EXHIBIT 177 "OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE AMERICAN ASSEMBLY FINAL REPORT ON 'THE POPULATION DILEMMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND ACTION"'" (An assembly at Palm Springs, Calif., November 28 to December 1, 1963, with Occidental College) [Printed by Grant Dahlstrom, the Castle Press, Pasadena, Calif.] Without doubt all participants who accepted invitations last September to attend the Occidental College American Assembly conference at Palm Springs, November 28 through December 1, 1963, on the subject, "The Population Dilemma: Implications for Policy and Action," left the El Mirador Hotel feeling they had shared a profoundly stimulating experience. Clearly they were impressed with the tremendously important, even ominous significance of the subject discussed. In over 20 years of collegiate teaching of economics, I had encountered on the theories and problems of population a lack of really deep belief that any serious problem could for long exist or that changing death rates could in any way be related to policy with reference to birth rates. This often naive optimistic tendency is derived from long standing, even inbred attitudes based on culture, economic growth, scientific and technological advance, and religious dogmas. In this conference composed of a most representative educated and informed group of adults (representative by age, creed, geography, race, and profession, and the latter comprising clergymen, doctors, educators, lawyers, politicians, government officials, and social workers), it was gratifying to observe close attention to the facts, thoroughgoing candor in the midst of good will and tolerance, and an earthy practicality which allowed no one to escape the necessities of policy, program, and action through reliance on some readymade theory or generalization. It is not for me to summarize this regional American assembly. This was the task of the assembly itself, which was well performed on the basis of the excellent draft of the discussions of panels and sections as presented by the director of this assembly, Merritt K. Ruddock, who represented the panel chairmen. Suffice it to say that considering speakers and participants and the results manifest herein, I was intensely proud to have had the privilege of leading such a responsible group of American citizens. ARTHUR G. COONS. THE POPULATION DILEMMA: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY AND ACTION-FINAL This report was drafted on the basis of the discussions at the Palm PREAMBLE In the middle of the 20th century the human race is confronted by two manmade problems which threaten its destruction. One, the nuclear bomb, man is actively attempting to control. The other, the population explosion, mankind is only beginning to understand, much less to control. Realistic awareness of the consequences of the population pressures is of the utmost urgency. The consequences are universal, affecting as they do the whole human race in all parts of the world: the highly developed as well as the underdeveloped nations. The U.S. population today is growing at the rate of one additional Los Angeles (three and a half million) per year, the world at another Los Angeles every 3 weeks. Not only is the population growing, but the rate of increase is accelerating with explosive effects. It took more than 500,000 years for the world to reach its present population level of 3 billion. In 40 years it may double. In vast areas of the world, hunger, disease, and misery are the ways of life; in their wake follow anarchy and tyranny. In every area of the world man is struggling with housing, medical care, education, crime, sanitation, unemployment, communication, and the diminishing supply of natural resources. California, with one of the highest living standards in the world, has, through a combination of migration and natural increase, the greatest annual growth of any State in the Union and is facing staggering burdens in attempting to meet its population problems. The population dilemma stands athwart of virtually every effort that man is making to shape his environment to meet his needs and to realize his goals. Efforts to help the underdeveloped nations are being frustrated by their population growth. Aid designed to build their economies is being consumed by the day-to-day demands of survival. As the problems of mere existence increase, the possibilities of achieving higher values decrease. There exists a remarkable paradox in our approach to population problems. We have made a massive effort, with dramatic effect, to reduce the death rate, and we have largely ignored the birth rate. The result has been a severe aggravation rather than an alleviation of the problem. The historic population controls-migration, famine, pestilence, plague, genocide, and war are not tenable. Accordingly, this assembly adopts the following principles which it believes must guide every approach to this problem, and advocates the courses of action outlined in the ensuing recommendations. PRINCIPLES The sanctity of individual rights and the fundamental concept of freedom of choice must be preserved. The importance of religious institutions and the relationship of the individual to his faith shall not be impaired. Life merely sustained