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Medicine and War

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Medicine, population and war

a
Jack Parsons
a
Treferig Cottage Farm , Llantrisant, Mid‐Glam,
CF72 8LQ
Published online: 22 Oct 2007.

To cite this article: Jack Parsons (1996) Medicine, population and war , Medicine
and War, 12:1, 23-34, DOI: 10.1080/13623699608409254

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 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR

Medicine, Population and War*

JACK PARSONS
Llantrisant, Mid-Giant, CF72 8LQ

Do medicine and health-care increase population size as well as individual quality

of life? Do large and rapid increases in numbers tend to put greater pressure on
and therefore increase competition for scarce resources and in turn raise the level
and intensity of human conflict and violence? Does this hypothesized succession of
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events present health professionals with weighty ethical and practical dilemmas
requiring urgent attention? It is argued here that it does.

KEYWORDS Population growth Population pressure Resources

Scarcity Life expectancy Conflict
Violence War Medical ethics

Every human society is faced not with one population problem but with two:
how to beget and rear enough children, and how not to beget and rear too
many.'
Margaret Mead, 1962
One of the reasons for [the present] situation is the success of medicine ... By
greatly reducing the number of infant deaths in all countries a natural check
upon the rapid growth of population has been removed ... [and] more
people than ever before are surviving into their seventh and eighth decade.2
Dr Noel Poynter,
President, British Society for the History of Medicine, 1971

Introduction
A major problem in our desire to abolish war is that of causation.
Presumably, if the causes of violence can be discovered then in principle
they can be addressed directly and at least to some extent brought under
control. 'World population growth' must assuredly be one of these causes,
so this and its relationship with the practice of medicine forms the central
theme of this article.

The 'Population Problem'

Some Basic Facts
Mostly, when we speak about the 'population problem', we are referring
to a whole complex of problems; poverty, pollution, unemployment,

* This article has been significantly shortened by the editors for reasons of space.
MEDICINE, CONFLICT AND SURVIVAL, VOL. 12, 23-34(1996)
 24 J. PARSONS
illiteracy, environmental damage, conservation, extinctions, and so on. We
stress the population dimension because so many commentators, pressure
groups and governments either ignore it, pay only lip-service, or deny it
altogether. With notable exceptions, members of the health professions by
and large follow the first course.
Despite the fact that since the Second World War there has been a good
deal of progress in lowering both birth rates and the annual population
growth rate (AGR), there is no room for complacency. Although the AGR
peaked at about 2 per cent in the mid-1960s and then declined to around
1.6 per cent in 1990-95 (doubling-time 46 years) the annual natural
increase rose from around 50 millions in the 1950s to about 70 millions in
the mid-1960s, and then to some 90 millions in the mid-1990s. It is pre-
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dicted to remain at this level for about 30 years. Not until the 2030s is
there likely to be a fall in natural increase, and it will take more than two
generations from now before this drops - at an AGR of 0.5 per cent in the
mid-2040s - to the 1950 level of 50 millions/year.

The Relevance of the Cairo Conference

Dr Fred Sai declared after the Cairo Conference on Population and
Development 'There is no question that we have succeeded beyond our
wildest dreams.'3 Many others agreed that it was indeed a great break-
through, partly because one of these decennial conferences has had the
word 'development' in both its title and terms of reference. Another reason
is that the Vatican delegation agreed to sign the final report in spite of
some very strong reservations. Paradoxically, it was probably the Vatican
party's rigid stance on sex education, contraception and induced abortion
which generated the large polarizing force needed to bring about a con-
sensus among the many other disparate groups attending."
However, consensus could not be achieved without skating over the
thorny topic of funding and the jettisoning of pretty well all direct talk of
population stabilization. The emphasis must now be on such politically
correct goals as educating and otherwise empowering women. Not that
there is anything wrong with such aims: indeed, they are admirable and
should be urgently pursued. However, the rejection of the quantification
frame - particularly relating to family-planning/population targets and to
the sources of money needed to carry forward the high ideals of the
Conference - leaves a lot to be desired. Another unrealistic aspect of both
deliberations and Report was the great stress placed on human rights with
hardly a word on the corresponding human duties required to make those
rights realities.5
The Conference newssheet reported that some non-governmental organi-
zations and representatives of less developed countries regretted that it had
devoted 'ten days to abortion and only ten minutes to development': in
theory, one of the two main themes. There was also a lot of concern
(mainly muted) on the broad themes of population competition, competi-
 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR 25

