Polio infections surged last year in Africa after Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria led a boycott against immunizations, claiming the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigeria's Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.
The clerics finally relented, but not before the disease spread from Nigeria. The 2004 worldwide polio case count reached 1,185 last year, compared with 784 in 2003. Nigeria accounted for over 60 percent of the 2004 tally.
In other happy stories, there are parts of the world where young boys are attacked in the streets and castrated so their penises can be sold on the black market as ingredients in a magic potion that cures AIDS.
It's remarkable how tolerant we are of ignorance and stupidity in this culture when education is one the greatest privledges a society can have.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Douglas Adams
Niffoni wrote:In other happy stories, there are parts of the world where young boys are attacked in the streets and castrated so their penises can be sold on the black market as ingredients in a magic potion that cures AIDS.
Seriously, I was too angry at the reason to feel pain at the thought of the act.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Douglas Adams
Too often it seems it is the peaceful and innocent who are slaughtered. In this a lesson may be found that it may not be prudential to be either too peaceful or too innocent. One does not survive with wolves by becoming a sheep.