at some quantitative level is not the only objective. Essential criteria include adequate space and environment to create and preserve the civilized qualities of human life. In meeting these problems, wherever possible emphasis should be placed on individual motivation, initiative and action, creation and support of private agencies, and effective communication on a people-to-people basis. Where individual action and private agencies cannot handle the problems, or take the initiative, government funds and services should be used. The problem should not be considered or met without concern for the need to reemphasize individual responsibility, moral values, and the importance of the family and its relationship to the community. The United States should not expect of any other nation, at whatever stage of development, the acceptance of measures which we ourselves are not prepared to adopt. U.S. domestic policy RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Conception control information should be made available, without coercion, by public as well as private agencies and actively distributed. The means used should include public health services, hospitals, schools, religious institutions, press, radio, and television. 2. The program of provision by public and private agencies of conceptioncontrol pills, medications, and devices, should be accelerated to the end that, without coercion, they will be truly available to all of the people. 3. Abortion laws should be liberalized to legalize voluntary surgical termination of pregnancy in cases of forcible rape and incest; high possibility of serious congenital or other deformity of the child; and serious health problems of the mother (if pregnancy were completed). 4. Public agencies using public funds should be set up to provide voluntary sterilization to those who request it, with enactment of enabling legislation as necessary. 5. Research should be encouraged by public and private support to develop and perfect methods of controlling fertility acceptable on the broadest possible basis. 6. Government at each level should reevaluate the problem of preserving our natural resources. The abuse of land and space, the pollution of land, water, and air, the decrease in nonrenewable energy resources and inorganic raw materials are now of serious import to our Nation. Concurrently, an intensified educational campaign should be carried out by private and public agencies to stimulate public awareness as to the necessity of conserving economic and recreational resources. In the control of population growth, everything shall be done to insure equality of access to all natural resources. 7. The approximate present numerical level for immigration should be maintained, but the national-origin quota should be eliminated and replaced with a nondiscriminatory immigration policy based on selection by standards of literacy, moral character, and economic potential, but so framed as to prevent a drain of skilled personnel from underdeveloped countries. U.S. policy abroad 1. The statement of U.S. policy on population made by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Richard Gardner in December 1962 should be actively publicized, supported, implemented, and expanded. 2. The United States should urge serious consideration of this problem by all nations and should extend assistance in the control of population growth to other nations at their request. It is urgent that every effort should be made to cooperate closely in projects and programs which are initiated by such nations. This assistance, from both public and private sources, should include an active and vigorous program of information as well as direct aid in the form of supplies, research, and other technical assistance. 3. Demographic studies and analyses should become an integral part of the U.S. foreign aid program. 4. In determining whether and to what extent foreign aid should be given to any particular nation, the effectiveness of such aid, in view of population trends, must be considered. 5. A vigorous reevaluation of our international trade and investment policies is required in order that they may better contribute to world economic growth with a consequent easing of the world population problem. 6. The time has now come when the United Nations and its specialized agencies should deal more effectively with the population problem. The United Nations should move beyond an information program to leadership in an action program. The United States should support United Nations projects and programs designed to provide information and direct aid for the solution of the population dilemma. Finally, this assembly respectfully recommends to the President of the United States that he appoint a broadly representative group of leading citizens to consider all aspects-both domestic and foreign-of the profound dilemma brought about by the dramatic decline in death rates and explosive increase in birth rates, and to make policy and program recommendations. THE ARITHMETIC OF PEOPLE (By William Vogt) The people arithmetic I want to talk about tonight is really very simple. Perhaps that is the reason it is misunderstood, or at least overlooked. It is hard to accept that anything so portentous can be as simple as--for example-balancing