Malnutrition

WASHINGTON -- Every serving vice president since Alben Barkley in 1952 who has wanted his party's presidential nomination has gotten it. Al Gore wants his party's, so it is not too soon to be depressed. And inquisitive. Herewith some questions for him.You say that abortions should be "safe, legal and rare." Why do you care if they are rare? In Roe v. Wade, which you adore, the Supreme Court said a fetus is, unlike crab grass, only "potential" life. That makes it easy for you to defend even partial-birth abortions.

When you picture Iraq, what do you see? Visions of Saddam Hussein? Hidden containers of anthrax and nerve gas? Scud missiles on alert?Having visited Iraq last spring, this is what I see: dignified Muslim women begging on Baghdad street corners; young boys hawking cigarettes and kerosene to help support their families; a father running with his child into a hospital emergency room because there are so few functioning ambulances; a middle-aged man with diabetes...

A 23-year-old Baltimore woman was found guilty of second-degree murder and child abuse yesterday in the starvation death of her 5-month-old daughter last year.Porthingia Johnson of the 1700 block of Aliceanna St. told police she woke up on March 20, 1994 to find her daughter Alicia lifeless. She said she held the dead girl for two days before the father, Michael Johnson, returned to the apartment after being away for two weeks.Johnson said she didn't know the girl was undernourished, according to her police statement.

OCOSINGO, Mexico -- The people of this village in the middl of the lush Lacandon Jungle live in huts of dried branches with few modern conveniences. Until a little more than a year ago, they confronted illness and disease in the way of their ancestors, with prayer and magic.But that's changed now in Ocosingo, as it has in scores of other places all over Mexico. This place now has a government-funded, state-of-the-art hospital. In the year since it opened, villagers say, they have seen remarkable progress in their fight against disease and malnutrition.

An Anne Arundel County survey looking at the needs and opinions of its older residents estimates as many as 1,100 are living in "crisis" due to poverty, malnutrition, ill health, substandard housing or isolation.The eight-month study, highlights of which were released Wednesday, shows the vast majority of county seniors lead "active, satisfying and rewarding lives." Some, however, are in dire need of immediate help."This confirms our belief that a lot of seniors are doing very well, but those who are not need a lot of help," said Carol R. Baker, director of the county's Department of Aging, which conducted the study in conjunction with the Bethesda-based research firm of Ecosometrics, Inc."

London. -- No famine, no war, no flood, no earthquake has ever claimed the lives of 250,000 children in a single week. Yet malnutrition and disease claim that number of the world's children every seven days. That is the first consideration.The second, as UNICEF's newly published ''State of the World's Children'' makes plain, is that for a mere $25 billion it would now be possible ''to control the major childhood diseases, eradicate polio, halve child malnutrition, bring clean water to all communities, provide a basic education for every child, and make family planning available to all couples.

The photos of tiny children, with bellies swollen and arms an legs pathetically thin, show the misery of Somalia. What they can't show is that many, even with emergency help, will be forever scarred by the famine that grips their country.Aid workers say 300,000 people have died so far; the total could reach 500,000 by the end of the year.Relief agencies are feeding 3.2 million people a day, but a third of the population of 6 million remains threatened by starvation. And the youngest generation -- children under 5 -- could be wiped out in some places.

MOSCOW -- Veterans of Nazi prison camps are meeting veterans of Communist prison camps here this week.Many are white-haired, bent, aged. Others are not so old, and haven't been out so very long. All had suffered at the hands of the century's two great totalitarian systems.A few -- like 69-year-old Yevgenia Wrubletskaia -- had known both."I was in both hells. There was no difference between them," she said.These were regimes built on cruelty, humiliation and death.But a theme that was voiced strongly at the conference's opening session was that the German totalitarian past is safely buried while Russia's is not."

Dear Dr. Solomon: I've just finished reading an article that deals with malnutrition, and I felt I had to write to you. The article says that malnourished people can be found among all of us, regardless of our economic status. What do you think? -- Sanford, Richmond, Va.Dear Sanford: I don't know the article to which you refer, but I believe you may be confusing malnutrition with calorie intake. A person can have an adequate or even an above-average calorie intake and still be malnourished if the diet is not well balanced and if it does not provide the nutrients needed for good health.

THIS promises to be an especially patriotic Fourth of July, overflowing with words and images of America triumphant.But I am in a kind of internal exile from my country. I am a dissident in late 20th-century America, at odds with the patriotic majority and deeply suspicious of my own government.America is the country of my birth, whose history I have taught and whose ideals I cherish. Yet, I cannot celebrate this national festival withy fellow citizens.My nation disgraced itself in the Persian Gulf war. I watched my country go to war against a backward, minor power in order to restore an oppressive, autocratic monarch to his medieval throne.