population - Rainbow Reporter

Rainbow Reporter

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Vimu Subscription

Free condoms in Beijing

August 16th 2008 01:55

Red is such a Chinese colour

How AIDS has taught the Chinese some good sense on homosexuality and public health - unlike many other countries.

Jin Dapeng, director of Beijing's municipal health bureau, said the bureau had distributed 400,000 free condoms in over 400 hotels in the Olympic city in a bid to raise awareness of safe sex and AIDS prevention.

But the condoms have only been placed in rooms in hotels rated three stars and above. These are the hotels used by foreigners, wealthy locals, and party members - who one can safely assume could afford to buy their own.

Jin also claimed that “thousands” of Olympic volunteers had been trained in AIDS prevention for the Olympic Games, and that 250,000 free pamphlets had been distributed.

I guess that takes care of the poor folks.

However, we must acknowledge that China is one of the most repsonsible third-ish world countries when it comes to HIV Aids, unlike it's old formerly communist ally Russia.

This has been forced on the country by simple practical considerations.

China woke up to the fact that you cannot operate a one child policy in a country which prefers male children and not end up with a surplus of boys, and furthermore, that a very high percentage of those boys are not going to be able to find wives, even if they want them.

As a result, China has a thriving gay scene, with many men who might formerly have disappeared into the marriage closet having little choice but to embrace their homosexuality more or less openly.

That in turn means that the country has had to downgrade the stigma of homosexuality in order to prevent the spread of HIV. Contrast that with the soaring HIV rates in countries where they refuse to inform, treat, or even recognise the existence of men who have sex with men (except perhaps to hang them).

It also neatly demonstrates that most policies may have outcomes other than the ones they were designed to have.. Sooner than almost anyone else the Chinese, an intensely practical people at heart, realised that in an overpopulated world, and with HIV about, it makes sense to accept homosexuality rather than try to drive it underground or stamp it out.

That only creates an untreatable population who, because of the stigma of homosexuality, also have sex with / marry women and hence spread the disease into the majority population.

As a post-religious society, the ancient imperatives to have lots of babies because lots of them would die before reaching adulthood (which saturates outdated religious texts like the bible and the koran) could be replaced by a more responsible modern approach more in accordance with reality.

Unfortunately it's a lot easier to change a totalitarian society than a democratic one, where consent of the ruled must first be obtained. But we have no option but to try.

Vote

Shared on

Rainbow Reporter

Doug Pollard Friends

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: religion, gay rights, HIV, AIDS, gay politics, sport, population, world politics

Email this Post to a Friend

Let Us Prey

July 20th 2008 00:06

By CVRaveOn @ photoshoptalent

We turned ourselves from prey to predator, but at what cost?

I’ve been reading some of the more apocalyptic websites scattered around the net and discovered a whole network of extreme websites arguing that we don’t have to worry about global warming, environmental degradation and so forth because “the Lord can clean the air with the hem of his robe” if and when he so chooses, thus neatly absolving us from any responsibility for our own predicament.

On the other hand there are those who think mankind is responsible for the fix we’re in, and therefore responsible for cleaning up the mess, too. (I’m not going to waste time on those who deny there is any mess at all).

How did we get here? Because we didn’t like being prey, and used human ingenuity to turn ourselves into predators instead.

It’s an arms race. Prey animals that are good at evading predators breed. Prey animals are usually fast and prolific breeders. Prey numbers increase.

Predators tend to be slow breeders with small families. When prey is abundant, predator numbers rise. Predators are also evolving, so they’re gradually getting better at catching prey. Prey numbers fall.

The balance shifts. Now there are not enough prey to feed all the predators. They either starve, move somewhere else, or switch to another prey species if one is available. Fewer of the original prey are taken, so their numbers begin to rise – and the cycle begins again.

Humans are a different order of predator, because we’re not a natural predator. We began as prey. We’re self-taught predators – and we didn’t do a very good job of it.

For a start, we don’t just prey on one or two species, we prey on a huge range of species. We’re not just hunting in a few habitats. Thanks to technology, we can hunt in many habitats. And our cleverness allows us to hunt whole species out of existence.

