Popcorn: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

More False ‘Starvation Death’ Statistics

The big lie of 40,000 hunger/starvation/malnutrition deaths which supposedly occur daily in the world got a big boost recently in The Washington Post.

Ms. Jessica Mathews’ 17 January article “A Retreat on Trade?,” stated that “An appalling 40,000 [people] die from hunger and hunger-related causes daily.” On 9 February, U.S. Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, in an article adapted from his new book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, said that “Each day, almost 40,000 children under the age of 5 are dying from hunger and malnutrition caused in significant part by ecological devastation.”

The constant repetition of these claims demands knowledge of the basic facts: “Each year roughly 50,000,000 deaths occur in the world, of which about 15 million are infants and children below the age of 5 years.”1 Of the 50 million deaths “…roughly 11,000,000…occur each year in the developed countries .…”2 For all practical purposes, no one starves to death or dies from “hunger and malnutrition” in these lands (Europe, Japan, the former USSR, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Oceania, Canada, and the United States).

Of the remaining 39 million yearly deaths, all occurring in the underdeveloped world, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that at least 9 million of them are caused by either cancer3 or circulatory and heart diseases4.

Subtracting these 9 million deaths leaves some 30 million deaths, several million of which are caused by various episodes of violence, e.g. accidents, homicides, suicides, insurrections, and war. None of these deaths are “hunger-related.”

Thus, if there really were 40,000 “hunger” caused deaths in the world daily (14.6 million per year), that would mean every other African, Asian and South American who dies would have died as a result of hunger, starvation, and malnutrition! Does anyone really believe that?

What about the deaths of children? UNICEF and the WHO have long said that 40,000 deaths occur daily among children under age 5 in developing countries. Although Senator Gore has neatly tied together the worst scenarios of the Malthusian and ecological doomsayers as alleged causes of these deaths, the actual causes, according to the WHO, are tabulated below.

The malnutrition which accompanies some of these deaths5 is most often caused by the underlying disease and usually occurs subsequent to the onset of the disease rather than being its cause.6 Despite the claims of population propagandists the 40,000 children who allegedly die each day do not die of starvation or “hunger.”7 Unfortunately, some children and other people in the “third world” do starve to death or die of “hunger and malnutrition] but wildly exaggerating their numbers to promote world-wide population control schemes does nobody any good. If only the same effort and monies were used to eradicate disease and provide proper sanitation and health facilities.

Causes of deathNumber (thousands)Percentage of deaths

*Polio causes about 250,000 paralytic cases annually, of which about 10 percent die.

Source: Alan D. Lupus. “Causes of Death: An Assessment of Global Patterns of Mortality Around 1950.” World Health Statistical Quarterly 43: 9I-104 (1990).

Table reprinted from Mosely & Cowley, “The Challenge of World Health,” Population Bulletin, Population Reference Bureau, Vol. 46, No. 4, December 1991, p.11.

Catholics Spread Hunger Death Baloney

The Washington, DC based Catholic News Service (CNS) recently distributed a thick slice of “hunger” death baloney to its subscribers. The CNS story, released just prior to Thanksgiving, quoted Oxfam America, a left-of-center humanitarian group involved in combating world hunger, to the effect that “…each day 60,000 people die of hunger and related disease [that totals to 21.9 million yearly], and of those, 40,000 are children under age 5.”

Enough, already!