The Hope of Hopelessness

Poverty is defined very differently between those people who live it everyday, and others who only read about it in books and magazine articles. According to Dr. John H. Bodley, 1.2 billion people around the globe are thought to be living in extreme poverty (Bodley 2005; 418). This means that over a billion urban people do not have access to basic sanitation, simple medicines, sturdy shelters, clean water, or even significant amounts of food. Not only are these people deprived of the basic life necessities, but for most of the people living in these extreme conditions, often times basic human rights are denied to these people as well. The problems facing the people who live in such extreme poverty are difficult for most Americans to understand; but, according to the United States Census Bureau, almost 36 million Americans live below the poverty line (United States Department of Commerce; http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html). Despite a nation’s apparent wealth and resources, in this industrial age, poverty has become a global reality.

In America, nearly 100 billion pounds of food is discarded each year by the elite and middle class societies. According to the Bread for the World Institute, almost 10 million people, including over 3 million children, go entire days without eating (Bread for the World Institute; http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/domestic.html). A study done at the University of Arizona shows, that on average, an American household wastes fourteen percent of the food purchased for that household. In the same study Dr. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, explains how “forty to fifty percent of all food ready for harvest [in the United States] never gets eaten” (Food Navigator; http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376). The study, which was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), found “that not only is edible food discarded that could feed people who need it, but the rate of loss, even partially corrected, could save [American] consumers and manufacturers tens of billions of dollars each year” (Food Navigator; http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376). Cutting down on food waste would also help avert serious environmental problems in the future. Dr. Jones estimates by reducing food waste in the United States, that it could also lessen damage to the environment by as much as twenty five percent through improved landfill usage and less soil depletion. This news might be shocking to some Americans, especially those people throwing out any Thanksgiving leftovers.

Also at the University of Arizona, award winning plant scientist Dr. Rod Wing, has helped to lead an international effort in the fight against global hunger. Dr. Wing and his team have successfully completed sequencing the rice genome. With this new insight, scientist in the future will be able to slightly alter the genetic make-up of rice making it a “super crop”. “Super crops” are traditional crops which have been genetically altered to be made more bountiful, made more nutritious, and made to require less land and water for the crops to be grown. This is good news considering that fifty five percent of the world’s population eats only rice and water, a fact Dr. Wing hopes to one day be able to change. The next goal of Dr. Wing is to discover, map, and sequence the genes of beans, tomatoes, and similar crops, helping to create a large variety of these “super crops” (Lamplot; http://cals.arizona.edu/media/archives/1.11.html).

Unfortunately, hunger isn’t the only problem poverty stricken people are facing. In many tropical regions the malaria parasites run rampant through the impoverished citizens. The treatments for malaria are often too expensive for impoverished peoples to afford, and subsequently nearly three million people die from malaria each year (Yarris; http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sb-PBD-anti-malarial.html). Eager to put an end to that, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley's Chemical Engineering Department have teamed up with scientist at the University of Arizona’s Institute for Collaborative Bioresearch. Together these two teams are working in an exciting field known as “synthetic biology”. Basically, the researchers add new genes and engineer a new metabolic pathway in the Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. With this done, the researchers can quickly and cheaply synthesize the chemical compound artemisinin. Artemisinin is a next-generation drug which has been proven to effectively combat the different malaria parasites (Keasling 2003; 797).

In nature, the only source of artemisinin is from the leaves of Artemisia annua, or the sweet wormwood tree. Artemisinin is known to kill all strains of malaria, but is only produced in very small quantities because extracting artemisinin from the leaves of the plant is an expensive and time consuming process. This new method will not only make it easier to dispense to those people with the most need for the drug, but the new method will also make the treatments much less expensive than previous malaria medications. Sadly, fighting hunger and disease is not enough to solve the problem of world poverty. The rights of impoverished people are being trampled on through out the world, and as a consequence, some poverty stricken people don’t even have clean water. Take the case of Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ Bom Jesus. Located in the fertile Brazilian region of zona da mata, the citizens of Bom Jesus live in mortal fear of the South American summer. Between the months of September and February Bom Jesus, and the rest of northern Brazil, experiences a dreadful dry season. This use to not be a problem for the people of Bom Jesus, who, up until the mid 1970’s, had a large freshwater reservoir (Scheper-Hughes 1991; 143). Suddenly, in 1982 the state owned water utility made the switch from the reservoir source, to using the water of the Caparibe River. This was problematic for the citizens of Bom Jesus, who for decades had treated the river like a dump for everything you can image. The booming local sugar industry used the river to dispose of all their left over and mechanical waste, local shoe factories used to discard animal carcasses in the river, and even the local hospital dumped most of its contaminated medical and human waste there as well (Scheper-Hughes 1991; 144).

While the people of Bom Jesus suffered, the same elite few at the water utility company who had deemed it necessary to take water from the Caparibe River were having bottled water shipped in, as well as large filtration systems installed in their homes. After almost a decade of this bureaucracy, Padre Agostino Leal organised a massive communitywide demonstration in the autumn of 1988. The protest attracted both the richest and the poorest citizens of Bom Jesus, and together the two classes demanded changes in the water system. Eventually, the conditions of the water system were improved as a direct result of Padre Agostino Leal’s hard work with the people of Bom Jesus. With the protest a success, Padre Leal went on to organise several more demonstrations against the oppressive Brazilian government, a method which illustrates one of the best methods in the fight against poverty.

The poverty problem has existed for millennia, and simple throwing money at it will not find a permanent solution. Poverty will continue to be a problem until the poor and the rich unite to rid the world of a problem which affects both classes. Only together can the people of the world clean up the slums and cesspools, only by working together can the proper medications be distributed to everyone, and only together can we balance the waste of food with the need of food. Organisations like the One Campaign, UNICEF, and Care International are urging people around the world to unite, and help make world poverty a thing of the past. Only when the rights and political voices of the impoverished people around the world are respected, will mankind truly be on the path to riding the world of global poverty.

Citations and References Page

Bread for the World Institute. “Domestic Hunger & Poverty Facts”. Hunger Basics. Last updated December 1st, 2004. Last visited December 4th, 2005. .
Bodley, John H. Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2005.
Food Navigator - USA. “U.S. Wastes Half its Food”. Food Navigator’s News Headlines. Last updated November 26th, 2004. Last visited December 4th, 2005. .
Keasling, Jay D. “Engineering a mevalonate pathway in Escherichia coli for production of terpenoids”. Nature Biotechnology. Pages 796-802. Basingstoke, Hampshire. Macmillan Publishers Limited. July 1st, 2003.
Lamplot, Vern. “UA Attracts Top Plant Scientist”. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona. Last updated January 07th, 2002. Last visited October 24th, 2005. .
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Lifeboat Ethics: Mother Love and Child Death in Brazil”. Applying Cultural Anthropology. Pages 142-147. Edited by Aaron Podolefsky and Peter J. Brown. Mountain View, California. Mayfield. 1991.
United States Department of Commerce. “2003 Income, Poverty and Health Insurance and Data from the American Community Survey”. U.S. Census Press Releases. Last updated August 26th, 2004. Last visited December 5th, 2005. .
Yarris, Lynn. “Synthetic Biology Offers New Hope For Malaria Victims”. Berkely Lab’s Science Beat. Last updated March 24th, 2004. Last visited December 4th, 2005. .