The Greatest Health Threat

Over the last six months I have come to realize the greatest health threat to humans. This essay is intended to present that threat.

The threat is not AIDS, although AIDS is a symptom of the problem. In fact, it is not any disease. Nor is it Homosexuality, or any other lifestyle choice that people may have. In fact, homosexuality may be part of a solution to the problem. Nor is it war, and other forms of political strife, although, again, these are symptoms. I don't even think it is an asteroid hitting Earth, although that would solve the problem.

The greatest threat to the health of humans is overpopulation. The reason is not that humans are about to use up all the resources of the earth, but rather the affect of overpopulation on humans.

What is overpopulation? This is when there is an attempt to have too many of something growing in a given area. In this case the "area" is the entire Earth, and the "something growing" is people.

I have come to realize that Arthur Clark's idea that the world should have a population of only a few million may not be off the mark as much as I have originally thought, although I suspect my reasons for saying that differ significantly from his.

The signs are already here. During my lifetime I have seen several new diseases announced, perhaps as many as five or ten. These are not diseases that existed and people didn't recognize, these are new diseases. During this same time I have seen the (possibly temporary – certainly the military hopes so) of one disease, namely smallpox. That is a net gain of four or five.

Also other diseases, such as tuberculosis now comes in different varieties – some resistant to man's punky efforts to bring them under control.

Some people who have not considered this will think this is a statement that disease is the greatest health threat. "Big deal," they will say, "disease has always been a health threat. What does this have to do with overpopulation? Overpopulation can cause problems in that resources are strained. Besides, in may parts of the world population is down."

And population could cause us to strain resources. This hasn't happened yet, however. In almost every incident where, for example, starvation has been a problem, I could trace it directly to war and/or political stupidity, not strain on the resources. I've seen estimates that the world could have a population of maybe ten to fifteen billion before the resources are strained to the limit.

Alarmist will say that day may not be far off, yet I suspect it may be further than they think. Contrary to the point of view commonly held, and stated in The Matrix, human beings do not continue to increase in population until the resources are strained beyond limit. Some animals do, but not humans. I would offer as proof the family size in the United States. When my father was young, families with ten children or more were common. Now it is much more common to see a family size of four, or even fewer. Quite often this is not attributed to the increase in population directly. Rather, it is attributed to the increase in complexity of life. The complexity is caused by increased population. Therefore, the increase in population has caused a decrease in the birthrate, and a stable population in many places.

Of course, religions designed during a time when humanity was not nearly as populous act to slow down this trend. This is true whether the religion is the Catholic church, or the Mormon church. In either case they encourage large families at a time when large families are stupid, irrational entities.

The problem is that the stability is too late. If people were acting rationally, they would keep the population much lower, closer to the three of four million that Arthur Clark suggests. The reason is disease. (Back to the original points I was making.)

I recently read the book Clan of the Cave Bear which is a story about life 35,000 years ago. Many problems can be found with the depictions, and I have documented some, but the general lifestyle is probably not that far off. There are two diseases mentioned in this book, tuberculosis, and the common cold. Yet, the lifestyle would not have allowed either of these disease to exist. If the common cold did exist, people in one group would have gotten very sick, then everyone in the group would have developed an immunity to the cold, and the cold itself would have died. Tuberculosis would have suffered a similar fate, but it may have taken much longer.

Certainly I have seen it noted recently that Tuberculosis did not actually become a disease until people started domesticating animals, which would have been much later than 35,000 years ago.

A more modern day example of the same thing can be seen in the Earth II experiment. In this experiment a certain number of people were going to live in an enclosed environment for a year. During the first six months they had no contact with the outside world, even to get food. They were never sick (although there was a serious accident). After the six months they decided to allow limited contact with others. During this second six month people caught colds, and were sick.

Having the high world population we have makes an ideal breeding ground for disease. With billions of people there are billions of little experiments going on trying to find this perfect disease. Meanwhile, each of these billions of immune systems is trying to find a way to eliminate the disease. The diseases have the upper hand, as I noted above.

If the population were lower, then the same "experiments" would be going on, except they would be in the millions of experiments, not billions. Also, since people would not contact other people as often, the single immune system would have to fight the disease. Perhaps it might be devastating to one individual, but the human race as a whole would be much healthier.

How do we get there? I really don't know. The truth is it may be taken out of our hands. During the the sixth century more than half the population of the world died due to bubonic plague. And this was not unique. During the fourteenth century a third of the population died due to disease. One of these experiments mentioned above some day will develop a disease which may even have a higher fatality rate.

Nor is the punky efforts of homo sapiens a guarantee that the fatality ratio will be less. How many people have seen a cure for AIDS? Current indiscriminate use of antibiotics guarantee they will not be available when they are needed. That is, I see an advertisement on TV saying, "Use our spray to kill 99% of the bacteria on surfaces." That means it kills 99%, but not the one percent, which is allowed to survive and reproduce. Pretty soon, probably just a few years, all germs are immune, so if someone gets sick because of the germs, that antibiotic cannot be used.

Meanwhile, the immune system of the children is not allowed to practice on these germs, so the immune system doesn't develop, and the children have problems with more serious diseases later in life.

Good luck on Coruscant (the planet in Star Wars Episode one which was one big city).