Humankind is like a global cancer

Humankind is lik= e a global cancer – doctor

By Andy Ogle Science and Environment The Edmonton Journal, Sunday, October 14, 1990 = Sunday Comm= entary

The human species is a global cancer, growing rapidly out of control much like a highly malignant tumor. This unsettling diagnosis is offered by Dr. Warren Hern, a physician and assista= nt professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He published his hypothesis last month in a small journal called Population and Environment.   The image is all the more troubling considering that a highly malignantform of cancer resists all efforts at effective regulation until the host has died.=

     “Cancerous tumors,” Hern points out, “continue to grow even in the face of starvation of the host.”     “The idea = that the human population is a planetary cancer is a profoundly disturbing conclusion,” he says, “but the observations of the scientific community over the last 20 years have provided massive support for this hypothesis, and little, if anything, to refute it.

Cancer keeps goi= ng

     “It is exceedingly rare that any cancer ever voluntarily or spontaneously stops be= ing a cancer. If the human specie= s can stop being a cancer, it will either be one of those remarkable exceptions, = or my hypothesis is wrong. I will gladly accept either result.”

     For his troubles= , Hern was immediately attacked by the local media. One of the Boulder newspapers wrote an editorial headlined, “The Gloomy World of Dr. Hern.” A Denver radio talk show host called him an ecoquack and a Fellow-in-Good-Standing of the Sky-Is-Falling School.    Hern shrugs off such assaults.

     “These very conservative talk show hosts don’t like me because I do abortions,= 221; he explained in an interview. “That’s my clinical specialty. I’m an epidemiologist but I = do have an abortion practice, so they sort of went after me for that.   “These guys are against= the environmental movement to begin with although this isn’t what you wou= ld call a paper that’s strictly about the environment or strictly about population. In either case, n= either one of them had read it.”

     Hern, 52, could = be called Colorado’s Henry Morgentaler. Hern has performed more than 25,000 abortions since 1973, mos of them at the Boulder Abortion Clinic he runs. In 1= 984 he published an abortion practice textbook.



Fertility contro= l

     “Providing abortion services is not only consistent with my personal and professional ethics,” he says, “but I see it as consistent with this larger = view that one of the most urgent necessities is providing people with fertility control that’s safe, effective and offered in a humane and dignified way. Whic= h is what I’m doing.

     “There are certainly people out there who don’t like it. I had five shots fired through the= front of my building here 2 ½ years ago.&= nbsp; That’s a clear sign of disapproval. Now I work behind four layers of bullet-proof glass.”

     To Hern, the abo= rtion battle is not about the definition of life but the definition of power R= 11; who has it and who doesn’t.

     “The fact = that women can get abortions and control their fertility allows them to compete = with men for jobs and moeney and power.” He says. “And that’s really ups= etting to people. Women are uppity a= nd they don’t like it.

     “Fetuses a= re not uppity. They don’t argu= e with you. And besides you can defe= nd the fetus at election time and win elections.&= nbsp; That’s how the right wing of the Republican party has won power for the last 12 years.”

     Clearly Hern is = not a man to back away from a fight.

     He has been invo= lved in public health, fertility control and environmental issues in the U.S. and Latin America siince graduating from medical school in 1965.   He did his internship in Panama and worked as a Peace Corps doctor = in Brazil.= After completing a master of public health degree at the University = of North Carolina, he worked as an administrator i= n Washington for t= wo years with the Office of Economic Opportunity family planning program.=

PhD dissertation=

    Since the 1960s, Hern has regularly visited a small village of Shipibo = Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. His research there on how cultural change led to significantly higher birth rat= es among the Shipibo became the basis of a PhD dissertation. That led to his appointment to the anthropology faculty at the University of Colorado, where = he teaches a course in medical anthropology and another in population and fami= ly planning.

     Hern says he beg= an to think about the human species in a cancer metaphor 20 years ago, but decided against writing about it then because he wanted to establish academic credibility, first. And he th= ought at the time that it was too radical an idea for most people.

     “It’= s not an idea that makes you feel warm and fuzzy,” he says in uncharacteris= tic understatement. Nor is it a n= ew idea. But Hern believes he= 217;s the first to really explore it and look at all the implications.

     “Other people,” he says, “have used it as an analogy, saying we’= re kind of like this. I’m = saying this is the ticket. The chara= cteristics that I see, as I describe in this paper, are extremely ominous.<= /span>

     “I see thi= ngs happening faster and faster and getting out of control faster and faster. If you look at it from any time perspective – whether you look at it from the time perspective of thr= ee million years of human existence or the last 100,000 years or the last 10,0= 00 or even the last 100 years – what we’re doing is happening in t= he twinkling of an eye.

