wrote in message
oups.com...
Tim Shoppa wrote:

In the US there is pretty good tracking of Cobalt-60 sources (lotsa
paperwork etc.) but in third world countries the handling is a lot
morre shoddy (many newspaper articles about how some piece of medical
equipment using it turned up in dumps, folks took the metal and made
furniture like beds, then died, etc.)


Tell me something:

1. Whats the odds of the above happening? Multiply the number of deaths
by the odds.

2. Now how many lives could such a machine save? How much food that was
going to spoil could be made to last long enough to feed people? How
many lives could that food be expected to save in Africa?


Something that has not been considered in this thread, is whether this is
really a good approach: trying to find some highly technical solution to
some problem that may or may not exist. Are we saying that people in Africa
are dying because they are consuming big globs of rancid fat, gone off in
the heat? On the other hand, how quickly does dried fruit in a dry
atmosphere go rotten enough to kill people?

What on earth did Africa do before? Were they really all getting ill from
their traditional diet? Could the problem actually be new foods that we are
selling to these countries, that turn out to be totally unsuitable for the
climate? Are we trying to fix a problem that should not be there in the
first place?

How does irradiated beefburgers help the millions dying of AIDs? What about
the millions displaced by war? Diseases spread by parasites and sewage and
floods? Does irradiated food help them?

I think we really need to understand the real problems being faced around
the world. I just wanted to inject some sanity, as I see it, here ;-)

-- JJ