tive breeding, and population imperialism.6 An article in the concluding

issue of the newssheet observed that aid was to be partly reorientated
towards birth control programmes in Southern countries but western
governments do not hide the fact that high population growth in
developing countries is one of their principal concerns.7
The consensus in Cairo was that no single solution is likely to produce
the changes needed to slow population growth and mitigate its effects.
Government spokespersons and many others now argue that a number of
social interventions when combined and sustained will bring about lower
birth rates and, ultimately, a stationary population. In addition to the
empowerment of women, policies include sustainable development,
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improved literacy, much wider availability of contraceptives, and high

quality health care - especially reproductive health care.8
Financing the substantial programmes called for on birth control,
health, and education, and so on, is perhaps the most difficult problem.
The host/donor ratios of funds for family planning programmes vary
widely. In 1992, for instance, Indonesia funded 82 per cent of the cost
whereas Uganda paid for only 3 per cent. The UN suggests that donors
should provide one third of the funds, and this would require an increase
from $2 billion in 1992 up to $5.7 billion in 2000. The United States has
so far been by far the largest contributor to population programmes ($431
million in 1993) but both Germany and Japan have now promised massive
increases in their already large commitments in this sphere. Britain and
many other countries are less forthcoming and it is by no means clear that
the minimal needs will be met.
Understanding and Disseminating the Facts and their Implications
Many otherwise intelligent and concerned people seem to find it very hard
to take in the meaning of population statistics. How can the true signifi-
cance of an annual world population growth rate of about 1.6 per cent be
appreciated by people paying anything up to 23 per cent or so on their
bank or credit-card loans? Yet at only 2 per cent per annum a population
doubles twice every lifespan (70 years) so that merely maintaining material
living standards means that net wealth and income must also be quad-
rupled over that time. If real income per head is expected to increase by 2
per cent a year also, then that too must double every 35 years. Putting the
two together (a 2 per cent per annum increase in both population and real
per capita income) shows that a net eightfold increase in production is
required over every unit lifespan. Over how many lifespans can such
figures be maintained? Very few of us doubt that population growth must
come to a halt very soon, but I have shown elsewhere that the inexorable
dynamic of exponential growth must in the very near future halt per capita
increase in wealth also, bringing at the utmost theoretical limit every one
of us up against the 'millionaire barrier'.9
Some Third World countries are doubling in numbers in 20 years or
 26 J. PARSONS

less, which means that they must increase total real income by a factor of
about 12 per lifespan simply to maintain their existing levels of poverty,
often abject. A significant move towards Western living standards would
require at least a quadrupling of per capita income, necessitating, with the
two put together, nearly a fiftyfold increase in production in one lifespan.
If the optimistic projections are wrong and birth rates remain at their
present levels, then - on the 'constant fertility' projection, world popula-
tion would reach 16 billion by 2050, three times the 1991 figure, and
would pass 50 billion not long after 2100. Even if the most pessimistic
projections turn out to be wrong, the truly massive impact of even the
optimistic projections does not seem to be appreciated by large numbers of
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otherwise intelligent and well-informed professional people.

Dr Maurice King has argued that some countries suffer from population
'entrapment', defined as follows. 'A local population is demographically
entrapped if it has exceeded, or is projected to exceed the combination of:
(a) the carrying capacity of its own eco-system, (b) its ability to obtain
the products, and particularly the food, produced by other ecosystems
except as food aid, and (c) its ability to migrate to other ecosystems in a
manner which preserves (or improves) its standard of living. Items (b) and
(c) describe the links that a population has with other ecosystems and are
crucial, so they are most easily thought of as "connectedness", and its
opposite, "disconnectedness".'"'10

Population Pressure and Conflict

On the topic of a possible causal relationship between population pressure
and conflict only three basic positions are possible, namely, that there is no
systematic relationship; that population pressure tends to reduce conflict;
or that population pressure tends to increase conflict. It seems obvious that
the last of these is correct, so it is not surprising that deep concern can be
found in the writings of the ancients: Confucius, Aristotle, Kautilya, and
Tertullian, to name but a few. In addition to the injunction to 'increase
and multiply', the Bible contains many references to the problems of popu-
lation, resource and quality of life. Similarly, both historical and anthropo-
logical literature show clearly that most 'primitive' societies are aware of
the ever-present need to balance numbers and resources against each other
so as to maintain the group's desired quality of life, and of the danger of
war if conflict over scarce resources is allowed to get out of hand. Eric
Wolf" has argued that in modern times population pressure is one of the
main factors leading to revolutions, giving as examples Mexico in 1910,
Russia in 1917, China in the 1930s, Cuba in 1953, Vietnam in 1962, and
Algeria in 1963. Some left-wing activists, notably in Latin America, have
argued against birth control programmes on the express rationale that the
greater the head of demographic steam, as it were, then the more rapid
and complete would be their hoped-for revolutions. On the other hand,
 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR 27

