BPO Call Centers – bane or boon?

Many jobless Filipino nurses work in call centers while awaiting employment, the Philippine Nurses Association (PNA) said, attributing the problem to a surge in supply of nurses and of salaries in both government and private hospitals that are lower than the pay given to call center agents. Nurses who are applying for employment abroad need at least two-year work experience in 250-bed hospitals. Since there are not enough hospitals to accommodate them all, some nurses were forced to defray P3,500 to pay health facilities in order to get their training and the required credentials. The monthly salary for nurses range from only P6,000 to P8,000 in private hospitals while the public sector offers P10,000, driving the licensed nurses to apply in call centers who pay salaries ranging from P15,000 to 30,000 plus relocation incentives.

In matters of health, the nurses are saved from starvation and potential malnourishment, but are exposed to the BPO syndrome -- Vitamin D sunshine deficiency, disrupted bioclock and sleep deprivation, denied normal social activity stress. Most agents work at night, communicating with overseas clients who are in daylight time zones.

BPO Syndrome
Working after sundown deprives the worker of the benefits of sunlight, the Vitamin D produced by Ultraviolet light (UV-B and UV-A), which is the main source of this vitamin essential to metabolize calcium for bone development. Food sources are inadequate to supply this nutrient. A deliberate exposure to early morning or late afternoon sunlight solves the problem, but must be a habitual regimen.
For most people it is more difficult to sleep during the day. And day sleeping is not as deep as night sleeping so this in turn decreases the ability to perform safely and efficiently. Other factors that may affect day sleeping include noise, light and social commitments. The disrupted Circadian clock (sleep-wake cycle) and the changed meal schedule takes several days for the body to adapt to the new rhythm of the sleep-wake cycle. This demands a new sleep regimen to ensure a healthy 8-hour sleep.

Working at night when the body wants to sleep, and then sleep when the body wants to be awake changes the wake times and disrupts the internal body clock (circadian rhythm).
Nightshift work affects social events that occur mostly during the evening provoking stresses from frustration of normal social activity.
Aside from the social aspect there is the health aspect. According to the New England Journal of Medicine shift workers appear to be at increased risk for peptic ulcer disease, coronary heart disease, insulin resistance, as well as for sleep deprivation, depression, and sleepiness-related accidents.

Certain things that can reduce any of the negative factors of night shift work: get enough good deep sleep (minimum 6 hours); reduce noise and other disturbances; darken bedroom to simulate nighttime; avoid heavy foods, caffeine, alcohol or tobacco (stimulants that may interfere with sleeping); avoid exercise or strenuous activity prior to sleeping (increases adrenaline)

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Reasons for Getting Good Sleep 

Knowing that a shortened period of sleep may contribute to various ills, including memory lapses, trouble learning and paying attention, heart disease, obesity, mood problems and a weakened immune system, night shift workers can benefit from these tips. One or two sleepless nights or a bout of insomnia may not be something to worry about, but not getting enough sleep frequently is a concern. Some people do well with six hours, others need nine or more. Experts think seven to nine hours is about right. Some reasons to consider changing current sleep habits.

 Learning and memory
Sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory. Studies seem to show that people are more insightful or creative in their problem solving after a full sleep.

Weight
A constant lack of sleep may cause weight gain by altering the way the body processes and stores carbohydrates, and by stimulating the release of cortisol, a stress hormone. Excess cortisol has been linked to an increase in abdominal fat. Loss of sleep also reduces levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite, and increases ghrelin (GRELL-in), an appetite-stimulating hormone — a combination that can encourage eating.

Safety
There’s no evidence that we ever adapt to chronic sleep loss, but sleep "debt" contributes to sleepiness, including “microsleeps,” (seconds-long dips into sleep). These lapses may cause falls, injury and road accidents.

Quality of life
Long- and short-term sleep loss causes irritability, impatience, inability to concentrate and moodiness. Poor sleep affects the ability to work. Sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea are associated with depression.

Heart and lung health
Insomnia and sleep apnea have been linked to high blood pressure and irregular heart beat. Lack of sleep increases stress hormone levels and inflammation, two factors associated with heart attacks.

