Survival of the fittest

Every now and then, you have to feel sorry for scientists. Frequently misunderstood, misquoted, and often enveloped in a quagmire of jealous and contrary colleagues, scientists really don’t have an easy life. This appears to be especially true for University of Texas biology professor Eric Pianka, who has taken quite a lot of heat – including death threats, for some statements he made on a couple of occasions regarding the overpopulation of the planet.

Pianka reportedly made two speeches last month, both to students and colleagues, and in each he made statements regarding dwindling animal habitats and human overpopulation. A newspaper in Texas reported on these two speeches, and although the newspaper had a transcript of the original speech, it was on the condition that the speech not be distributed, so we can’t know the exact details of the speech.

But we know the gist of some of the text in his speech, which is that unchecked overpopulation of the earth will lead to problems for humans and animals alike, and that if we don’t start practicing population control – natural events, like epidemics, will take care of it for us. In separate statements since the controversy began, Pianka has been quoted as saying:

"If we don't control our population, microbes will. Why do we have these lethal microbes that kill us in the first place? The answer is, there's too many of us."

"We're taking over this Earth and not leaving anything for anything else on this Earth."

He also asserts that a lower population would mean less strain on natural resources. The newspaper that covered the speeches, the Gazette-Enterprise, reported that he said that disease

"will control the scourge of humanity. We're looking forward to a huge collapse."

It said he weighed the killing power of various diseases such as bird flu and HIV but decided neither would yield the needed results.

One colleague of Pianka’s, Forrest Mims, states emphatically that Pianka is advocating the destruction of mankind.

"He wishes for it. He hopes for it. He laughs about it. He jokes about it," Mims said. "It's got to happen because we are the scourge of humanity."

The University of Texas, exhibiting common sense in this whirlpool of bullshit, is supporting Pianka and his First Amendment rights.

Pianka was expressing his own opinion, University of Texas spokesman Don Hale said.

"Dr. Pianka has First Amendment rights to express his point of view," Hale said. "We have plenty of faculty with a lot of different points of view and they have the right to express that point of view, but they're expressing their personal point of view."

Thank GOD. Honestly, I don’t understand why people are getting their panties in a wad over these statements. Overpopulation can be a problem. Epidemics are the Earth’s way of dealing with overpopulation. People shouldn’t breed willynilly with no regard for the consequences. We are running out of natural resources. We are ruining the natural habitat of thousands of animals. We are forcing ahead global warming. Reality bites.

In what was reported, I don’t see any indication that he hates people or wants the human race to be wiped out. Without reading the entire transcript, I don’t see how anyone can react with enough vitriol to want to kill the professor and his family. If you ask me, those are the people with the problems, not Dr. Pianka.

Even so, I’m not sure Dr. Pianka has done very well with keeping up with biology statistics. Not all of us are breeding like rabbits. Recent numbers in Europe are showing that many E.U. countries aren’t even keeping up with parental replacement (2.1 births per family). National averages in many countries are running at 1.99 and much, much lower. What we are going to end up with, then, is extreme overpopulation in some countries, and underpopulation in others. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think these numbers will average out, as we may even experience the dying out of some cultures, and overwhelming numbers of others – countries where the birth rate is upwards of 6 or more, yet in these same countries, the infant mortality rate is shockingly high. The world may already be experiencing the scourge Dr. Pianka was talking about, but on a different, and much slower scale. Add in a flu epidemic like the one in 1918, and we will be well on the way.

The bottom line is, these are not pleasant things to think about. In a world with constant terrorist threats, religious fanaticism, crazy and destructive weather, impending pandemic – talking about reality in this manner just adds fuel to an already incendiary population. The world of 2006 is a world of fear, and there are too many unknowns. Poor Dr. Pianka is taking the heat from a fire that has been blazing steadily for too many years. Maybe it is time to cool off, and take things in stride. After all, we are alive right here and now, and tomorrow we may not be.