Watching the World
More Disasters in Store
“Because of the destruction of the environment,” reports the German newspaper Schweinfurter Tagblatt on a statement of WHO (World Health Organization), “the number of natural disasters will increase considerably by the year 2000.” According to WHO, “there are now more and more ecological disasters caused by man himself.” The chemical disasters at Bhopal (India) and Séveso (Italy), the atomic reactor accident at Chernobyl (U.S.S.R.), the off-shore oil-slick catastrophe in Alaska, and the burning oil fields in Kuwait were cited as examples. “Pollution of air, water, and soil, as well as the depletion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, show that industrial development is destructive,” the article adds. “More than 50 million people have lost their homes through natural disasters since the beginning of this century.”
Soaring Cost of Justice
Canadians forked out “over a record $7.7 billion [thousand million] last year on police, courts, jails and legal aid,” reports The Toronto Star. This means that every Canadian spends $295 a year to support the justice system. In spite of the large expenditure of money, “the crime rate jumped 32 per cent,” says the Star. The number of prison inmates increased 37 percent between 1981 and 1987. Commenting on the high cost of justice, the executive director of Toronto’s John Howard Society, Sherry Kulman, said: “Seven billion [thousand million] is a lot of money and I’m really surprised people aren’t saying ‘wait a minute, what’s going on here?’” She added: “Isn’t it about time people realized that the system isn’t working?”
Vehicle Retrieval by Satellite
As vehicle hijacking reaches serious proportions in South Africa, the latest in a string of innovations to retrieve vehicles taken by hijackers and thieves is satellite tracking. The Star, a Johannesburg newspaper, explains that once the driver has the system installed, he merely has to activate a transmitter should the vehicle be hijacked or stolen. The vehicle is then tracked by a satellite and its location displayed on a computer screen in a “control room where it is shown as a ‘bleep’ on a map.” The control room, in turn, alerts helicopter or ground security units, who go after the vehicle. The report adds: “Pilot tests have so far proved that a vehicle can be located . . . within about 15 minutes, and that the retrieval rate is 95 percent.”
Drugs in the Schools
How are youths introduced to drugs in school? “Drugs do not reach the schools by the hand of strangers, but through students themselves,” says Abílio Pereira, a police chief in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. “No one accepts drugs from someone he is not acquainted with.” He adds: “I was used to finding marijuana on 17-year-old boys. Now we have problems with 12- and even 10-year-old boys.” To start with, drugs may be offered free in a happy-hour atmosphere, but once the young people are hooked, the dealers charge for them. “There is no school where drugs do not enter,” states Alberto Corazza, a district police chief in São Paulo. Says Veja magazine: “Never has it been so easy to buy drugs in the schools, never has the dealers’ network been so widespread among students and never has it been so hard to control this sort of commerce.”
Treatments Compared
Patients with terminal cancer who are treated with conventional therapy fare neither better nor worse than do those treated by unorthodox therapies, says a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Over 150 cancer patients with an average life expectancy of a year or less were used in the study. Half received traditional treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, while the other half were treated with a vegetarian diet, coffee enemas, and vaccines that are intended to energize the immune system. The patients had advanced lung cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, or melanoma. At the end of one year, just over half of the patients in each group were alive, and 15 percent at the end of two years. “The results show very clearly that for patients with advanced cancers our treatments are probably not prolonging life,” said Dr. Barrie Cassileth, the paper’s author. “We have to ask how to make these people most comfortable, and in some cases that may mean no treatment at all.”
Too Clean?
When the tanker Exxon Valdez went aground off the Alaskan coast, the resultant oil spill killed a large number of animals—at last count some 580,000 birds, 5,500 sea otters, and 22 whales. While there was talk of permanent damage, that is not true, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and most species should be back to full strength in about five years. “Recovery might have been even quicker if some beaches had not been blasted with jets of hot water as a way to calm public outcry,” reports Fortune magazine. “Agency studies show that more small organisms die from hot water than from oil.” According to chief scientist Sylvia Earle, “sometimes the best, and ironically the most difficult, thing to do in the face of an ecological disaster is to do nothing.”
More Barracks Than Hospitals
Governments around the world spend 5.4 percent of their gross national product on military activities but only 4.2 percent on health care, reports Demos, a bulletin published by the Dutch Inter University Demographic Institute. The ratio in the developing countries is even more lopsided: 5.6 percent for defense but only 1.4 percent for medical care. Governments in Southeast Asia, notes Demos, top the list by spending seven times more on the military than on health.
Problems With Humidifiers
“Acute problems, such as humidifier fever, a flu-like illness affecting groups of people in offices, can be linked to massive humidifiers where water sits and accumulates organisms,” reports The Medical Post of Canada. Home humidifiers present similar risks when bacteria and fungi breed in stagnant water that is later sprayed into the air. In The Medical Post, one expert suggested that when humidifying the air for medical reasons, patients should consider “steam-generated humidity in a room, including something as simple as keeping a kettle boiling on the stove.”
Pocket-Size Electronic Bibles
“For now, in the world of electronics, small is beautiful,” reports Newsweek. Among the latest hand-held gadgets are three $400 versions of the Bible, including the Revised Standard and King James editions, put out by a New Jersey, U.S.A., firm. “Why spend $400 for a Bible?” asks Newsweek. “Because it has typewriter-style keys and some intelligence.” Forgotten scripture locations can be found by simply typing in some key words that may be remembered. The firm “may have struck the absent-minded-clergy market,” says the article. “It has already sold 50,000 electronic Bibles in six months.”
Embarrassing Dating Error
Eleven years ago, an artistic South African grandmother, Joan Ahrens, produced some fine paintings using rocks as her canvases, imitating traditional Bushman art. Later, one of her painted rocks was picked up in the veld near her former home in the city of Pietermaritzburg. Eventually it got into the hands of the curator of the city’s museum. Unaware of the origin of this rock art, the curator had it dated in England by the Oxford University radio carbon accelerator unit. Experts estimated that the painting was 1,200 years old! Why such an embarrassing error? “It has since been established,” according to a report in South Africa’s Sunday Times, “that the oil paint used by Mrs Ahrens contained natural oils which contained carbon—the only substance dated by Oxford.”
The Price of Fraud and Arson
Credit card fraud in Britain costs banks and finance houses £75 million ($150 million, U.S.) a year, according to The Times of London. Yet even this sum is minuscule compared to the estimated cost of arson: £500 million ($1,000 million) in 1990 alone, when total fire losses reached a record £1,000 million ($2,000 million). Although vandalism by males from 10 to 25 years of age is the most common cause of arson, up to 20 percent of arson cases are tied to fraud—businesses, cars, and homes are deliberately destroyed to collect insurance payments. Britain’s Home Office figures also reveal that 1,008 schools were deliberately damaged or destroyed by arson in the year 1988, reports The Times.