Last week, I discussed what I thought were major problems in the world today—AIDS, malaria, abortion/infanticide, and the Middle Eastern Conflict. Of these four problems, I was debating on whether to work on the malaria problem, or the abortion/infanticide problem. However, as I pondered these issues, I reflected on my plans to be an obstetrician/gynecologist. I could impact my world by being a good doctor who works to best service my patients and their unborn children. I will help my patients in the best way I can while being an advocate for alternatives to abortion such as adoption. Although I feel very strongly about abortion and infanticide, I really don’t feel like devoting a semester to coming up with a project about how to end it. I would rather just try to have an impact on my patient population once I become a doctor. Abortion is a very popular subject in today’s society, and I do not want to pick such an overdone topic. Of course, any effort to end abuses against children, both born and unborn, is a truly noble effort. However, there are nationwide campaigns against abortion, and I believe I will simply echo those efforts if I tackle this problem.
Another reason I do not want to deal with abortion is because I really have no solutions as to how I would end it. Making abortion illegal is not an effective solution to this problem. If laws are passed that make abortion illegal, I believe that women will just turn to unqualified, unaccredited medical practitioners to perform the procedure. In this scenario, not only is an unborn child dying, but the mother is also putting her life at a greater risk than normal by having an unqualified person perform the abortion. Perhaps implementing some kind of plan that focused on children from K-12 grades would be more effective in teaching them the value of all life, and how abortion is as much of a moral crime as killing a fully grown human. I am sure this plan would be met with resistance from NOW, ACLU, and other groups who are for abortion and against the death penalty (something I cannot understand), but they have their opinions, and I have mine.
As for the infanticide part of this problem, this campaign would center on China. But gee, they seem like a hard-headed government…I would have to come up with a plan that would change the government and the laws in place. Maybe a boycott on all Chinese products would have an effect. That plan would make shopping in America rather difficult, though. American companies would have to step up and manufacture more goods to take the place of China’s dominance in the trade market. Like I said, I’d rather not tackle this particular problem. It involves too many aspects of foreign policy, human rights, and the always uncontrollable factor of people, who are sometimes stubborn and set in their ways.
So, pray tell, what problem will I seek to solve? I think I will choose to solve, or at least treat, the malaria problem. Malaria is not often talked about in Western media. It is not really a problem in the U.S., or Europe, so these countries do not pay as much attention to it as they do to diseases like AIDS, or mad cow disease. My campaign would focus on making the general public of western and industrialized nations more aware of the worldwide impacts of the disease, and re-implement and restructure programs that were previously created to eradicate this disease.
The focus of increasing awareness of the disease would be to raise money and gin up interest in projects which would focus on areas of the world that suffer the greatest impact of malaria. These areas include Africa, the sub continent of India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Central and South America. With sufficient funding and personnel support, these areas of the world could receive help that would significantly reduce the deaths caused by this disease.
Right now, scientists around the world are searching for a vaccine against malaria. In my campaign, I would ask the government to increase funding for this research. I would also try to involve private businesses by having the government issue contracts with them to employ people to work on this problem. Sometimes, to me, it seems that private business and corporations get things done more efficiently, if they are given enough money. Governments tend to bring a lot of red tape into the picture, and they sometimes sacrifice efficiency for the sake of litigation and bureaucracy. Increased levels of funding for vaccine research would hopefully attract the most brilliant minds in the world to work on this problem, and to help them work more efficiently, they would work mainly in the private sector of business. However, this particular venture would have some sort of main office headed by the government that would stay in contact and lead, in a laissez-faire type of way, the various companies that were contracted to come up with a vaccine. Of course, a watch-dog committee would probably be needed to ensure that funding for this project was not being abused by the companies, and that progress was being made on finding a vaccine.
Now, this program sounds rather costly. I believe newly re-inaugurated President Bush just committed another billion or so to fight AIDS in Africa. I wonder what exactly that money goes to. Billion sounds like such a high number; maybe it was few million. Anyway, my point is that this program, like everything in life, is going to cost. When governments find they need money for a new program, they use taxpayers’ money. I don’t want to raise taxes on Americans, so I would go after the U.N. They have rather questionable fund management practices as of late, and I don’t see what they are accomplishing with their funds except holding meetings, so I would confiscate their money, and have them focus their energy and allocate their funds to this project. All the illegal profits from the oil for food program with Iraq would be confiscated and put into this project. The U.N. would use their money to fund this project, and they would use their people to carry it out in the affected areas of the world that need relief. As it seems that they are currently a rather irrelevant and ineffective world body, this project could give them a new purpose. When it is successfully executed, it could be an accomplishment they could point to with pride.
Perhaps this sounds like an infeasible project. The U.N. would not easily relinquish their money, and the U.S. government may have a hard time dealing in a laissez-faire manner with private companies who are doing research with their funds. However, the awareness part of the program, to increase awareness of the disease is a good starting point. People need to understand that malaria outranks AIDS as being a leading cause of death, and that every 30 seconds, a child in Africa dies from the disease. Pop stars need to have concerts benefiting this research just as much as any other research on other world-wide diseases.
To scale down this project to a more feasible scope, I would start here on campus by having clubs such as the biology and chemistry clubs have fund raisers and seminars that make students on campus more aware of the disease and its effects. Also, I would ask department administrators that are involved in research programs for students to look into steering some of the students toward malaria research and internships. Doing research on malaria is a great way to gain an increased level of knowledge of the disease. Also, if more students, during their education at Xavier University, work in research studying how this disease operates and can be eliminated, there is a higher chance that they will go on to be scientists and experts in this particular field. In essence, this early exposure to malaria research could produce the research team that discovers a vaccine for the disease.
As far as implementing this project off campus, the Center for Disease Control has a history of working on malaria and supporting efforts to eliminate the disease. Right now, the campaign has stagnated. If they could be prompted to restart their campaign of eliminating malaria, they could collaborate with campuses nationwide to involve students in research on the disease, and they could get other areas of the government behind the campaign. They could also spearhead a commercial endeavor to increase awareness about the disease and its devastating effects in other countries.
Through this campaign, I would hope to open people’s eyes to the seriousness of malaria, and let them know that it can actually be cured with the right medication. If all the millions of people in the world had access to the right medicine, millions of lives would be saved. All that is needed is funding, efficient administration, and interested people. And perhaps an army that the U.N. could use to enforce their mission of mercy in politically troubled areas of the world…a girl can dream, right?

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 30th, 2005 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Project Progress, Week 03: Your Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.