Americans Could Benefit
Good morning. Last week Margaret Chen, head of the World Health Organization, strongly suggested that Americans could benefit from Cuban health programs and from some breakthrough drugs and vaccines that treat such diseases as cancer and diabetes, if President Obama's plans to normalize relations with the island actually come to fruition. Ms. Chen, for example, repeated that one reason poor Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than rich America is because of the ubiquitous polyclinics that saturate the island and are ready 24-hours-a-day to treat and advise pregnant Cubans free-of-charge. Ms. Chen suggests that the U. S. study and replicate those polyclinics and she suggests that Americans should have access to Cuban-developed drugs and vaccines. Well, this week another internationally renowned health professional strongly echoed Ms. Chen's words about Cuba's health methods.
Dr. Peter G. Bourne was born in 1939 in Oxford, England. Today he is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford. In between those two milestones in his distinguished life he became known as one of the world's foremost medical experts. He got his MD degree from Emory University in Atlanta in 1962 and his MA in anthropology from Stanford in 1969. In the 1970s he was Special Assistant to President Jimmy Carter for Health Issues. He was also President Carter's Drug Czar. Today, in addition to his teachings at Oxford, Dr. Bourne is still a pilot, a marathoner, and he is Chairman of the Board of MEDICC, which stands for Medical Education Cooperation With Cuba. Since 1959 Dr. Bourne has deeply admired the health practices instituted in 1959 by Revolutionary Cuba right after the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Dr. Bourne has written lavishly about that in his books, including contrasts with Batista's Cuba.
Dr. Bourne wrote a superb biography of Jimmy Carter.
Dr. Bourne also wrote a superb biography of Fidel Castro. Since 1959 Americans have been told daily that all of the assassination attempts, military and terrorist acts against Cuba, the embargo, etc., etc., are fully justified because "every dollar we allow to reach Cuba goes into Fidel Castro's pockets or his Swiss bank accounts." Such lies, Dr. Bourne says, have hurt Cubans and Americans everyday since 1959 while sating endless revenge, economic, and political motives of extremists Cuban exiles and their sycophants. In the summer of 2015 the World Bank and the World Health Organization both praised Cuba for the extraordinary percentage of its economy devoted to education, health, and shelter on the island. Well, Peter G. Bourne has been saying that since 1959...although Americans are not supposed to pay any attention to such unbiased experts because it might anger anti-Castro benefactors.
Peter G. Bourne in the 1970s with President Carter.
In this first week of August, 2015, Dr. Peter G. Bourne has written another superb article, this one praising President Barack Obama for his peaceful overtures to Cuba. Dr. Bourne knows as much about Cuba's health practices as any non-Cuban in the entire world. His updated article points out how Americans can benefit from advances in medicine pioneered in Cuba and, yes, funded by Revolutionary Cuba. Dr. Bourne has a slide-show with 27 graphics to illustrate his points about Cuba's medical progress from zero during the Batista years to world-class during the Castro years.
Graphic #1 from Dr. Peter G. Bourne.
Graphic #2 from Dr. Peter G. Bourne.
After those first two graphics, Dr. Peter G. Bourne's slide-show goes through 25 more graphics touting Cuba's health programs, and then he concludes with the above graphic. Americans to this day are supposed to believe every word the three Fox News-promoted presidential candidates -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz -- say about Cuba. And Americans are supposed to totally dismiss every word that true, unbiased experts like Dr. Peter G. Bourne say about Cuba. It's been that way since 1959. President Barack Obama's efforts have bravely attempted to correct that abomination by at least opening some cracks, some fissures, in America's Cuban policy that has shamed democracy since the 1950s. But politicos like Bush, Rubio, and Cruz -- among the many who have benefited from Batistiano-Mafiosi dictates concerning Cuba -- are determined to, by their own words, "block," "turn back," and "destroy" Mr. Obama's sane, decent approach to Cuba. If history of the last six decades is any clue, neither the American people nor the U. S. media have the courage to oppose that affront and insult to democracy. Across the ocean at Oxford University, Dr. Bourne has monitored the progress President Obama has made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now Dr. Bourne will monitor right-wing benefactors blocking, turning back, and destroying most if not all of what a decent President has wrought.
I'll close this essay on Dr. Peter G. Bourne with this graphic, one of the 27 in his slideshow. It shows that during Batista's rule Cuba's infant mortality rate was among the worst in the world; after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the island's infant mortality became among the world's best, and lower than that in the United States. At the bottom of this graphic Dr. Bourne points out that the deaths of mothers during childbirth also took a precipitous dip after 1959 in Revolutionary Cuba. The lives of babies and the lives of mothers are the best indicators of a nation's health care. Bush, Rubio, and Cruz won't dispute Dr. Bourne's graphics and they won't dispute the article he wrote this week. But they'll assume Americans won't care about what unbiased experts say about the nearby island that Bush, Rubio, and Cruz will tell you was much better off when the Batistianos and the Mafiosi ruled supreme back in the 1950s.
In their extremely well-funded, bought-and-paid-for bids for the White House, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush self-servingly don't seem too impressed with any Cuban positives -- including such meaningless things as infant and mother mortality rates. On the other hand, they seem to think that the glory days of Cuba came in the 1950s when Batista, Lansky, and Luciano were in charge of Cuba.
But.......................
.............when Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba, they were only concerned with robbing the island and brutalizing the peasants.
But at least.............
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........................the Cuban Revolution, after its triumph on January 1, 1959, did care about infant and mother mortality, according to renowned Dr. Peter G. Bourne.
Good night..!
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