Man-made Death

To the Editor.—  In a recent commentary, Mr Rhodes¹ recommended that statistics should be assembled to determine exactly where the man-made deaths are occurring in the world today. The statistics would focus attention on the guilty parties and allow a first step toward resolution of the problem.The suggested approach is inherently flawed because it ignores the central, essential prerequisite for eliminating the many forms of man-made death: the guilty parties must first come to value human life per se over anything else. As long as preservation of human life is negotiable relative to a perceived greater good, killing will be inevitable. Compilation of statistics is unlikely to alter societal ideologies.For example, some relevant statistics have already been compiled concerning abortions in the United States: around 20 million human beings have been killed in utero since Roe v Wade in 1973, and in some cities there are now