I would be the last one to argue against reducing maternity death and child mortality. The disregard of the Taliban for their own mothers, wives and sisters was adequate proof of the Taliban's intrinsic evil. However having said this, I find myself uneasy whenever I read about child mortality being reduced in a dirt poor country. My wife is South African and I've been to Africa more times than I ever wanted to be. When I travel around Southern Africa, something that really gets into my face is that Africa has many problems but most of those problems have one root cause: There are too many poor people there.

Now the political issues surrounding South African demography have been complicated by the previous Afrikaaner regime and HIV. However the issues are less blurred for the rest of Africa: Europeans and Americans have introduced a social revolution to Africa through basic hygiene and medical technology. The reduction of child mortality lead directly to population explosions within African societies that were totally unequiped to deal with it both economicly or politically.

I shake my head in quiet frustration at Ludiites who yammer about technology as the root of all evil. Those imbeciles typically refer to high tech like computers, nuclear technology, etc. Although I applaud their efforts, the real root of the world's ills are these "do-gooder" physicians out there saving the lives of innocent children. Isn't it ironic that such high morality is bringing whole societies to ruin? There must be a better way of doing this? We seem to have the cart before the horse.

Gary