BODY COUNT. Global avoidable mortality since 1950
I am a highly published biological scientist and in 2003 published a huge pharmacological text entitled "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects" (
Over the last few years I have carefully researched, written, edited and finally published a science-based history book of very wide potential utility entitled “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya,
In 1998 I published a detailed book entitled “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (G.M. Polya,
“Body Count” is a carefully researched book by a 4 decade career biological scientist on a key social parameter “avoidable mortality” (excess death, deaths that should not have happened) which is nevertheless largely ignored by Mainstream media and for good reason – the post-1950 global avoidable mortality totals about 1.3 billion. Even in the United States, the richest country in the World, it can be estimated from publicly available UN demographic data that 0.2 million under-5 year old American infants have died avoidably over the last 10 years due to the warped Administration priorities of international wars (that have so far caused violent deaths and excess deaths from war-imposed deprivation totalling 4.6 million, 2.2 million and 5.0 million in in Iraq 1990-2011, Somalia 1992-2011, and and Afghanistan 2001-2011, respectively, mostly of Women and Children) rather than of addressing urgent domestic priorities such as infant and maternal health.
I am a scientist and not an ideologue – my core humanitarian philosophy is simply that of the American Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“Body Count” is a number of books efficiently packaged in a user-friendly way as a KEY REFERENCE WORK for laypersons, high school and college students, teachers, researchers, journalists, human rights activists and workers and other people in public life.
(a) summarizes, tabulates and analyzes avoidable mortality for every country in the world since 1950;
(b) uniquely provides a succinct and systematically organized history of every country in the world coupled with key avoidable mortality statistics (a fabulous resource for students, scholars, journalists and human rights activists);
(c) a systematic analysis of the actual causes of excess death in the world (noting that 16 million people die avoidably in the world every year, this including 10 million under-5 avoidable infant deaths); and
(d) finally, sets out a brief and systematic series of practical suggestions for halting the First World-complicit global avoidable mortality holocaust.
A picture says a thousand words. If you indeed become interested in my dispassionately scientific and scholarly but deeply humanitarian book you may also be interested in using the following huge paintings I have painted to spread a message of Peace, Love and Respect for Mother, Child and Woman e.g. “Sydney Madonna”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/ , “Manhattan Madonna”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10766/26/ , “Qana”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ , “Truelove”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11031/26/ , Isfahan Matisse: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14417/26/ , and Alhambra Pollock: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14082/42/ . Please forward these links to everyone you know in the interests of Peace, Love, Mother and Child – just as I am sending copies of my book to key writers, media and libraries around the world.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity. We are obliged to INFORM others about abuses of Humanity.
I have set out below a detailed outline of “Body Count” and its contents.
1. Statement of aims and rationale
Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is the difference between the ACTUAL deaths in a country over a given period and the deaths EXPECTED for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. Avoidable mortality provides the bottom-line measure of the consequences of human actions and the success or otherwise of societal, regional and global policies.
UN demographic data enabled calculation of avoidable mortality (and corroborative, independent under-5 infant mortality estimates) for every country in the world since 1950. The 1950-2005 avoidable mortality has totaled 1.3 billion for the world and 1.2 billion for the non-European world, these horrendous estimates being consonant with 1950-2005 under-5 infant mortality estimates of 0.88 billion for the world and 0.85 billion for the non-European world. The data have been tabulated for every country together with other key demographic data and important social indicators, namely adult literacy and annual per capita income.
The avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality outcomes have been best in Overseas European countries (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel) that have never been occupied but have frequently invaded other countries – and the worst outcomes have been for Non-Arab African countries that have variously been subject to centuries of invasion and occupation. Detailed, summarized histories of all countries of the world are accompanied by precise estimates of avoidable mortality in the post-1950 era due to war, occupation, genocide and passive genocide. Thus the post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess deaths) and under-5 infant mortality in Coalition-occupied
Rational global human risk management requires avoidable mortality information, scientific analysis and sensible systemic change. There is no public discussion of the actual human cost of
Avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality correlate with war and foreign occupation, with the latter encompassing both explicit violent occupation and neo-colonial hegemony. An apocalyptic quartet of violence, deprivation, disease and LYING is responsible for the continuing carnage. The ruler is responsible for the ruled, death is equally final whether violent or non-violent and mass avoidable mortality of subject people is passive genocide in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Extensive analysis of the causes of avoidable mortality has revealed politically disparate successes (e.g. Cuba and Fiji) that point the way to rational, humane and low cost global solutions involving peace, independence, very low but sufficient incomes, high literacy, good primary health care and governance for the common good.
