Email Debates
(addendum to the Forum)

Note: The original emailer's remarks are in italics, while WOA's remarks are in non-italics.

Overconsumption vs Overpopulation

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Birth Control Virus
 I ponder from time to time what could be done about human overpopulation. It seems like an impossible situation given the Catholic Church's policy of foiling attempts by anyone to convince people that having fewer children would make their lives better. Aid to overpopulated countries since WWII has actually vastly increased human populations in already starving countries, compounding the misery and suffering the aid was supposed to help remedy. Did you know that the original idea for aid to overpopulated countries was to give them birth control education and access to birth control devices? The food packages were added to the plan only to give temporary relief until birth control and agricultural education could take effect. The Catholic Church boycotted the original aid plans until all elements relating to birth control were removed from them. Now we have much larger starving populations than 50 years ago and the impact on the environment is... so bad it's hard to think about.

A possible solution struck me a few years ago, but I never really knew who to tell it to. It's the kind of solution that makes people gasp and look at you in fearful awe. I was thinking about the futility of trying to convince the superstitious, ignorant masses to stop having children they can't care for, which made me start thinking about how much better it would be if we all had to pass a competency test for a parent's license, which made me think of fascism, Nazi Germany, right wing Republicans, and wonder just who would make up the test even if it were possible to regulate parenthood like that's which made me think of people who can't have children until they go through a lot of trouble and expense with fertility treatment, which made me think how few people would have children if it cost money to get pregnant, which made me try to think of a way to make people have to spend money to be able to get pregnant.

What if someone designed a birth control virus? A virus can be designed to do very specific things. HIV for instance attacks only T-cells which progressively weakens a victims immune system. What if a virus could be developed that attacked only human 'nurse' cells, the cells that shield sperm from destruction by the immune system. Such a virus would make victims sterile without harming overall health at all. If the virus were highly contagious it would spread free contraception to all parts of the world. This is where most people get a little scared of the idea. How would anyone with the virus ever have children? Perhaps immune suppressant drugs would allow sperm to build up in anyone who wants father children. Sperm samples could be collected and stored for later use. It would make shelling out the cost of fertility treatment a prerequisite for getting pregnant. It would mean no more accidental pregnancies, no more spur of the moment decisions to have a baby. It would require that parents plan for and save for their children. Wouldn't it be great to have a world where all children are well taken care of, highly valued, and have fantastic futures ahead of them?

What if someone designed a birth control virus? A virus can be designed to do very specific things. HIV for instance attacks only T-cells which progressively weakens a victims immune system. What if a virus could be developed that attacked only human 'nurse' cells, the cells that shield sperm from destruction by the immune system. Such a virus would make victims sterile without harming overall health at all. If the virus were highly contagious it would spread free contraception to all parts of the world. This is where most people get a little scared of the idea. How would anyone with the virus ever have children? Perhaps immune suppressant drugs would allow sperm to build up in anyone who wants father children. Sperm samples could be collected and stored for later use. It would make shelling out the cost of fertility treatment a prerequisite for getting pregnant. It would mean no more accidental pregnancies, no more spur of the moment decisions to have a baby. It would require that parents plan for and save for their children. Wouldn't it be great to have a world where all children are well taken care of, highly valued, and have fantastic futures ahead of them?

Pass this on to any virologists, genetic engineers, or any other lab coat wearing people who might understand how something like this could be done.

Regards, George

Well, I have a few problems with this:

  1. The Catholic Church has been very ineffective stopping birth control in Catholic countries, such as in Spain where the birth rate is one of the five lowest in the world, only 1.5 births per woman, and Mexico, where the birth rate has dropped to 3.1, far below= what it would be if people were not practicing the Pope's preachings.
  2. People of all kinds object strenuously when someone wants a form of control over their lives. An example is the objections to China's policies to one child per family, which I agree was a necessity - in China's case.
  3. We would be imposing our materialistic values on third world countries, where people are very poor but, in many cases, can afford to feed their families. They wouldn't be able to afford an antidote to the virus. It is not up to us to decide that poor people cannot properly raise children.
  4. The birth rate IS dropping, birth control IS being used, the question is, how much of the environment will be destroyed and how much will our quality of life be lowered before population stops growing. Before we use something drastic like the virus, let's turn to voluntary family planning, which seems to be working where proper efforts have been made (such as family planning clinics, education of women, employment of women, and fostering of small business ventures for the poor).

God will take care of things
The key to happiness is the understanding that WE are not unlimited, we are finite, WE were created by a presence far greater that OURSELVES.

This presence has a plan for the universe. To CONTROL Population is not only unnatural, inhumane and unnecessary, it is also counter productive to the basic and in alienable right to life.

Find a new band wagon. Try to admit to yourself and the world that you really hate children, support the forced government imposed murdering of unborn humans and don't believe in God, Heaven or Hell.

So tell me, what is natural about modern medicine? Seems to me we are fighting God's will. It used to be that people had 5-10 children and only half of them survived!!!

I don't hate children, having several myself. And I sure don't like seeing children die of starvation. Admit to yourself: God lets children die!

