Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gargoyle.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Extent of hunger in America Message-ID: <271@gargoyle.UUCP> Date: Tue, 10-Dec-85 20:57:24 EST Article-I.D.: gargoyle.271 Posted: Tue Dec 10 20:57:24 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Dec-85 22:28:40 EST Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 233 Xref: lsuc net.politics:2379 net.politics.theory:643 Summary: >> But millions of Americans *cannot* earn, beg, borrow, or steal even >> that much. They include children, the elderly, the mentally and >> physically ill, the disabled, and the unemployed. > > If this assertion is true, then you are right. This is the issue >under discussion. I doubt it. I see "Help wanted" signs screaming >from McDonald's and Burger King. There are lawns to mow, floors >to clean, invalids and babies to sit: jobs for adults and chil- >dren and old people. No, I DON'T want them to flock, cap in >hand, to ask for these jobs. I am glad they can refuse them. But, >dammit, why can't you admit the fact? I know, personally, people >living on SSI; they get adequate nutrition. I see some beggars, >but they are not mothers with emaciated babies; they are men, >usually alcoholics. Words are cheap. Show me. OK: visit one of the more than 50 soup kitchens in Boston that serve over 4,000 meals a day and ask the people who are in daily contact with the hungry. Call the Project Bread Hunger Hotline of the Paulist Center and explain to them that there are no chronically hungry people in Boston -- because these are the people who need to be told that they are mistaken, not us hardheads on the net. Tell them all they have to do is look up the help wanted ads in the Globe, and give everyone who shows up in the bread lines a job instead of a meal. > OK, this is Boston, and you say Mississipi is different. JoSH >has lived there, and he denies it. I know him from his postings; >why should I believe some unknown doctors more ? Of course: JoSH is an authority on the hunger situation in MS because he grew up there and you know him from the net. His testimony is to be preferred to that of Dr. Aaron Shirley, a Jackson pediatrician and president of the state medical association, who has extensively studied the hunger situation in his state and testified before Congress on the subject. >Why don't these hungry people move to a better place ? Haitians >do, braving high seas and immigration officials. Why not Mississi- >pians who don't face these obstacles ? Possibly because they are >*not* hungry ? Here is another area where you can perform a great service to the nation's poor. Visit Mississippi and explain to 85-year-old widows in wheelchairs that they would be better off if they moved to New York where the welfare benefits are higher, away from everything they know. Another place to visit is the Texas Valley, where you can explain (in Spanish) to numerous illiterates the benefits of moving to another state. Also schedule a stop at the Navajo reservation in Arizona. >How do I explain the reports [of hunger]? Well, there are powerful >interests involved here, political, departmental, professional and >economic. Do you expect hunger specialists to declare their job >redundant ? You haven't provided an explanation of the reports of hunger. You have only asserted that you are disinclined to believe them because "powerful interests" of some kind may account for the hunger reports. Presumably, a pediatrician who treats malnourished children doesn't want his job to become redundant, so he invents tales of thousands of malnourished children. Or something like that. >To the well-fed, many things are more important than food. Americans >I see are well-fed. No doubt. And the Americans you see are a representative sampling of the population, right? JoSH writes: >>The report of the Physician Task Force on Hunger in America, >>sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health, > >Listen, I hate to break it to you, but these guys existence >depends on maintaining a belief that there are problems out there. I am waiting for an explanation of how the existence of the medical and public health professions depends on the belief that the US has a serious hunger problem. >Why are socialists so ready to believe that people quit acting in their >own self-interest as soon as the word "public" appears in their title? I have seen no criticisms of the methodology, etc. of the Report -- which I would be very interested in seeing. All I have seen is the ad hominem argument that the Report is just what you'd expect coming from these guys. The authors of the Report include surgeons and pediatricians at major hospitals, deans of schools of public health and schools of nutrition, clergymen, and other well-known communist agitators. Among the local physicians participating in the field investigations was e.g., Irwin Rosenberg, M.D., Director, Clinical Nutrition Research Center and Professor of Medicine, Univ. of Chicago; President, American Society for Clinical Nutrition. A KGB agent, no doubt. What we are dealing with here on the net are some people who cannot accept facts that challenge their view of the world. Instead of reading *Hunger in America*, the Report of the Physician Task Force, as I recommended, and making an informed judgment of its validity, they attack its conclusions in advance of knowing anything about the extensive research from which those conclusions were derived. A profitable and enlightening discussion presupposes certain shared values and beliefs, such as honesty, a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and agreement on what constitutes a reasonable argument. Where these are lacking, discussion is fruitless. Accordingly I will restrict my discussions to people who I know share these values and beliefs. I hope to learn much from discussion with people who share a love of scholarship and philosophy. Let me end with some excerpts from the Physician Task Force Report. If you are annoyed or bored by talk about hunger in America, you