Immunity
Although not all the facts are clear, scientists have found that sleep deprivation alters the body's immune system, which fights off illness. For example, sleep loss around the time of a flu shot has been shown to reduce the production of flu-fighting antibodies.

Loss Of Sleep, Even For A Single Night, Increases Inflammation In The Body

 (September 4, 2008) -- Loss of sleep, even for a few short hours during the night, can prompt one’s immune system to turn against healthy tissue and organs. Losing sleep for even part of one night can trigger the key cellular pathway that produces tissue-damaging inflammation according to new research. The findings suggest a good night’s sleep can ease the risk of both heart disease and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis.full story... 

Light at night and working the graveyard shift linked to increased risk of breast cancer
SEATTLE — Oct. 16, 2001 — Women who work the graveyard shift may face an up to 60 percent increased risk of breast cancer, according to a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center study.
Results of the study, the first population-based investigation of the relationship between breast-cancer risk and exposure to light at night as determined by sleep habits, bedroom lighting and graveyard-shift work, will be published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The NCI funded the study.
Led by Scott Davis, Ph.D., a member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division, the study is one of two independent investigations to be published in JNCI that conclude sleep interruption, especially among women who work the night shift, is linked to a significant increase in breast-cancer risk. Read more

working the graveyard shift
In addition to a little grogginess, people who work the night shift endure a number of consequences.
A study conducted by Scott Davis, University of Washington professor and chairman of Epidemiology, is being done on males who work the night shift. According to Davis, studies observing the effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields, light-at-night and the risk of breast cancer were already being done in the early 1990s. They were the inspiration for the study.
“The exposures were thought to be related to disruption of the normal circadian rhythm and the production of the hormone melatonin at night,” Davis explained. “There was evidence at the time that lower levels of melatonin at night, when it is normally high, could affect the production of reproductive hormones in women, particularly estrogen, and actually increase circulating estrogens. We know from other studies that increased estrogen can increase the risk of breast cancer.”
As a result, Davis decided to delve further into the topic and actually compare the hormone levels of day and night shift workers.
Although the study is still underway, some effects of working the night shift are already clear.
A number of adverse health effects have been reported to be associated with working night shifts.
“These include increased gastrointestinal disorders, increased stress, perhaps an increase in some cardiovascular diseases, perhaps some increase in adverse pregnancy outcomes, and an increase in breast, prostate, colon and endometrial cancer. All of these cancer types are thought to be related to hormone levels,” Davis said.

Shiftwork - health effects
There is a small part of the brain called the ‘circadian clock’, which monitors the amount of light you see, moment by moment. In the evening, when the light starts to wane, your clock notices and prompts a flood of a brain chemical called melatonin, which gives the body the signal to fall asleep. Overnight, melatonin levels remain high. They drop at daybreak and remain low during the day.

During the day, other chemicals (neurotransmitters) – such as noradrenaline and acetylcholine – increase in the body and keep you awake. This system keeps you synchronised through the day–night cycle. Many other functions of the body – including temperature, digestion, heart rate and blood pressure – fluctuate through the day, tuned by the activity of the circadian clock.

This changing rate of activity over each 24-hour period is known as circadian rhythm. A person who works nights, or starts their working day before 6am, runs counter to their circadian rhythm. This may risk health problems.

Metabolism at night
An important body function, which follows the circadian rhythm, is the internal body temperature. This temperature increases through the day. It reaches the lower level in the early hours of the morning and reaches the maximum level late in the afternoon.

The tendency to fall asleep and stay asleep occurs during the decreasing phase of the temperature circadian rhythm (between midnight and 4am). As the body temperature rises, it is more difficult to stay asleep. This is why night workers who try to fall asleep at 8am find it very difficult and also find it difficult to remain asleep through the day.

