Intbel

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We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Paul Birch

Since 1979 is hardly "for ages".

A "treatment" doesn't mean a cure; it may be little more than a feeble palliative. Malaria is endemic in much of China, and the mortality has always been high. Whatever medicines they had clearly had little impact, and certainly did not constitute a miracle cure.

The new drug seems promising, but we have seen similar claims many times before. Historically only one effective and lasting solution to the malaria problem has been found; a sufficient population density to keep the land well drained and free of the stagnant water in which the mosquitos breed.

Intbel

__________________
We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Paul Birch

Do you have any specific point of disagreement with my reply, or are you just making snide comments?

Intbel

__________________
We are all free to choose - every step of the way - no exceptions.

Paul Birch

Anyone can slip INTO phpbb_making foolish statements. I understand what you were trying to say, and I sympathise. However, it was an unneccessary politically correct "defence" that opens the door to unjustified attack.

By saying that every "ism" fails we inadvertantly rule out the possibility of complete truth, of any philosophy that is fully correct, thereby falling INTO phpbb_the trap of promoting the very moral relativism that libertarianism (as distinct from libertinism) has traditionally rejected. The existence of a correct philosophy does not entail that every society must be organised the same way or that every person must behave the same way; the doctrine does not have to be an ideology, or even to require that everyone believe in it.

Most "isms" are wrong, because most sets of belief are wrong. But not all of them. One complete set is right and true. Our job is to try to find that set, by assembling valid subsets INTO phpbb_a coherent whole.

If you admit that "every 'ism' fails", all our enemies need to do to debunk our beliefs is to label them with an "ism". Then they no longer need to debate actual policies or particular arguments; they can condemn us with that label alone. We have put ourselves in the position of having to say, "yes, we're libertarians, but we don't really believe it, we're not extremists". And that's self-defeating. What we believe, we really do believe. We don't need to apologise for it.

We have seen just such an obnoxious attack in another thread, in which the "ism" label has been used to tar all libertarian ideas with the same brush, on the basis that some who are called or who call themselves libertarians may espouse opinions that others consider extreme and mistaken. Your defence, I would argue, is an own goal. On a historical note, the word "capitalist" was originally concocted by communists as a term of abuse for those who believe in the merits of economic freedom and the moral goodness of a free market.

Paul Birch

What reservations? Be specific. So far as I am aware I wasn't challenging anything you wrote in that post. I was mainly pointing out that it did not back up Gareth's daft conspiracy theory, which I took to refer to alleged ancient wisdom not recent research. By the way, from what I heard on the news, I was under the impression that this new drug had been developed by Brazilian researchers. I may be mistaken...

Yes, there seem to be dozens of new "cures" being reported, both drugs and vaccines or innoculations, from teams all over the world. Such as this one:

"The team of European and South African scientists said the new drug, called G25, completely cured monkeys infected with the disease in laboratory experiments."

The one you mentioned seems to be related to this one: " ... Professor Nick White, who runs the Wellcome Trust's south-east Asia unit, told BBC News Online how rates of malaria were reduced by 90% - using a drug made from a Chinese herb. ... along with other doctors, [he] heard about [artemisinin or ... sweet wormwood] ... used in China to treat malaria ... In total, around 25,000 people have been involved in trials in Thailand and Africa. ... combination treatments, using artemisinin ... were effective in curing malaria, said Professor White but, used together, artemisinin and mesloquine were 95% effective."

According to New Scientist, sweet wormwood "has been used for more than 1500 years in traditional Chinese medicine to treat fevers". It does not appear to have been considered a specific against malaria, nor to have been kept any sort of Chinese secret. It is apparently rather costly too. "Now, a [cheap] synthetic drug, with apparently similar properties to artemisinin, has been produced by ... the University of Nebraska ... and ... Ranbaxy of New Delhi, India, and Malaria for Medicines Venture ... in Geneva, Switzerland."

With all of these claims it's best to take them with a pinch of salt until we see how they actually pan out.