16:48:06 GMT, joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) wrote:

>
>Mr. Lloyd-Jones - you are a lovely example of a little knowledge being a
>dangerous thing. 
 
So she says.  She then goes on to agree with everything I say. Her
long screed supports with some enthusiasm and even the occasional fact
all of my major points:
 
1.) There is a great deal of uncalled for disease in the US, most of
it caused by lousy public health policies.  You bring up the case of
Houston, and I am glad to have the example. Houston is a city so badly
governed that it does not even have zoning; the ship canal is a sewer;
the entire place varies between ticky-tacky and pure slum, with
occasional outbreaks of incredible wealth.  Of course it's diseased:
that's how you construct a human reservoir for disease.
 
2.) Soap and good diet are the major defences against disease.  Good
roads, good drainage, and good housing are also major helps.

3.) Major progress on malaria will come only with and from the spread
of middle-class European life styles in Africa.  The importance of
medicine in this regard is trivial compared to the importance of food,
housing, roads, drainage, and other major aspectts of economic
development.
 
4.) The overuse of antibiotics is a Bad Thing.
 
We share the sense that gin and tonic can be treated jocularly; her
degree of scepticism is greater than mine -- yet she speaks of
particular strains of mosquito which are _now_ resistant to quinine, a
turn of phrase which suggests the truth of tonic water's usefulness.
Perhaps she can elaborate on this distinction.
 
                                                               -dlj.



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