PHA-Exchange> Rebuttal to 'How Vitamins Could Change the World'

[Aviva]

People are poor because they are stupid. What next?

Let us be very careful about the lessons that the World Economic Forum
draws
from the recent UNICEF study on vitamin deficiency and health. 

Victim blaming reaches the height of absurdity with this "Behave
Yourselves" approach to health which would have us believe that people
are ill because their behaviour is wrong or inadequate. The rather
transparent purpose of this theory is to avoid examining the root or 
structural causes of poverty - and the resulting poor health status of 
the poor.     

Now we are being told that 2 billion people live in poverty because
their IQs are low. Apparently "2 billion people are consigned to lives 
below their physical and mental potential" because they are 
malnourished and the answer is to throw some vitamin and mineral 
supplements at them.  

Once again, public health logic and history is being reversed. We have
known for decades that malnutrition is bad for all aspects of healthy
development including intellectual development. And perhaps it is 
important to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms involved 
through studies such as these.

However, in terms of implications for action, let us be very clear. Two
billion people live in poverty because of man-made (and I use that term
advisedly) not god-given economic and political arrangements on this
earth.
Malnutrition is one of various elements of miserable living conditions,
others being cold, discomfort, filth, unsafe surroundings, chronic
insecurity and violence. Another element is stunted development
--physical and intellectual. 

Logic requires that we seek common underlying causes for these
phenomena.
The underlying cause is a grotesquely unfair economic and political
world order. Two billion people live in poverty AND 2 billion people are
consigned to lives below their potential, because wealth and power are
concentrated among a miniscule and very discreet minority. 

Enough diversions. People (not stakeholders) want food (not
micronutrients); they want water (not Oral Rehydration Therapy)they 
want a decent income (not microcredit); they want work or a livelihood 
(not an income-generating activity); they want democracy (not 
participation in good governance); they want a life (not a 
microexistence). Whatever people want, they and not the World Economic 
Forum will decide. 

We have heard the WEF message loud and clear. It is not unfamiliar. It
is yet another diversionary tactic in a last ditch attempt to maintain 
the status quo. Of course people want the right quantities of vitamins 
and minerals, but they want it in the context of a decent, full, 
dignified human life not in the context of a strategy which says "Here 
are some micronutrients in exchange for the right to continue our 
fabulously profitable exploitation of your human and material 
resources".       

A.K.

Note: I can hardly agree more with this position.
Claudio Schuftan