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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: New Chernobyl figures
Message-ID: <898@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Jul-86 13:20:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.898
Posted: Thu Jul 10 13:20:12 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jul-86 08:37:01 EDT
References: <684@bu-cs.UUCP> <927@mmm.UUCP> <186@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 121

> In article <884@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> 
> <I didn't say "all" hunter-gatherer societies.  But just about all American
> <Indian cultures fit into this category of sexual oppression.  (And that's
> <the example you were citing.)
> 
> Please tell me what you've read that indicates American Indian cultures
> were predominately patriarchial and patrilineal prior to the arrival of
> the French, English, and Spanish in the New World.  
> 

Sigh.  The text used by my wife's American history class, _Building_A_Nation_
(Littwack, *et. al.*).  The text I used in my American history class (name
escapes me at the moment).  American history books have greatly improved
their treatment of the American Indian in the last 20 years.  There is now
recognition that their cultures had some good to them, and not all Indian
tribes were savages like the Apache.  And yet the same history books 
still acknowledge that even compared to European cultures, the status of
women was quite low.

No, I don't consider self-serving polemics like _God_Is_Red_ (Vine DeLoria)
as objective sources for information about American Indian cultures.  I
just finished reading an interview with Russell Means in the latest issue
of _Reason_, and was astonished at how many FALSE statements he made, in
an attempt to justify the "Noble Red Man" myth.  Honest evaluations of 
the American Indian cultures do not start out with attempts to boil every-
thing down to good vs. evil.

> <As for what kind of health they enjoyed:  You are incredibly ignorant
> <if you think the health problems were a function of how well they could
> <support a hunter-gatherer economy.  I'm really disturbed at how incredibly
> <ignorant the "Let's all live with nature" sorts are about the health
> <advances made just in the last two centuries.  C-sections are a RECENT
> <development.  There are NO primitive cultures that had a solution to this
> <problem.  Breech delivery?  Mother dies.  Frequently the child dies.  
> <C-section is just ONE example, one near and dear to me because my wife
> <had to have a C-section for our daughter.  In a primitive culture, she
> <would have died, slowly and in agony.
> 
> In spite of the fact that the use of C-sections has increased rapidly in
> this country in the past ten years, we have a higher mortality rate for
> births than many countries in Europe where home deliveries
> are the norm.  I don't consider myself especially ignorant about medical
> advances, I just don't consider all of modern medicine an advance.

See the posting made a while back to net.med concerning infant mortality
rates.  You'll find that infant mortality rates are not measured the same
here as in Europe, and the difference makes our infant mortality rates
appear higher than Europe's.  There's also reason to question the accuracy
of some of the raw numbers.  To quote from Bill Oliver's article:

>- As Sepkowitz
>- states:
>- 	"These attempts to use crude birth weights and 
>- birth-weight-specific mortality rates are misleading and inappropriate.
>- Many countires report incomplete or provisional data for mortality of
>- infants weighting less than 1000g, the weight group in which the
>- largest number of deaths occurs.  And skepticism shades into disbelief
>- when one encounters figures such as those indicating that the West
>- Germans have approximately three times the number of live births of
>- infants weighting less than 1000g as the East Germans....The crude
>- mortality rates of the WHO may fuel political oratory; little of
>- medical value is derived from the data or the oratory.(12)"

>- 12)  Sepkowitz,S (letter), Paneth, N (reply) "Infant Mortality"
>- JAMA 248:1451,1982.

If you've been following the debate concerning C-sections, you'll see
that C-sections have been on the increase for a variety of reasons,
including fear of lawsuits, improved diagnostic abilities to determine
fetal distress (which may lead to C-sections because doctors are being
over cautious), and increased numbers of children of Oriental/non-Oriental
parentage (leads to problems with head/cervical mismatch).

Incidentally, infant mortality has been falling steadily in this country
(and most everywhere else) for a very long time.  The rate of decline has
slowed of late -- some people for political reasons have tried to give
the impression that there has been an increase in infant mortality.

> For instance, in spite of the enormous sums of money that have been
> poured into cancer research and the wide variety of expensive treatments
> that have been promoted for cancer in the past ten years, the cancer
> survival rate remains unchanged. And when you balance the few advances 
> that have been made against the tremendous deterioration of our environment,
> and the very brief and unhealthy lives of many people in third world countries,
> I have to wonder if the human race as a whole is any healthier (it's certainly
> not happier) than it was in a "primitive" state.
> 

I'm not arguing that everything about modern medicine is an improvement --
I'm arguing that part of a technological culture is overall MUCH improved
medical care.

Cancer survial rate remains unchanged?  That runs contrary to what the
American Cancer Society has been saying for some time.  My understanding
is that some types of cancer have DRAMATICALLY higher surival rates than
20 years ago.

Remember also, that with the exception of lung cancer (because of smoking)
the rate of all forms of cancer are steady or declining.  (Source: American
Cancer Society.)  Some people (again for political reasons) have tried to
give the impression that cancer is on the increase.  With the exception
mentioned above, it is not.

Also, the level of health in the Third World is what it is in spite of
our civilization -- not because of it.  The Third World is a good example
of returning to a non-technological society and what it does for health.

> << <The Indians also didn't pay taxes.
> << 
> << One more argument in favor of abandoning our present lifestyle...
> << 
> <No, one more argument in favor of abandoning government.
> 
> An excess of government IS our present lifestyle....
> 
> Charlotte Allen

What are you arguing against, government or technology?  

Clayton E. Cramer