BETRAYAL OF TRUST Part 3

The next section of BETRAYAL OF TRUST:
The Collapse of Global Public
Health by Laurie Garrett is
an eye-opening account of health care
in the post 1991 countries of the
former Soviet Union, especially Russia.

The overall impression I get from this
chapter is that despite the many
facts she relates about the poor state
of healthcare in the U.S.S.R., public
health was still better off in the
U.S.S.R. than it is now.

Even though she also says that the
great breakdowns in public health
began before 1991 -- they greatly
accelerated after 1991.

It's hard to escape the feeling that
she thinks that capitalism is doing
a p*ss-poor job of looking after
the health of the former Soviet
peoples.

She acknowledges that the U.S.S.R.
had its shortcomings -- she certainly
lambasts Lysenko who had ridiculous
theories that contradicted modern
knowledge of genetics -- but that on
balance public health was better then
than now.

Though she acknowledges that the
post-U.S.S.R. country doing the best
is Estonia -- because it's most open
to Western medical advances and
techniques.

Still, the reams of numbers on
tuberculosis, HIV, alcoholism etc
do paint a bleak picture of life in
Russia -- and may make you think
twice about going there if you
were planning such a trip. After all,
there's still a lot of stray
pollution and radiation around the
country (leftover from Communist times).

One thing that bothered me was that
although she mentions that under Stalin
many of the U.S.S.R.'s best thinkers
and scientists were sent to the gulag,
she doesn't list Siberia as one of the
U.S.S.R.'s great public health hazards.

Yet Stalin and to a certain extent his
predecessors all were responsible for the
deaths of millions of people -- most of
them ordinary people.

Surely that must be balanced against
lower rates of tuberculosis.

Maybe I'm unfair. I don't think she really
wants a return of the Soviets. But I
do think she is a great believer in
big government and uncomfortable with
its absence and the flourishing of
business.

And at the end of this chapter you really
want to know, what's happened in the past
6 years? Has Russia made any progress at
all? Are things still just as bad?