The three core sections of the book uniquely involve:
(1) detailed analysis and tabulation of avoidable mortality, infant mortality and linked demographic parameters for every country in the world in the period 1950-2005;
(2) a concise summary of the history of every country in the world in the context of avoidable mortality and its political causation; and
(3) a detailed analysis of the physical causes of avoidable mortality (thanatology) and detailed, scientific solutions to a continuing catastrophe that kills 16 million people a year (44,000 daily, about 60% of them infants).
It is a horrifying testament to Mainstream lying by omission and politically correct racism (PC racism) that there are, to my knowledge, NO books doing ANY of these three things in a systematic and comprehensive fashion.
2. Table of contents with listing of chapter headings & short description of each chapter/section
Title, Publication Details, Table of Contents, Key Quotations, Detailed Contents, List of Tables & Preface.
Chapter 1. Introduction – global avoidable mortality
1.1 Science & history – history ignored yields history repeated;
1.2 Deleting history – the “forgotten”, man-made WW2 Bengal Famine;
1.3 Avoidable mortality (excess mortality), under-5 infant mortality and foreign occupation;
1.4 Global avoidable mortality (excess mortality);
1.5 Non-reportage of global avoidable mortality ensures its continuance;
Chapter 2. Global post-1950 excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality
2.1 Estimation of mortality and avoidable mortality (excess mortality);
2.2 Calculation of under-5 infant mortality;
2.3 Comparison of global and regional post-1950 total mortality and under-5 infant mortality;
2.4 Estimation of avoidable under-5 infant mortality;
2.5 Comparison of under-5 infant mortality and excess mortality;
2.6 “Humanizing” mortality;
2.7 “Humanizing” excess mortality;
2.8 The human aspect of under-5 infant mortality;
Chapter 3. Correlates and causes of post-1950 avoidable global mass mortality
3.1 “Big picture” regional analysis of global post-1950 under-5 infant mortality and excess mortality;
3.5 Latin America and
3.8 Arab North Africa and the
3.13 To be or not to be - lowest mortality countries invading distant high mortality countries;
3.14 Quantitative assessment of the mortality consequences of occupation;
Chapter 4. Country-by-country analysis of avoidable mortality in European countries
4.1 Introduction – matching excess mortality with foreign occupation; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:
Chapter 5. Latin America and the Caribbean – from European invasion, genocide and slavery to
5.1 Overview; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:
5.2 Latin American and
Chapter 6. North Africa, Asia & Pacific – the impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism and war
6.1 Overview; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:
6.4 Arab North Africa and
Chapter 7. Non-Arab
7.1 Overview of the continuing African tragedy; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes: 7.2 Short histories of the countries of Non-Arab Africa;
Chapter 8. Synthesis, conclusions and suggestions
8.1 Finding causes and solutions;
8.2 Risk management;
8.3 Violent versus non-violent death;
8.4 The ruler is responsible for the ruled;
8.5 Passive genocide in Occupied Iraq and
8.9 Human cost of occupation;
8.10 High technology war, horrendous civilian/invader death ratios and PC racism; 8.11 Killing by default – arms, debt, globalization and economic constraint;
8.12 Excuses for war and the War on Terror;
8.13 Feminist perspective - right to life, women and allo-mothering;
8.14 Academic, media, political and sectarian lying;
8.15 Conclusions and suggestions – how to save the world
Section 9. Notes
Notes for the Preamble and Chapters 1-8.
Section 10. Bibliography.
3. Brief description of each chapter/section:
The preamble contains title page, table of contents, detailed contents (chapter, sub-headings and tables), key quotes and a succinct preface.
