One plus one equals three; 5; Four Horsemen

One plus one you equals three for. Any gun you oh I want you. When it was me me me being in you. Know it was going out with you. The one thing that I want to. Eat. It is estimated that in 16:50 there were four hundred and seventy billion people in the world. It took two centuries for that figure to double. It took only one century to double again. Today there are well over three and a half billion of us sharing this planet. Demographers tell us that by the year 2000 the world population will swell to almost 7 billion. This series of programs is about this problem about what happens because one plus one

equals three. But isn't war famine. Her. Disease a war famine and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Are the personifications of natures population control. And they've been with man since the first microscopic bit of protoplasm began to live. Despite modern medicine disease is still with us.

So is war. Hunger is not only a fact of life in Asia Latin America and Africa. But a hard reality for many Americans as well. Now faces a solid some time and some place. The great growth in population but modern man is currently experiencing is in a large measure directly attributable to man's efforts to control one of these horsemen disease. The influence of this aspect of man's efforts to preserve life was discussed by Dr. Alan Guttmacher president of Planned Parenthood world population. In an interview with Luis Chryslers. Well the big upsurge in population growth from what I can tell from reading the charts seems to have come about the turn of the 20th century. Prior to that time what were the principal factors that held the population growth rate to this what I guess point 5 percent are lower prior to that time. Well actually no. The great surgeon rate of growth followed World War 2. Previous to that

in the earlier part of the 20 the century were growing at 1 percent and then following World War Two. There was a marked acceleration of growth due to. The advances in medicine particularly of course to the virtual elimination of malaria. This was the great population control mechanism world of that of course the antibiotics have come in transfusions and so forth and so on now. Previous to. The 16:30 there was no such thing as public health and hygiene and beginning about this time some anonymous person discovered that boiling water made it safe to drink. This began to save lives and then people learnt more about preparation and safety of foods how to take care of their own expert

and public health and hygiene came into being and this began to show a big gap between the growth rate and death rate because previous to this the world birth rate was about 45 per thousand per year. And the real death rate was 43 44. And then beginning about 16:30 of course increasing in crescendo this drop in birth rate drop in death rate became more and more acute. Now of course the birthrate of the world is probably a little lower than it was perhaps in the area of 40. The death rate of the world has dropped materially from 43 or 44 and now we have the death rate of about 20. United Nations has an excellent demographic division that is division which deals in the

science of population and they make the estimate that 130 million babies will be born this year and only 60 million people will die. That means we'll have an overage of 70 million births over deaths. That means that in one year the world accumulates more people then inhabit the. British Isles and all of Scandinavia these comments from Dr. Alan Guttmacher medical advances have been termed death control in a sense the term is well-chosen modern medical treatments and public health efforts have greatly increased the life span of the average individual and given many more individuals the opportunity to reach maturity. Toothpaste and heart transplants aspirin and miracle drugs these are but a part of man's efforts to control disease. The practice of medicine is a development that has grown out of man's

desire to relieve pain and suffering as well as the basic drive of all of us to stay alive. It has been helped at least to some extent by sort of natural selection of the individuals who did not have body strong enough to resist disease. They don't live and therefore did not pass on their characteristics to a new generation. A quick look at a chart showing the population growth from ancient to modern times will illustrate the importance of medical developments. The chart shows a slow but steady increase in world population until about 17 20. How the influence of the public health measures Dr good marker discussed began to have their influence. The chart takes a steady swing upward and by the middle of the 20th century the current on the chart goes almost straight up. What has brought this on. To a large measure it is a combination of medical developments and advances in public health sanitary sewers rodent

control and containment of such diseases as plague rabies typhus yellow fever and malaria have helped bring about our rapid population growth. Malaria control to mention one of these areas has come about largely for the development of DDT. One of the many distinguished men who has worked on malaria control is Dr. James B Kitzmiller G-Net assistant professor of zoology at the University of Illinois at Obama in an interview with Louise guy Slayer's. Dr. Kitzmiller discussed both his background and his feelings about the work he has done. Your background is in biology I believe. That's right I have my degree in zoology from the University of Michigan actually with a specialization in genetics. My research is on the genetics and psycho genetics of mosquitoes especially malaria carrying mosquitoes the genus and how fleas have been at University of Illinois since 1988. Getting into the malaria business you have been with the World Health Organization a good many number of years.

