The issue of Malaria has plagued our minds for many years and we, as humans, have tried to face it from many different angles; one of which is DDT (or Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane). By killing the Mosquitos who carry the disease with the synthetic contact nerve poison, Malaria was eradicated from Europe and Northern America. Unfortunately many poor countries, such as parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, still suffer from the disease. Wheelan gives an example quoted from Tanzanian reasearcher Wen Kilama, "If seven Boeing 747s, mostly filled with children, crashed in Mt. Kilimanjaro every day, then the world would take notice"(89). The example Wen Kilama gives can be applied to many different problems of disease, infections, ways of life - the list runs on and on. I personally found his point interesting because it can be taken in a couple different ways. On one side of the spectrum, you have people who care for children raising Cain about the children who are killed on impact with the mountain or devoured by the hungry flames of the wreckage and want to solve the issue for that facet of the occurance. On the complete opposite side, you have environmental activists raging about how the daily crashes are ruining Mt. Kilomanjaro's environment with the post-crash fires and fuel leakage (not to mention the bodies of children polluting the natural environment). Did I mention the tourists? Who wants a bunch of bodies scattered along the trail? Kind of ruins the hike, doesn't it? So Wheelan does bring up a point: people would take notice and get the issue solved quickly -even if they don't care about the children - they care about something, and that something gets them motivated to do something about it.
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