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  • Title: A strategy for reducing numbers? Response.
    Author: Jolly R.
    Journal: Health Millions; 1991 Dec; 17(5):28. PubMed ID: 12317115.
    Abstract:
    UNICEF advocates the reduction of infant/child mortality because it feels that such an action will reduce both fertility and human suffering. It was feared in the beginning, and today as well, that increasing the survival rate for children would cause rapid population growth. However, there is a large body of evidence to the contrary. When such measures are combined with measures to promote and support family planning there are even greater reductions in fertility levels. This is why such organizations as UNFPA, WHO, and UNICEF have advocated this course of action. This strategy is also present in the Declaration of the World Summit for Children. Anyone advocating the reduction in support for programs designed to enhance child survival as a method of population control is confusing the issues, misdirecting environmental attention, and stirring up the debate about international mortality. The evidence clearly shows that family planning without family health, including child health, is much less successful. Further, child mortality, even at high levels does little to slow population growth while such death and suffering greatly burden women and families. While rapid population growth and high population densities in developing countries present serious problems, both are much less important than the high levels of consumption in developed nations. Each child in the industrialized world will, at present levels of consumption, be expected to consume 30 to 100 times more than a child born in the poorest nations. Such suggestions in a time of instant global communication only attempt to set back international morality and tempt those in the international intellectual community to embrace ideas similar to the eugenic principles that led to the holocaust.
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