Thursday, April 06, 2006
Two Heroes and a Blackguard
Laurels to
I would trade a million Piankas for Drs. Vadym Lazaryev and Vladymyr Ishchenko.
(Thanks to my daughter-in-law and son for pointing me to the linked stories.)
[t]wo Ukraininan doctors, Vadym Lazaryev and Vladymyr Ishchenko, [who] have been seeking asylum in Ireland since 2004, after they were forced to flee their country for exposing appalling human rights abuses of women and unborn children in the Ukraine.Dr. Eric Pianka, on the other hand, probably roots for the dark side:
The doctors were part of a group working to uncover a macabre system of medical trafficking in the bodies of unborn babies, European Life Network reported today. Doctors were deceiving women into aborting their babies for false "medical" reasons, and then selling the bodies of the children. The children would be aborted live, and their bodies cut into separate organs. In some cases live dissection took place.
Most of the body parts were apparently sold to the burgeoning cosmetic industry of "foetal tissue" youth-enhancing treatments, as well as quack "medical therapies."
In many cases, women were paid to get pregnant and to deliver the baby at a given gestation. They were paid a higher price for carrying the child closer to term, since abortion is illegal in the Ukraine after 12 weeks gestation.
[A] few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka . . . , the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. . . .Pianka and his sychophants, I am sure, believe that they are among the chosen 10 percent who should be spared. Pianka clearly belongs to that breed of doom-sayers who want a society that operates according to their strictures. But society refuses to cooperate, and so they conjure historically and scientifically invalid explanations for the behavior of man and nature. By doing so they are able to convince themselves that their vision is the correct one. Because they cannot satisfy their power-lust in the real world, they retaliate by conjuring a theoretical world of doom. It is as if they walk around under a thought balloon which reads "Take that!"
. . . Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. . . .
Pianka . . . began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. . . .
After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.
“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population. . . .
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause. . . .
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." He said those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, ". . . because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered.
I would trade a million Piankas for Drs. Vadym Lazaryev and Vladymyr Ishchenko.
(Thanks to my daughter-in-law and son for pointing me to the linked stories.)