your checkbook. Or, perhaps, that anything as simple as balancing your check book can be so portentous. After all, when you have so many dollars in the account, you can add only so much before the account exceeds the amount that can be insured by the FDIC. And you can take out only so much before your paper checks turn to rubber. Despite the simplicity of its arithmetic, the total population problem is enormously complicated-but inevitably it must be faced in terms of simple addition and subtraction. This is a fact to keep in mind, at all times. This is not a happy subject and I hope you will forgive me if I omit the customary opening funny story. It is not easy to be amusing about 2 billion men, women, and children whose standard of living is far below that of most pet dogs and cats in this country. It is especially difficult to treat such a subject lightly when the rate at which these people are propagating may double their numbers by 1999, and their misery will almost certainly grow at an even faster rate. Not many of us, I am sure, are so indifferent to human suffering that we can shrug our shoulders and say, "Let them eat cake." Thoughtful members of our affluent society, especially if they have children, must look ahead 30 or 40 years and wonder if we can continue to exist as an island in a vast sea of poverty that will almost certainly be far wider than that in the poor countries today. For example: What will be the situation of California and the other border States when, by the end of this century, less than 40 years ahead, Mexico has 118 million citizens? This is what she would have if she continued to grow at her current rate. These multiplying millions, on three continents, live in diverse environments. I should like to discuss, briefly, later, simply noting now that from these environments must come food, water, shelter, clothing, and varieties of energy ranging from the tiny fires with which the Guatemalan highlanders cook their gruel, to petroleum, coal, hydropower, and-ultimately-the sun. The biological processes perpetuating these populations are, except for minor ecological modifications, essentially the same as those perpetuating our own. Had I not been addressing such an august audience I should have been tempted to call this talk, "The Egg and You." It is basically that which I am talking about. It is with the fertilization of the female gamete that much of the trouble starts. Such fertilization will take place perhaps 160 to 175 million times during the next year. The resultant fetuses will be deliberately and artificially aborted in perhaps 10 to 35 million cases, probably over a million in this country alone. There will be "fetal wastage" perhaps 10 to 15 percent-from spontaneous abortion, and something near 118 million infants will be born alive. Total world deaths will amount to about half the number of births, and the world population will increase by about 57 million. (Less than 10 years ago the excellent U.N. population office was estimating the then current annual increase at 34 million.) At today's rate of increase, the world population will double to a little more than 6 billion in 39 years. Many demographers, including some in our own State Department, think we shall pass the 7 billion mark by the end of this century. The 3 billion now alive represent facts. The 6 to 7 billion represent fairly solidly based projections, with which I happen to disagree, a faint adumbration of the combinations and permutations that will complicate the world's problems within four decades. Most of you are probably familiar with the oft-repeated history of the recent population upsurge, so I shall recount it as briefly as possible, merely to refresh your memories. years. It took from the beginning of time until about 1850 for the human population to add up to its first billion. It reached 2 billion in approximately another 80 The third billion was added on in about 30 years-and we shall continue to grow roughly a billion every 12 or 13 years, until the end of the century. There are, I think, few educated people who do not recognize that this sudden outburst of human numbers is cause for grave concern. Even those who are most optimistic about the total number of human beings that can be somehow supported recognize that the rapidity of growth, in itself, raises extraordinary problems. One finds such concern not only for the underdeveloped countries, but for Great Britain (where growth is not rapid) in the pages of the London Economist, and for North American communities in newspapers, school boards, and water boards across our own country. Even some chambers of commerce have begun to slow down peddling the desirability of population growth. Before we consider some of the actual and potential consequences of this growth, let us look briefly for an explanation of what triggered it. Rising birth rates have had little effect, and then only locally and temporarily. There was the "baby boom" as soldiers returned to their families after World War II. In some parts of the West Indies, Latin America, and Asia, eradication of malaria, checks on venereal disease, and improvements in food and water supplies have resulted in increases in birth rates; over the world, generally, after the postwar bulge, birth rates