Biologist Eric Pianka advocates using the ebola virus to kill 90% of world’s population and gets a standing ovation from the Texas Academy of Science (Link). The scary thing is that he seems to be serious. (HT: Victor Reppert)
Update (4.12.06): There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere over this incident and over whether Dr. Pianka actually meant to advocate using ebola to this the world’s population (as Forrest Mims, the author of the article linked to above concludes) or whether he just meant to say that it would be a good thing if ebola wiped out 90% of the human race. That may be a somewhat fine distinction, though. Here’s one source that defends Mims’ interpretation. Here’s another that disputes it. Here’s a partial transcript of the controversial speech. You be the judge.
What a dumb idea. People like Pianka make Humanity look stupid. Why in the world would we kill 90% of the population? The world is not even close to being over populated. We have plenty of area to live, plenty of water to drink, and plenty of food to eat. Why then kill 5,900,000,000 people? If we stopped wasting money on liberal social programs that don’t work then we could spend a little on cultivating areas and getting them more easily habitable and productive. The earth has a land area of about 148,300,000 km2 or 148,300,000,000,000 m2. That means that with the current population of about 6,600,000,000, each person could have their own area of about 22500 m2 or 250000 ft2. That is a huge amount. Even with 10 times the population that is still a huge amount.
Whoever advocates this idea is entirely ill-informed and has not logically thought out their argument. I can’t believe that he got a standing ovation.
scary is right. Thanks for the link. Just found your site…wonderful!