Ellen Ruppel Shell: Haiti’s other disaster

Professor of Journalism, Ellen Ruppel Shell, in an opinion piece for the Jan. 22 edition of The Boston Globe, reminds readers that the same America that is generously donating tens of millions of dollars to Haiti in earthquake relief is also exploiting cheap Haitian labor. The column is excerpted below.

In Haiti, another disaster needs our Help
By Ellen Ruppel Shell

THIS WEEK, CNN contextualized the earthquake disaster in Haiti by showing an archival news clip of Haitian children eating mud cookies made primarily of edible clay trucked in from the country’s Central Plateau. A good number of Haitian mothers apparently believe that feeding their children clay mixed with a bit of oil or sugar is better than feeding them nothing. There is logic to this: the cookies fill empty stomachs, after all, and may even contain trace minerals. The fact that clay has little if any nutritional value and often carries dangerously high levels of bacteria is easily forgotten when a mother is looking into the eyes of her starving child.

Read the full column in The Boston Globe.

Shell, who is also co-director of the Science and Medical Journalism Program, is author most recently of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.