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 former Managing Director of the IEET.