Increased risks
A person working the night shift is at greater risk of various disorders, accidents and misfortunes, including:
Increased likelihood of obesity
Increased risk of cardiovascular disease
Higher risk of mood changes
Increased risk of gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation and stomach discomfort
Higher risk of motor vehicle accidents and work-related accidents
Increased likelihood of family problems, including divorce
In addition:
The sleep deprivation, which can be caused by shiftwork, may increase the risk of epilepsy in pre-disposed people.
Shiftworkers with diabetes can experience difficulties in controlling their blood sugar levels.
Sleep problems
Shiftworkers get, on average, two to three hours less sleep than other workers, often sleep through the day in two split periods, a few hours in the morning and then an hour or so before going to work at night. Night workers can find it difficult sleeping during the day It’s difficult to keep the sleep environment dark as well as free of noise.

Unintended consequences
Hundreds of thousands of young Filipinos, fresh out of graduate school are working in an aggressive and expanding industry that aims to attain over a million workforce. This enormous segment of Pinoy society will have a huge impact on the economy in terms of consumer spending, and on Filipino mores and customs, some good, some bad. For starters, their spending habits, particularly in fast food and the traffic of their indispensable toys, the cell phone, will adjust to their nocturnal behavior. Sidewalk vendors will feel the reduction of customers while malls may enjoy a boost in weekend sales. The sociological ramifications are worth watching.

Food Art

Veggie noodles

Veggie noodles promoted by none less than the President of the Strong Republic of the Philippines is also known by its nickname VAT noodles owing the moniker to its alleged funding source, the Value Added Tax. The nutrition news, wheat noodles fortified by adding yellow squash, did not receive universal acclaim. The hoopla was mocked by the political opposition as hype, and well it might be.

First of all, Nature worked untold millenniums to produce squash and wheat and are nutritious foods in their unaltered form. Noodles is man’s puny attempt to improve on Nature, wasting some of the nutrients and adding costs in the process. Secondly, it is misleading to declare that VAT funded the development, as the product was one of the outputs of Department of Science and Technology/Food and Nutrition Research Institute in their thrust (funded by tax money) to develop better mouse traps or reinvent the wheel. The product and recipe, Canton Noodles with Squash, can be accessed at this site.

Caution is advised on the nutrition label. It fails to list the sodium content, and microbial plate counts are worthless after leaving the factory. Most of all, the wheat flour could be the white flour variety (stripped of its bran nutrients and therefore bad for diabetics).

The Philippine Daily Inquirer headlined Binay slams Arroyo’s VAT-sponsored veggie noodles  

The yellowish veggie noodles may have been funded by the government's value added tax, but it would still be subject to the same tax when sold in the markets -- even to the poorest people, the intended beneficiaries. An opposition leader on Saturday pointed out that the poor who will buy the vegetable noodles will still have to pay for its VAT, and it won't really help the poor cope with rising prices of food and fuel.

“Even as the VAT was used to fund the production of the veggie noodles, the poor will still have to pay for the VAT on these same noodles,” said Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay,

 president of the United Opposition, adding: “It’s like frying them in their own fat…”

The food crisis: is the world exceeding its carrying capacity?

“The current food crisis is the result of an imbalance between food and people”, gambits a comment to the Lancet Editorial (April 26, 2008) 1, “you neglect to discuss the people component. This is because we human beings, with the exception of the Chinese, place a tight taboo (the Hardinian taboo2) on controlling our population numbers. We apply the concept of “carrying capacity” to animals, but never to ourselves because we have grown accustomed to the fact that, if we do exceed the ability of our local ecosystem to feed us, we can usually rely on getting food from elsewhere. But what if that ecosystem is the whole world? Is it possible for the world to exceed its carrying capacity?3 Since the causes of the current food crisis seem unlikely to disappear, it probably is.

If there is not enough food, what about fewer mouths? The long-term solution to the current food crisis requires the lifting of the Hardinian taboo, followed by an urgent reduction in global population growth, and if possible in the total population, while hoping that nature does not do it for us first with a calamity such as a pandemic of avian influenza.4 …”.

References

1. The Lancet. Finding long-term solutions to the world food crisis. Lancet 2008; 371: 1389.

2. Hardin G. Living within limits. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993:.

3. Cohen JE. How many people can the earth support?. New York: WW Norton, 1995:.

4. Gambotto A, Barratt-Boyes SM, de Jong MD, Neumann G, Kawaok Y. Human infection with highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus. Lancet 2008; 371: 1464-1475.

