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

[Anand Karve]

Dear Nikhil,
I am not an expert in these matters, and am also unable to cite the
relevant literature, but it seems that the death rate among villagers
is higher in India than that of Indian city dwellers. This has
definitely nothing to do with air quality, because the air in the
cities is more polluted than that in the villages. One has to really
know the village dwellers intimately to understand the causes of
higher death rate among villagers. There were recently reports from a
part of Maharashtra state of aboriginal tribal babies dying due to
malnutrition, a euphemism for starvation. The same news also had
photographs of the parents of the dead babies. The parents did not
look malnourished. Should one therefore assume that the parents
deliberately starved their children? The answer in many cases is in
the affirmative. A medical doctor working with tribals wrote in her
book that although these people ate wild tubers, roots, fruits and
also ate fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and even arthropods, they
had a lot of dietary taboos about infants. She wrote in her book that
the list of foods that the infants were not supposed to eat was longer
than the list of substances that the infants were allowed to eat.
Yours
A.D.Karve

On 10/27/16, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)