Issues in Population and Bioethics

Issues in Population and
Bioethics

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Title: Issues in Population and Bioethics
Author: Sam Vaknin
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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.

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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.