 

So what is the relevance of the comment to Pinoy society? Something that surfaced from the Church opposition to the Reproductive Health Care Act, House Bill 812. President Arroyo maintains her “pro-life” stand is aligned with that of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. And this country is in the midst of a food crisis even if our President would not acknowledge it.

Flashback to my comments over a decade ago.

 

SOBER QUESTIONS

A freshly erupted Eraption (witticisms emanating from the proclivity of President “Erap” Estrada to offer one-liner opinions), which usually signals the onset of contentious debate, was about his posture on abortion.  He said he opposed it.

This declaration rejuvenates the dormant issue of abortion with sonics raised to a higher decibel level.  It will be boosted by the adrenalin induced by the death penalty furor.  The death sentence will take center stage once again but this time the principal actor will be the unborn, in an entirely silent and passive mode, so to speak, and the mother in a supporting but vital role.

The abortion issue will split both the erudite and the unlearned into two contending camps: the pro-lifers who oppose abortion absolutely and the pro-choicers who support women’s rights and the mother’s right to decide.

Will the battle be in the field of morality, of right and wrong, sinner or saint?  Or will it spill, as it probably will, into the legislative tussles and court litigation?

What are the legal reference points other than the constitutional provision that the state “shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception”?

The terse phrase “from conception” has a parallel in U.S. legislation.  Five years before the 1987 Philippine constitution was promulgated, two U.S. legislators, one of them Representative Henry Hyde (yes, the chief inquisitor in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton) introduced legislation that “for purposes of enforcing the obligation of the states… not to deprive persons of life without due process of law, human life shall be deemed to exist from conception”.  By law, the fertilized egg, called the zygote, begins its human existence even if ironically it has no brain, nor brain activity, the consensual vital sign whose absence indicates human death.

Our own Congressman Jaraula, who says he opposes abortion, reveals that a bill on abortion is about to be filed in Congress by a certain Rep. Padilla.  How will such a bill fare?  The signs indicate stormy weather and very rough sailing.

The opponents are formidable.  Aside from “Tinex” Jaraula, the most visible are the uncompromising Pope, the Catholic Church, and a hostile Senate.  Most daunting of all would be the expected presidential vote.

What relevance does U.S. history and jurisprudence have on our impending melee about this issue?  We can learn valuable lessons for avoiding the violence and bloodshed the Americans experienced and still suffer.

For instance, are our solons capable of shedding politics and using only calm reason in elaborating their stance?  Will the medical community protect and honor the Hippocratic oath and shun U.S. doctors’ record of coercion in the passage of laws criminalizing abortion to stop incursion of midwives, homeopaths, and faith healers into their profession?  Will the scientific community, having played God in their cloning and cell research, and thus be in the best position to define the biological event of when human life starts to exist, take a neutral position and suggest that science has no contribution to make to the contentious issue of when human life begins?

Resolution in 2008?

Media coverage of the issues:

In a statement, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, one of the author-proponents of the reproductive bill, said his group  “does not intend to gatecrash” the July 25 prayer rally on the Filipino family, as they don’t want to be a party to “this vaudeville of misinformation.”

 “It is, however, disheartening that those who claim to be purveyors of truth are, in fact, peddling misinformation,” which is contained in the “Manifesto of Filipino Families.”

a manifesto which the Catholic Church espouses, “will only mire the faithful in ignorance and shackle our women to a life of unremitting pregnancies because it contains deliberate falsehoods.”

“An inordinately huge population growth rate of 2.04 percent imperils family life as a ballooning population impacts adversely on health, education, food security, employment, shelter and the environment – the very essentials of sustainable family life,” he said.

Lagman said that among the “misrepresentations” in the manifesto is the claim that Congress is railroading the family planning bills. This is false, since these bills have been pending in Congress for the past four Congresses, a time period spanning over a decade which belies railroading.