may as well skip it. ________________ The huge, overwhelming complex of buildings known as Cook County Hospital is located right in the middle of Chicago, the nation's third-largest city. It is an unlikely place to find kwashiorkor and marasmus, the Third World diseases of advanced malnutrition and starvation, which were reported to us in south Texas. As our team of doctors listened, joined by the Administrator of the hospital and the Chief of Internal Medicine, Dr. Stephen Nightingale, we learned that these conditions do exist in urban America: "They say we don't see kwashiorkor and marasmus in this country, but we do. I see 15-20 cases every year in my hospital." The person speaking was Dr. Katherine K. Christoffel, Chair of the Committee on Nutrition of the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The hospital about which she spoke is Children's Memorial Hospital, where she is Attending Pediatrician in the Division of Ambulatory Services. Despite her impressive credentials, members of the visiting team of physicians remained skeptical until her report was corroborated by yet another Chicago doctor with his own impressive credentials and experience. Dr. Howard B. Levy is Chairman of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital.... A member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the AMA, Dr. Levy joined us to express concern about what he is seeing: "We too are seeing kwashiorkor and marasmus, problems which I have not seen since I was overseas. Malnutrition has clearly gone up in the last few years. We have more low-birth-weight babies. We are seeing so much TB that my house staff is no longer excited by it; it excites me that they are not excited by this trend." Dr. Levy underscored the significance of what he was reporting: "clear, measurable, methodological phenomena" which demonstrate that the health of his patients is getting worse. More and more patients, Dr. Levy observed, have inadequate money to purchase food necessary to prevent growth failure and other nutrition-related problems among the pediatric population. ... Cook County Hospital gives out food itself and is asked regularly for more by hungry patients. Dr. Nightingale, the Internal Medicine Chief, said that he admits 20 people a day whose problems stem from inadequate nutrition. Pediatric social worker Brenda Chandler has patients come to her saying, "Do you have anything I could eat?" Dietitian Mary Jo Davis sees hunger among "patients" who are not really admitted to the hospital. "Almost every day we have people looking around trying to find out where the hospital leaves its garbage," she reported. ... Betty Williams of Chicago United Charities placed the mounting hunger problem in a unique perspective: "Our agency is over 100 years old, and this period is as bad as many of us can recall." ... To respond to the increasing demand, the number of soup kitchens in the city jumped over 80% in the last two years, and now serve 11,500 meals a week. The number of church-related food pantries increased 45% in the same period of time. ... In southwest Chicago our inquiry into the situation faced by laid-off steelworkers at the Wisconsin Plant could have taken place at the Armco Plant in Houston. Frustrated and angry, unemployed workers and their families stand in lines for 5-pound block of cheese and a loaf of bread. Frank Lumkin, president of the Save Our Jobs Committee, explained the dimensions of the problem. "It's having 100 bags of food to give to the families and finding 500 people show up, already in line, at 7:00 a.m." ... The hungry in Chicago are the families seen by the Visiting Nurse Association, whose district offices have been forced to open food pantries to respond to the lack of food among their patients. "These babies are hungry," implored executive director Margaret Ahern. But, according to her, not only babies. She cited many instances of parents and the elderly also going hungry, some whose caloric intake is as low as 550 calories and 24 grams of protein. "In the prison camps of Germany," she noted, "the daily ration was 800 calories and 40 grams of protein." The hungry are the patients at the South Lawndale Health Center. The medical director, Dr. Alvarez, and the clinic staff report that health problems related to poor nutrition are not uncommon. Some 10% of their pediatric patients have iron-deficiency anemia, and pulmonary tuberculosis is seen in young people they serve, itself often a result of compromised nutrition. Health workers note that, when they do home visits, they find families unable to purchase adequate food. Children often consume only coffee and an egg for a meal. The hungry, according to other Chicago agencies, are the undocumented workers whose fear of being deported prevents their even standing in line for cheese. ... Hunger in Chicago is the faces, young and old, black and white, of people living on the margins, and many who live beyond the margins of a full stomach: --The 81-year-old man and his wife who come for a meal at the Uptown Ministries, who live on $293 monthly in social security benefits and $24 in food stamps. They eat mostly grits and oatmeal, sometimes rice and beans. ... --The patient in a hospital who, along with her three children, stuffed food into their mouths by hand. They had had nothing to eat for three days. --The mothers whom doctors find diluting their infant's formula in order to make it last the month. [testimony by Mary Jo Davis] ... "These people are human beings," Charles Betcher reminded us when we visited the soup kitchen at the Uptown Baptist Church. "You can't live long on two pieces of bread a day." ... It is perhaps what Jack Ramsey, director of Second Harvest, umbrella organization for food banks around the nation, had in mind when he observed: "When you see government agencies making referrals to small food pantries that are running out of resources, that's an American tragedy." [Selected from many pages of similar accounts in *Hunger in America*] -- Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes