Watching the World
World Prison Listing
What country ranks number one in imprisonments for lawbreakers? The United States, says Sentencing Project, a research group. South Africa is number two and the Soviet Union is number three, according to its listing. More than a million Americans are in prison, thus giving the United States top billing as the nation that has the largest share of its population incarcerated—426 out of every 100,000 residents. The annual cost for incarceration? For just the United States, it is $16 billion. “We [have] got to stop jailing and start rehabilitating,” commented a U.S. government official about the report. “We can build all the jails we think we need and slam the doors down on thousands of people, but it won’t make a bit of difference until we address the fundamental causes of crime.”
Brain-Tumor Treatment
“Stereotactic radiosurgery” may be difficult to pronounce, yet for some sufferers of small, primary brain tumors, those words may spell hope. Stereotactic radiosurgery, according to the Los Angeles Times, “aims several precisely focused beams of radiation at the target mass, killing it.” The rest of the brain, skull, and skin remain relatively unaffected by this nonsurgical procedure. However, it cannot be used on organs other than the brain and is ineffective against tumors more than 1.4 inches [3.5 cm] in diameter. Nevertheless, “this is a truly remarkable concept,” says Dr. Michael L. J. Apuzzo, professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.
China Battles Illiteracy
China has made remarkable progress in its 40-year battle against illiteracy, but the uphill struggle is not over. In 1949 some 80 percent of the Chinese people could not read; now the figure is down to nearly 20 percent, reports China Today. Yet, in a country where the population is nearing 1.2 thousand million, that is still a substantial number. China Today estimates that there are some 220 million illiterate or semiliterate people in the country; every year another 2 million teenagers who cannot properly read and write reach age 15. Hence, the government has launched a ten-year program to teach at least four million illiterates to read and write each year.
Guilty Surgeon
“It is a sentence destined to cause an uproar in the medical world,” said La Repubblica. For the first time in Italy, a surgeon was found guilty of manslaughter. He was convicted of causing the death of an elderly woman by performing an extremely risky operation without her consent. The sentence of a court in Florence stated that the surgeon had performed the operation “when it was not at all necessary and in spite of the patient’s categorical opposition to that type of operation.” The court rejected the reasoning of defense lawyers who claimed that the patient was in such serious condition that the operation could not be deferred, but it accepted the arguments of the prosecution and the plaintiff’s lawyers. They based their arguments on the “patient’s consent,” “without which every operation is illegal,” and every cut made by the scalpel “is equivalent to a knife-thrust,” observes La Repubblica. “The judgment states that only the patient has the right of choice concerning his own body and his own destiny.”
Youths Under Stress
“Girls suffer far more than do boys from the stress of daily routine,” reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A four-year study of 1,700 youths between the ages of 12 and 17 carried out at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, showed that under excessive pressure, girls tend to swallow their anxieties and react with headaches, nervousness, sleeplessness, and stomach problems. It was said that boys more commonly work off everyday stress by extroverted behavior, becoming gruff, aggressive, or violent. Where does the stress originate? From parents’ unreasonably high scholastic expectations, from too little recognition from persons of the same age, from excessive consumer demands, and from too much hectic leisure time.
Altitude Record
On October 24, 1990, 52-year-old Helen Stamataki succeeded in stepping onto the 4.3-mile-high [7 km] mountain crest of the Himalayas called the Tukutche Peak, thus setting a record for Greeks in mountaineering, reported the Athenian newspaper “TA NEA.” It stated that she is the first woman to do this “without the help of oxygen, an act that is considered by most of the alpinists as being extremely venturous, since the alpinist may sustain pulmonary edema and die within a few hours.”
Abandoned Cars
“Abandoned bicycles used to trouble us, but now it’s abandoned cars that give us a hard time,” complained an official of Japan’s National Police Agency. About four million cars are abandoned throughout Japan each year, according to a government estimate. In the past, car owners sold their old cars to scrap-iron dealers, but now they must pay the dealers to remove them. Explaining why cars are getting dumped, The Daily Yomiuri said that disposal firms do not find car-scrapping a profitable business in the wake of a recent sharp fall in scrap-iron prices. The police, though, are taking action. They have started prosecuting people for abandoning cars.
Allergic to Spaghetti
One Italian in a thousand cannot enjoy eating a plate of spaghetti because of being “allergic to pasta.” Or, rather, according to the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, these poor souls are suffering from an illness called celiac disease. Since bread and pasta are the staple of many Italians, the illness is becoming a social problem. In fact, specialists in this field met together in a conference held in Rome last November to discuss cures. Celiac disease causes a permanent intolerance to gluten, a component of wheat, barley, rye, and oats, and brings about a change in the mucous membrane of the intestines.
Blood-Bank Crisis in India
“Blood: does it give life or does it take it?” asked a recent issue of India Today in a report on the deplorable state of the nation’s private blood banks. India’s Health Ministry commissioned a study that found that over 70 percent of the blood drawn from professional blood donors in that country is not tested properly for the lethal HIV virus that causes AIDS. The report also noted the unhygienic conditions that prevail in many private blood banks, which buy blood from sickly and poor donors. Many of these donors are “alcoholics or drug abusers,” or they “have indiscriminate sexual habits.” So India Today lamented that because of “hepatitis, malaria, syphilis and now AIDS” that donated blood may transmit, “buying blood from outside is like playing Russian roulette.”
Consumers Beware
“Over the last decade, the profits to be made in the $150 billion pharmaceutical market have inspired a new form of forgery: drugs that are not what they seem,” reports Newsweek. “The names are familiar,” and they include some of the world’s best-selling medicines. “The counterfeits look like the real thing, right down to the labels, manufacturers’ pamphlets and purity seals.” But inside they may contain harmful substances, such as industrial solvents, sawdust, dirt, talcum powder, and contaminated water. Often the doses contained are weak and diluted or completely worthless. The result? “Hundreds if not thousands of people have died,” says health economist Susan Foster of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Doctors and hospitals may themselves unwittingly dispense the drugs. Legitimate manufacturers are hard-pressed to find a solution. The drugs often originate in countries that do not recognize international drug patents. Usually, legitimate drug companies keep the problem quiet so as to avoid publicity that will scare people away from buying their product.
Justified Fear?
Airplane travel is still rated as one of the safest means of transportation. Yet, for those who have a fear of flying, the following statistics on drinking and flying, published in Newsweek, may come as no surprise: “More than 10,000 of the 675,500 licensed U.S. pilots have drunk-driving records. More than 1,200 airline pilots have been treated for alcoholism and returned to duty in the past 15 years. Between 5 and 10 percent of general aviation pilots killed in plane crashes each year have alcohol in their blood. Six commuter and air-taxi accidents between 1980 and 1988 were attributed solely or in part to pilot drinking.”