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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Coyne who wrote (159089)	7/8/2001 10:55:46 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 769670

Technology: Poorest countries fall behind without equal access to technology, medicine By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press MEXICO CITY (July 8, 2001 9:02 p.m. EDT) - In a world where 1.2 billion people are still forced to survive on less than $1 per day, governments of the poorest countries will have to take advantage of genetically engineered food, cutting-edge medicine and technology to have a fighting chance against poverty, a United Nations report has concluded. The 11th annual Human Development Report, scheduled to be released in Mexico City on Tuesday, found that the world's richest countries are holding back scientific breakthroughs key to eradicating hunger and stamping out poverty. "The current debate in Europe and the United States over genetically modified crops mostly ignores the concerns of the developing world," the report says, adding that crops altered to produce higher yields could revolutionize farming in Africa, Latin America and across the underdeveloped world. It further argues that the developed world's push to cap technology once widely available has hurt the world's poor, highlighting how the campaign to ban DDT has left tropical countries battling a new breed of Malaria-carrying mosquitos. The report also faults wealthy nations for driving up international prices of prescription drugs by refusing to pay their share of high prices. "The citizens of rich countries must understand that it is only fair for people in developing countries to pay less for medicines and other products," the report says. "The report is intended to challenge prevailing skepticism about technology," Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Fund, said in a recent interview. "There is a view that the history of development was a history of technology's failure." The report ranked 174 countries based on income, education, life expectancy and health care, awarding Norway the world's highest standard of living. "This is a recognition that our government combines a good welfare system for all people with a dynamic economy," Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stolenberg said. "With a good welfare state you have people who are willing to take risks they can't take elsewhere," Stolenberg said. "You have well-educated people with good health who are more productive and create a more dynamic economy." Stolenberg's country was followed in the rankings by Australia and Canada, the latter having topped the report six years in a row. African nations made up 29 of the report's 36 worst performers, with war-ravaged Sierra Leone lodged at rock bottom for the second-straight year. A baby born in Sierra Leone today will likely die before it turns 39, compared to Norway's life expectancy of 79. The United States slipped from third to sixth in this year's report. Ranked at 134, Haiti was the Americas' least-developed nation. At last year's unprecedented U.N. Millennium Summit, countries pledged to reduce mortality rates for children under 5 by two-thirds, cut poverty in half, and reduce the percentage of their citizens living without drinking water by 50 percent, all by 2015. But without the aid of new technology, most of the world has no chance of meeting those goals, according to the report, which notes that 30,000 children under age 5 die worldwide of preventable causes everyday, almost 1 billion people live without safe drinking water.