Scientist Advocates Killing 90% of Human Race

[Guest guest]

Source >

http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/feature1p/index.html

 

 

Texas Scientist Advocates Killing 90% of Human Race

 

31 March 2006

 

Recently citizen scientist Forrest Mims told me about

a speech he heard at the Texas Academy of Science

during which the speaker, a world-renowned ecologist,

advocated for the extermination of 90 percent of the

human species in a most horrible and painful manner.

Apparently at the speaker's direction, the speech was

not video taped by the Academy and so Forrest's may be

the only record of what was said. Forrest's account of

what he witnessed chilled my soul. Astonishingly,

Forrest reports that many of the Academy members

present gave the speaker a standing ovation. To date,

the Academy has not moved to sanction the speaker or

distance itself from the speaker's remarks.

 

If the professional community has lost its sense of

moral outrage when one if their own openly calls for

the slow and painful extermination of over 5 billion

human beings, then it falls upon the amateur community

to be the conscience of science.

 

Forrest, who is a member of the Texas Academy and

chairs its Environmental Science Section, told me he

would be unable to describe the speech in The Citizen

Scientist because he has protested the speech to the

Academy and he serves as Editor of The Citizen

Scientist. Therefore, to preclude a possible conflict

of interest, I have directed Forrest to describe what

he observed and his reactions in this special feature,

for which I have served as editor and which is being

released a week ahead of our normal publication

schedule. Comments may be sent to Backscatter.

 

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.,

MacArthur Fellow,

Founder and Executive Director,

Society for Amateur Scientists

 

Special Editorial: Dealing with Doctor Doom

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.

 

Meeting Doctor Doom

 

Forrest M. Mims III

Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.

 

There is always something special about science

meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of

Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March

2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student

and his professor presented the results of a DNA study

I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see

the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we

collected last summer and my tree ring photographs

transformed into a first class scientific presentation

that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal

(Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, " Bald Cypress

of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique? "

109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program

and Abstracts [ PDF ], Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).

 

But there was a gravely disturbing side to that

otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I

watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the

Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a

standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically

advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's

population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by

Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas

evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the

Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

 

Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka

began speaking. An official of the Academy approached

a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium

and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera

operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens

of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked

away.

 

This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later

when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining

that the general public is not yet ready to hear what

he was about to tell us. Because of many years of

experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange

introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red

flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member

of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its

Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a

notepad so I could take on the role of science

reporter.

 

One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of

anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies

a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story

about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards

are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”

 

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're

no better than bacteria!”

 

Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how

human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He

presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that

the sharp increase in human population since the

beginning of the industrial age is devastating the

planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to

restore the planet before it's too late.

 

Saving the Earth with Ebola

 

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not

survive without drastic measures. Then, and 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.

 

He then showed solutions for reducing the world's

population in the form of a slide depicting the Four

Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not

do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most

efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that

must soon die if the population crisis is to be

solved.

 

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human

skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its

eye sockets.

 

AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because

it is too slow. 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.

 

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at

killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern,

looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne

90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think

about that.”

 

With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen

behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The

audience that had been applauding some of his

statements now sat silent.

 

After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics

and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for

mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.

 

“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I

think we may have to cut back to two billion, which

would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil

crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of

the world's population.

 

How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be

saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he

might be around when the killer disease goes to work.

He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears

on his web site.

 

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.

 

Questions for Dr. Doom

 

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.”

 

After noting that the audience did not represent the

general population, a questioner asked, " What kind of

reception have you received as you have presented

these ideas to other audiences that are not

representative of us? "

 

Pianka replied, " I speak to the converted! "

 

Pianka responded to more questions by condemning

politicians in general and Al Gore by name, because

they do not address the population problem and

" ...because they deceive the public in every way they

can to stay in power. "

 

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.

Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at

the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It

was necessary to wait a while before I could get close

enough to take some photographs (Fig. 1).

 

I was assigned to judge a paper in a grad student

competition after the speech. On the way, three

professors dismissed Pianka as a crank. While waiting

to enter the competition room, a group of a dozen

Lamar University students expressed outrage over the

Pianka speech.

 

Yet five hours later, the distinguished leaders of the

Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a

plaque in recognition of his being named 2006

Distinguished Texas Scientist. When the banquet hall

filled with more than 400 people responded with

enthusiastic applause, I walked out in protest.

 

Corresponding with Dr. Doom

 

Recently I exchanged a number of e-mails with Pianka.

I pointed out to him that one might infer his death

wish was really aimed at Africans, for Ebola is found

only in Central Africa. He replied that Ebola does not

discriminate, kills everyone and could spread to

Europe and the the Americas by a single infected

airplane passenger.

 

In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely

fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and

found verification of my interpretation of his remarks

on his own web site. In a student evaluation of a 2004

course he taught, one of Professor Pianka's students

wrote, " Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology

is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think

that preaching that 90% of the human population should

die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of

encouraging conservation awareness. " (Go here and

scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation

section near the end.)

 

Yet the majority of his student reviews were

favorable, with one even saying, “ I worship Dr.

Pianka.”

 

The 45-minute lecture before the Texas Academy of

Science converted a university biology senior into a

Pianka disciple, who then published a blog that

seriously supports Pianka's mass death wish.

 

Dangerous Times

 

Let me now remove my reporter's hat for a moment and

tell you what I think. We live in dangerous times. The

national security of many countries is at risk.

Science has become tainted by highly publicized cases

of misconduct and fraud.

 

Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former

student might someday become a professional biologist

or physician with access to the most deadly strains of

viruses and bacteria? I believe that airborne Ebola is

unlikely to threaten the world outside of Central

Africa. But scientists have regenerated the 1918

Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people. There

is concern that small pox might someday return. And

what other terrible plagues are waiting out there in

the natural world to cross the species barrier and to

which scientists will one day have access?

 

Meanwhile, I still can't get out of my mind the

pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred

scientists of the Texas Academy of Science gave a

standing ovation for a speaker who they heard advocate

for the slow and torturous death of over five billion

human beings.

 

Forrest M. Mims III is Chairman of the Environmental

Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, and

the editor of The Citizen Scientist. He and his

science are featured online at www.forrestmims.org and

www.sunandsky.org. The views expressed herein are his

own and do not represent the official views of the

Texas Academy of Science or the Society for Amateur

Scientists.

 

Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.

 

Comments may be sent to Backscatter

 

Special Editorial: Dealing with Doctor Doom

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.