Thanks Matt. In theory it sounds possible that your message could have impact for the reasons you gave—though I’d be interested in seeing empirical evidence that people would give up chicken for ethical reasons.
tjmather
Karma: 73
One possible area for exploration is around Schistosomiasis prevention, as reinfection rates appear to be high after deworming campaigns. PMA2020 has launched an annual survey to measure the impact of Schistosomiasis control programs in Uganda.
Johns Hopkins University/Center for Communication Programs in Uganda will be conducting a mass media campaign to promote Schistosomiasis prevention in fall 2017 before deworming day. The 2017 PMA2020 survey should be able to measure changes in knowledge, attitudes and practices after the mass media campaign. If there is funding in place, the 2018 PMA2020 survey may be able to measure the impact of the mass media campaign on actual infection rates.
Does anyone have ideas for exploration around Schistosomiasis prevention? With the PMA2020 survey, there is a unique opportunity for data collection to help evaluate potential Schistosomiasis prevention programs.
Disclosure: I am helping fund both the data collection and mass media program in Uganda
Absolutely yes, Against Malaria Foundation is very good from a human rights point of view :)
I agree that contraceptives could increase wild-animal suffering in the short run. The challenge I’ve run into is how to balance the increase in short term wild-animal suffering against the rights of people to plan their pregnancies, as well as considerations around farm animal suffering. I feel a lot of uncertainty around this, and not sure we can definitively answer that question without having a better understanding of how much insects and other wild animals suffer.
I think what tips the balance for me is that I have the intuition that preventing unwanted pregnancies may increase world stability in the long run, which could lead to better outcomes in the future, since we’ll have the luxury to be able to tackle stuff like wild animal suffering.
There is some evidence from a study in Europe that suggests that unwanted children have greater proneness to social problems and criminal activity. Another much more speculative consideration is whether there could be future conflicts related to resources such as water tables and topsoil being depleted around the world, depending if technology to produce food continues to keep up with the increasing demand for food.
In summary, I feel uncertain if contraceptives are a net positive or negative from a utilitarian point of view, but I do feel from a human rights point of view, that every pregnancy should be wanted.
That is a good point about the need for studies to measure the long term impact. What do you think of United Poultry Concerns? Do you know of any people who have given up chicken for ethical reasons but still eat other meat?
Do you think that cultured meat research should focus on developing alternatives to chicken instead of beef?
I believe that both contraceptive delivery and research are important, and wouldn’t advocate for funding one over the other. I was thinking more in terms of high priority funding gaps for both areas, and because male contraceptive research is so neglected, there appear to be some low hanging fruit. There are scientists who want to work on a clean sheets pill as well as other methods but who haven’t been able to for years due to lack of funding. If successful, the clean sheets pill might be able prevent both pregnancy and STDs such as AIDS.
Many men do care about their partners and avoiding unintended pregnancy, and many women struggle to find a contraceptive method that works for them with manageable side effects. Even looking at it just from a purely selfish perspective, many men do want to avoid the responsibility of having kids and having to pay child support.
I completely agree that there is a need for re-thought on the demand side campaign. I’m hoping that with the ACE research fund ( http://researchfund.animalcharityevaluators.org/ ) we’ll learn more about what works on the demand side, the challenge being able to measure small effect sizes. It does seem plausible that advocacy could be more effective if the ask is smaller, e.g. switching from chicken to beef or better yet a tastier meat alternative.
I agree that the patent stuff might not be a top EA cause—the inclusion here was based on my personal experience of being sued by a patent troll.
I have looked at http://havingkids.org/ I don’t really see their model taking off as it seems difficult to understand and a bit unusual.
I’m currently focused on male contraceptive research in order to help reduce unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Approximately 40% of pregnancies are unwanted worldwide, many of which end in abortion. I’m donating to https://www.malecontraceptive.org/
I believe that behavior change is very difficult, and it might be more pragmatic to develop technologies that people want and that help animals as a side effect. Examples are better male contraception and tastier meat alternatives.
I think http://www.onestepforanimals.org/why-one-step.html does raise some very good points on why we should focus on reducing chicken consumption, thanks for sharing that!
This year I’m supporting the Male Contraception Initiative to help fund research into non-hormonal male contraceptives.
The rationale for this is:
There are limited contraceptive options for men
Male contraceptive research is very underfunded and there appear to be significant funding gaps.
