Lead pigment in turmeric is the culprit in a global poisoning mystery (2024)

I think this NPR article is too quick to put a positive spin on this. They have made a nice little story here with a happy ending. Farmers had blackened turmeric -> they used a random yellow die they found -> massive lead spike in everyone's bloodstream -> Americans came in with a xray gun and saved the day -> no more lead in the blood.

But if you ascribe even the slightest but of agency to any of the non-Americans involved, you have to wonder if this problem will come back.

> But if you ascribe even the slightest but of agency to any of the non-Americans involved, you have to wonder if this problem will come back.

From the article:

> And recently they are celebrating some big news on the lead fighting front: This week, UNICEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a new $150 million initiative to combat lead poisoning.

Americans have disassembled USAID. The agency of Americans is also contributing to this reccuring.

> The agency of Americans is also contributing to this reccuring.

I’m going to push back very, very hard on ascribing any sort of blame on anyone other than those who are committing these acts. Least of all the American taxpayer, regardless of whether or not dismantling USAID is a good idea.

If the rest of the world is so helpless that all hope depends on Americans to solve even problems such as this and it’s our fault for not doing so, then I don’t want to hear a peep about us taking any other actions in the world that we deem just. You can’t have it both ways.

The article makes clear that the initiative, though announced by USAID with other partners, was funded primarily by philanthropy.

> The money – most of it from Open Philanthropy – will go to more than a dozen countries from Indonesia and Uganda to Ghana and Peru.

From other sources, I think the US _financial_ commitment was actually pretty minimal ($4M). But if USAID had been providing important governance, administration or coordination, withdrawing its involvement could still destabilize an effort that otherwise could have been impactful.

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/us-government-commits-4-mill...

"Blame" is a loaded word. But is it really so strange to you to think that the richest and most powerful country might have some role to play in international problems that arise from comparative poverty? And that the country with the largest military in the world also should be held to a high standard in how it uses that tremendous force?

If we were just some average-sized middle-income country, then no one would expect that we should play a disproportionate role in helping things at an international level, or that the use of our military is more criticized than any other. But we're big and rich and powerful and we've had some military presence in other continents pretty much continuously since WWII, and we shouldn't expect to be able to act with impunity.