Information Related to "A Look at the Current State of the World"
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by Scott Ashley and John Ross Schroeder
Moral standards declining in Britain
George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury, has instigated a national debate about the waning of traditional values in the United Kingdom. Besides newspaper interviews and an appearance on BBC Radio 4, he delivered a 40-minute speech in the British House of Lords. Dr. Carey has made English schools the focus of this moral crusade. Here are a few of his colorful comments:
Dr. Carey's crusade has inspired a volley of verbal counterattacks by journalists, religionists and educators. Among other things, they have accused him of seeking to rescue his broken ministry by suddenly seizing on an old-fashioned-values campaign. But his call for a return to traditional morality has been a fairly consistent part of his message for years.
Armed conflict continues in smaller countries
Although the winding down of the Cold War may have reduced the threat of war among the world's superpowers, conflicts among smaller nations continue largely unabated, says the Swedish International Peace Research Institute's annual report.
The institute, financed by the Swedish government, reported 30 major conflicts in 1995. The report cautions that an ominous trend in these more localized conflicts is "loss of control of developments by the great (world) powers."
"Now it is not the strong but the weak state that presents the greatest threat," warned Adam Rotfeld, director of the institute.
Major armed conflicts of 1995, with casualty tolls given by the institute, included:
World slums become breeding grounds for deadly diseases
Shantytowns and urban slum areas are rapidly becoming breeding grounds for deadly diseases, according to researchers addressing a United Nations conference on urban problems.
Although many factors contribute to such problems, the greatest single component appears to be the massive flooding of people into cities, especially in less-developed countries. Within 20 years, nine of the 10 most populous cities are expected to be in less-developed nations, with several in epidemic-prone areas in Africa and Asia.
Three such megacities - Bombay, India; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Lagos, Nigeria - are expected to grow to a total population of 70 million within the next 20 years.
Unsanitary conditions resulting from such population growth create ideal breeding grounds for disease-bearing mosquitoes, and overcrowding allows faster spread of diseases through such cities, particularly in areas where people's resistance to disease is weakened from chronically fouled drinking water.
Some families moving into cities from outlying areas also bring their animals - cows, goats, pigs and chickens - with them, creating opportunities for disease transmission across species. Some scientists believe that the AIDS virus was transmitted from an animal host to humans, where it proved deadly.
"It's fine to coexist with these other species in a dispersed rural setting, but when we come into the kind of contact (that exists) in the cities . . . what you create is the ideal circumstance for ecological mixing of microbes," said Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague.
Since 1973 at least 30 new diseases have been identified, including the deadly Ebola virus, which emerged in 1977 and resurfaced in 1995 in Zaire, where it killed 245 people.
Compounding the threat are drug-resistant forms of other diseases, some of which have been reintroduced into cities around the world through rapidly expanding international travel. In 1991, for example, an outbreak of cholera across South America demonstrated how quickly age-old diseases can spread via modern transportation systems.
The following year, a new strain of cholera arose in India and has spread to Southeast Asia. Tuberculosis, largely forgotten in modern countries, is making a deadly comeback as drug-resistant strains are on the rise in poorer areas of some American cities. (Source: The Associated Press.)
Teenage pregnancies cost society dearly
Births to teens under age 18 cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $7 billion annually, according to a study by the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity based in New York City.
The study compared the financial consequences for teenage mothers, their babies and the babies' fathers with others of similar social circumstance who did not bear children until the mother was 20 or 21. Researchers studied data from the most recent 13 years, comparing differences in welfare payments, taxpayer-financed health care, social cases that led to children being placed in foster-care situations, and the rate of prison incarceration of children born to teenage mothers.
According to the study, teen childbirths cost the U.S. taxpaying public an additional $2.2 billion yearly for food-stamp benefits and welfare payments, $1.5 billion for medical care, $900 million in additional costs for foster care and $1 billion for construction of additional prison facilities. The annual financial impact also includes $1.3 billion in lost tax revenue resulting from lower and lost wages of women who have babies during their teen years.
"That's $7 billion a year that's going right out the window," said Rebecca Maynard, chief editor of the study and professor of education and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She noted that from a financial standpoint "we could spend $7 billion to fix this problem and end up no worse or better off financially."
Analysts say the study's conclusions are conservative; they considered only the consequences of births to American teens under 18. This age-group gives birth to 175,000 children annually. Among all girls age 15 to 19, some 500,000 children are born each year, with 72 percent of mothers unmarried. (Source: The New York Times.)
AIDS slowing, but still killing thousands
At the 11th International Conference on AIDS, conferees heard that AIDS infects another 8,500 people every day. Worldwide, an estimated 21 million people are infected with the virus, with 90 percent of them in poorer countries, according to the United Nations.
Although the rate of increase appears to be slowing in many areas, AIDS remains a pervasive and deadly killer in others. In Botswana, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, at least 10 percent of the populace is said to carry the virus.
Worldwide, three of every four cases are said to be transmitted heterosexually, which contributes to the extremely high rate of infection in some countries. Women now account for 42 percent of AIDS victims.
In the United States an estimated 40,000 people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) annually. Of these, 19 percent are women, whereas they comprised only 7 percent of AIDS cases a decade ago. About one in every 300 Americans age 13 and up is infected. This rate is remaining fairly steady, with new people infected at the same rate others are dying from the disease.
In 1992, the latest year for which U.S. figures are available, an estimated 650,000 to 900,000 were infected with the HIV. Of those infected, half were men contracting the deadly virus through homosexual sex and a quarter through the use of injected drugs. (Sources: The Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times.) GN
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