Another is that the laws on reproductive health and family planning eventually lead to the legalization of abortion. This is completely untrue because, on the contrary, a rational and comprehensive national policy on family planning, which includes contraceptive use, reduces significantly the rate of abortion as documented by international studies. Consequently, there is no need to legalize abortion if there is an increased usage of modern and effective contraceptives.

But the battle lines are drawn as these events reported by media indicate:

Cabral backs bill on family planning

Even if it means she could lose her job for going against President Arroyo’s stand, Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral yesterday maintained her support for the proposed reproductive health bill, which she said would help solve the country’s population problem.

Church official: We stand by CBCP on RH bill

A Church official, reacting to Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado who earlier declared that supporters of the bill under his diocese will be refused communion,  said an advocate of the controversial reproductive health bill pending in Congress may accept the Holy Communion or not on his own volition.

In a Pastoral Letter read in Catholic churches throughout Misamis Occidental, Archbishop Dosado said the debate created by his "no-communion" order was able to "expose the alien anti-life culture which some of them (in government) try to impose upon our unsuspecting people."

Letters to the Editor/No abortion involved in many birth regulation methods

07/28/2008 Nobody is taking away the right of Catholic priests to express their opposition to population management. By the same token, they should not deny others, particularly non-Catholics, the right to choose the method of regulating birth in their families. Making available the different methods of birth regulation is not the same as forcing them on the population… this approach respects the right of men and women to decide for themselves the method they think would work best for them.

Condoms a no-no even for couples with HIV, says CBCP exec

Philippine Daily Inquirer   07/18/2008

MANILA, Philippines—For the Catholic Church, condoms—even for married couples afflicted with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)—are still a big no-no.

An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said on Wednesday there was still no clear directive from the Vatican that married couples infected with HIV and those with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) could use condoms.

Bullying bishops 

The debate about reproductive health has shifted to high gear. Last week, some well-known conservative clerics appear to have threatened to excommunicate progressive politicians who expressed support for abortion (the proposed reproductive health bill to be filed in the House of Representatives when it opens next week). The threat seems to be working - at least on some of the slimier, unprincipled politicians for which this country has become famous

Pillow Talk

Exercise self-discipline in bed, archbishop tells couples

Philippine Daily Inquirer   07/26/2008

-- Amid the raging debate on artificial methods of birth control, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales’s advice to all married couples is to exercise more “self-discipline” and “self-control” in bed.

In his message to the Catholic flock at Friday’s prayer rally marking the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical on the Regulation of Birth or Humanae Vitae, Rosales said the lack of discipline in the marital bed rebounds on other aspects of life.

Because life should be valued and its creation is a serious matter, “there should be discipline and self-control” between couples, the prelate said in Filipino.

Couples who have the discipline to practice the Church-sanctioned natural family planning methods are “in possession of true values of life” and tend to pass it on to their children. They also tend to be good citizens, he said.

The missing voices of poor women

Philippine Daily Inquirer   07/18/2008

In the increasingly shrill debate over reproductive health, the voices of poor Filipino women, those most affected by the problem, remain eerily missing. Why this silence?

A study done in 2000 by a Filipino and international research team found that thousands of Filipino women are in effect “practicing family planning” through induced abortion. Shrouded in secrecy, it is their method of preventing the birth of another child.

NGO community organizers report that women friends in Metro Manila’s informal settlements have related intensely disturbing accounts of abortion as the poor woman’s answer to population control. Barely able to feed, clothe and educate four or five young children, and worried about the older ones already living on the streets, a woman who learns that she is pregnant with her fourth or fifth child is likely to abort it. Effective family planning solutions not having been available to her, she sees no other solution.

Running out of arguments

Editorial: Tribune 07/23/2008

If stupidity marked the presidential spokesmen’s arguments in defense of Gloria Arroyo’s record-breaking drop in public satisfaction rating, so does stupidity mark the Catholic bishops’ argument against the reproductive health bill, which they call the anti-life measure. Talk about misleading “Catholic” statements!

