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  Malaria and Overpopulation

  I couldn't help but to notice some of the obnoxious comments posted on this website by Jeff Hoffman.

  Basic human morality compels me to reply.

  None of the world's malarious zones are "over-populated".  Indeed, if any parts of the world are over-populated they are North America, Western Europe and Japan - the places where nobody dies of Malaria.

  The average North American uses 9 times the resources (i.e. land and the stuff like oil, metal and food) the average African uses.  Africa, by the way, is the world's second largest continent and has an area that exceeds 30,000,000 square kilometers in size.  At current levels of consumption, the continent of Africa could accommodate about 5 times more people than currently live there before becoming as "populated" as North America in terms of resource use and impact on the environment.

  Or, put another way, about 80% or 250 million North Americans would have to die in order to reduce North America's resource use to that of all of Africa.

  Yet, there are no signs that a malaria pandemic is going to sweep North America in order to reduce the "over-population" on that continent.  Why not?  Because malaria is not a
  "natural population control".  If it were, malaria would be killing suburban Americans, not poor Africans and Asians that make negligible demands on their environment.

  The reality is that "biocentric" people like Hoffman have a distorted and dangerous morality that equivocates between human persons, with rights and responsibilities, and plants and animals which have neither.   The Malaria bug, and mosquitoes for that matter, cannot be reasoned with.  That gives human persons the right and responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure their own survival.

  I wonder if Hoffman would be so eager to prevent the use of DDT if his child or parent were among the 3 million people annually of Malaria, a disease that we have conveniently eradicated from the developed world by using, among other things, DDT.  

  I doubt that Hoffman is prepared to sacrifice his own life to reduce "over-population" on this planet.  It is sickening that he would expect the poor and less fortunate to bear all of the real sacrifice for his "biocentric" utopia.
  On The North knows best? posted 3 years, 11 months ago 19 Responses