Issues in Population and Bioethics | Page 2

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 Malthusian regulatory mechanisms - the depletion of natural
resources - from arable land to water - is undeniable and gargantuan.
Our pressing environmental issues - global warming, water stress,
salinization, desertification, deforestation, pollution, loss of biological
diversity - and our ominous social ills - crime at the forefront - are
traceable to one, politically incorrect, truth:
There are too many of us. We are way too numerous. The population
load is unsustainable. We, the survivors, would be better off if others

were to perish. Should population growth continue unabated - we are
all doomed.
Doomed to what?
Numerous Cassandras and countless Jeremiads have been falsified by
history. With proper governance, scientific research, education,
affordable medicines, effective family planning, and economic growth -
this planet can support even 10-12 billion people. We are not at risk of
physical extinction and never have been.
What is hazarded is not our life - but our quality of life. As any
insurance actuary will attest, we are governed by statistical datasets.
Consider this single fact:
About 1% of the population suffer from the perniciously debilitating
and all-pervasive mental health disorder, schizophrenia. At the
beginning of the 20th century, there were 16.5 million schizophrenics -
nowadays there are 64 million. Their impact on friends, family, and
colleagues is exponential - and incalculable. This is not a merely
quantitative leap. It is a qualitative phase transition.
Or this:
Large populations lead to the emergence of high density urban centers.
It is inefficient to cultivate ever smaller plots of land. Surplus
manpower moves to centers of industrial production. A second wave of
internal migrants caters to their needs, thus spawning a service sector.
Network effects generate excess capital and a virtuous cycle of
investment, employment, and consumption ensues.
But over-crowding breeds violence (as has been demonstrated in
experiments with mice). The sheer numbers involved serve to magnify
and amplify social anomies, deviate behaviour, and antisocial traits. In
the city, there are more criminals, more perverts, more victims, more
immigrants, and more racists per square mile.
Moreover, only a planned and orderly urbanization is desirable. The
blights that pass for cities in most third world countries are the
outgrowth of neither premeditation nor method. These mega-cities are
infested with non-disposed of waste and prone to natural catastrophes
and epidemics.
No one can vouchsafe for a "critical mass" of humans, a threshold
beyond which the species will implode and vanish.
Luckily, the ebb and flow of human numbers is subject to three

regulatory demographic mechanisms, the combined action of which
gives hope.
The Malthusian Mechanism
Limited resources lead to wars, famine, and diseases and, thus, to a
decrease in human numbers. Mankind has done well to check famine,
fend off disease, and staunch war. But to have done so without a
commensurate policy of population control was irresponsible.
The Assimilative Mechanism
Mankind is not divorced from nature. Humanity is destined to be
impacted by its choices and by the reverberations of its actions.
Damage caused to the environment haunts - in a complex feedback
loop - the perpetrators.
Examples:
Immoderate use of antibiotics leads to the eruption of drug-resistant
strains of pathogens. A myriad types of cancer are caused by human
pollution. Man is the victim of its own destructive excesses.
The Cognitive Mechanism
Humans intentionally limit the propagation of their race through family
planning, abortion, and contraceptives. Genetic engineering will likely
intermesh with these to produce "enhanced" or "designed" progeny to
specifications.
We must stop procreating. Or, else, pray for a reduction in our
numbers.
This could be achieved benignly, for instance by colonizing space, or
the ocean depths - both remote and technologically unfeasible
possibilities.
Yet, the alternative is cataclysmic. Unintended wars, rampant disease,
and lethal famines will ultimately trim our numbers - no matter how
noble our intentions and how diligent our efforts to curb them.
Is this a bad thing?
Not necessarily. To my mind, even a Malthusian resolution is
preferable to the alternative of slow decay, uniform impecuniosity, and
perdition in instalments - an alternative made inexorable by our
collective irresponsibility and denial.
Racing Down
Eugenics and the Future of the Human Species
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

"It is clear that modern medicine has created a serious dilemma ... In
the past, there were many children who never survived - they
succumbed to various diseases ... But in a sense modern medicine has
put natural selection out of commission. Something that has helped one
individual