Chapter 1 summarizes the overall thrust of the book, specifically that history ignored yields history repeated. The deadly consequences of tardy reportage of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and the general non-reportage of the WW2 Bengal Famine (holocaust denial) (see Gideon Polya’s Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History), are used to support the argument that non-reportage of global avoidable mortality ensures its continuance. Thus the non-reported 1950-2005 avoidable mortality has totaled 1.3 billion for the world, 1.2 billion for the non-European world and 0.6 billion for the Muslim world – a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengal Famine in British-ruled
Chapter 2 deals with the methodology used and presents detailed Tables summarizing regional and national avoidable mortality, under-5 infant mortality and other key demographic parameters and social indicators. The tables are organized by region in ascending order of post-1950 avoidable mortality. The best avoidable mortality outcomes have been in European countries and the worst in South Asia and non-Arab
Chapter 3 specifically addresses the correlates and causes of post-1950 avoidable mortality. Avoidable mortality correlates with foreign occupation which simply ensures rulers with decreased intrinsic regard for the ruled. Avoidable mortality provides a key measure of how rulers regard their domestic and foreign subjects and has been used to quantify the intrinsic racism of past and present imperialist powers. The surprising result is that the worst avoidable mortality-based “intrinsic racism scores” for the major First World “occupiers” have been for the Netherlands, Israel and Portugal and the best score for Russia, with the results for the UK, France and the US in between.
Chapters 4 to 7 provide detailed, summary “occupation histories” of all the countries of the world together with precise estimates for each country of avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for particular post-1950 periods. The reader will be shocked by the magnitude of the actual human cost of specific post-1950 wars, occupations and other events as illustrated by the following three examples.
The post-invasion avoidable mortality in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories totals 0.3, 1.0 and 2.4 million, respectively, and the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality totals 0.2, 0.5 and 1.9 million, respectively (as of mid-2007). Avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality reached a minimum in post-colonial
Similar avoidable carnage but for reasons of First World-complicit incompetent indigenous governance has occurred in
At the other end of the scale, relative to other European countries there has been markedly higher than average avoidable mortality in some Central and Eastern European countries subject to post-war Soviet occupation (specifically Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia and the Ukraine). Thus, while
Chapter 8 provides a detailed summary of the causes of avoidable mortality including war, occupation, deprivation, famine, disease, genocide and passive genocide. Avoidable mortality is fundamentally caused by violence, deprivation, disease and lying. Requisite responses to man-made mass mortality include Cessation, Acknowledgement, Apology, Amends and Assertion of non-repetition (acronym: CAAAA or C4A) as exemplified by post-Holocaust
A Chapter 8 Appendix composed of 12 detailed Tables 8.1-8.12 summarizes the roughly current state of play (2003) for all regions and countries of the World in relation to the following parameters: mortality, excess mortality, under-5 infant mortality, mortality/population, excess mortality/population, under-5 infant mortality/population, under-5 infants/population, “annual under-5 infant death rate”, and % HIV positive.
Each of the above sections commences with 5 carefully chosen quotations that capture the essence of the book or its specific chapters. Each chapter is split into numbered and entitled sub-sections and concludes with a carefully constructed summary. For ease of reading and efficiency, all documenting references and notes are indicated by superscript numbers and listed in Section 9. The Bibliography Section 10 lists all works quoted in Section 9 in a consistent fashion e.g. author(s), year, title, publisher, city (for books); author(s), year, title, journal, volume, pages (for journal articles); and similarly defined documentation for other references (notably URLs for Web-accessible documents).
There is no Subject Index because the book has been carefully designed with a comprehensive Detailed Contents section and with systematically Alphabetized historical contents. “Body Count” represents both a powerful humanitarian statement and a key reference work for students, scholars, journalists, the general public and humanitarian activists.
4. People who would benefit from the “Body Count” resource
This book is special, original and important in that it is the ONLY work available that comprehensively quantifies the horrendous global human avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality that has occurred over the last half century and is still occurring unchecked. It is also a very useful reference resource in that it is the only book currently available (as far as I know) that provides a detailed summary history for every country in the world from the Neolithic era to the present.
This book by a humanist biological scientist is a relatively dispassionate scientific catalogue and analysis of an appalling human reality that the world comprehensively ignores, namely global avoidable mortality. The book represents an encyclopaedic, quantitative resource for students, scholars, journalists and the general public and an unanswerable moral weapon for humanitarian activists in all countries.
