778 



professional groups, not to governments. This government has not, and will not 

 as long as I am here, have a positive political doctrine in its program that has 

 to do with this problem of birth control. That is not our business." 



Although the President's statement received considerable public at- 

 tention, and dismayed proponents of family plaiming, it does not ap- 

 pear to have provoked any general public criticism. The population 

 explosion had not then commanded general awareness, and a 

 program to supply birth control information to the LDCs might well 

 have encountered the same adverse public reaction as that voiced by 

 the President. In addition, although specialists in economic develop- 

 ment were certainly aware of the negative impact of rapid population 

 growth on the development of the LDCs, introduction of birth control 

 and family planning assistance into the foreign aid program would 

 have been a radical departure not readily adopted by those with policy 

 responsibilities, particularly in view of the President's opposition. 



U.S. caution toward dispensing birth control information to devel- 

 oping countries was matched, in varying degrees, by the caution with 

 which the LDCs addressed the problem. Few had instituted family 

 planning programs, campaigns, and clinics by the late 1950s, and in 

 even fewer were such activities being pressed with real energy and 

 resourcefulness. The idea of limiting family size ran counter to the 

 social, cultural, religious, and economic patterns prevailing in much of 

 the underdeveloped world ; governments of these countries were under- 

 standably hesitant to go forward with programs of this nature, and in- 

 deed in some instances were actively opposed to doing so. 



Even had the United States been willing to raise the question of 

 population growth with the LDCs, the practical results that might 

 have been achieved in the early days of foreign aid would probably 

 have been insignificant. Advanced methods of contraception — such as, 

 for example, the oral contraceptive ("the Pill") and the intrauterine 

 device ("the lUD") — were not in wide use untU the decade of the 

 1960s. Previous methods of birth control had been termed in 1961, 

 liy the President of the Royal Institute of Biology, "so crude as to 

 l)e a disgrace to science in this age of spectacular technical achieve- 

 ment." " Even today, physicians and othei- scientists continue to 

 express disagreement over the safety of the oral contraceptive, the 

 effects (intended or other) of the lUD, and the enormously complex 

 chemistry of the process of conception. These uncertainties have been 

 communicated to the general public, and reinforce social, religious, and 

 cultural resistances to family planning and general birth control. 



Much is still unknown about human reproductive processes. Many 

 anomalies in this branch of physiology remain unexplained. A major 

 research effort has been urged in such fields as the rhythm method of 

 conception control, the synthesis and screening of candidate antifer- 

 tility compounds, and the physiology of sperm generation.^* Dr. John 



'-•"Public Papers of the Presidents. Dwight D. Elsenhower, 1959" (Washinfrton, U.S. 

 Government Printing Office, 1960), pages 287-288. Howerer, President Elsenhower reversed 

 his stand In 1965, when he came out In favor of measures anthorlrfng the Government to 

 cope eflfectlvely with the need to slow down and then stabilize the world's population 

 growth. 



" As quoted In Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. "Family Planning .ind Popula- 

 tion Research, 1970." hearings, op. clt., page 37. , 



^* See for example, the testimony of .Tohn Rock. M.D., professor emprltns, fTarvnrri Medi- 

 cal School. Dr. Rock, author of "The Time Must Come," has long advocated legitimizing 

 birth control methods and information. In "Family Planning and Population Research, ' 

 op. cit., page 448. 