That's right I've been a consultant for the World Health Organization for. About 12 years now and take frequent trips to Geneva and do a lot of consulting work for them in Southeast Asia and in various other parts of the world and I think it's my you are obviously quite sincere when you're talking about the problems we're going to be facing due to population and yet just a few minutes ago you were talking about your experience in the air you control and now. The World Health Organization. I suppose you might say you've been essentially keeping people alive to face this population problem. How do you live with yourself. I was not easy. You know that's that's really not true. Actually I suppose that I like many of my colleagues who have been working in these areas probably for almost all of my scientific life have been at least on the fringes of contributing to the eradication of malaria not directly a lot of people who've done a lot more. But all of us who are in the Health Sciences.

Have have a vector in this cup in this direction. So certainly all of us have thought many many times about fine 10 or 15 years ago. Hundreds of millions of people have malaria. Now most of these people are protected from malaria probably only 15 percent of the people who were exposed to malaria. Right after World War 2 now have the risk of malaria. So we've really cut it down about 85 percent. Well certainly all of these people are are living not only to eat and to take up space but they're also living to reproduce and certainly those of us in the area have thought about it many times are we really doing the world a favor by keeping all these people I will the answer to that of course can only be one one answer the answer is yes. We have to try to eliminate malaria just the same as we have to try to build hospitals why.

Same as we're trying heart transplants the same is we're trying new methods for taking out an appendix or anything else. If if we were to say you know we all suddenly stop malaria research in malaria control. This would be approximately the same as saying well let's burn down all the hospitals in the world so that anybody who was connected in the in any way with what we now termed death control has the same problem. I suspect that most of us rationalize and I think that it is not only rationalization I firmly believe that this is the way it has to be done is that we must continue our research and what we would call death control in malaria typhoid smallpox polio anything else that you want to name. But at the same time we have to end by the fact we have to realize a very definite and positive obligation to educate people about the dangers of the population explosion. And so I suspect that this is why

most of us are willing to talk about the population explosion about the population dangers and the things that society is going to face with respect to these problems. I think that's why most of us are willing to talk about it under any conditions and to anyone at any time. So I would guess that it isn't a question of living with one's sauf it's a question of. Of having to do the job that we're capable of doing and at the same time assuming the extra obligation of trying to educate enough people to the dangers of population. To everything there. Was was.

Was. Oh it's all over me to eat medicine or Disease Control. Is man's opera to influence one of the natural checks to population growth. More has been used or is said to have been used as a check to population growth. In an interview in his office at the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago sociology professor Dr. Philip Hauser was asked about the influence of the four horsemen. Could you look back a little bit for us. Let's say 200 to 300 years ago. Well let's go back to the father prior to let's say sixteen hundred. What were the checks on population. Were major checks at that time where the checks imposed by nature. And this means essentially epidemic. And fact.

I have referred earlier to the fact that the US is not too far from a zero rate of growth. Let me say that there's no doubt in my mind that mankind as a whole really achieve a zero rate of growth if you stop and think about it we are on a finite planet. There are only 200 million square miles of surface. Only a fourth of that 50 million square miles is land. Now given a finite planet any rate of growth any rate of growth in the long run will produce saturation. There's no doubt in my mind that we were achieved zero growth for all of mankind and also for the United States. Now the only question is. Will is the rate of growth being produced by nature or by man. If by man. Whether the methods be relatively rational and desirable are irrational and undesirable. Now I've already answered your question before the modern era such checks as they were mostly imposed by nature. Things Malthus talked about pestilence. And famine

disease and starvation. Now if they're there also been some earlier methods and undesirable methods by man this would include such things as require other up to this point in history the military has been so ineffective and so unhappy that they've never made much difference on the rates of world population growth. But with the advent of the hydrogen bomb there's now hope that is the military could become a very effective instrumentality for controlling population growth. I'm not advocating this from a career but this would be one of the undesirable methods and the history shows it has been used even if without too much success in the past. Another method that would be undesirable in a drug and on human history is homosexuality and my intensive studies of this show it's never accompanied by a very high birth rate. And then of course there's a stem and other method which you find in human history cannibalism. Now these are the kinds of undesirable methods but human populations push to despair and limits

have in the past used such methods. Now the more desirable methods are some of those we've been discussing although here I might distinguish among three things often confused. One is conception control. This includes all the methods by which conception is prevented. Behavioral mechanical chemical physiological surgical. The second is birth control. Not birth control it includes conception control plus abortion. And abortion like it or not. Still the most widely used method of birth control in the world as a whole and the economically advanced nations including the United States we use mostly conception control abetted by Bush largely through the invested in needle underground channels in the developing regions of the world. The major method is abortion. And it just began to try to get at conception control. Now. Third there is population control. And this includes the relationship between births deaths