the 1992 joint communique of the Royal Society and the US National
Academy of Sciences states: 'If ... predictions of population growth prove
accurate and patterns of human activity ... remain unchanged, science and
technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of
the environment or continued poverty for much of the world'.12
Norman Myers points out that sub-Saharan Africa, with a much higher
population growth rate than the rest of the Third World, suffers much
environmental devastation and is already 'the most impoverished region in
the world', with a falling per capita income and nearly two out of three
'in absolute poverty ... [and] ... at least half ... chronically undernourished
... [with] less food than when their countries raised the flag of nationhood
30 years ago ... 50 million are simply starving.' It is no accident that the
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region 'is racked with ... turmoil and violence ... [with] more than 200
coups or attempted coups since 1950'.13
Myers also notes US Vice-President Al Gore's reminder that the Nile
'delivers no more water today than it did when Moses was discovered
among the bullrushes' and the population of the whole world was only
around 200 millions. The regional population alone now exceeds that
figure and competition for this precious resource is escalating rapidly
because of both growing numbers and increasing per capita demands.
'Ethiopia has never joined Egypt ... to regulate ... the Nile's waters. On
the contrary, it has repeatedly asserted that ... it feels at complete liberty
to dispose of its natural resources in whatever way it pleases ... [and] it
aims to resettle 1.5 million impoverished peasants from the degraded high-
lands into the ... southwestern sector ... [and] to divert up to 39 per cent
of the Blue Nile's waters ... This prospect alarms Egypt ... In 1985 the
Egyptian foreign minister, Boutros Ghali, [stated] "We depend upon the
Nile 100 per cent. The next war in our region will [not be] over politics
[but] over the waters of the Nile"."3
It is almost certain that one of the most violent social episodes of
modern times - the hand-to-hand slaying of up to a million people in
Rwanda in 1994 - was caused in part by the intense pressure on resources,
notably land and food. Hamand and others have drawn attention to the
very high population growth rate there (now averaging 8.5 children per
family) and quite exceptionally high pre-genocide rural population density,
405 per sq. km for the country as a whole and 560 per sq.km in the
Ruhengeri Prefecture.14 The number of children per family could rise from
6.2 in 1990, to 9.1 in 2000, and 12.6 in 2010. Even in 1984 families in the
Gisenyi and Cyangugu prefectures were trying to survive on plots of only
0.13 ha. (about 30-40m.) and the situation is much worse now; nearly
half of all Rwandan children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition
and growth-stunting. Such overcrowding inevitably creates physiological
stress - making political conflicts more difficult to resolve - and the high
rate of population increase can only make matters worse.
In a recent letter to The Lancet, three angry Belgian paediatricians drew
 28 J. PARSONS

attention to the fact that they had been predicting this disaster for a
generation. They warned that, if nothing changed, complete collapse in the
population was to be expected in the 1990s as a consequence of popula-
tion expansion within a subsistence economy. These warnings were
ignored.15 The Rwandan massacres may have temporarily reduced the
excess pressure but without drastic changes in reproductive behaviour
respite can only be brief.
In his excellent recent book,16 Stanley Johnson stresses the causal rela-
tionship between population pressure and violence. He notes that at the
1984 World Population Conference in Mexico no less than 92 heads of
government or of state sent in reports describing the disturbing effects of
excessive population pressure 'which can or do give rise to tensions, insta-
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bilities and conflicts'; for instance, Turgut Ozal, Prime Minister of Turkey,
wrote that 'population issues cannot be confined to national boundaries.
They are closely related to the attainment of our ideals for peace, security
and stability in the world.'16 Johnson quotes the Brandt Commission
opinion that it is 'difficult to avoid the conclusion that a world of 15
billion ... would be marked by a host of potentially devastating economic,
social, and political conflicts'.16
A 1984 Earthscan document, also quoted by Myers, argues that at least
three types of environmental factors are often linked to population
pressures and strife. One of these is the accelerating trend in forest and soil
degradation which is 'rapidly marginalising hundreds of millions of Third
World people'. Another factor is the rapidly rising shortage of fresh water
as 'deforestation and soil erosion have reduced the "sponge effect" of the
land ... Rivers now tend to flood after the rains and run low in the dry
season'. The third factor concerns the decline in ocean fish stocks as
demand rapidly increases.13

