Eating Our Young

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

America has always been full contradictions (the more cynical among us might say hypocrisies). It is a place where anyone with enough spunk, luck, and wherewithal can become rich and powerful, but it is also a country where abject poverty runs rampant. It is a place where people all over the world come to fulfill their dreams but is also a place whose citizens (whose own ancestors, ironically, also come from faraway lands), have a history of despising newcomers. 

It is place ruled by law that is overrun by millions of guns. There is at least one gun for every man, woman, and child in America. We suffer from one of the highest violent crime rates in the world. Citizens are murdered by firearms on the street, in churches, in stores, and in schools. We are a nation of laws but worship outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, or Wyatt Earp. 

It is a place where medical science has attained phenomenal levels of successful treatments but is one of the only places in the world where many of its citizens cannot afford them. During the Space Race of the 1960s, we revered science and technology and reaped its benefits. Who doesn’t have a smartphone or a laptop these days? But now, because of rampant disinformation, many of us treat scientists and doctors with suspicion. 

And, as a nation which in the past has prided itself on making life better for our children, we now deliberately putting them at risk. We say we love our kids, but in truth we are killing them. We have joined the ranks of creatures like hamsters, black widow spiders, and rats. We are eating our own young.

It is dangerous to be an American child today and could prove to be even more dangerous in the near future. According to the American Journal of Managed Care, America has the highest infant mortality rate of any high-income country despite more on health care than any other. This happens for a variety of reasons, including high poverty rate, inadequate prenatal care, and a high rate of caesarean sections. Poverty correlates with chronic disease like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease—all of which complicate pregnancy. Knowing that the U.S. spends more on health care than other country, the question of why these issues (particularly pre-natal care) are not addressed—a question that is partly addressed by simply looking at the American for-profit health care system. 

Millions of Americans are under or uninsured when it comes to health care and cannot afford decent medical care—including prenatal care. Pediatric medicine used to include standard childhood vaccines including TDaP, polio, chickenpox, hepatitis, and others.  According the Center for Disease Control, “During 1951-1954, an average of 16,316 paralytic polio cases and 1879 deaths from polio were reported each year (9,10). Polio incidence declined sharply following the introduction of vaccine to less than 1000 cases in 1962 and remained below 100 cases after that year.” The polio vaccine saved lives and protected untold numbers of children from crippling effects of the disease. 

Vaccines for influenza, measles, chickenpox, and hepatitis also saved lives and millions of dollars in medical expenses, but thanks to the deluded ravings of a lunatic fringe, vaccines have come under fire. Unfounded claims that they cause autism and death have prompted thousands of misguided parents to decide not to have their children vaccinated. Spearheaded by Robert Kennedy, Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Social Services, these anti-vaccine delusions might become law, putting millions of children at risk of disease and death. 

And if our children manage to dodge serious disease—or carriers in their classrooms—they are at serious risk of being victims of gun violence. According to a report from Pew Research, gun deaths for teens and children increased fifty percent between 2019 and 2021. School shootings, and mass shootings in general, are higher than ever before. Once again, we have to ask why? Why are fatal shootings—particularly among children—at record highs and still rising? The easy availability and affordability of guns, particularly semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15, is part of the problem. The NRA has spent years and millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers to make it easier for citizens to obtain and own—and modify—weapons. 

We are a nation of contradictions. We say we love our children and want their lives to be better than ours, yet because of the health care industry, the gun lobby, and delusional conspiracy theorists, they are at greater risk today than their grandparents were as children. And why? Greed mostly. We have put our children’s lives on the line so that companies like Eli Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, Smith & Wesson, Browning, and SIG can increase their profit margins. 

There’s also ignorance (mostly manufactured by Fox News and other organs of disinformation). Then vaccine conspiracy theorists like Joseph Mercola have spread massively harmful disinformation in order to create a market for his medical “supplements” and Robert F. Kennedy seems to be building a political career on his idiotic brainworm induced ideas.

As a society, Americans are harming and killing the most vulnerable among us—children. And no one seems to care. School shootings happen more and more often, and no one bats an eye. Some refuse to protect children—even their own—from disease and possible death. And the health care industry is seeking to serve more Americans—even babies—less efficiently.

These problems are all easily solvable if we face them head-on, but instead we choose to look away from the dead, sick, and dying children. Who—or what—have we become that we are eating our own young?

Notes

1. https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-has-highest-infant-maternal-mortality-rates-despite-the-most-health-care-spending#
2. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/
3. https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/teens-drugs-and-overdose-contrasting-pre-pandemic-and-current-trends/#:~:text=Adolescent%20drug%20fatalities%20more%20than,in%202022%20(Figure%201).
4. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm#:~:text=During%201951%2D1954%2C%20an%20average,100%20cases%20after%20that%20year.