Pampanga Archbishop Paciano Aniceto argued that it was unfair that Catholic taxpayers’ money is being used to fund contraceptives, saying this is the reason churchmen are concerned since they want to make sure that this money from the taxpaying Catholics will not be used against Catholic families.

Now that is really stupid and “unbiblical,” considering that even Jesus Christ did say, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” which could be translated today as the pronouncement on the separation principle between church and state.

But biblical sayings aside, tax payments, whether from Catholics, Protestants, atheists, agnostics and even cultists, have nothing to do with one’s religion or non-religion. These belong to the realm of the state, into which the Catholic church, or any church for that matter, has no business interfering.

QC mayor presses OK of reproductive health law

PhilStar    July 29, 2008

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte Jr. cited yesterday the need for the enactment of a national reproductive health law to address the fast growing population of the country.

He said that although the family planning program of the government has been devolved to local government units, a national family planning policy is still needed to guide the people.

The mayor said the national policy may be patterned after the newly approved policy ordinance, which will establish the Quezon City Population and Reproductive Health Management Policy, to address the fast growing population in the city, and to speed up delivery of basic services to the people.

“The stand of the city government is that the final choice on how big their family will be is for couples, the government just provides guidance and provides the necessary support,” Belmonte told reporters during a press briefing.

The mayor said the new ordinance would effectively address the growing population of the city, which ballooned from 1.1 million in 1980 to 2 million this year…

GMA: We will survive crisis

PhilStar.com   July 29, 2008

The “tough choices” made by the administration will help the country survive and emerge stronger from the global food and fuel crunch, President Arroyo said yesterday.

In her 58-minute State of the Nation Address, Mrs. Arroyo also stressed that there is no easy cure for the country’s economic ailment, which she said is global in nature…

Tribal mayor upstages Congress fashionistas 

PhilStar    July 29, 2008

While most female lawmakers wore Filipiniana dresses at the eighth State of the Nation Address of President Arroyo yesterday, a mayor of a fifth-class municipality in Quirino province stole the show, wearing a tribal attire that left little to the imagination.

A television report showed Nagtipunan Mayor Rosario Camma in tribal clothing as he arrived at the House of Representatives.

In her speech, Mrs. Arroyo cited Camma, a former chieftain of Bugkalot, for helping 15,000 members of the Bugkalot tribe develop irrigation, plant vegetables and corn and achieve food sufficiency following the distribution of 100,000 Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title (CIDT) for Bugkalots in Quirino, Aurora and Nueva Vizcaya.

Camma apparently proved to all and sundry – senators, congressmen, diplomatic corps, Supreme Court justices and Cabinet members - that it was not cold in the session hall after all, as he just wore his blue G-string during the entire duration of the event.

Not only did the G-string outdo the fashion of the ladies, it was done in style. (Fashion is described as “me too”; style is “only me”.) Moreover, it demonstrated energy conservation the native way – no need for air conditioning.

 

The SONA grudgingly admits a real food crisis exists. And the tempest rages on, swirling around the basic issue: “The current food crisis is the result of an imbalance between food and people.”?

UPDATE

BOOK: Fatal MisConception: the Struggle to Control World By Matthew Connelly accused the developed worl of conspiring to control populations developing countries

In the critical book review, Men gone wild? The politics of population control

by Duff Gillespie formerly head, United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) population programme, which is roundly criticized by book author Connelly, Gillespie lashed back:

Connelly considers his book the first “global history of population control”, which, at various times and places, encompasses eugenics, infanticide, pronatalist schemes, restrictive immigration policies, genocide, and family planning. His archival research exhaustively spans the late 1800s through to the mid-1980s, after which his research becomes a bit thin. He includes a numbing number of cameo appearances by the famous, the infamous, and the unknown. Although an occasional nugget of interest can be found in the first part of the book, most readers will find Connelly's attention to minutiae a powerful narcotic.

