Livestock Disease And African Food Security Essays - Animal Virology

Livestock Disease And African Food Security Livestock Disease and African Food Security A serious problem in Africa today is the emergence of rampant, deadly strains of disease that are affecting livestock and ravaging populations of pigs and cattle in many African nations, putting food security at risk in many populations of various nations. With already major food scarcity issues among many emerging African nations, disease will only further pressure an already dire situation for food security in Africa. Livestock play important roles in farming systems, which provide primarily food and income, which is necessary for food security. Nearly 12 percent of the world populations rely solely on livestock for its livelihood. (4) The latest outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in the West African island nation of Cape Verde threatens the country's entire pig population, according to a 1996 FAO report. The disease has been endemically present in at least part of Cape Verde archipelago since 1985 - with peaks of morbidity/mortality twice a year, in spring and winter. (1) ASF is caused by a particularly resistant virus and is a potentially devastating disease. Very few pigs survive infection and those that do are contagious. ASF is endemically present in wild pigs in southern and eastern Africa in a cycle including infected domestic pigs, soft ticks and wild pigs. (1) In various ecosystems of Central and Western Africa there are huge outbreaks of this disease among domestic pigs and the disease occurs elsewhere in Africa. In all areas, infection is most common as a result of contact with infected, recovered or carrier pigs and ingestion of contaminated or infected garbage, urine and feces. Various strains have occurred in different regions due to the increasing use of non-indigenous pigs, which are particularly vulnerable to this. Animals are being shipped by road and air and are not being quarantined properly if at all. This threatens any country that relies on livestock for food security. ASF is an extremely resistant virus and can spread quickly among populations that are kept in poor sanitary conditions. Many experts agree that diseases such as ASF will continue to spread throughout African pig farms if proper sanitary conditions are not met and proper quarantine's aren't administered to try and curb the spread of this disease. Since there is no vaccine available, destroying infected animals is the primary method for eliminating the disease. In a different outbreak in Cote d'Ivore, almost 22,000 pigs were killed by ASF and another 100,000 were slaughtered in an attempt to eradicate the disease. (2) Yet another recent outbreak of ASF has surfaced in West African country of Benin on the Nigerian border. Authorities reported almost 3000 pigs dead and the FAO has sent a team called EMPRES (Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases) to investigate just as they did in both Cape Verde and Cote d'Ivore. (2) The team was put together in an effort to control plant and animals diseases that can stress a countries vital food security issues. A different di sease called Classic Swine fever, which isn't as deadly a strain is what the Benin officials say it is, but the EMPRES team fears this could be the deadly ASF version. An acute problem that comes without warning, ASF can completely destroy a countries pork industry because once the news gets out, no country will trade or buy any livestock with that country. This can have serious implications on meat eating cultures. In Cote d'Ivore, all pig sales were stopped in 1996 and continued again in 1997 with a total loss estimated to be around US $18million. The FAO report says that around 60 percent of Benin's populations relies solely on agriculture and stocks of 600 000 pigs play a vital role in income generation and national food security. (3) There are various methods used to farm pigs in both Benin and Cote d'Ivore. Commercial farms are the highest in output and are often hit hardest by the disease due to close quarters and easy transmission from one infected pig to another. Others rai se pigs in backyards where the animals are exposed to garbage and unhealthy conditions. Both of these methods of farming pigs are at the highest risk for

