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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Population Control, Nazi Style
Message-ID: <26500056@inmet>
Date: Thu, 28-Aug-86 22:03:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.26500056
Posted: Thu Aug 28 22:03:00 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Aug-86 01:17:58 EDT
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Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Aug 28 22:03:00 1986


[Discussion, with R. Carnes, of Paul Ehrlich's "Nazi-like" statements]

The following is from *The Population Bomb* by Paul Ehrlich,
Ballantine Books, 1968, pp.165, 166:

>...the United States could take effective unilateral action in  many
>cases.  A  good  example  of how we might have acted can be built
>around the Chandrasekhar incident I mentioned earlier.

>When he suggested sterilizing all Indian males with three or more
>children,  we  should have applied pressure on the Indian govern-
>ment to go ahead with the plan. ...

>We should have volunteered logistic support in the form  of  hel-
>icopters, vehicles and surgical instruments.  We should have sent
>doctors to aid in the plan ...

>Coercion? Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause.

He does not say if we were to send handcuffs for the victims,  or
how best to pressure the Indian government to become totalitarian.

After comparing population growth to cancer growth, he goes on:

>We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms  to  the
>cutting out of cancer. The operation will require many apparently
>brutal and heartless decisions.

>The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced  that
>only  with radical surgery [etc.]

This is the "final  solution"  language.  The  victims-to-be  are
first dehumanized, described as cancerous cells, a pestilential
scourge; then the "apparently" brutal and heartless  solutions
are  introduced  with a perfunctory regret; but in reality we are
invited to admire ourselves for being above ordinary considera-
tions  of  decency and humanity. We are the surgeons, others just
cells.

		Jan Wasilewsky