Left I on the News

Here's something I wrote in September, 2003:

The U.S. has started (although not yet finished) two wars and killed tens of thousands of people pursuing its "war on terrorism." Is terrorism the #1 problem facing humanity? You would certainly get that idea listening to George Bush, or the U.S. media for that matter.

Here are some random facts I scrounged from the web. This is a table I would love to see someone with more time and expertise expand on, in order to paint a fuller picture, but here's my start:

• Hunger-related deaths - 9,000,000/year
• Diarrhea - 1,500,000/year
• Traffic accidents - 1,000,000/year
• Terrorism - <5,000/year (much less)

Imagine a world in which several hundred billion dollars were spent on public health or nutrition instead of war. Instead of killing thousands of innocent people, millions of lives could be saved (and, quite probably, the threat from terrorism reduced at the same time). If only Halliburton were in the health-care business.

And here's the latest addition to that list: "An estimated 388 million people will die from chronic disease worldwide over the next 10 years, according to World Health Organisation figures," with many of those 39 million deaths a year attributable to preventable causes such as obesity (the focus of this particular study). "Insufficient physical exercise is a risk factor in many chronic diseases and is estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide each year." Remarkably, the study predicts that "obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life expectancy since data collecting began in 1900."