and migration and consideration of social economic policy and programs that can affect the birth rate the death rate and migration rate. Now no nation in the world yet has population control. But I think our nations sooner or later will have it. Two thirds three fourths of mankind is dependent mostly on abortion. The economically advanced nations they remaining run for through one third of the people are increasingly using conception control. That's the world picture. You mentioned. This matter on immigration and see if what I was gets us into this whole matter of politics once again which we have mentioned a little bit earlier. On you talked about population control involving his total spirit. Could you I mean a bit more explicit about what you mean by population control and this broadest picture. Rock may be important to start talking about this possibility because as you know President Nixon is on the verge of appointing a

Population Commission authorized by the Congress to examine the end to population problems of the world and the nation and come up with recommendations. Some of these may take the form of aspects of what I've just defined as population control for example. And here's a good example before the Congress right now Senator Packwood has introduced a bill to redo the exemptions on our income tax alone so as to meditate against the high birth rate. The present time the more children the greater the tax exemption. This constitutes a from the pronate of US policies the other thing is not considered. Now in my judgment Senator Packwood but I would not accomplish very much do no harm it would be a good expression of the right kind of policy. But did this country the very poor who have the most children don't pay income tax anyway so they would be affected and the very rich. I also have a good many children. I wouldn't be affected because the kind of exemptions in the income tax would be meaningless to them from a financial

standpoint. But the general policy is the kind of thing that I have in mind when I say the consideration of policy that would tend to discourage large families rather than the adoption of social political economic taxation policies that would encourage large families. In other words you're saying that some sort of the things such as Oh I think the the one that struck comes to mind is Paul Alec's proposal for taxes on baby food. Is this the kind of thing you're talking about is government where this might be one form of policy though I might say I'm completely opposed to that kind of specific taxation charge. I think we must find policies that create positive incentives rather than love policies of government enters into this that penalize or punish people and especially that would punish the children. Could you give us an example of the kind of positive policy that you see there. For example let's consider the policy adopted by Sweden many years ago after a royal commission report

cation by their worrying about population of the time when you know their birth rate was so low that they were worried about replacements. In which the State Government to Sweden assumed responsibility for bearing the costs of education and health. The most the cost of raising a child. By that time this would be appropriate in this policy and this was to be have been a bunch of rich and poor alike. Didn't matter because the theory was that the government owed this to the people in a sense as a form of service that that should be made available. Now this was a positive kind of policy. Some of the other kinds of policies that are under consideration. Would be for example kind of thing being talked about in parts of India. Should the government guaranteed to Palance. Only age pensions if they have no more than two or three children. At the present time one of the

factors of the start that accounts for a high birth rate in India is in the absence of any social security measures. They are dependent upon sons. For support narrowly age. Now if the government were to make a bend the bent of the Indian people block the idea that the government would support them in a role age and they didn't need to have five children are to be sure they have two sons that would be a policy that would tend to restrict for Turkey. This is the kind of thing that would be about are of the same character guarantee that the government would put children through higher education in India if the family had no more than two or three children. Dr. Philip Hollister pointed out a variety of ways man can check population growth medicine is beginning to develop more and more sophisticated methods of birth control. However various societies have a variety of times provided social practices that have been a fact menat least some population control. We'd like to stress that this may not have been the intended result but a side effect like marriage

is one such practice combined with strong social pressures against premarital sex while relations late marriage shortens the reproductive span for individuals and results in smaller families and a lower population growth. Ireland during the potato famine in America during the Depression both held their birth rate somewhat in check by this method of celibacy and individual groups of the population such as monks members of such religious groups the Shakers those who choose not to marry also provide a population growth check the influence of this factor however is considered small in some areas of some nations infanticide has been practiced to keep families small. To everything. Think the time want to read the Sun. Heather it.

I judged it was done to. A time to be born. Throughout the ages men and women have sought to select the time the children will be born. Efforts and birth control are not new and next week at this time we'll be talking about birth control and some of the history behind it. We'll talk about how man is trying to restore the balance between births and deaths while at the same time preserving life in the face of the Four Horsemen disease war famine and death. You have been listening to one plus one equals three four. Five.

A series of programs about the problems we face because of our growing population. Your host for this program has been Dennis Corrigan special music performed by Ria Truscott engineering by Edna Haney. On me right. Many many many many. And there is little to no one to tell. Me. One plus one equals three four five was produced and directed by the East Geisler spy wy allowing the radio service of the University of Illinois in Urbana.

This is the national educational radio network.