12 Interesting Facts About Activist Grace Lee Boggs

12 Interesting Facts About Activist Grace Lee Boggs Grace Lee Boggs isn’t a household name, but the Chinese-American activist made long-lasting contributions to the civil rights, labor, and feminist movements. Boggs died on Oct. 5, 2015, at age 100. Learn why her activism earned her the respect of black leaders such as Angela Davis and Malcolm X with this list of 10 interesting facts about her life. Birth Born Grace Lee on June 27, 1915, to Chin and Yin Lan Lee, the activist came into the world in the unit above her family’s Chinese restaurant in Providence, R.I. Her father would later enjoy success as a restaurateur in Manhattan. Early Years and Education Although Boggs was born in Rhode Island, she spent her childhood in Jackson Heights, Queens. She demonstrated keen intelligence at an early age. At just 16, she started studies at Barnard College. By 1935, she’d earned a philosophy degree from the college, and by 1940, five years before her 30th birthday, she earned a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. Job Discrimination Although Boggs demonstrated that she was intelligent, perceptive and disciplined at a young age, she couldn’t find work as an academic. No university would hire a Chinese-American woman to teach ethics or political thought in the 1940s,  according to the New Yorker. Early Career and Radicalism Before becoming a prolific author in her own right, Boggs translated the writings of Karl Marx. She was active in leftist circles, participating in the Workers Party, the Socialist Workers Party and the Trotskyite movement as a young adult. Her work and political inclinations led her to partner up with socialist theorists such as C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya as part of a political sect called the Johnson-Forest Tendency. Fight for Tenants’ Rights In the 1940s, Boggs lived in Chicago, working in a city library. In the Windy City, she organized protests for tenants to fight for their rights, including living quarters free from vermin. Both she and her mostly black neighbors had experienced rodent infestations, and Boggs was inspired to protest after witnessing them demonstrate in the streets. Marriage to James Boggs Just two years shy of her 40th birthday, Boggs married James Boggs in 1953. Like her, James Boggs was an activist and writer. He also worked in the automobile industry, and Grace Lee Boggs settled with him in the auto industry’s epicenter- Detroit. Together, the Boggses set out to give people of color, women, and youth the necessary tools to effect social change. James Boggs died in 1993. Political Inspirations Grace Lee Boggs found inspiration in both the nonviolence of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi as well as in the Black Power Movement. In 1963, she took part in the Great Walk to Freedom march, which featured King. Later that year, she hosted Malcolm X at her home. Under Surveillance Because of her political activism, the Boggses found themselves under government surveillance. The FBI visited their home multiple times, and Boggs even joked that the feds likely thought of her as â€Å"Afro-Chinese† because her husband and friends were black, she lived in a black area and centered her activism on the black struggle for civil rights. Detroit Summer Grace Lee Boggs helped to establish the organization Detroit Summer in 1992. The program connects youth to a number of community service projects, including home renovations and community gardens. Prolific Author Boggs penned a number of books. Her first book, George Herbert Mead: Philosopher of the Social Individual, debuted in 1945. It chronicled Mead, the academic credited with founding social psychology. Boggs’ other books included 1974’s â€Å"Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century,† which she co-wrote with her husband; 1977’s Women and the Movement to Build a New America; 1998’s Living for Change: An Autobiography; and 2011’s The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, which she co-wrote with Scott Kurashige. School Named in Her Honor In 2013, a charter elementary school opened in honor of Boggs and her husband. It’s called the James and Grace Lee Boggs School. Documentary Film The life and work of Grace Lee Boggs were chronicled in the 2014 PBS documentary â€Å"American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs.† The director of the film shared the name Grace Lee and launched a film project about well-known and unknown people alike about this relatively common name that transcends racial groups.

Medical Torture Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Medical Torture - Research Paper Example This was essentially the same debate that existed in Britain during the nineteenth century on vivisections (Miller 334). If the prisoner dies from taking the herb medicine, then that herb plant or its active ingredients can be eliminated from the list of possible medicinal drugs from the list kept by the imperial doctors. If the prisoner gets well, then that herbal concoction gets examined for its other healing properties and included in that precious list. Ancient Chinese medicine could be cited here as an example of medical practices that may have bordered on the unethical if it is considered within today’s stricter context in bio-ethics. Acupuncturists could not gain much knowledge about the human body without using live humans as experimental subjects. There are obvious advantages to using live human subjects in medical experiments. A need to examine the effects of certain drugs or surgical procedures on live subjects gives the immediate feedback that has great importance on the search for medical knowledge. The field of medical science did not cringe from using live animals for experiments, such as monkeys and rats, until these practices were banned only recently for humanitarian reasons. Discussion China was not alone in the ancient world in its search for cures of human ailments. Other ancient civilizations such as those in Iraq, Egypt and Persia also contributed to the accumulation of human medical knowledge. The search for a cure can be considered as the corollary to a much deeper search – the search for the fountain of youth and immortality. In ancient Chinese traditional medicine, emperors constantly consulted with their sage doctors or physicians regarding such topics as pathology, diagnostics, acupuncture and moxibution. The ancient priests of Egypt succeeded in developing the lost medical art of mummification in their quest for immortality and in building the pyramids to house their mummies. In ancient China, these sage physicians an d erudite teachers discussed medicine in the wider context of the overall Chinese culture to encompass other areas of knowledge such as cosmology, astronomy, geography, military science, philosophy and divination (Galambos 1). It can be said that the search for medical answers to some of the most baffling diseases like cancer continues today. Although medical professionals are expected to adhere to the ancient oath of Hippocrates, there are a few rogue elements that will resort to shortcuts and unethical methods to obtain their research. This is especially tempting to people who have illusions of grandeur, such as being the first to discover the cure for cancer, as an example. A more recent experience with medical experimentation was that of Nazi Germany in which prisoners were used in experiments, sometimes without the use of anesthesia, to test the limits of human endurance and tolerance for pain. Their use of live humans was founded on the false science of eugenics based on hered ity and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Famous people were captivated by an allure of eugenics (literally, good genes) like Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes among others, to include US presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. It was a by-product of the Progressive Movement to attain social progress (Winfield 59). Eugenics apparently lost favor because of those inhuman and unauthorized series of experiments which even some medical scientists found to be revolting. The practice of the false