824 



population explosion.'' Not only is it unthinkable in terms of the values 

 of all cultures, but, as Carl Taylor, Director of the Di\dsion of Inter- 

 national Health, the Johns Hopkins University, put it: 



It is demographic noneense to think that the population problem can be post- 

 poned by maintaining high death rates. In underdeveloped countries, if high 

 birth rates had not been biologically adjusted to high death rates, the population 

 would have faced extinction.** 



Taylor points out that the death rate is sure to fall as part of the de- 

 velopment process, and that this happened in Western countries with 

 little if any assistance from health and medical services. The reality 

 was that the peasant families of the LDCs had to have six or eight 

 children in order to be sure that three or four would grow to matur- 

 ity. Once the parents feel more secure that their children will survive, 

 they may be more inclined to limit the size of their families. 



The contribution that better health conditions can make toward 

 solving rather than complicating the food/population paradox has been 

 suggested earlier in this study. Widespread disease adds to the bunien 

 on available food supplies and exacerbates protein deficiencies. A pop- 

 ulation in good health gets maximum benefit from its food supplies. Its 

 productivity is higher. Malaria control in Ceylon made possible a mass 

 migration to formerly thinly populated parts of the island, to the bene- 

 fit of the country's economy."* A mass mosquito control program in Ne- 

 pal opened up the Rapti Valley to settlement and to agricultural pro-- 

 duction. 



Widespread acceptance of family planning is, as we have seen, gen- 

 erally agreed upon as essential, for bc^h economic and political reasons, 

 to the success of the entire modernizing effort. Assistance to family 

 planning is now the top priority of the U.S. foreigii aid program. 

 Helping the LDCs manage their population growth is an important 

 objective of U.S. foreign policy. Health workers who have contributed 

 so signally to development in the past will unquestionably be called 

 upon to contribute to the achievement of this crucial objective. 



T?ie Impact of PopukUion Growth on Economic Development 



The extent to which population growth, if allowed to pursue its 

 natural course, will impede economic development can be illustrated 

 in a number of ways. One example mi^ht be the case of the Aswan 

 Dam in Egypt : That dam has made available for cultivation approxi- 

 mately 2 million new acres of land and generates three times the 

 amount of electricity produced in Egypt as of 1963; it may increase 

 agridiltural production in Egypt by as much as 45 percent. Yet the , 

 Egyptian peculation has risen commensurately while the dam was , 



^ Some development economists ma.v privately think In these terms, however. At least 

 one publication. World Population and American Responsibility, by Arthur F. Corwin, 

 rather sardonically highlights the contributions to the population explosion of privately 

 financed American public health programs. On the other hand, Gunnar Myrdal, John H. 

 Bryant, and other students of development emphatically reject the idea of permitting 

 continued high mortality as a means of population control. See the section on "The Com- 

 plex Issue of Health and Overpopulation. In U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign 

 AflPairs. "Science, Technology, and American Diplomacy : The Politics of Global Health." 

 Prepared for the Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments of 

 the . . . by Freeman H. Quimby, Science Policy Research Division, Congressional Research 

 Service, Library of Congress, May 1971. See vol. II, pages 751-754. 



w Carl E. Taylor, "Health and Population." Foreign Affairs, (April, 1965), page 475. 



•« Ibid., page 478. 