In his emotively titled chapters “Controlling Nations” and “A System Without a Brain”, Connelly describes how past quixotic attempts to control the world's population coalesced into a “population movement” by the early 1970s. Led by larger-than-life personalities, such as General William Draper and Robert McNamara, then head of the World Bank, the movement spent “lavish” amounts of money on the movement's chosen instrument of population control: family planning. Although the US led this movement, other western countries joined in the “population control” effort. The movement was driven by the notion that there were too many people in the South (meaning the developing nations), and that further rapid population growth not only hindered economic and social development in the South, but also posed a potential threat to the tranquility and wealth of the North( developed world). Political leaders in some of the countries in the South shared many of the North's concerns about rapid population growth: in China, leaders instituted the one-child family programme, and in India, Sanjay Gandhi was the mastermind behind the coercive sterilization programme. Read more…

by Duff Gillespie formerly head, United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) population programme, which is roundly criticized by book author Connelly, Gillespie lashed back:

Connelly considers his book the first “global history of population control”, which, at various times and places, encompasses eugenics, infanticide, pronatalist schemes, restrictive immigration policies, genocide, and family planning. His archival research exhaustively spans the late 1800s through to the mid-1980s, after which his research becomes a bit thin. He includes a numbing number of cameo appearances by the famous, the infamous, and the unknown. Although an occasional nugget of interest can be found in the first part of the book, most readers will find Connelly's attention to minutiae a powerful narcotic.

In his emotively titled chapters “Controlling Nations” and “A System Without a Brain”, Connelly describes how past quixotic attempts to control the world's population coalesced into a “population movement” by the early 1970s. Led by larger-than-life personalities, such as General William Draper and Robert McNamara, then head of the World Bank, the movement spent “lavish” amounts of money on the movement's chosen instrument of population control: family planning. Although the US led this movement, other western countries joined in the “population control” effort. The movement was driven by the notion that there were too many people in the South (meaning the developing nations), and that further rapid population growth not only hindered economic and social development in the South, but also posed a potential threat to the tranquility and wealth of the North( developed world). Political leaders in some of the countries in the South shared many of the North's concerns about rapid population growth: in China, leaders instituted the one-child family programme, and in India, Sanjay Gandhi was the mastermind behind the coercive sterilization programme. Read more…

Food for the Future

That our agriculture cannot produce enough rice to feed our population is a grim fact. Unless we intend to use starvation as the primary policy to control population growth, Filipinos must act aggressively to reform its agriculture. Food, the fundamental determinant of health, is life.

The administration’s responses to the recent food crisis have consisted mostly of palliatives that offer temporary relief, like the massive emergency importation of rice, a heavy price subsidy to make rice affordable to the poor, and cash doles to lucky families.

Food for the Future

The Arroyo administration has talked about pouring P30 billion into a new program to accelerate rice production, but it has not put forward anything as bold and concrete as the food production project proposed by San Miguel Corp. and the Kuok Group. The government has identified three million hectares of idle lands that can be planted to various crops, particularly rice, corn, sugarcane, coconut and vegetables. SMC, together with the Malaysian food giant Kuok Group, wants to develop one-third of that, or one million hectares. They plan to invest as much as $1,000 per hectare for their project called “Feeding our Future.” Under this proposal the government will keep ownership of the land, while SMC and the Kuok Group will provide financial and technical expertise in developing the lands and then buy all of the produce. Since these are public lands, there will be no problem this time with the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law like SMC had in Sumilao town in Bukidnon, but the government must make sure that the farmers who will till the land get a fair return on their labors.

So far so good. Now the spoiler – the food is for animals and the rice for beer, and profitability, not exigency, dictates the pace of the project

San Miguel and the Kuok Group will split a 30-percent equity infusion in the project and the remaining 70 percent would be raised through long-term debt issues. “Our priority is always rice, corn, sugar, coconut and maybe later on other crops like palm,” SMC President Ang told reporters, adding San Miguel would convert most of the produce into animal feed.

Rice will be used for beer fermentation, Ang said.

The joint venture will issue debt locally and offshore, depending on market conditions, to fund certain phases of the project, Ang said. “We can go to the market and issue 25-year bonds,” he said.

Ang said the Philippine would benefit from the expertise of the Kuok Group, which owns Wilmar International, the world’s largest publicly listed palm oil trader.