Cholera in Haiti, Asthma and Cows, National Parks

UN Admits It Caused Haitian Cholera Outbreak Guest: Rosa Freedman, JD, Professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading Haitians had known political unrest and grinding poverty prior to the devastating earthquake and floods hit in 2010. But one plight the country had avoided was cholera. That was not a disease found in Haiti until UN peacekeepers brought it with them when they came to help after the earthquake. Since then, cholera has killed at least 10,000 people in Haiti and made hundreds of thousands sick. Asthma and the Amish Guest: Carole Ober, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago Six million kids in the US have asthma – that’s one out of 11 children, and the number is rising. But what if there were a simple solution to preventing asthma from developing? You just have to live with a cow. A report out in The New England Journal of Medicine finds Amish children who grow up on a family farm, in close proximity to dairy cows, have much lower rates of asthma. And researchers at the University of Chicago believe microbes in the dust have something to do with that. Why Paying Kidnappers Doesn’t Pay Guest: Todd Sandler, PhD, Professor of Economics at the University of Texas - Dallas Just imagine, for a moment, that someone in your immediate family were kidnapped by a terror group in Iraq or Syria. If you pay a million-dollar ransom, your loved one will be released. If you don’t, the result will likely be a gruesome execution broadcast online. You pay the money, right? But since 9-11, the United States has stuck to a strict policy of not making any concessions to terrorist kidnappers – no ransoms, no prisoner swaps. Bending to the terrorist demands will only invite more kidnappings of Americans, US officials have said. In several tragic cases involving American hostages of ISIS and Al Qaeda, not only did the US refuse to pay the ransom, they refused to let the family pay either. And the hostages were killed. National Park S