The Life Sciences Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs The World of Biological Research Requirements for the Future (1970) / Chapter Skim
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The Great Hazards
The Great Hazards
Pages 428-451
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From page 428... ...
The social creations of man language, knowledge, culture, philosophy, society have an existence of their own and are transmitted by social inheritance from generation to generation. But they depend for both their persistence and change on the genetic endowments of the biological human beings who are subjected to them and, at the same time, make them possible.
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From page 429... ...
But plant and animal species vary remarkably in their radiosensitivity, and surely current food chains would be disrupted with such profound ecological consequences that it is not clear that man could continue to find sustenance, warmth, and shelter. Similar considerations may well apply to the possibility of widespread use of biological warfare.
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From page 430... ...
Large areas of South American forest have been cleared for agriculture, despite the fact that, within a year or two, the rich forest is replaced by a concretelike laterite soil; until research provides the technology to prevent this, such forest should remain in the native state. But when such knowledge is in hand, vast areas could be opened for productive agriculture.
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From page 431... ...
If, as an arbitrary figure, one in 1,000 individuals will suffer ill effects from a specific agent, causal relationships can be revealed only by very large-scale studies of whole population groups. Yet if one incident in 1,000 seems a small effect, consider that, in a population of 200 million, as many as 200 thousand individuals would experience damage.
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From page 432... ...
Only large-scale, long-term epidemiological research will reveal whether the contraceptive pills, pain killers, sleeping pills, sweeteners, and tranquilizers, now consumed on so great a scale, have any untoward longrange effects on their consumers.* Man has always been exposed to the hazards of his environment and it may well be that he has never been more safe than he is today in the developed nations.
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From page 433... ...
Such safeguards will be effective if the prevailing climate of opinion welcomes the attainment of useful information and forbids authoritarian attempts at improper exploitation of linked data. Man's biological future depends on knowledge of his experiences, good and bad, and record linkage is an important means of acquiring such knowledge.
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From page 434... ...
This sense of urgency, arising originally from the desire simply to assure the viability of life an char Planet is heightened by growing public appreciation of the ^~ ^~ i- 7 ~ I1 importance of beauty, natural and manmade, ~n our surroundings for the improvement of the quality of life. Many reports have directed attention to the more obvious gross problems of managing the environment, problems that derive from a combination of population growth, advancing technology, and increased technological productivity.
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From page 435... ...
such understanding and planning capability to the developing nations, most of which still retain the native qualities of their environments and are in danger of galloping destruction of their resources as they race to develop their technological capabilities and to achieve economic independence and a reasonable standard of living. Biologists and engineers should work jointly to design cities of quality and beauty.
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From page 436... ...
The Size of Human Populations In the seventh century, according to the records of the Church of Mayo, two kings of Erin summoned the principal clergy and laity to a council at Temora, in consequence of a general dearth, the land not being sufficient to support the increasing population. The chiefs .
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From page 437... ...
. (Small numbers outside parentheses indicate the rapidly decreasing number of years required to increase world population by a billion people.)
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From page 438... ...
200 350 / Canada, Australasia 40 70 / Latin America 270 760 a.,_ A=^ 57Q 860 U.S.S.R. 240 400 India 520 1330 China 730 1480 Japan 100 140 Rest of Asia 590 1550 Europe 460 Africa 330 1.0 billion FIGURE 51 Projected population of developed and underdeveloped nations in the year 2000.
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From page 439... ...
Production per acre has been increasing rapidly in the highly developed areas of the world, but, until recently, in most underdeveloped nations gains in production have come primarily from the extension of cultivated acreage rather than from increased production per acre. Moreover, the constraints to the extension of acreage are becoming all too visible in many of the most densely settled parts of the world.
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From page 440... ...
It will suffice to note that no new species of animal or plant has been adapted for human consumption as a major foodstuff in recorded history. We still have urgent need to provide fundamental designs for extremely intensive, very high-yield agriculture, to learn how to take advantage of offshore opportunities for intensive aquiculture of molluscs and, perhaps, of higher marine organisms, to breed wheat of more useful protein content, to find suitable alternatives to the dependence of man, globally, on just a few staple crops rice, wheat, and corn.
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From page 441... ...
Each region requires a corps of local scientific and engineering specialists to make available to its population the beneficial results of industrial and scientific technology, and American technical assistance should give high priority to assisting in the endeavor to train such specialists. The immediate demands on the biosphere have been generated and exacerbated by rapid population growth, which, particularly in the developing nations, is the consequence of the almost abrupt inauguration of public health and sanitation measures, producing drastic reduction of the death rate while the birth rate remained unchecked.
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From page 442... ...
This remarkably accelerated growth, largely the result of decreasing death rates due to simple public health and hygienic measures accompanied by commensurate increases in agricultural productivity, occurred first in Europe and the United States and is now operative also in many of the developing nations, with startling consequences. Witness Brazil with a population of 17.5 million in 1900, 52 million in l9SO, 71 million in 1960, 83 million in 1966, and an estimated 240 million by 2000, or a 14-fold increase within We twentieth century!
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From page 443... ...
Yet, worldwide, since about 1950 agricultural productivity has grown by about 3 percent annually, while population increase has averaged less than 2 percent. Indeed, it is estimated that if worldwide per capita food consumption had held constant at 1955 levels, despite the population increase by 1975 there would have been a world surplus of 40 million tons of wheat and 75 million tons of rice.
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From page 444... ...
In a general way, application of a ton of fertilizer nitrogen yields an increment in crop production equal to the basic yield of a 14-acre plot. Stated differently, there are about 3.5 billion acres of land presently under cultivation; application of $10 worth of fertilizer per acre would increase production by about 50 percent, i.e., for $35 billion per year or $10 per capita, worldwide, world food production would rise by the equivalent of 1.7 billion acres of average land and a 50 percent increase in available food, per capita.
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From page 445... ...
The world's lowest crude death rates are found in such places as Taiwan, Singapore, Puerto Rico, and Chile, where health protection has become relatively good and a history of high birth rates has left a young population. In the long run, reductions in birth rates reduce growth both directly and indirectly by increasing the average age and, other things being equal, the crude death rate.
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From page 446... ...
Moreover, where services and supplies are made available, women are beginning to seek them in large numbers. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore have clearly reduced their birth rates through their family planning programs.
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From page 447... ...
The availability of the cheap intrauterine device has encouraged governments of underdeveloped nations to build the organizations they require to spread family planning practices. With such organizations in being and operative, the next technological innovation can be introduced much more rapidly.
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From page 448... ...
In the past decade, applied research based on many preceding years of basic research has made possible the contraceptive pills, the intrauterine devices and, consequently, the beginnings of a birth rate decline in some developing areas as well as in developed nations. Further basic research is greatly needed to prepare for yet further advances, and it is the only pathway to completely new approaches in population control.
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From page 449... ...
There is, however, one aspect in which population control and the health of the population are at odds. Population control would be furthered by encouraging late marriage, a principal factor in the low birth rate in Ireland.
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From page 450... ...
The present gene pool is the culmination of 3 billion years of evolution and natural selection. The physical vigor, long life, and intellectual capacity of most humans reflect the fact that, historically, natural selection has minimized the incidence of genes that, when expressed in the homozygous phenotype (an individual with two identical genes for the trait in question)
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From page 451... ...
Knowledge of the inheritance and the variability in expression of the numerous kinds of human defects accumulates steadily, and the outlook for improved foundations for counseling is favorable. It will be enormously enhanced as procedures are developed that might make possible positive recognition of those who are asymptomatic heterozygotes for specified undesirable genes.
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