Today, while browsing Mother Jones's website, I stumbled upon an article discussing a discovery made by researchers from New Zealand, which in many areas is deeply impoverished, showing that in an overwhelming amount of cases, kids raised on livestock farms, in particular farms that raise chicken, unfortunately end up with various blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma at some time during their lives at a far higher rate that people who were not in the same living situations. And since in the overwhelming amount of these cases, these children come from impoverished families with living conditions that often leave them in situations that result in these children consistently commingling with the animals exposing them to their waste and other viruses that livestock can cary. It causes me to dispair about how many different ways impoverished children are unavoidably exposed to so many harmful situations. It seems that in developing countries, there is no way to escape the unavoidable fate of poor health, unless someone can step in, and in some way, help pull them out of these conditions to give at least some of these children a fighting chance.
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/07/chickens-cancer
But how would people fix this? Naturally, there are many situations in many places where people are at risk to diseases, warfare, no education, and a variety of other debilitating conditions, and each situation requires a special plan to help bring people out of those poor conditions. What about in this particular case? Are the chickens the problem? Is it some sort of chemical that the farmers use? Does malnutrition and poverty have something to do with it? To find a solution, research must first be done and the exact causes identified, or else a lot of effort could be wasted fixing problems that don't exist.
ReplyDeleteLike misoc162 said, it's really hard to assess a bunch of different situations and come up with only one way to fix it. It really depends on each area. It's also difficult to assume what chemicals they would be using. Different areas can get different access to completely different chemicals in order to get a similar job done. Thus, money must be expended to search individually for a cause. There is no one catch-all solution here.
ReplyDeleteIt really depends on what the situation is. Without knowing what causes various blood cancers, it is hard to help those children. It is hard to say that chickens are cause of various blood cancers that children at those areas are probably just not getting enough health care or that people at those areas are just genetically more like to get blood cancers. Therefore, it is important to know what causes the blood cancers in those areas before taking an action.
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