People who would particularly benefit from Body Count” include senior high school students, undergraduate and postgraduate university students and scholars. The academic areas that this book relates to include history (general and specific areas), economics (environmental economics, world trade), commerce, management (risk management), business, law (international law), sociology (racism, feminism, conflict), women’s studies, biology (disease, human ecology, biological sustainability), medicine (epidemiology, risk management), journalism, media studies and politics (political science).
This book is designed for ordinary citizens in all walks of life. Thus I have recently given a 16 lecture course based on this book and entitled “Science, History and Avoidable Mortality” to a University of the Third Age (U3A) class of retired citizens from many former occupations – teaching, science, librarianship, secretarial, armed services, medicine, nursing, surgery, management, business and academia.
In addition to the
Many in Latin America, Africa,
This book provides a wealth of quantitative data, thoughtful analysis and radical insights for students, scholars and humanitarian activists who demand humane global change but are enmeshed in a dominant global culture of comprehensive DENIAL. The dominant, prosperous, “politically correct racist”
5. Related books
There are no such books about global avoidable mortality although there are many books dealing with specific conflict areas (e.g. the Iraq War) that constitute only a small part of my book. Thus Richard Hil and Paul Wilson have recently published “Dead Bodies Don’t Count: Civilian Casualties and the Forgotten Costs of the Iraq Conflict” (Zeus Publishing,
Published books that come closest in subject matter to my book are some excellent books on past genocides [Chalk, F. & Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (
Wasserstein, B. (1979), Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1988)], famine [Davis, M. (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (Verso,
Various recent books and articles by humane writers such as John Pilger, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, George Monbiot, Scott Ritter, Edward Said, Paul Roberts, John Perkins, Emmanuel Todd and William Blum reveal much about the dishonesty and violence of post-war US and related imperialism but do not provide comprehensive quantitation of the human cost. My book does not go into the details of violent deaths and political machinations – it is simply largely concerned with the war- and occupation-related avoidable mortality of which violent death can be a relatively small part. My book provides a detailed statistical and historical complement to the works of these other writers.
In writing Chapters 4-7 of this book I would have loved to have been able to refer to a succinct summary of world history from about 2000BC onwards [the best I could find, albeit an account that finished in mid-1952, was Langer, W.L. (1953), An Encyclopaedia of World History (Harrap, London)] and the best such compendium of more recent Third World history finished in about 1990 [Bissio, R.R. (1990), Third World Guide 91/92 (Instituto del Tercer Mondo, Montevideo)].
I am not aware of any other current history book that succinctly summarizes the history of all countries in the world from the Neolithic era to 2005 (as is achieved by Chapters 4-7 of my book). No other book even attempts to deal with post-1950 avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality, let alone in a comprehensive fashion.
6. Brief CV of Dr Gideon Polya
Gideon Polya was born in
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career (search Google Advanced Scholar for many of these publications), most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects" (860 pages; 500 pages of tables; 4 indexes; Taylor & Francis/CRC Press, London & New York, 2003). In 1998 he published “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (Polya, Melbourne).
In recent years, in addition to writing “Body Count”, Dr Polya has written extensively about global avoidable mortality (numerous articles on this and related matters can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his websites: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html , http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ , http://gpolya.newsvine.com/ and http://gideon.sulekha.com/default.htm ).
Gideon Polya is married with 3 children. A keen artist he has published numerous cartoons (including illustrations for a statistics textbook), has painted a thousand paintings (abstract figurative and landscapes) and has drawn thousands of portraits.
Humanitarian Words having evidently failed (16 million people die avoidably each year i.e. 44,000 each day) Gideon Polya recently turned to Painting for Peace, painting HUGE works to spread a message of Peace, Love and respect for Woman and for Mother and Child, including: Sydney Madonna, Manhattan Madonna, Truelove, Melbourne Madonna, Qana (conceptually related to Pablo Picasso’s 1937 antiwar masterpiece Guernica about the Nazi bombing of the town of the same name), Isfahan Matisse, and Alhambra Pollock(that is explained by the Acronym PEACE – Pólya, Escher, Alhambra, Cultural Ecumenism). I would be delighted if you would pass on these links on to your friends, colleagues, associates and local media in the interests of Peace, Amity and respect for Woman, Mother and Child (see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .)
7 . Inquiries about “Body Count”