Watching the World
A Vatican “Contradiction”
“Holiness, why does the Vatican still sell cigarettes?” a priest asked John Paul II during the pope’s yearly audience with the clergy of Rome. He continued: “Besides damaging health, this commerce contradicts your continual appeals in favor of the protection of health and our pastoral activity.” For Ugo Mesini, the 76-year-old priest, the fact that the Vatican sells tobacco and cigarettes containing the statement “smoking is damaging to your health” is a “counter-testimony” and a “contradiction” to the pope’s message. As reported in the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, the pope replied that on the matter of tobacco, his “conscience is clear.” He promised, though, to speak about the Vatican’s cigarette sales with the overseeing cardinal.
“Satan’s Century”
“At its worst, this has been Satan’s century,” says a New York Times editorial. “In no previous age have people shown so great an aptitude, and appetite, for killing millions of other people for reasons of race, religion or class.” As evidence, it cites the Auschwitz death camp that came to light 50 years ago. The liberators of this German concentration camp found “slave laborers thin as matchsticks, children chewed up in demented laboratory experiments, and the remains of four gas chambers and crematorium ovens that once claimed 20,000 victims a day,” the editorial says, and scorched in their memory are “the bodies heaped like kindling, the 43,000 pairs of shoes, the piles of human hair.” It adds: “To this day, Auschwitz defeats sense and comprehension.”
Food Shortages Expected
“Unless there is a major investment in transforming technology, we are in for very severe problems,” says Ismail Serageldin, a development expert from Egypt and a vice president of the World Bank. He is speaking of the increasing need for basic foods—a need that is already outstripping supply in certain parts of Asia and Africa, where population growth is the fastest. “We will have two billion more [people] in the next 20 years no matter what, and 95 percent of them will be in the poorest countries,” he said. Although dramatic increases in basic crop yields have been realized in the past 25 years, additional gains are getting increasingly more difficult to achieve because of environmental and biological limits. Gains are also threatened by more aggressive pests and plant diseases and by degradation of the land. Worldwatch Institute concurs. “Evidence that the world is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable can be seen in shrinking fish catches, falling water tables, declining bird populations, record heat waves and dwindling grain stocks, to name just a few,” it says in its State of the World 1995 report.
Age and Diet
Some researchers now say that people over 50 may not need to worry about the added weight of middle-age spread, reports The Times of London. For instance, David Dickinson, editor of the Consumers’ Association magazine, says: “Advice that everyone with a higher ratio of height to weight is too fat and should slim is mistaken. Slimming can damage your health quite independently of its effect on the height-to-weight ratio. Most people over 50 do not need to slim.” Nutrition and Dietetics professor Tom Sanders explains: “The health risks of obesity are often exaggerated. It does increase the risk of diabetes and arthritis, but the health risks of plumpness are negligible. It may even offer advantages to women.” And Dr. Martin Wiseman of the Department of Health advises: “At any age it is important not to be too fat or too thin. Eating sensibly and keeping active is the best way of achieving this but as we get older being plump is better than being thin.”
Fortunate Accident?
A container filled with 29,000 plastic toys—ducks, turtles, beavers, and frogs—was washed overboard from a ship in a North Pacific storm in January 1992. This accident has proved to be a boon to scientists. Unlike the 61,000 Nike athletic shoes spilled two years earlier, the lightweight toys bob almost completely on top of the water and are driven by wind as well as by ocean currents. This has allowed oceanographers studying the North Pacific tides to include wind effect in their studies. The first of the toys started appearing on beaches in southeast Alaska some ten months after the spill, and 400 more hit the coast along a 530-mile [850 km] stretch of the Gulf of Alaska during the following ten months. The small toys, no more than five inches [13 cm] in length, were being shipped from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington, U.S.A. It is expected that some will eventually pass through the Bering Strait, make their way in ice packs across the Arctic Ocean, and end up in the North Atlantic.
Partial Victory Over Polio
Paralytic poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio, is said to have killed or disabled over 10 million people down through history. It has been depicted in carvings dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Striking mostly the young, it can cause paralysis or death by asphyxiation. Now, according to the Pan American Health Organization, an arm of the World Health Organization, polio has been eradicated in the Western Hemisphere. The last reported case was of a Peruvian child in 1991, who survived with damage to one leg. However, unlike smallpox, which was eradicated worldwide in 1977, the polio virus is still found in other regions and could possibly be reintroduced into the Americas by immigration and travel. The last complete report showed fewer than 10,000 cases for the year. Until fully conquered, immunization against the disease must continue, say the health experts.
Taiwan’s Orangutan Quandary
Authorities in Taiwan face an unusual problem: What to do with the orangutans that became fashionable as pets in 1986 after one was featured on a television show as an “ideal companion.” As reported in New Scientist, some one thousand young orangutans were taken into the country and sold as pets. Now, as the animals are reaching sexual maturity and becoming aggressive and unpredictable, hundreds are being abandoned by their owners. Because they are solitary animals and do not face the problem of integrating into a social group as do chimpanzees and gorillas, domesticated orangutans can be returned to the wild. However, the pets have picked up human diseases, such as hepatitis B and tuberculosis, and could threaten the already endangered wild orangutan population. Many may have to be destroyed, which some consider kinder than having them live out their lives in a bleak animal shelter.
Toronto’s Street Kids
Officials say that up to 10,000 street kids pass through the city of Toronto on a regular basis. “The number has skyrocketed in the last decade,” reports The Toronto Star. “Most street kids tell of problems at home, ranging from abuse to parental rules they refuse to live by. They tell of a world of drugs, violence and prostitution, and endless hours of idle boredom.” It is estimated that 54 percent of Toronto’s street kids engage in prostitution. One in five girls will get pregnant, 80 percent use drugs or alcohol, 67 percent have been abused, and 43 percent have attempted suicide. “If anyone tells you street life is glamorous and exciting, don’t believe it. It’s like death, it’s not living at all,” claims one youth. “Some find no way out of a continuing life of drugs, prostitution and escalating crime; others, older and wiser, look toward getting an education and a job,” adds the Star.
Save That Tooth!
If a tooth gets knocked out by accident, don’t throw it away, advises the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter. “Research shows that you have a 50% chance of a successful reimplantation if you get to the dentist within 30 minutes.” What should you do? Try to stay as calm as possible. Hold the tooth by the crown and rinse it gently in lukewarm water—do not scrub it. Call your dentist to tell him of your visit and, unless he tells you otherwise, insert the tooth gently back into its socket. Bite down firmly on a clean cloth or handkerchief for five minutes to seat the tooth, and keep biting with moderate pressure until you see the dentist. If you can’t immediately reinsert the tooth, keep it bathed in saliva in your mouth. For children who are so young that they may swallow the tooth, place it in a plastic bag or a cup and immerse it in milk or water containing a pinch of salt. Even if a longer time has elapsed, it is best to go to the dentist and let him decide what to do. “Saving a tooth is definitely worth the effort,” says the report.