Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

82 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION poverty the rich society merely has to support a population as fabulous as its wealth. If a world is rich enough to support twenty-five billion people, its women can always see to it that it must support seventy-five billions. If it can support one hundred billions in luxury, the women can always see to it that it must support three hundred billions, et cetera. A country such as India may triple its food supply and it will still starve. For the scientist who finds new food sources under every bed the equations of population have a sarcastic, ““So what?”’ , An expanding galactic empire of men, for all its mighty ships, would be less able to find place for an increasing population than us puny beings of Twentieth Century Earth! Science-fiction authors should quietly forget that they ever considered the empty planets of space as dumping grounds for surplus people. It won’t work. The ship captain of an exploring vessel could never keep up with “‘the women in every port.” Now I know that certain people will object to my statement that science “has let us down.” They will mention the hushed-up fact that science has invented contraceptives. They will tell us that if the average woman limits herself to two children, the population will no longer increase and thus cannot get ahead of science. In such a world, they say, science can feed our children and provide them with the material benefits which make a rich spiritual life possible. These birth controllers are for the most part sincere, honest people, and we must give them credit for that, however, they are shockingly naive con- cerning the side-effects of their program of control. It is sometimes difficult to discuss these side-effects with them. If one mentions the possible disasters _ of world-wide government control, they have stubborn arguments to show that there would be no disaster. If one mentions the possible psychological damage from such a program, they have stubborn arguments to show that there would be no damage. They know. But there is one side-effect that has no possible answer. , Birth control is a bargain with the devil and the price is racial death. It works this way: The average woman contracts to produce only two or very close to two children, depending upon the number that science can handle at the moment, and science in exchange, with no excess population to worry about, easily contracts to reduce the infant mortality rate to near zero and at the same time to provide the adult population with any material riches it so desires. One goes with the other. Without the first arrangement, as we have seen, you cannot have the second. You have also bought racial death. Read the fine type which happens to concern genetics. Our genetic structure is an amazing blueprint. Suppose a building con- tractor threw some plans into a lot and came back a week later to find his building erected due to the fact that the blueprints had gathered together all the construction materials and had assembled themselves into the structure on the plans. Genetic blueprints do that all the time. You were assembled that way and so was I. Our blueprints are complex protein molecules printed on the chromosomes in our cells. Now these molecules—genes—are not one hundred per cent stable, they THE RIGHT TO BREED 83 tend to “‘blur.”’ Some are more stable than others, of course—some ‘‘inks’’ are more “‘blurproof” than others—and evolution has selected the more stable of these molecules for use, especially in the plans which call for a being with a long generation and a small number of offspring, such as man. Still, they blur. Naturally this changes the plan somewhat and we have a mutation. By far the majority of mutations are innocuous—they change the shape of the nose, the height, the skin complexion, et cetera. Of the remaining mutations which cannot be classified as innocuous, most are damaging to the organism. Only the odd few are improvements. Whatever they are, they tend to cause within the species a steady “‘spread’’; i.e., individuals tend to become more and more different. A high infant mortality rate, on the other hand, tends to eliminate the “spread’’ of an organism toward negative char- acteristics by killing off the individuals which develop such characteristics before they can breed. Consider what would happen in the birth controllers’ ““Utopia.”’ Because every individual who was born would reach adulthood, every mutation would be propagated. By the natural forces of chemistry good and medium genes would be gradually converted to negative, useless, or deadly genes, and since most poor quality genes are recessive they would disperse quickly throughout the whole race. The effect would be a cumulative one because birth control plugs up quite tightly the conventional drain by which these defective genes are flushed from the flesh of the species. A race which accepts birth control accepts progressive physical and mental degeneration. It kills its own limb on the tree of evolution. Jt insures its death. We have been told that birth control is immoral. We have been asked to accept this on faith because it is the word of God. Some of the more ungodly among us, perhaps those who are less intelligent, have denied the word of God and have refused to abide by it. We are like little children in that respect. A child is told not to touch the fire. He is too young to under- stand. He has to accept the command of his parent on faith. The respectful child suffers no pain; the disrespectful child suffers. Later when a child is more mature he is able to comprehend the command and accepts it in its own right. A hundred years ago a man had to accept the immorality of birth control on faith but today we are more mature, Because we know genetics, we know why birth control is immoral. We can prove that it is immoral. The ecology of Earth demands a high infant mortality rate of all its species. If man, by the use of birth control, divorces himself from this ecology, he dies as a species, childless; he becomes a dead end and the main line of evolution will not even pass through him. His works, his very reason for being turns to a dust that will sift into oblivion unremembered. We belong to Earth. We must accept a high infant and adolescent death rate as an essential part of a stable social structure. There is no population problem, for populations automatically adjust them- selves without external control. We will never have to worry about excess population. There is no such thing as an excess population. There can be ho see -eomiebooks:com