ASB DBWI: Jimmy Carter personally takes on guinea worm.

I know he briefly mentioned it in a speech as a wish list item and the type of thing which could be done if we had better international cooperation.

But what if former President Jimmy Carter personally took on guinea worm himself?
 
Little impact. Guinea worms are gonna be seen by most of hoi poloi as a joke issue("Hey, are those like cute little guinea pigs, haw haw haw!"), and Carter, while a darling of the international world-beat humanitarian crowd, is pretty much a nobody as far as the average public is concerned. Midly despised within the US, pretty much forgotten everywhere else.

So, joke politician takes on joke issue. Not a good recipe for success.

(OOC: I actually don't know how successful the campaign against guinea worms has been, even though I've been paying cursory attention to it, mostly via Carter, since the late 80s. What I wrote is kinda the reaction I might have given if someone had asked me back then about the prospects for Carter's efforts.)
 
Last edited:
Seriously Carter was way better off fronting the campaign against international human trafficiking and sex slavery. Anything to do with sex automatically garners public attention, and that compensated somewhat for Carter's lacklustre persona.
 
And Fox News would have a field day, following Jimmy and Rosalyn to some dusty little village where they don't even have air conditioning.

And interviewing Jimmy, pretending to be interested in the issue but really just to make fun of him.:p
 
And okay, he does have the systematic approach of an engineer. And he has a certain kind of patience. And he has the artist-type personality where he's much better picking his own issues, rather than whatever crosses his desk. Plus, he's gotten pretty good at coalition building.

But Jimmy has no medical training whatsoever!

Even being very optimistic, I'd put his odds at best at 1 out of 10.
 
And Fox News would have a field day, following Jimmy and Rosalyn to some dusty little village where they don't even have air conditioning.

And interviewing Jimmy, pretending to be interested in the issue but really just to make fun of him.:p

Yeah, it was bad enough when NBC did that reality-show following him around on his anti-sex traffic crusade. It was ostensibly sympathetic, but you know a lot of the audience was just snickering at the whole "elderly Christian square tours international red-light districts and and tries not to act shocked" thing.

Admittedly, he did roll with it pretty well. That one episode of him chatting with the Bangkok ladyboys was classic.
 
I think I remember that episode! And it did have the aspect of the square Christian dude trying not to be shocked, at least at the beginning, and then the former president recovered rather nicely.

And as Jimmy has said in his slow southern cadence, Our first task is to show persons currently involved in the sex trade as human beings, before we talk about reforms and better alternatives.

Then there was that news magazine with the particularly well-written article which asked, Why doesn't Carter only focus on the bad cases of human trafficking? And they answered their own question this way: because then people shut it out and stop listening. Instead, by showing about two-thirds of people who choose sex work admittedly often due to lack of jobs, and one-third of the bad cases, Carter lets the audience conclude for themselves that trafficking is not a given. He therefore engages his audience in looking for real improvement.

Okay, so President Carter has successfully raised awareness, but how much tangible improvement has this really led to?

I know the California House voted 40% to decriminalization prostitution and finance spot inspections of adult-oriented businesses.

I myself might lean toward that answer, but I don't know for sure. I mean, the California package didn't address middle-class jobs, nor immigration in any kind of substantial way. It purports to be realistic. And maybe it is in some ways, but not so much in others.
 
And I still like the guinea worm possibility. Maybe Jimmy talks to a variety of medical professionals and finds out that several different things would need to happen at about the same time to make a real difference. So outside chance, maybe the Carter Center does take it on afterall.

And part of the challenge is that President and First Lady Carter visit a number of rural villages!
 
from WHO about guinea worm disease:

http://www.who.int/dracunculiasis/disease/en/

' . . . Infected persons try to relieve the burning sensation by immersing the infected part of their body in local water sources, usually ponds water. This also induces a contraction of the female worm at the base of the ulcer causing the sudden expulsion of hundreds of thousands of first stage larvae into the water. . . '
And yes, we can rag on the poor people for being uneducated and being stupid. But if you or I had the same burning pain, the 'fiery serpent' as it's been called, we might do the exact same thing.

It's a very hard disease.

Frankly, I don't think the Carter Center would stand much of a chance, even if Jimmy and Rosalynn did personally invest a lot of time and energy.
 
Top