Medicine and Population Pressure

Whilst most health systems, though not all, have had no overt policy
to increase population, it must be stressed that the policy of having no
specific population policy still cannot avoid affecting numbers. The Royal
Commission on Population pointed out in 1949 that 'it is impossible for
non-population policy in its effects, as distinct from its intentions, to be
"neutral" in this matter: over a wide range of affairs, policy and adminis-
tration have a continuous effect on family size."7
If excessive population pressure on resources tends to cause conflict, and
the latter is undesirable, then we need to seek the causes of this pressure,
which quickly leads to the question; 'does medicine tend to increase it?'
Are the health professions directly fostering the 'too many' syndrome?
Albert Einstein certinly thought so. He was convinced both that the popu-
lation explosion was one of the biggest problems facing our species and
that medical science was the main cause of this imbalance. In a letter to the
 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR 29

pioneer family planner, Margaret Sanger, he wrote, 'the progress of

hygiene and medicine has completely altered the early precarious equili-
brium of the quantitative stability of the human race ... I am ... firmly
convinced that a powerful attempt to solve this tremendous problem, at
least partly, by conscious educational effort, is of urgent necessity."8
Boosting Numbers through Opposition to Birth Control
One way in which the medical profession almost certainly boosted popula-
tion numbers over the last one and a half centuries is via the number of
unwanted births. This has been through the opposition, in some cases
fanatical, of most senior members, in alliance with virtually all senior
divines, to sex education and contraception. The Roman Church, in com-
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pany with at least a few health professionals, still tenaciously opposes both
of these things. As late as 1944 Halliday Sutherland, a prolific medical
author, published a book arguing that the British nation was committing
suicide by means of contraception. He maintains that he is dealing with
'those human vultures now engorging themselves out of the very life of a
nation once morally strong; and by human vultures I mean those ... who
finance the manufacture of contraceptives and who advocate contracep-
tives favourable to themselves; likewise all doctors who are hawkers of
contraceptives."9
Despite the fact that many doctors were hypocritically practising birth
control in private20 and that contraception for the masses did have a few
distinguished medical protagonists, the sheer weight of opinion against it
must have seriously reduced public access and therefore caused a direct
increase in numbers through the birth of unwanted children. This stance
on the part of metropolitan personnel serving in the French colonies,
coupled with their country's anti-birth control legislation, gave an added
impetus - still having some effect on the already powerful population
explosion in the Francophone region in Africa.
Boosting Numbers through Medical Practice
In A Social History of Medicine, Cartwright stated that some authors have
rejected the thesis that population growth in Britain from the 18th century
was due mainly to improved medical service.21 He argued instead that 'the
16th century was an age of new infections' (e.g. congenital syphilis, small-
pox, and the 'English Sweat') which then began to die out more or less
spontaneously, giving the effect of a medical boost to life expectancy.
McKeown also takes a very sceptical view of medicine's effect on numbers.
Quoting authors as far apart as Moliere and Nancy Mitford, by way of
Habbakuk and George Bernard Shaw, he states that 'no knowledgeable
person is likely to dispute that we owe the vast increase in expectation of
life and reduction of morbidity mainly to changes which occurred before
effective clinical intervention was possible'.22
Numbers are well on the way to their second doubling during the
 30 J. PARSONS

present writer's lifetime, a rate of growth quite incapable of being

sustained for more than an eyeblink in the history of our species. Medicine
in the round must surely be among the main means by which this great
revolution has been brought about. One of the most striking individual
contributions must surely be that of Semmelweis, who, within a seven-
month period, single-handedly reduced puerperal fever fatalities in the
maternity ward of the Vienna General Hospital by 90 per cent.23 Even
McKeown pointed out that there has been a decline to virtual extinction
much of it over the last century of a number of earlier killer diseases such
as bronchitis, respiratory tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza, diphtheria,
and smallpox. Poynter highlighted the population study of Mauritius and
quoted Titmuss as saying that 'until 1947 it could hardly be said that
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Mauritius had a population problem. Then the World Health Organiza-

tion and teams of scientists from Britain intervened to control malaria.
Since then the rate of growth has been phenomenal. Population control is
essential and in the time available it is the only non-violent answer to the
threat of population disaster.'2
Is the Third World now Mauritius writ large? In his Statement for
World Population Day, 11 July 1994, Dr Fred Sai announced that 'in the
health field there have been great advances. In little more than a generation
child mortality rates have been cut by half, three million children a year
are being saved by immunization programmes, malnutrition rates have
been reduced by 30 per cent and life expectancy has increased by about a
third.'24
Surely there is no escaping the conclusion that the practice of medicine
saves lives, dramatically increasing numbers and therefore pressure on
resources.

