The Gallery
Artist: Ryan Spencer Reed

Powerful picture.

Actually (in response to our drug pushing spammer), African Sleeping Sickness (Trypanosomiasis) is generally treated with Suramin... though, unlike Xanax, you generally have to get it (in the USA) via the CDC. Though I suppose if people can find a way to get a buzz off of it, people will soon be selling knock-offs of it, too, on the internet... ;-)

But on a serious/somber note, it's also (like Joe mentioned) if not treated, most often fatal; and unfortunately, the medicines used to treat it can be fairly hard to get, and potentially very toxic to use...

Begs the questions why the photographer didn't or couldn't do something to save her.

I think there's another picture in Africa floating around of a dying child lying around while a vulture looked overhead waiting for him to die. That particular child they were able to save. But the sight was so tramatic that the photographer committed suicide after returning to the States.

Then again, you can't count on any pictures that come out of the third world. Everyone's got an agenda, and it's hard to get caught with forgery out there. (Not to deny that pestilience and starvation occur out there.

Tim,

Lucky? It wasn't luck that brought America its wealth and health, but the hard work and virtue of people, generations of them. Before them, America was as worse off as Africa.

Why does this happen? The better question would be why plague doesn't happen everywhere. Plague, poverty and pestilence are the norm. It's intelligent human action which defeat those norms. Africans--and these particular Africans--didn't take that action. The real "why" question is why these victims, and the population of the continent they live on, didn't take that action.

Why must we make that treatment possible? Why should their sickness be a claim on our strength? Why should their poverty be a claim on our wealth? Why should their ignorance be a claim on our genius?

Yes, I'm to love others as I love myself. But how would we love ourselves if I were a shiftless person doing nothing to improve my lot in life? Eventually, I'd leave people like that alone to sink or swim on their own.

Even on a selfish level, human life has value to me qua human life, and is worth preserving. Furthermore, it's aesthetically displeasing to me to see people suffer so; it's a mess I'd pay a degree of time, money and energy to clean up. But by no circumstances do I consider their misfortune to be a mandate on me to act. Imagine the consequence personally, and societally, if that weren't the case, and every bum on the street had a first mortgage on your personal resources.

Protagonist wrote:

"Begs the questions why the photographer didn't or couldn't do something to save her."

As I stated before, this isn't something where it's just a matter of taking some penicillin for a few days and it goes away.

Based upon your further comments, it seems likely that you (and your post) are going to just turn to stone at the first light of day (ie: you're just trolling here), but I'll pose a question for you to really search your soul about (not just post a flip post about here): "if you started to fail in life, would you really jump straight to letting yourself 'sink.' If you have hit misfortune, do you really think the best, most loving thing for the person who finds you bleeding on the sidewalk (or whatever) can do is to walk on by?"

Protagonist:

I am thankful that God didn't wait to see if I had earned his mercy before he decided to show mercy to me.

If you understood how deeply flawed and sinful you are, and how undeserving you are of grace even as an American you wouldn't be self-righteous about those suffering in Africa (or anywhere).

Scott

Scott:

"Thankful that God didn't wait"? This would assume that God is bound by the laws of time, and that God is not omniscient--He wouldn't know a fact at one time, but know it later. Wouldn't he just know innately what your sins are, and then innately know whether it's for the best to forgive you or not?

And this raises another good question: If we're so "deeply flawed and sinful", if we're so rotten to the core, if we're so horrible and bad, then why would God die for our sins? Put another way, why would God redeem man and not redeem the devil, even though we are assumedly just as bad as the Fallen Angel? Surely he's not being arbitrary.

We know that God saw us bad, and decided to make us good. We know, by that mercy, that God saw in us the potential for good.

Granted I'm "deeply flawed and sinful", but I also have infinite potential for good. In that sense, I'm very much "deserving of grace". However, I wouldn't phrase it as my right, but as God's prerogative. God, being a just, loving and good God would want to effect as much good in the world as he could. So he would naturally want to redeem someone who has the potential for good, such as us. God's mercy is our benevolent fate, not an exception to our doomed fate.

Regarding starving Africans, I'm not being self-righteous; I'm being realistic.

Self-Righteousness would be to say that Americans arw innately, ontologically better than Africans, and thus I'm in a better condition. Conversely, by a self-righteous view, Africans would innately, ontologically worse than Americans.

That's not what I said. I'm saying that if Africans did what Americans did, they would have what Americans have. Conversely, if Americans didn't do what Americans do, they would be as worse off as Africans.

Africans--along with everyone else--are people who control their fate and who can effect good into the world through rational action, just like the God in whose image we're made. In that sense, we're all equal, we're all on the hook for own own welfare, and we're all worthy of divine blessings.