Posted on 04/04/2006 9:41:40 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Texas Prof.: 'We're Breeding Our Brains Out'
Talk radio and blogs are taking aim at a University of Texas biology professor because of a published report suggesting he advocates death for most of the human population as a means of saving the Earth.
However, Eric Pianka says his remarks about his beliefs were taken out of context, that he was just raising a warning that deadly disease epidemics are a threat if population growth isn't contained.
"What we really need to do is start thinking about controlling our population before it's too late," he said Monday. "It's already too late, but we're not even thinking about it. We're just mindlessly rushing ahead breeding our brains out."
Pianka, who has gotten vitriolic e-mails and even a death threat, said he believes the Earth would be better off if there were fewer people using up natural resources and destroying habitats.
The furor began when The Gazette-Enterprise of Seguin, Texas, reported Sunday on two speeches Pianka made last month to groups of scientists and students about vanishing animal habitats and the exploding human population.
That report was circulated widely and posted on "The Drudge Report," then quickly became talk radio fodder.
The Gazette-Enterprise quoted Pianka as saying 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.
"HIV is too slow. It's no good," he said.
Pianka said that doesn't mean he wants most humans to die.
However, Forrest Mims, an amateur scientist, author and chairman of the Texas Academy of Science's environmental science section, told The Associated Press there was no mistaking Pianka's disdain for humans and desire for their elimination in the speech he heard.
"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."
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."
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Forrest Mims of the Texas Academy of Science has a somewhat disturbing report on a speech one Eric Pianka, a "University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert," delivered to the academy last month. Pianka argued that "overpopulation" was endangering the Earth, a commonplace enough notion, but one he carried to monstrous extremes:
Without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number. . . .
His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs. . . .
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.
Then came the question and answer session, in which Professor Pianka stated that other diseases are also efficient killers.
The audience laughed when he said, "You know, the bird flu's good, too." They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth." . . .
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." He said those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population.
Probably the audience's enthusiasm was in large part simply a result of the frisson of hearing someone say something so outlandish. But the story does reinforce the stereotype of scientists as brainy freaks devoid of ordinary human feeling and common sense.
OOOPS, I mis-spelled the word HUMANS in the title.
Moderator, kindly correct it. Thanks.
This Prof, who shall remain nameless forever, is not suggesting any proactive reduction of population but that the growth of population will trigger its own reduction. The entire matter is of no importance.
I believe he got that expression wrong.
Maybe he could begin by eliminating himself!
I can't top that. Oh well, time for a nap...
Lovely. Ping worthy? I'd like to drop kick the guy into a yard full of pit bulls. Of course, that wouldn't be the Christian thing to do....
I wonder how hard the sovereign God of the universe laughs at people like this?
Orthodox Jews have some of the highest IQs on the planet, and having ten children in a family is hardly remarkable in that community.
There is no such thing as "overpopulation" - the human mind is a near-infinite resource and the only earthly one we need to ensure physical survival.
He is old and looks like he will come down with some nasty physical condition any day. If he were young and just starting out he might be a candidate for professional assistance.
Seriously, what a waste of good oxygen. If algore wants to know what causes global warming, he oughta start with the stuff this guy's mouth is emitting.
dead, GET OUT OF MY CHAIR!
I guess he must be fishing for a chaired professorship at Princeton.
When he says that "We're breeding our brains out," I'm tempted to ask, "Who's this we, Quimosabe?"
Muslims all over the world are breeding their brains out. Mexicans are breeding their brains out. But well-mannered Europeans and western intellectuals are busy working toward demographic extinction.
I hate to say it, but according to history, the rule is, "He who breeds, wins."
Still, talk about spreading ebola and bird flu is, to say the least, disturbing. Let's not forget that international "population planning" was dreamed up by Margaret Sanger but first implemented by the CIA, which saw it as a way of evening the odds against potential future enemies in the breeding grounds of the third world. Now, of course, the UN is carrying the ball.
No. We've been aborting out brains out for the last 30+ years. That's why it's so essential to have temporary guest workers to do the work Americans aren't there to do.
I'm guessing they all assume that they will be in the 10% of the population left standing. It seems clear to me, however, that the odds are against them.
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