have tended to fall. But though they have retreated from their physiological maximum, in Africa they remain in the high 40's (per thousand per year), in Asia in the low 40's, and about the same in Latin America. Death rates, on the other hand, have tobogganed. A few samples: For Africa, a recent Population Bulletin, using U.N. sources, estimates death rates at 25 per thousand; Asia 22, and Latin America, 17. At these figures, populations in Africa will double in about 35 years, Asia in about the same, and Latin American in 28. Costa Rica, the little Central American country that has long been regarded as one of the most progressive in Latin America, recently announced an annual growth rate in excess of 5 percent to double in 14 years. In 1963, the second year of the Alliance for Progress, there are 943 million more people than in 1940, the year before President Roosevelt held out to the world the goal of "freedom from want”—and most of the addition has come in the underdeveloped countries. There are 99 million more in Latin America, 100 million more in Africa, and 577 million more in Asia. The average per capita income in Africa, in 1960, was $129; in Asia it was $126; and in the 20 republics to the south of us, it was $303! All these regions are characterized by highly skewed distribution of wealth and it is almost certain that the median income is very much lower. (These income estimates, incidentally, are among the most unreliable published, but I give them because they are so frequently referred to. The underdeveloped countries simply do not have facilities for collecting information; and as "guesstimates" the figures tend to be inflated, for a number of reasons.) Dr. Irene Taeuber, one of our most conservative demographers, projects possibly another 391 million people for Africa by the end of this century, 421 million more for Latin America, and 2,350 million additional for Asia. Let us look at some of the consequences of this growth. There are- or soon will be nearly 3 billion people in the underdeveloped countries alone. One-half to two-thirds of them suffer chronic malnutrition. Indeed, this is probably responsible for more deaths than any other single cause. Probably two-thirds do not have what we would call decent housing. Indoor water supplies, even nearby water supplies, are available in a minority of houses. Many of you have undoubtedly read Oscar Lewis' "Children of Sanchez." Their existence was luxurious compared with the lot of millions in Rio, Lima, Calcutta, Bombay or for that matter around Mexico City itself. A shift in air masses, resulting in drought, or in economic winds resulting in redistribution of trade, may bring about actual starvation as it has recently in Haiti and northeastern Brazil. Literacy rates may run as low as 5 or 10 percent, as in some of the new member countries of the U.N., though most underdeveloped countries claim a rate that is a good deal higher. Here again skepticism is in order: exaggerated literacy claims bolster national pride and the test for literacy may mean that a man has once been in school, or that he can-with difficulty-make out the simplest printing. When literacy means, as it often does, even in parts of highly developed countries, the ability to be misled by words in print, it makes dubious progress. But without reasonably informed literacy, of course, as Jefferson repeatedly emphasized, democratic government is impossible. This is even more true in our complicated interrelated modern "one world" than in the late 18th century. Despite the millions of dollars spent by UNESCO and in direct country-to-country assistance, despite the considerable national expenditures of countries like Mexico, the U.N. reports that while "the proportion of illiterate adults declined the total number either remained stationary or rose." Adequate medical care is the exception rather than the rule. UNESCO reported recently that, while we in the United States have about 1 doctor to every 800 of our population, El Salvador and India both have about 1 to 6,000, Pakistan 1 to 18,000, Nigeria 1 to 30,000, and Ghana, 1 to 35,000. (In view of the fact that the population explosion in these countries is chiefly the result of falling death rates, it is interesting to note how much can be accomplished in the absence of doctors.) These statistics are given as a clue to the quality of living endured in the underdeveloped countries where such a simple analgesic as aspirin may be nearly as unavailable as a physician. Another impact of the excessively rapid population growth has been deterioration of the environment in which many of these billions live. This is given scant consideration by governments, by international organizations, and by groups concerned with economic development. The result is widespread downgrading of natural resources, ranging from superficial overgrazing, bad forestry management, and soil erosion, to utter destruction, wiping out water and soil resources-to all intents and human purposes-forever. Such destruction is most common under the difficult conditions of the tropics where violent rainstorms wash unprotected land, and where high temperatures and long dry spells contribute to destruction of vegetation and seriously retard its restoration. This was described pic |