Medicine and War

Logically, if 'a' causes 'b' and 'b' causes 'c', then 'a' must at one remove
cause 'c'. If population pressure tends to cause conflict, conflict can turn
into war, and medicine tends to increase population pressure, the question
immediately arises; 'does medicine tend to cause war?' If the factual
evidence and the argumentation on the two preliminary steps above are
accepted, then the answer has to be 'yes', and several further important
questions present themselves. The professional may be sceptical, even
cynical, about how much life-preserving is being achieved, but even small
increments can have a very big effect at the margin.

The Marginality Effect

Even if we accept the claims of sceptics like McKeown, or cynics such as
Shaw and Illich20 - that the effect of medical practice on life prolongation
and the increase in numbers has been marginal - this does not get the pro-
fession completely off the ethical hook. Both commonsense and everyday
 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR 31

observation show that the effects of adding further units to a finite system
can differ widely at different points along the 'empty-full' scale. Often each
new unit has an increasingly large effect as the ultimate capacity of the
system is approached. Taking as an analogy the effects of increases in road
traffic density, research has demonstrated how disproportionate is the dis-
location as saturation point is approached. Increasing the flow in a test-
circuit by 100 per cent from 1,000 to 2,000 vehicles an hour increased the
journey time by only 6 per cent. From this point a further 50 per cent
increase to 3,000 an hour, raised the journey time by 44 per cent, the third
1,000 having seven and a half times more effect than the second. Raising
the flow by a mere 8 per cent from this point increased the time by over 60
per cent.25 If this argument is generally applicable it follows that in some
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circumstances quite small increments in human numbers brought about by

the efforts of health professionals could still have very damaging effects.

Ethical and Practical Implications for Health Professionals

If the three stages of the transitive argument are accepted - where 'a' is
medicine and 'c' is conflict, then some very important questions are raised.
First, what amounts and kinds of responsibility are or should be carried by
individual practitioners and the profession as a whole? Secondly, what
practical consequences should flow from this analysis? How should health
professionals behave differently both to undo past harms as far as possible,
and to minimise these in the future? In a previous contribution to a medi-
cal publication26, I examined the historical roots of the modern medical
ethic based on Hippocrates, the lay Asclepiads, and the goddesses Hygeia
and Panacea, concluding that its original essence was balance; metis sana
in corpore sano in equilibrium with a healthy and sustainable environ-
ment.
Sir Richard Livingstone once defined a technician as 'someone who
understands everything about his job except its ultimate purpose and its
place in the order of the universe'.27 On this theme the question is whether
most modern health professionals have become technicians in just the
sense described, with little or no concern for the ecology of medicine. A.V.
Hill drew attention to one of the most profound ethical dilemmas of all
times: 'If ethical principles deny our right to do evil in order that good may
come, are we justified in doing good when the foreseeable consequence
is evil?'28 If we decide that we are all moral agents, responsible for the
natural consequences of our acts and failures to act, then medical practi-
tioners - who every day intervene in the evolutionary process - cannot be
excused from this universal principle because their intentions are good.
They have spearheaded the onslaught upon the earlier balance of nature
which has created the current population explosion.
These considerations raise a profound dilemma for members of the
health professions. Should they claim or deny that their efforts are pro-
 32 J. PARSONS
longing life and so increasing human numbers, thereby putting greater
pressure on the earth's limited resources? If they choose denial then what
is their rationale for carrying on? Is it only to increase the quality of life,
rather than both quality and quantity? If the former, then are they to some
extent obtaining under false pretences a goodly proportion of the vast
resources that go into medicine? If, on the other hand, health professionals
want to claim that they are increasing both quality and quantity of human
life (quantity in the sense of preserving existing life, i.e., not being pro-
natalist), then what should their attitude and subsequent practical action
be towards the amelioration of the overpopulation and conflict situation
they are helping to create? In the face of an almost universally acknow-
ledged problem of the utmost magnitude it seems not merely legitimate but
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essential to invite members of the health professions to re-examine rather

