[Stoves] Off-topic: Alcohol, drugs or stoves? WHO is the new Vatican?

[Traveller]

Some recent news items below. WHO has no jurisdiction to set of implement
any air quality standards or stove standards - or for that matter standards
for nutrition, alcohol, health sector staffing - but like the Vatican it
can put some people out of the church of "clean cookstoves". I can foresee
the consequences but need to look into IOR accounts.

It is the abuse, or selective use, of the IHME theatrics in the Global
Burden of Disease (GBD) - that "super-human" effort of "killing by
assumptions" - that risks undue policy biases by the implication of
causality.

All that GBD does is assign - via dubious or at least debatable methods -
causes of death and "risk factors" that individual diseases and
disabilities can be attributed to. Attribution to risk factors is an
incentive for irrational exuberance.

When the database for deaths, diseases, and environmental influences -
quality and quantity of clean water to emissions or concentrations of air
pollutants or to exposure to polluted air or water or soils - is itself
fictional, we transcend the earth and the earthly science, to join Godly
Association of Catholic Charisma. (I mean Catholic as catholic; no offense
intended to Francis or other priests and nuns.)

First below a WSJ (22 August 2016) item on alcohol; businesses are
beginning to take notice that GBD is injurious to their health. I am not
suggesting that people drink unlimited alcohol, just that "clean
cookstoves" could reduce employment in the commercial wood and charcoal
supply chains just as kerosene/LPG subsidy reforms in India could eliminate
jobs linked to corrupt diversion. Women will be better off not carrying
wood or water on their heads - bicycles and carts are available, if not
small trucks (even with diesel soot emissions). And cooking beer or
distilling liquor with "clean stoves" might even avert DALYs; I will write
a grant.

Then some pieces on choices in policies as well as behaviors - from mental
health (the Hindu piece) to improved nutrition (First Post piece) to
infrastructure and human resources for health services (WSJ 6 September
2016) to burden of disability from pain (the Atlantic 7 October 2016 and
NYT 16 October 2016). These are also informed by GBD.

Why are these relevant to cooking? Because the drudgery of cooking with
unprocessed solid fuels collected with no direct expense - the whole
syndrome of "traditional cooking" that is far beyond mere stoves - is
likely a cause of hopelessness and depression in millions of women if not
tens or hundreds of millions (along with other drudgeries). A Miracle Stove
won't fix that. Also added to their burden of disease from Household Air
Pollution is that due to poor nutrition, poor access to or poor quality of
health care services, and, yes, even the aches and pains from carrying wood
or the physically demanding tasks of cooking. A Miracle Stove won't fix
that either.

The intellectual apparatus of "Evidence Base" for the benefits of "clean
cookstoves" consists of a magician's wizardry. Or the Vatican's catechism.

To run up alleys just to check if they are blind is sophomoric. To
deliberately pursue dead ends is deceit.

The premise of ISO IWA exercise - that boiling water in labs will open the
way for rapid adoption of "clean stoves" powered by solid fuels by the
masses - is speculative. Yes, testing protocols and performance standards
can help in ordinal ranking of such stoves. However, the ISO/IWA method has
no consideration for actual usability of the stoves - the point made in
VividEconomics report to ESMAP on the Mirt mtad - or the "contextuality" -
what fuel types where for what type of actual cooking.

As Cecil says, it is "fundamental folly" and "premature". The real work has
to begin at the national, regional, local levels - understanding how people
cook as well as how people and cooking have changed over time and how they
might change in the future.

When "biomass stoves" (I prefer coals when sustained heating is required)
are seen as tools for pleasure, not as pills delivering averted DALYs - for
which they must compete with NSAIDs and meditation for pain,
micro-nutrients and fresh foods for nutrition, and end of conflicts for
mental health - we might at last have a purpose to our work. Yes, cleaning
up cooking - with fuels, stoves, operating practices - is to be pursued in
terms of usability and contextuality, along with supplementary strategy on
local biomass management and air quality management. Whether the trees are
saved or the climate is saved is incidental and cannot be attributed to
individual stoves or users.

That is, the premise of EPA/BAMG work on HAPit, etc. is also no more than
speculative. A speculation that will never be proven in real practice. Just
bear in mind that there is no specific evidentiary basis for assigning any
particular "averted DALYs" to the transition of roughly 3 billion cooks who
changed to "clean fuels" (gas, electricity) cooking over the last 100
years.

I think the mental imagery - or the poverty pornography - of cooking and
stoves has remained unchanged for decades. I see mindless surveys and
thousands of academic papers but very little in terms of setting the
contexts of women's lives, the place (physical and mental) of the kitchen
(if there is such a designated space) and of cooking, of feeding and
eating, of all the variables of health and economy that are merrily ignored
in pursuit of the Miracle Stove.


Nikhil
With Moderate Drinking Under Fire, Alcohol Companies Go on Offensive
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/with-moderate-drinking-under-fire-alcohol-companies-go-on-offensive-1471889160>
, WSJ 22 August 2016
"One of the first signs came when WHO officials set out nearly a decade ago
to develop a new alcohol policy. They planned to focus on “global burden of
disease,” assessing a broad range of possible effects, including indirect
ones such as rates of accidents and certain infections.
“It was that sort of thing coming out of the WHO that made us fear for our
lives,” said Mitch Ramsay, then an executive at SABMiller PLC."
---------------------------------

Economic Nonsense From the U.N. on Drugs
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/economic-nonsense-from-the-u-n-on-drugs-1474064319>
WSJ
16 September 2016

"Convincing developed and developing nations to invest more in the health
care of the poor would go a long way toward better addressing the real
barriers to access, like substandard infrastructure. Many nations are full
of impassable roads. Corrupt officials routinely steal donated drugs to
sell in the black market. Health-care professionals are in short supply.
Africans, for instance, suffer one quarter of the global burden of
disease—but the continent is home to only 3% of the world’s health-care
workers, according
<http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/s17815en/s17815en.pdf> to the
Cameron Institute.

The U.N. has yet to take issue with the iPhone 7, which just hit the market
for $649, because we still live in a world where profits from innovations
outside health care are applauded and admired. But those who invent cures
for deadly diseases are routinely shamed for making money. I cannot think
of a better reason to financially reward someone than for helping to extend
and save lives."

----------

Huge gap between policy and practice: Vikram Patel
<http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/huge-gap-between-policy-and-practice-vikram-patel/article8630543.ece>
, The Hindu 22 May 2016
"The *Lancet Psychiatry* established in three new papers that a third of
the global burden of disease for mental, neurological and substance use
disorders occurs in India and China, more than in all high-income countries
combined."
India tops the list of nations with most anaemic women and children
<http://www.firstpost.com/living/india-tops-the-list-of-nations-with-most-anaemic-women-and-children-3075578.html>,
First Post 27 October 2016How Back Pain Took Over the World - The biggest
cause of disability around the world is surprisingly banal
<http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/how-back-pain-took-over-the-world/503243/>
Atlantic
7 October 2016 and, also on pain, Millions of Men Are Missing From the Job
Market
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/millions-of-men-are-missing-from-the-job-market.html?>
NYT
16 October 2016
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