A sterilizing virus

I recently came across a link to a short story by Gregory Benford, A Desparate Calculus, about a group of scientists who create a contagious virus that has an unusual side effect: it renders its female victims infertile by triggering their ovaries to release all their eggs at once. The virus is generally not fatal (though vulnerable groups such as the elderly might die, as they can in ordinary flu outbreaks every year). The ultimate effect of this is that it will stop most of the next generation being born – though a few women will likely be resistant to its effects.

Given my outlook you can safely guess I didn’t see this scheme as a bad thing :-). I wonder if it would be do-able in reality; obviously it would have ethicists and the general public in hysterics should they find out, so it would need to be implemented surreptitiously. I feel the situation with the world’s rapidly growing population and ongoing biodiversity loss to be urgent enough to justify such a drastic course of action. It would not involve killing vast numbers of people already here, but would prevent (most) future people from being born.

I suppose that measures such as IVF from stored embryos, cloning and artificial wombs could be used to get around the virus, but the last two technologies are not developed and the first can be difficult to achieve.

There would also be issues of body autonomy; the few fertile women might become valued for their wombs, and lose reproductive rights such as access to contraception.

While there are some worthy efforts to give women access to family planning and education in countries that don’t have or allow these, these are just too slow – they may take decades to achieve, if ever. And even in developed countries, women’s access to contraception and abortion are at times under thread from conservative governments – some states in the USA have currently been trying to overturn laws allowing access to these.

Collected articles

I have a backlog of various articles from the last 4 months that I meant to comment on, so much linkage follows!

The next pandemic (maybe)

“Mexico flu ‘a potential pandemic’ ”, BBC News, 26/4; Wikipedia: 2009 swine flu outbreak. This new flu strain, which originated in Mexico, is causing much alarm as it has so far killed nearly 100 people there, and air travelers have spread isolated cases to other countries. The World Health Organization says it has the potential to become a pandemic; unlike the avian flu this one, derived from pigs, seems to be more virulently effective at spreading. Young people are more likely to be victims. With high population densities worldwide, a pandemic is only a matter of time, and overcrowded cities combined with accessible air travel make perfect conditions for a virus to spread.

While browsing The New York Times, I came across an environmental blog, Dot Earth, with the tagline, “Nine billion people. One planet”.

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

Seems that the author feels such population growth is inevitable! If worldwide measures were taken now (enforcing family size limits, giving women access to health care, family planning and education), that huge unsustainable number might not be reached.

One entry is titled, “U.N.: Young and Old Boom on the Road to 9 Billion”:

The United Nations Population Division has updated its population forecasts through 2050, and concludes that, despite a longstanding global decline in fertility rates, the world is still on a path to exceed 9 billion people by mid-century, with the vast majority of the increase coming in the world’s poorest countries.

In those countries, large proportions of the population are children or teenagers, who could contribute either to a large workforce and economic gains or – in the absence of education and jobs – to instability and conflict.

The other fast-growing group around the globe is the oldest segment of the populations, according to the United Nations – and that trend also can pose challenges, particularly in the absence of a large working-age population.

A world crammed with that many people – and polluted by their waste products – is a nightmarish scenario (I will be 80 in 2050).