At first, and for quite a long time, humans remained subject to the usual predator-prey law. In times of feast, we flourished, in times of famine, we died. The natural mechanism controlled our numbers. But we don’t like that, we don’t accept that, and work diligently to overcome anything that kills us.

We have become better and better predators. We extend our reach by using technology. And we have over-ridden the fail-safes that used to keep us in our natural place, principally war, starvation, disease and death.

Let’s start with starvation. Take commercial fishing as an example.

In the past, when fish became few, fishermen would beach their boats and either starve, or find another way to feed themselves. Now, they buy technological devices that allow them to see where the fish are, and carry on fishing. They fish in weather that used to keep them in port. They fish species they couldn’t reach before. They fish from bigger ships that can stay at sea taking prey for longer.

The world over, fish stocks are collapsing, because of modern technology. Unlike any other predator, humans can hunt a prey species to extinction. It is now likely that some prey fish, such as cod, will never recover.

In the past, the natural cycle repaired the damage. But we have distorted the cycle. When we move on, we may not have left enough breeding stock alive. We have staved off hunger by extending the predator-prey cycle, but at the cost of wiping out prey species.

Another fail-safe is disease, most dramatically, plagues and epidemics, which as recently as the beginning of the 20th century, took huge numbers. But medical science, and in particular, antibiotics, has temporarily checked many diseases.

One again we successfully turned ourselves from prey to predator. Having been prey to bacteria for centuries, we went on the attack with antibiotics, and wiped out many. But not completely. More and more bacteria are becoming immune, so that we now have some diseases for which once again we have no cure, such as the resistant staph infections, the flesh-eating bugs and so on, and must rely on our natural defences, our immune systems.

Once again we extended the predator-prey cycle, but did not abolish it. We have never managed to get a handle on some diseases, especially viruses. We can’t cure a cold, only endure it. We can’t cure or find a vaccine for AIDS.

We haven’t abolished death, though by prolonging our lives we have increased our demand on the earths resources.

The final failsafe is combat. Sometimes we prey on one another, in what we call war, for resources such as land (for hunting and agriculture or resources).

Wars kept our numbers down, until we got too good at them. Then, as with hunger and disease, we decided we’d better try and abolish, or at least control it. After the two world wars, we have tried to keep wars small and manageable. We won’t use nukes. We try to prevent genocide. We send in peacekeepers.

There is now only one means left to prevent our extinction.

In the past, we could appeal to God, Nature (or nowadays, the ecosystem), to put things right, to restore the balance. That was all very well when we were just another ape and fitted into the natural order. But we have insisted on taking ourselves out of the natural order. Now it’s all down to us.

We could stop interfering – at considerable cost. We could go ‘back to nature’, let famines run their course, not send food aid, claim it’s God’s will that some (but not us, of course) should starve (that statement is meant to be ironic, btw).

We could unshackle war, refuse to send in peackeepers, turn a blind eye to genocide. Actually, some would say we’re not too bad at this one (irony again).

We could refuse medical assistance and drugs, either directly or indirectly, by pricing them out of reach (we’re not too bad at this either). Though to be ethically correct, we should also refuse to use them ourselves.

Some will say we should do nothing, because this is all God’s will. As I mentioned, one very scary website (no, I’m not going to tell you where it is), says that if God wants clean air, he will provide it, and if he doesn’t, we just have to put up with it. Nothing we can do about it besides pray – and go on preying as usual.

Others say, not to worry, human ingenuity will save us, it’s always managed before. But since it was human ingenuity that created this situation, that doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope.

Having elected ourselves the managing directors of the planet, subverting nature (or God, if you prefer), we are finding that we’re not very good at it yet, and we may not get good enough, fast enough, to save ourselves.

When we’ve eaten all the fish, and the birds, and the mammals, what will human ingenuity come up with? Soylent Green?

Vote

Shared on

Rainbow Reporter

Doug Pollard Friends

Comments (1)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: religion, ecology, population, world politics

Email this Post to a Friend

[ Rainbow Reporter Home ] [ Create A New Post ]

Doug Pollard's Blogs

I have no other blogs :(

Moderated by Doug Pollard

Orble

Orble Homepage

Start an Orble Blog

Subscribe to DailyOrble

Receive a daily e-mail of Orble's most popular posts