U.N. agencies pose bigger health risks

Published 7:11 pm Friday, December 5, 2014

Ebola has dropped out of the headlines and largely out of the consciousness of Americans, but the United Nations warns that Ebola “is the most severe acute public-health emergency seen in modern times.”

Not so, says Stanford University professor and physician Henry I. Miller. The “most severe acute public-health emergency” is the United Nations itself, he counters.

“As the United Nations’ own data make clear, infectious diseases, many of them preventable and treatable, remain the scourge of poorer populations,” Miller writes in National Review. “In 2008, about 250 million cases of malaria caused almost a million deaths, mostly of children younger than 5. In virtually all poor, malaria-endemic countries, there is inadequate access to antimalarial medicines (especially artemisinin-based combination therapy). The incidence of malaria could be reduced dramatically by the judicious application of the mosquito-killing chemical DDT, but the U.N. and national regulators have curtailed its availability, owing to misguided notions about its toxicity (and no small measure of political correctness).”

The United Nations stands in the way of other medical advances, as well. Miller points to many actions by World Health Organization (WHO) director Margaret Chan. One example is genetically modified crops.

“Especially during drought conditions — which currently plague much of Europe, Africa, Australia, South America and the United States — even a small percentage reduction in the use of water for irrigation could result in huge benefits, both economic and humanitarian,” Miller points out. “Genetically engineered, or ‘genetically modified’ (GM), crop varieties can accomplish this and are widely recognized by agricultural scientists and policymakers as critical to meeting future water shortages. During the past decade, however, various U.N. agencies, including Dr. Chan’s WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), have created major regulatory obstacles to innovations in plant breeding.”

Genetic engineering allows crops to thrive in unlikely places, and to help cure disease, even.

“Ironically, the U.N.’s obstructionism has taken a huge toll on a sector of genetic engineering known as ‘biopharming’ — using genetic-engineering techniques to induce crops such as corn, tomatoes and tobacco to produce high concentrations of high-value pharmaceuticals,” Miller notes. “Why is this ironic? Because one of the most promising drugs to treat Ebola infections, ZMapp, is obtained from genetically engineered tobacco plants that have been infected with genetically engineered plant viruses.”

The U.N. even undermines its own goal to end hunger.

“The most ambitious of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals — ‘to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’ by 2015 — certainly will not be accomplished by then, or ever, without innovative technology,” Miller says. “And that, in turn, cannot be developed in the face of U.N.-based bans and excessive regulatory barriers. Instead of taking constructive action to redress these inconsistencies, Dr. Chan, the head of WHO, is out and about, crying ‘Wolf!’ and bashing the pharmaceutical industry.”

Ebola does deserve attention and resources, Miller contends. But the United Nations, on the other hand, is deserving of neither.

“The U.N. is part of the problem, instead of the solution,” he says. “What is surprising is that the United States uncomplainingly contributes disproportionately to the U.N.’s budget.”