Peeved

I wasn't sure whether I should blog about this or not, but I'm so annoyed, that I think I'm going to just do it.

Yesterday, I was reading the BBC, and the front story was one about the UK pledging money to vaccinate kids in Africa so that children under 5 no longer have to die of preventable diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia.  I thought to myself, "finally."

Then, I noticed that there were many, many comments on the subject, I scrolled down expecting to see comments saying ,"It's about time!", "Thank God", etc, etc. Instead, I saw comment after comment of people saying things about population control and how we shouldn't be helping these kids now because they'll just grow up to die in the future. "The planet is already overpopulated and now we have 4 million more mouths to fee." No joke.People were actually saying this stuff.

I have been fuming about this for about 24 hours now.  Is overpopulation a problem? Yes. It is. It's a big problem.  But who are we to say who gets to live and die.  Just because they had the bad luck to be born poor, who are we to say that their lives are therefore worth less than our own? If we're concerned about overpopulation and sustainability, we better be recycling, cutting down our consumption, eating vegetarian/vegan, etc.  But we do NOT have the right to say that 4 million kids in underdeveloped countries should die of preventable diseases. If we're refusing to vaccinate these kids, then I guess we shouldn't be  vaccinating kids in the US and Europe.  Let's stop putting money into cancer research or any medical research for that matter. After all it's just nature's way of thinning out the population, right?

On the other hand, why don't we vaccinate these kids? Let's cut down the death rate of children under five. It's proven that as countries develop, the birth rate goes down. People stop having 10 kids each because they no longer worry that most of them will die before they hit their fifth birthday. As people's basic needs are met, they stop having so many children and start focusing on education and career. If we're so worried about overpopulation, we should be doing everything in our power to help underdeveloped countries meet their basic needs (i.e. helping their kids live) so that they can have a chance to start developing.  That's the way to stop population from growing at such an astounding rate.

Ok. I'm done. End rant.