     “The chang= es are astonishing. We have to put t= hat in perspective.

     “I’v= e been going down to the Peruvian Amazon for more than 25 years. I’ve worked all over Latin America, and what I see happening is just astonishing. What I see happe= ning in Colorado is astonishing.”

     The most compell= ing similarity between cancer and the human species is growth – rapid, unregulated growth. Poulation growth is slower and moderately regulated in some localities and even some regions but it is nevertheless inexorable in the global perspective.

    Consider these few population facts:

·      = As of 1990,= more humans have been added to the total world population in the past 40 years t= han in the previoius three million.

·      = Seven to ei= ght per cent of all human beings ever born are alive.

·      = The Black D= eath in the 14^th century wiped out one-third of the human population,= but it only temporarily slowed the rate of growth. By about 1650 the population was 5= 00 million; it doubled to a billion in just 200 years.

·      = The current= rate of growth has slowed slightly (from 2.1 to 1.7 per cent annually) but it is still exponential with a population doubling time of about 40 years.

·      = With global population at 5.3 billion, we are adding 90 million to 100 million people yearly.

     Many other speci= es have had population spurts, but even faster population crashes when their n= umbers exceeded the carrying capacity of their ecosystem or local food supply; in = some instances, that kind of extreme oscillation resulted in extinction.

Exceedingly clev= er

     Humans have been exceedingly clever at avoiding the crash.&= nbsp; We use culture and technology to adapt to even the most extreme conditions the globe can throw at us. But the question for humans remains: “Is there no limit to the carrying capacity of the earth’s ecosystem?”<= /p>
     In making a diag= nosis of malignancy, pathologists require that tumors demonstrate only two of the four primary characteristics of malignant growth. We are showing all four, Hern says= . Besides uncontrolled growth, the o= thers are:

     Metastasis ̵= 1; the processby which cancer quickly and lethally spreads. The comparison here is to widespre= ad and devastating (for indigenous populations) spread of European culture. Contact brought with it deadly epi= demics and loss of up to 95 per cent of indigenous populations followed by rapid expansion of colonial populations.

     Invasion and destruction of adjacent normal tissues – human communities, once established, tend to invade and de4stroy all adjacent ecosystems without limits. There is now no ecosy= stem on the plaet that is not already destroyed, invaded or immediately threaten= ed in some manner by the human species.

     De-differentiati= on – pathologists can tell what part of the body a normal cell comes from because it has a charateristic appearance.= But cancer cells tend to lose that differentiated appearance.

     Hern argues that human comjun= ities are becoming indistinguishable in appearance. The skylines of Chicago, São Paulo, De= nver and Tokyo are more similar than they are different.

Found similariti= es

     He has even found similarities in images of the growth of malignant tumors and the growth of cities. “A scematic vie= w of the growth of London from 1800 to 1955 looks like nothing so much as an expanding invasive, metastatic, malignant tumor.”
     On the basis of = his diagnosis, Hern proposes a new scientific name for us. Instead of homo sapiens – wise men – it should be homo ecophagus R= 11; the man who devours the ecosystem.

    We are capable, he say= s, of regulating fertility and population growth, of restoring environments, savi= ng other species from extinction and living in harmony with the rest of the ecosystem. Occasionally we ac= tually do behave that way, but overall we remain a cancer on the planet.

     “World lea= ders have to recognize what we’re u against and do something about it̷= 0;.

     “The princ= ipal obstacle to progress in this whole area is the United States government. We’re the ones who will not support the United Nations population fund. We’re the ones who go to the= Mexico City popul= ation conference and say, ‘Not to worry.’”

     With only $15 bi= llion, five per cent of the national military budge, the U.S. could provide safe and effective fertility control for everyone on the planet who wants it, Hern s= ays.

     “Our solut= ion is to give money to the capitalists. That’s the Reagan-Bush answer to everything. Well, that’s not going to do= it.

     The typical resp= onse to the growing recognition of widespread ecological damage is a fix-it approach, says Hern.

     “We’= ll fix the spotted owl. We’ll = fix Prince William Sound. We’ll fix the other thing. There are too many things to fix; = w just can’t fix them all. Wha= t we have to do is say, ‘What is the explanation for all these events? How can we devise a general theory= that helps us really understand what is going on?”

     “This is my theory. You know I may be wro= ng, but I think there is considerable evidence out there to support it and very little evidence to refute it…

     “If I̵= 7;m wrong, we have nothing to worry about.&nbs= p; And if I’m right, what else is important?”