10 



future, and the ability to evolve through cultural 

 evolution, human beings are so different than any other 

 animal you just really can't apply biological analogies to 

 them. 



The one thing that maybe has some relevance is so- 

 called socio-biology, the idea that we're more or less 

 controlled by our genes and our genes' objectivity is trying 

 to survive. The basic notion of socio-biology is that the 

 human being is just a device invented by a gene to produce 

 another gene, like a chicken is just a device invented by an 

 egg to produce more eggs . 



The genes want to survive, according to this 

 hypothesis. So, for example, you're very much concerned 

 about your children because they have half your genes, much 

 less about your grandchildren because they have a quarter of 

 your genes, hardly at all about your great-grandchildren 

 with only an eighth of your genes, and so forth. And 

 there's certainly something to that. 



That's socio-biologists ' explanation of altruism. But 

 again, it's overlain and really it can be submerged, and can 

 be completely dominated by peculiarly human characteristics 

 of human beings. So I never had any faith at all in the 

 biologists, at least after I got started in this business. 



Sharp: They were just missing too much? 



Revelle: I thought so, yes. 



The second group is people who think there 're too many 

 "niggers", too many "wogs", too many people in 

 less-developed countries. Cornelia Scaife May was sort of 

 an outstanding example of this. She was a real racist, and 

 in the long run she never gave us much money after she 

 really found out what we were up to. 



Sharp: What the guiding principles were, what you were doing, yes. 



Revelle: The third group of people are people in public health or are 

 concerned with public health, and they feel, quite rightly, 

 that families with too many children have a hard time, 

 particularly poor people with too many. The children never 

 get enough to eat and they don't survive as well. I guess 

 John Wyon would be a physician who felt strongly this way, 

 and quite properly. 



Then the fourth group are those who say or think that 

 population growth is a serious problem, one of the quite 

 serious problems of mankind, but it ' s involved with other 

 problems. It can't be separated out from the problems of 

 poverty and underdevelopment or effective resource 

 utilization, but must be looked at in historical 

 perspective, and that it's a problem which involves many of 

 the different aspects of human scholarship and human 

 science, not just administration of contraceptives, and that 

 was really my position. 



Sharp: That you couldn't just convince people to use birth control 