Non-hormonal methods may have fewer side effects than hormonal methods.
I got interested in male contraception after reading this post about vasalgel: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/4gvd40/vasalgel/
Some concerns are:
This research is very speculative and likely to fail
The cost of bringing a new contraceptive market is on the order of $100 million, and higher if you adjust for the cost of all the failures.
What would an ideal EA event look like to you? Would you like to see more discussion on earning to give and where to donate? Do you feel like earning to give is underappreciated in the EA community?
It seems plausible that http://nutritionfacts.org/ might be one of the most effective charities for saving lives in the US. Michael Greger and his team distill nutrition research to provide practical tips on what to eat to prevent heart disease, cancer and other top killers. The website has more than one million hits a month, so it seems likely that his research saves hundreds if not thousands of lives a year.
Their 2014 revenue was $571,178. So it seems plausible that nutritionfacts is saving lives at around approximately $1,000 per life saved.
As a bonus, he advocates for a plant based diet, so it seems like his research could lead to a reduction of factory farming. I have wondered if they have more room for funding for advertising their website.
Giving What We Can published a report on mental health in the developing world: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/cause/mental-health-neurological-disorders/
GiveWell recently funded a RCT to test a mindset intervention: http://www.givewell.org/international/charities/ipa/may-2016-grant
There is evidence linking diet to mental health described on http://nutritionfacts.org/topics/mental-health/
There are studies worth doing now that can be done now but aren’t being done, such as a high-quality studies to determine whether certain interventions work to improve animal welfare
There is a planned program to fund empirical research for animal advocacy https://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/introducing-our-new-advocacy-research-program-officer/
I’m hoping to help fund a randomized control trial (RCT) in Burkina Faso or another very low income area to test whether providing free family planning service vouchers increases uptake.
As discussed in http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/the-price-is-wrong , uptake of preventative health products increases significantly when they are provided for free to the poor. It would be interesting to see if the same holds true for contraceptives.
There is a great slideshow on what we have learned from free contraceptive programs.
I plan to post updates on https://www.facebook.com/groups/EffectiveFPCharities/
Both AMF and family planning improve lives, so in that sense they are compatible.
I agree that family planning could become a new EA focus area. There is a facebook group to discuss family planning charities from a EA perspective. Giving What We Can has a great blog post on research around adolescent pregnancy. Development Media International is conducting a RCT to test whether radio programs can create demand for family planning.
I agree and think that posting about plans early on would be very good.
I’m hoping to help fund family planning randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in the future. The reason is that there are very few family planning RCTs. With more RCTs, family planning funders should be able to direct funding towards programs that have higher impact. I wrote more about family planning on an earlier cause selection post.
I’m seeking people interested in helping to find possible implementing organizations and researchers as well as co-funders. I plan to post on the Family Planning 2020 community to seek expert feedback. I’m happy to discuss my reasoning here as well. I’m also wondering if there is an online community for evidence generation using RCTs where I could post my plans to get feedback.
In particular, I’m interested in studies of using mobile phones for reproductive health and family planning education. This is inspired by this blog post highlighting research showing that interactive SMS messages may reduce adolescent pregnancy in Ghana.
The rationale for focusing on mobile is the potential to create present and future demand for family planning among youth. Because SMS and interactive voice response can be automated, there may be potential to scale up a mobile based program cost effectively.
I have found that a healthy diet makes a difference in my own happiness. As a vegan, I have to pay a bit more attention to getting a well balanced diet, including b12 and vitamin d supplements. For breakfast I make a smoothie made with dates, bananas, berries, flax seeds, cacao nibs, walnuts, cinnamon, orange zest, and kale. I also drink green tea and try to avoid refined sugar/carbs/oils and alcohol.
If anyone is interested, http://nutritionfacts.org/ has a lot of evidence based nutritional advice.
There might be an opportunity to develop a gene drive targeting Aedes mosquitoes, a vector for Zika. Harvard University Effective Altruism is running a Philanthropy Advisory Fellowship and researching funding opportunities for gene drives. They will be publishing their findings next month.
Interesting, are you concerned that in a full-scale nuclear war that most places in the northern hemisphere would be unsafe due to military targets outside the cities and fallout?
What do you think about this Q&A on Quora about where it would be safest in the event of a nuclear war? Most of the suggested safe locations are in the southern hemisphere like New Zealand.