Consequences of Crowding

The other day I read about a doctor in the small town of Camden Indiana. He began getting patients with a rash of small pimple like protrusions that quickly turned into saucer-sized wounds. He sent tissue samples to the state laboratory and was told it was methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA. Strains of these bacteria are often referred to as "flesh-eating." The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that by 2005, MRSA was killing more than 18,000 Americans a year, more than AIDS. The doctor in trying to account for the number of patients he was seeing began to wonder if the many hog farms in the vicinity might have something to do with it. Researchers in Holland had discovered that the bacteria could pass from pigs to humans. In short, the doctor determined that the highly crowded pig farms (think pork factories) might be involved. These farms are immense enclosures which look like factories from the outside with tall feed silos that have large food delivery systems emanating from them. He found that they were functioning as massive MRSA incubators.

This got me thinking about some of the consequences of crowding. If the intense crowding of pigs can create a bacterium factory, what about the intense crowding of human beings? Mike Davis, a history professor at U. C. Irvine, recently published a book Planet of the Slums. Mike, who has written a number of books on the world's social conditions, points out that as of last year more of the world's population is living in urban than in rural areas. This is a first for mankind. The large majority of this increased urbanization consists of vast slums. Other than the often-cited social antagonisms that result from animal, including human, crowding, are we creating human disease incubators in slums of a million or more people? Mike has also written a book (The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu) on the pandemic potential of avian flu, which is moving from Chinese small farms to the chicken factories of Hong Kong. Crowding, on the scale that human beings have done it, contains the seeds of our own destruction. Is it not possible to see that we have far more in common than we have in differences? If moral concern for the poor of this planet will not move mankind to adequately address the massive disparities in global resource allocation, will an imminent global Black Plague do it?

Finally, in this paean to population idiocy, I will mention another recently-read article on Quiverfull. Quiverfull is a movement among Christians, mostly Protestants, who use Psalm 127 "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." as an imperative to have as many children as God gives them, usually 8 to 12. They view this practice as the way to advance the kingdom of their god by having more children than their adversaries. This movement is thought to have tens of thousands of adherents and is growing exponentially. It is supported by the head of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Of course, these people are not alone. The Roman Catholics and the Muslims have the same goal and are practicing the same means. These people say overpopulation be damned, we will breed more than our religious opponents. Thus in the throes of a present and increasing overpopulation and its attendant horrors, we have large religious groups waging a war for world domination using birth rate as the ammunition. Can we not call out and indict these enemies of humanity?
Bob Newhard