Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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Best of Luck
- David Carvel (12 March 2005)
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A ‘genu robustum’ to the demonic power of US freedom
- Mark Struthers (16 March 2005)
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Re: A ‘genu robustum’ to the demonic power of US freedom
- Noel B Thomas (17 March 2005)
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Martha Stewart and 13th Editor
- Jay Ilangaratne (17 March 2005)
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Re: Martha Stewart and 13th Editor
- Mark Struthers (18 March 2005)
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David Carvel, GP Biggar ML12 6BE, UK
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I am not sure Fiona Godlee necessarily would wish to be informed/reminded that she is the "13th editor" of the BMJ. Kamran may have been "acting editor" but I feel has "played the role" very well. Best of luck to you both. Competing interests: Not normally superstitious. |
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Mark Struthers, General Practitioner Bedfordshire, UK. mark.struthers@which.net
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It was percipient of Kamran Abbasi, in his last ‘Editor’s Choice’ (as editor) to publicise Maurice King’s views on Africa’s population entrapment. ‘The Commission for Africa’ lyrically declares, “all must immediately begin the journey that leads us to the ultimate common destination of a more equitable world.” The Commission forgets the demographic work of Maurice King, the US views on equity in world trade and the American taboo on Africa’s disentrapment. Tony Blair was wrong about Africa. Africa is not the scar on the conscience of the world. As pop star Sir Bob Geldorf said, “Africa is a living wound”. It is the US that keeps it festering – but that’s taboo. A community is demographically trapped, according to Maurice King, “if it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem (too many people and not enough land), - and there is nowhere for people to go, - and the economy produces too few exports to exchange for food and other essentials. What happens then is abject poverty, stunting, starvation, and population-driven violence.” In 1948, George Kennan at the US Department of State said, “We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment.” The US citizen burns twice as much fossil fuel as the European and at least 20 times as much as anyone in the developing world. Americans resent criticism of the lifestyle they expect to maintain in the future and won’t discuss Africa’s disentrapment – it has become taboo. But we’re all in it together, in one world, North and South, East and West, even the Americans. Disentrapment in the South can only take place as part of a campaign for sustainable lifestyles and reduced resource consumption in the North. The South has to reduce its fertility – as China has done with a one-child policy – and the North has to play ball on resources. Obviously happy with China’s population policies in China, the US is now threatened by China’s recent rapid economic expansion. However, the US deeply resents China’s consequent increased fossil fuel requirements - and controlling China’s resource consumption was the main reason for the war on Iraq of course. There is silence on Africa and its population entrapment - it’s taboo. There is a solution and Maurice King has the answer. “Genu robustum ad inguen gentes superantium acerrime applicandum” ‘The current superpower needs a bloody good knee to the geopolitical crotch’ from the rest of the world. This would be painful and a deserved psychological affront. But in the end a ‘Genu robustum…’ is harmless: the testes slip out of the way, and the anterior urethra remains intact! Please see: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic.disentrapment/Chapter29Demons.htm#Genurobustum I trust that the campaign of Maurice King v American taboos will be included in the BMJ theme issue scheduled for September. May Professor King win a robust debate for the betterment of all humankind - by kicking the US where it hurts. The theme issue on China should be interesting too. Source: Maurice King. Primary Mother Care and Population. Spiegel Press, Stamford, UK 2003. Chapter 29 ‘The population demons’ And http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/326/7387/507#30178 Competing interests: None declared |
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Noel B Thomas, GP (NHS) Maesteg CF34 9AL
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After a lifetime of service in Africa Maurice King has tried to awaken us to the demographic catastrophe that stalks that continent. To little effect. Demographers dismiss him sniffily. But then a demographer is said to be a person who, thrown naked from a plane at 20,000 feet, bemoans only the absence of an altimeter. Mark Struthers points to US government involvement in the wall of silence that has been erected around King's thesis. Alarm at the nature of that involvement and it's dangerous implications may be dismissed as the natterings of insular GPs like Struthers and I. Wonderful if that were so. Read and ponder over " America Alone, the Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order ", Halper and Clarke, C.U.P 2004. Try the current issue of the New York Review of Books, and read Bill Moyers' recent lecture at Havard Medical School, on what he feels is happening in his country. He begins, "There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality.This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis." Maurice King deserves all the support we can give him. For the sake of Africa and her people. Noel Thomas Competing interests: None declared |
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Jay Ilangaratne, Founder Medical-Journals.com
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As he comes to the end of his tenure as Editor, I wonder what made Dr Abbasi compare the same with Martha Stewart's release from prison. Is he suggesting that being the Editor of the BMJ is as bad as spending five months in an American jail? Perhaps,this is something the 13th incoming Editor should take note of. Competing interests: None declared |
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Mark Struthers, GP and prison medical officer Bedfordshire, UK. mark.struthers@which.net
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At any time there are around 2 million US citizens doing time in American prisons. An unknown number of non-US citizens are being held in America’s gulag abroad. Some of them are tortured. I doubt that any of these people would regard their sentence as some sort of ‘fun’ - even Martha Stewart, permitted another taste of US freedoms last week. However, while honourably conducting peacekeeping operations in the Middle East, Kamran Abbasi has also presided over draconian cuts in rapid response debate at e-BMJ. To genuflect to American phantom fears and general paranoia is no way to make the BMJ a lively journal for world consumption – and keep the patience of the reader outside America. Competing interests: None declared |
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