The failure of the mental‐health‐care system has prompted the swift organization of families into a rapidly growing national self‐help movement—the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
The National Academy of Sciences held a joint workshop with the Government of Tanzania last August on the potential of solar energy for the villages of that country. Costs of five solar technologies (mini-hydroelectric generators, wind, methane generation from organic wastes, photovoltaic cells, and flat-plate solar collectors) were compared with costs of diesel-generated electricity and with electricity from the national grid. Each of the five technologies is either now competitive with diesel or will be in a few years. Although the figures presented are not conclusive since they are derived from calculations rather than an actual test, the results are encouraging enough to warrant serious testing in Third World villages.
In the past several months American intellectual circles have spawned a new series of challenges to the morality and efficacy of responding to the needs of the poor countries. One of the surprising aspects of these arguments—one which has given considerable satisfaction to the devoted opponents of such aid and even raised eyebrows among the usually uninvolved—is the fact that these challenges have been spawned within the development community, by some who have spent a lifetime advocating help for the poor countries. Unlike earlier challenges which pointed out that much of American aid was used for overt political and military purposes, these new challenges hold that the provision of assistance is in and of itself immoral.
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