

Playing God - The Challenge of Deciding Who to Feed - asanwal
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-738253,00.html

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Mz
It is, of course, heart-wrenching to read something like this. And certainly
in cases of crisis (flood, hurricane, etc), I think it is the correct thing to
do to ship in food. But in many cases, I really am ambivalent about it. "Diet
for a Small Planet" made the point that hunger was rooted mostly in political
issues and trying to give food to people often worsened the problem. (Someone
here once spoke of some US company providing just enough free baby formula in
some third world country for mother's milk to dry up and many babies starving
as a result because the parents couldn't afford to buy the formula after the
free supply ran out.)

I don't know what The Answer is. But I think fixing root causes of such
problems is where more of the focus should be. "Give a man a fish, feed him
for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."

