A response to Niger Innis and Paul Driessen on the risk of malaria in Africa.
Since when is my neighbor’s right to good health my obligation? For that matter, how can any of us have a "right" to good health? When I contract the flu, develop a debilitating neurological disorder, accidentally lose a limb, or get cancer, just who has violated my health rights? Would that be everyone else, and may I expect some compensation toward restoring it? By making health a right and an obligation on others (societies or governments), that is what we prescribe.
In their article, “Human Rights that Really Matter,” Paul Driessen and Niger Innis inform us of the deplorable condition of two-billion humans in terms of a ‘rights violation.’ I applaud Mr. Driessen and Mr. Innis' humanitarianism and sentiment, but find their logic misapplied. I have no argument that we ought to pay attention to this health problem, but it is a different matter altogether to suggest, as they do, that we somehow violate the rights of others by withholding largesse. The charity and compassion of others is not something any of us has a G-d-given right to. They are merely something that makes all of us better people. Moreover, they downplay real human-rights violations as less onerous than this particular violation, something I fail to appreciate. Not that I think the CIA is guilty as accused; rather, it is preposterous to characterize a global health concern as an "atrocity" on a par with (or more atrocious than) the torture of human beings, no matter how much liberals torture the definition of torture. Perhaps, it is because it affects billions and torture only affects millions. Well, just about everyone gets the flu. Does that make the flu a still more heinous crime?
Health is not a legal right, but we, individually, have a right to pursue the best healthcare we can afford. If some lunatics have obstructed the eradication of malaria elsewhere, then they put all of us at risk. I agree with the authors that this is a bad thing. However, in free societies, everyone has a right to his own opinion and to act on it to the degree they violate no one else’s rights. In this case, the difference lies in the passive nature of the actions taken. If I poison your well, then I have violated your rights and should be punished. If I fail to act to prevent your well from being poisoned by some natural catastrophe, then I have not. And, if I refuse to do business with you because I don’t like the way you cleaned up your well by dumping chemicals in it I suspect may leach into my well or wipe out some submicron-size species I believe critical to the preservation of life on earth (with or without good reason), I am still within my rights and have done nothing to violate your rights. That is, in effect, what the organizations cited did. They withheld their commerce and charity from countries with whom they disagree. Of course, they have also caused many oblivious countrymen to participate in their stinginess and short-sightedness, but that doesn’t alter the ethical situation. And, they may have exacerbated a health problem by distracting us from it or garnered our unwitting complicity. But, the worst we can accuse them of is stupidity and cupidity.
Cutting off U.S. aid to poor countries does not constitute a violation of the rights of billions of people in those countries. If one year I give money to a charitable foundation, am I forever after obliged to ante up? If that is the case, why would I ever put myself in the position by making a contribution? What if I decide my money is being squandered or not reaching those it is supposed to help (instead going into the coffers of warlords who oppress their people)? Aren’t I then morally obligated to change the paradigm that enables this to happen? Even should I simply decide I have been generous enough long enough, I am within my rights to change my mind; and there is no moral requirement I continue a largesse so many have come to depend on and believe I now owe them. Rather, I have been eminently generous and should be applauded for the good I have done.
Finally, I believe congress makes its budget decisions on more than the shrill obfuscations of a few lunatics. Yes, they lend their weight, but I suspect 435 congressmen and 100 senators each have agendas of their own, have other demands on the same money, and are influenced by a multiplicity of promoters. Thus, the decision to curtail spending on this can’t be laid entirely at the feet of a bunch of rabid kooks. Even if it is, it is not because they have too much say; it is because ordinary, rational people don’t say enough.
Rather than argue we are guilty of “intolerable human-rights violations,” argue instead that: compassion and charity for others is in our own enlightened self-interest, failing to eradicate malaria now exposes our children to a later pandemic on this continent, healthy neighbors make good neighbors and improve the global bottom-line, nations ravaged by disease make poor markets for our exports and are a burden on our budget, etc. I am sure you can think of other advantages to addressing the problem that don’t devolve into castigating and guilt-sowing. Assert the positives and leave off the negativity and, I assure you, you’ll get a better response to the proposal. Just don’t turn this into one more rights-based obligation with legal trappings we will be forced into paying forever … please!
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Response from Paul Driessen & Niger Innis:
Robert Stapler’s response to our recent article (“Human rights that really matter”) completely misconstrues what we said. According to his interpretation, we are suggesting that Americans “somehow violate the rights of others by withholding largess.” That’s not what we said, or meant.
The United States is spending money on malaria control — vast sums, in fact: $80 million this year; $100 million next year. At the very least, we should demand that this money not be devoted to contractors, conferences and programs that keep most of our “largesse” right here in the Washington, DC area, instead of going overseas to battle malaria. We should demand that it not be spent on programs that perpetuate and exacerbate a massive epidemic that is sickening and killing countless fathers, mothers and children every year.
Our tax money should be spent on commodities that actually reduce malaria — especially on DDT, other insecticides and modern artemisinin-based drugs that prevent and cure this disease. But for years USAID (and the WHO and other agencies) have refused to do this. Worse, they have imposed policies, rules and constraints that prevent countries from using these weapons. On a number of occasions they and the EU have actually threatened to impose trade or aid sanctions on countries that dare to say they intend to use DDT to control this serial killer disease.
The predictable result is that tens of millions have died.
These agencies have known all this for years. They’ve known the drugs they were prescribing and providing were no longer effective. They’ve known that bed nets reduce malaria by maybe 20% — compared to 75% with DDT. They’ve known DDT does not have the negative health and environmental effects that activists claim it does — and causes no environmental harm when it is simply sprayed on the walls of houses. They’ve known the United States and Europe used DDT and other insecticides to eradicate malaria. They’ve known malaria rates have been going UP, ever since DDT was banned and they started pushing their politically correct “solutions.”
But now, from the safety and comfort of their malaria-free offices, they impose anti-insecticide ideologies, with little regard for the consequences. Mr. Stapler argues that they have a right to their opinions, that the effects are only passive in nature. We disagree, and wonder if he’d feel the same way if his own child were the victim of such callous quackery — and he had no access to a different physician.
These bureaucrats are doctors for the world’s poor. They are supposed to obey the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Yet, they are withholding effective treatment, offering snake oil, and condemning billions to suffering and millions to death. They want full power over these programs, and over people’s lives, but they refuse to be held to any standards of accountability or liability.
This, in our view, is a serious human rights violation. No amount of disinterested philosophical musings, or appeals to “enlightened self-interest,” by people not faced with real life-or-death disasters, can alter this fact. And yes, we do view this bureaucratic misfeasance and malfeasance as a far more serious violation than secret jails, sleep deprivation, forcing terrorists to accept female guards or even “waterboarding” them. (We did not advocate “torture” in our commentary and do not do so now.)
If we ensure that US taxpayer money is spent wisely and appropriately, we can largely eliminate malaria in these countries whose corrupt dictators and Swiss bank accounts are absorbing billions in US and global aid money. People will become healthy enough to work, and their countries will be better able to fight their own disease battles in the future.
Thankfully, the unconscionable situation we described may already be changing. There are suggestions that USAID is implementing new policies that reflect our advice. If true, that would be a fantastic development that Mr. Stapler himself would applaud.
– Paul Driessen and Niger Innis, December 21, 2005
rstapler@aceweb.com
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