Issues in Population and Bioethics

Issues in Population and Bioethics

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Issues in Population and Bioethics, by Sam Vaknin (#15 in our series by Sam Vaknin)
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Title: Issues in Population and Bioethics
Author: Sam Vaknin
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8420] ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. **
Copyright (C) 2002 by Lidija Rangelovska. [This file was first posted on July 9, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin1
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Copyright (C) 2002 by Lidija Rangelovska.^M ^M ^M ^M
Issues in Population and Bioethics
1st EDITION
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska

Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2003
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.

? 2002 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
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Visit Sam Vaknin's United Press International (UPI) Article Archive -Click HERE!
Philosophical Musings and Essays
http://samvak.tripod.com/culture.html
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
http://samvak.tripod.com/
ISBN: 9989-929-39-4
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
C O N T E N T S

I. And Then There Were Too Many
II. Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species
III. The Myth of the Right to Life
IV. The Aborted Contract
V. In Our Own Image - The Debate about Cloning
VI. Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
VII. The Author
VIII. About "After the Rain"
And Then There Were Too Many
By: Sam Vaknin
The latest census in Ukraine revealed an apocalyptic drop of 10% in its population - from 52.5 million a decade ago to a mere 47.5 million last year. Demographers predict a precipitous decline of one third in Russia's impoverished, inebriated, disillusioned, and ageing citizenry. Births in many countries in the rich, industrialized, West are below the replacement rate. These bastions of conspicuous affluence are shriveling.
Scholars and decision-makers - once terrified by the Malthusian dystopia of a "population bomb" - are more sanguine now. Advances in agricultural technology eradicated hunger even in teeming places like India and China. And then there is the old idea of progress: birth rates tend to decline with higher education levels and growing incomes. Family planning has had resounding successes in places as diverse as Thailand, China, and western Africa.
In the near past, fecundity used to compensate for infant mortality. As the latter declined - so did the former. Children are means of production in many destitute countries. Hence the inordinately large families of the past - a form of insurance against the economic outcomes of the inevitable demise of some of one's off-spring.
Yet, despite these trends, the world's populace is augmented by 80 million people annually. All of them are born to the younger inhabitants of the more penurious corners of the Earth. There were only 1 billion people alive in 1804. The number doubled a century later.
But our last billion - the sixth - required only 12 fertile years. The entire population of Germany is added every half a decade to both India and China. Clearly, Mankind's growth is out of control, as affirmed in the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development.
Dozens of millions of people regularly starve - many of them to death. In only one corner of the Earth - southern Africa - food aid is the sole subsistence of entire countries. More than 18 million people in Zambia, Malawi, and Angola survived on charitable donations in 1992. More than 10 million expect the same this year, among them the emaciated denizens of erstwhile food exporter, Zimbabwe.
According to Medecins Sans Frontiere, AIDS kills 3 million people a year, Tuberculosis another 2 million. Malaria decimates 2 people every minute. More than 14 million people fall prey to parasitic and infectious diseases every year - 90% of them in the developing countries.
Millions emigrate every year in search of a better life. These massive shifts are facilitated by modern modes of transportation. But, despite these tectonic relocations - and despite famine, disease, and war, the classic