Life being precious is generally a western country ideal, where we have few children and expect them to normally have a long healthy life. In many other countries of the world, the opposite is true, where mortality rates are high, life expectancy is low with large 10 to 15 children families being normal. In these countries relative to ours, life is considered as a somewhat cheaper commodity and more expendable.
This is not to downplay the grief from the loss of a child or family member but it is expected as part of the normal cycle of life.
Before the Industrial revolution the same was true in the UK, with large families, high mortality and a largely stable (or slow growing) UK population. The loss or illness of the breadwinner (usually the man) in a working class / farm labouring family would often lead to a dire and often fatal outcome for the family of starvation, especially winter starvation.

The Industrial Revolution in the UK changed this with increasing relative wealth and regular work for one or more members of a family, which meant that although conditions were still very poor by today's standards, starvation was much rarer and with the same large families and lower mortality rates, the population grew rapidly.
I'm sure Lizzie can add to this.
Cem, most democratic governments have a lot less power in an open society, than you give them credit for. Iran, Cuba, North Korea and their ilk with their non-existent personal freedoms and 'corrective' gulag system are much more able to suppress news and events, Chernobyl is a good example. If it had not been for radiation spreading around the world, the Russians would not of admitted it!

Likewise, it has only been since the end of the USSR and the cold war, that we have learnt how unreliable Russian nuclear submarines were and how many they lost or were destroyed through equipment failure and fires. So why everytime something happens in these countries, don't we get a conspiracy theory from you? What is your conspiracy theory for the Chinese earthquake or the Chechen attacks in the past on a Moscow airport and metro stations? In China has it been staged to consolidate the new leaders power and were the Moscow attacks likewise for Putin and his governments benefit?
With the Mars rover, what is your take on the suppression of the news on the anonymous alien terrorist group (assumed to be little the green men) that have capture it and are holding the US government to ransom, where the lunar landings, disrupted their supply of cheese from the moon?