God does let children die. We are not God. God does not allow his children to kill his children. Your history is flawed. Never did we have 5-10 kids and only half of them survived. We had 14 or 15 kids and 2 or 3 of them died. And sometimes modern medicine IS un-natural and un-healthy. My concern is this. Society has changed, for the worse. This change , when placed on a time line correlates exactly with the explosion of artificial birth control and rampant materialism. I sincerely believe, and having seven children myself - I know, that our society has lost it's way because we do not know how to love anymore. LOVE is not a feeling, it is an act of will. If we do not practice it, we lose the ability, just like a muscle. We, as a society, have our 1.9 kids, we impose our will on our bodies, we stop the factory, buy new cars every year, a new VCR for every room, new video games for the "pets" and burial plots for the dogs and cats.

Please try to see it from my point of view. If we did not consume so much, we would be able to provide for the third world. If we had more children in the West, we would be more charitable towards all of our fellow men. Nothing fosters charity in a human like the kind of mind boggling difficulty which comes from raising a large family. Birth rates are not keeping up with death rates and the suffering this will bring on our sociosytemic future will be tragic. Consider Mexico - It used to be women had on average 8 children. now they have 3. Men die far younger than women in Mexico. These old grandmothers used to be able to depend on their 8 or 9 children to care for them in their old age. Now their resource is greatly reduce. THEY WILL SUFFER MORE because of your plan.

I don't fault you for your views. You have been misled by a materialistic, selfish, western world. But I know a better way, a more ancient way, a more natural way. I know what I'm talking about because I live it every day. My children live it every day. We can change the world but we have got to turn away from the culture of death, embrace life as sacred and be open to it everywhere we can. If we do this, there will be more than enough food, housing, medicine and resource for all generations to come. If we continue on our capricious, willful way, we will so screw up the mechanism that we will surely bring pain misery and oppression on every one until the end of time. I want to quote a resource of mine that explains this far better than I could. This is ancient wisdom and should be applied to every human person:

"Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self- observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, 'every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible' is intrinsically evil.

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.... The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality." Karen, I'm sorry about the long E-Mail. If people, through a rightly formed conscience, though natural means, limit the number of children they have - that's good. But this can never be imposed, never be done artificially and never , never, NEVER result in the murdering of an unborn human (and life begins at conception).
With Love, Michael

So, which shall it be? This:
>Find a new band wagon. Try to admit to yourself and the world that you
>really hate children, support the forced government imposed murdering of
>unborn humans and don't believe in God, Heaven or Hell.

Or the letter you sent last?

You were wrong on at least two counts in the first letter. I do not support forced government birth control of any sort.

> Your history is flawed. Never did we have 5-10 kids
>and only half of them survived. We had 14 or 15 kids and 2
>or 3 of them died.

Well, if you look up your history, I'll check mine, but I believe that the natural birthrate, where there is no birth control of any kind, and people want to have children, is 6.5 - average. Looking at today's statistics, this is so. Looking at my great grandparents and even my grandparents, this is so.

>God does not allow his children to kill his children.

Apparently, he does. What else is genocide?

>We, as a society, have our 1.9 kids, we impose our
> will on our bodies, we stop the factory, buy new cars
> every year, a new VCR for every room, new video games for
> the "pets" and burial plots for the dogs and cats.

Well, some people do, but many don't. Many go out and enjoy God's creation or do volunteer work, or enjoy their 1.9 kids, their parents and families, or just try to earn a meagre living to support the 1.9 kids and families.

The current global average birth rate is 2.5. I consider this an accomplishment. You would not. But, even so, the population of the world has more than doubled since 1950, and is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050. There are already serious problems: global warming, depletion of soils and arable land and the spread of malaria in Africa, extreme air and water pollution in many third world countries.

You may not be for the Government enforcing your ideas, but the more people like you desensitize society regarding the issue the more likely the "sheeple" will be to allow the government to do just that.

As is usual with your kind of hate mongers, you assume you do more with regard to philanthropy than do I. I don't know you, nor am I as stupid as you so I won't make that mistake regarding you. Lets just say, I do far, far more than the average yuppy who has 1.9 kids, 2 new cars every three years, a house the size of a football field, a color TV to go with every remote controlled VCR in every room and a deep sense of CONCERN for the third world (and that's why they choose to only have 1.9 kids). What's more my children will do more than the yuppy's kids will do and I will have far more children that they will have so the effect of my children on the world will be far, far, far greater.

The World is by far large enough to handle our continued growth, hurricane Mitch should be an example of God's ability to naturally reduce the swell of the masses. The more we screw with nature (including our own reproduction) the more screwed up we will become. It is offensive to hear of population control, Hitler talked about it as did Margaret Sanger as did George Orwell. Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Well, you blew it, calling me stupid, and a hate-monger, and saying I want to 'control' population like Hitler did. No understanding there whatsoever. Good-bye.

You're breaking my heart!

What I should have said in reply to:

>The World is by far large enough to handle our
>continued growth, hurricane Mitch should be an example
>of God's ability to naturally reduce the swell of the masses.

Population is growing by 250,000 people a day. Hurricane Mitch didn't even touch that! (11,000 dead).