Simple can be just as effective as complex. Although nature herself is infinitely complex, she is also simple; the economics involved in simplicity equal less performance energy and less material usage to achieve a goal make it an attractive imperative.

Think of the efficacy and efficiency and economy of using solar water disinfection techniques in poverty-stricken, low-tech situations. Think of the United Nations World Food Program responding to disasters by rushing in emergency food like nutritious, high-energy biscuits to sustain life; inexpensive and extremely portable, and effective.

Now, another simple and inexpensive technique can be added to the life-saving, life-giving properties of clever minds seeking utilitarian methods to solve dreadful problems. Cervical cancer can be disastrously deadly, with no treatment options beyond apprehending the disease before it spreads.

At a cancer conference in Chicago experts were given proof of yet another expedient and effective treatment for people living in extreme poverty where the state seldom intervenes and treatment is not available for the poor. Tests using a simple vinegar experiment have proven effective in the same way that Pap smears and tests for HPV have become -- dramatically cutting the number of cervical cancer deaths in developed economies -- for women in India.

Local people with several weeks of training and no laboratory equipment are able to swab the cervix with diluted vinegar to which abnormal cells respond by colour-change. A visual examination that has slashed the cervical cancer death rate by 31% where the study took place, in Mumbai. This has the potential to prevent 22,000 deaths in India with common use.

"Everyone said it would go away, and every time I thought about going to the doctor there was either no money or something else would come up. Many women refused to get screened. Some of them died of cancer later. Now I feel everyone should get tested. I got my life back because of these tests", said Usha Devi, a mother of four children who had never had a gynecological examination, and had been bleeding heavily for several years.