Michael Lerner of Tikkun has published a sobering commentary on how funds are spent to relieve suffering. Here is an excerpt:
Two weeks ago the United Nations issued
a report detailing the deaths of more than 29,000
children every single day as a result of avoidable
diseases and malnutrition. Over ten million children a
year! The difference between the almost nonexistent
coverage of this ongoing human-created disaster and the
huge focus on the terrible tsunami-generated suffering
in South East Asia reveals some deep and ugly truths
about our collective self-deceptions.
Imagine if every single day there were headlines in
every newspaper in the world and every television show
saying: "29,000 children died yesterday from preventable
diseases and malnutrition" and then the rest of the
stories alternated between detailed personal accounts of
families where this devastation was taking place, and
sidebar features detailing what was happening in
advanced industrial countries, like this: "all this
suffering was happening while the wealthiest people in
the world enjoyed excesses of food, worried about how to
lose weight because they eat too much, spent money
trying to convince farmers not to grow too much food for
fear that doing so would drive down prices, and were
cutting the taxes of their wealthiest rather than
seeking to redistribute their excess millions of dollars
of personal income." If the story were told that way
every day, the goodness of human beings would rebel
quickly against these social systems that made all this
suffering possible, suffering far, far, far in excess of
all the suffering caused by tsunamis and other natural
disasters.
This is not to minimize the terrible tragedy that has
occurred in Southeast Asia -- but to remind us that terrible
tragedies happen every day. And for some reason, disasters
that have human causes seem to get smaller headlines and
less attention than those caused by nature. Why?
If we can raise tens of millions of dollars in a few weeks
from governments and private donations for the relief of one
natural disaster, why can't we devote proportional effort
and resources to the ongoing treatable problem of childhood
diseases and malnutrition? Why do we allow ten million
children to die every year, when it's not necessary?
And now the point that especially concerns us at the
Center for Responsible
Nanotechnology: what will happen when molecular
manufacturing gives us the capability to relieve suffering
on a far greater scale than we could today (if we wanted
to)? How will those potentially world-changing benefits be
distributed? When it becomes possible to radically reduce
poverty, to end starvation and hunger, to stamp out almost
all infectious diseases, will we do it? Or will only the
relatively few gain the advantages that nanotechnology can
offer?
If the lessons of today are any indication, we'll need to
make some big changes. Otherwise, it seems the gap between
the haves and the have-nots may grow rapidly wider. If we
want something different for our future, we should start
planning for it now.
Mike Treder is a fellow of the IEET, and the Executive Director of the non-profit
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, an organization working to raise awareness of the issues presented by advanced nanotechnology.
IEET Blog