urgently the likely long-term effects of their activities in their roles as pro-
fessionals and as citizens of both their own countries and the world. Is the
minimization of human suffering in the long run the great goal, or is there
another? If the latter, then what is it, and what - in either case - are the
most effective means of attaining it?
The quotation from the Brandt Commission mentioned above con-
cluded: 'Whether the nightmarish vision of a hopelessly overcrowded
planet in the next century can be averted depends gravely on what is
done now to hasten the stabilisation of population."6 Should health pro-
fessionals be playing a full part in bringing this about?
On this topic Poynter quoted the then Indian ambassador to the United
States as saying that 'we have been suffering from the civilizing effects of
science and medical research. These have shown us how to reduce our
death rate but so far failed to point the way to a controlled population.
This is one of the most important issues of conscience in modern medicine
which must advance on both fronts. If it considers life is sacred and every-
thing must be done to prolong it, it must also prevent human beings being
born into an existence of poverty, destitution and frustration'.2 Poynter
concludes; 'here we have the real kernel of the problem. Society is faced
with a dilemma which the conflicts between its own social mores and
religious beliefs make it almost impossible to resolve in time and so
puts the burden of choice on the doctor. Medicine is responsible for this
dilemma for it has destroyed the normal biological checks and balances;
therefore medicine must find the way out.'2

Possible Actions
Potts has pointed out that in many developing countries 50 to 80 per cent
of mothers want to limit or space births. If they were able to do this,
maternal mortality could be reduced by 45 per cent, and abortion would
significantly decrease. If 75 per cent of fertile couples were to practise
family planning, family size would drop to the level needed for population
stabilization. It will help greatly if health professionals recognize clearly
 MEDICINE, POPULATION AND WAR 33

that whilst population control costs money, the amounts needed are
trifling compared with what is spent on conventional overseas aid and
armaments. Potts concluded 'starting now, an investment of one cent per
day per taxpayer in the industrialized countries would more than meet
Third World family planning needs from external sources'.29
If health professionals can agree that by their efforts they are increasing
human numbers and therefore pressure on scarce resources, and therefore
conflict, they can easily, without any clash with their Hippocratic Oath,
take up these issues and use their considerable weight as both professionals
and citizens to ensure that unwanted births become a thing of the past.
This is the first and most obvious step and it can be attained by a change
of attitude, by increasing and switching resources into voluntary birth con-
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trol, including research into more effective and more acceptable methods.
Ought there not to be a significant shift in medical attention and
resources to activities like these? And ought there not to be profound
deliberations at the moral 'summit' of the British medical profession, the
Ethical Committee of the BMA, on the broader issues stressed in this
article? Detailed enquiries of this august body elicited the facts that these
issues have never been, are not now, and in the foreseeable future are not
likely to be, on its agenda.

References
1. Mead M. Male and Female. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1962.
2. Poynter N. Medicine and Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971: 4, 76.
3. Sai F. Media Backgrounder. International Planned Parenthood Federation:
Analysis of the International Conference on Population & Development.
Cairo, 5-13 Sept. 1994:
4. Potts M. Common sense prevailing at population conference. Lancet 1994;
344: 809.
5. Parsons J. The human rights-duties equation: an enquiry into the conservation
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(Accepted 12 September 1995)

Jack Parsons started as an engineering apprentice in Nottingham at the age of 14,

served as an RAF pilot from 1941 to 1946 and worked as a contractor's site-
engineer. After working his way around Western Europe, he set out on an
academic career and took a degree in Philosophy and Politics at the University of
Keele and joined the National Coal Board's research team investigating migration
among miners. From here he went to the Nuffield research unit at Brunei
University, finally becoming Lecturer in Social Institutions in the new School of
Social Sciences. From the mid-1960s he became increasingly absorbed in popula-
tion problems, and was a founder member and then hon. Education Officer of the
Conservation Society, in which capacity he lectured and broadcast widely on these
topics. From 1974 he worked fulltime on population issues as Deputy Director of
the Sir David Owen Population Centre at Cardiff, where he is still visiting lecturer,
taking early retirement in 1981 to give more time to research and writing. He was
a consultant for the World Conservation Strategy, has given seminars in Thailand,
Austria, Australia, and the USA - where he is a regular attender at a writer's work-
shop on migration problems - and has about a hundred publications in the popula-
tion field. His two main books, Population Versus Liberty (1971), and Population
Fallacies (1977) were both recently re-reviewed in the USA. He is a Humanist, a
patron of the Optimum Population Trust and was recently elected an honorary
associate of the Rationalist Press Association.
Correspondence: Treferig Cottage Farm, Llantrisant, Mid-Glam., CF72 8LQ.