How The Ehrlichs Operate: Big Claims, But No Proof

One need go no further than the third sentence of the very first page of text of the Ehrlichs’ latest book, The Population Explosion, for a prime example of how these two population control advocates work.1

That sentence reads : “Since 1968, at least 200 million people — mostly children — have perished needlessly of hunger and hunger-related diseases, despite crash programs to stretch the carrying capacity of Earth by increasing food production.”

What is the Ehrlichs’ proof for this astounding statement?

Supposedly the documentation is contained in footnote number 2 of Explosion, which consists of four citations: (a) Paul Ehrlich’s own The Population Bomb, (b) “information from UNICEF, WHO, and other sources on infant/child mortality,” (c) a single sentence from a short article appearing in International Health News, and (d) a “discussion” in World Resources 1987.2

The Ehrlichs’ first citation, treated previously (see “Paul Ehrlich: The Bombardier Returns,” PRI Review, No. 1, Jan. 1991), is just Ehrlich’s 22-year old assertion about impending global starvation, which was made without the slightest evidence at the time. The Ehrlichs simply cite anew something one of them wrote years ago but which has never been documented.

The Ehrlichs’ second reference is in no sense a real citation, as it lacks all semblance of the requirements of scholarship. This citation fails to provide the title of an article or book, or the year of printing or page number(s), for the “information from UNICEF, WHO, and other sources” which allegedly support the hunger death claims. As we shall see, there is a very good reason for the Ehrlichs’ failure to give a real reference to a UNICEF or WHO document which a reader could examine.

The third citation, International Health News, which ceased publication in 1988, was a relatively obscure newsletter of a Washington, D.C. based organization.3 Interestingly enough, the Ehrlichs don’t quote the actual words of the Health News citation but paraphrase them as follows: “… it is now estimated that 40,000 children die daily (14.6 million a year) from hunger-related diseases .…”4

Health News says almost the same thing with one rather interesting difference: “Forty thousand children die daily because of hunger-related diseases, UNICEF reports.”5 This is the second time UNICEF comes up in this affair, and in neither instance do the Ehrlichs give the proper information for a reader to verify just what UNICEF has to say on the subject of hunger deaths. First they fail to give a proper citation to any UNICEF (or “WHO and other sources”) document, and then they deliberately suppress the fact that another reference cited is allegedly based on a UNICEF report.

Why don’t the Ehrlichs directly cite UNICEF itself rather than rely upon a single sentence in a little known publication to report UNICEF’s well-known child mortality statistic?

The answer, I believe, lies in Paul Ehrlich’s desire to prove his 22 year-old claim, made in The Bomb, that “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”6 Of course Ehrlich can’t find any reputable source to cite who agrees with his starvation guesstimate. Thus, he is now reduced to speaking of “hunger and hunger-related deaths,” trusting that his readers will mentally insert the word “starvation” whenever they see the word “hunger.”

UNICEF has long said that “40,000 children die daily” throughout the world (see below), but it does not say they all die from hunger and hunger-related diseases. That’s Ehrlich’s fall-back position from his starvation claims and he dares not cite UNICEF directly because the organization’s reports don’t support him. However, Health News put the “hunger” word into UNICEF’s mouth, thereby giving Ehrlich exactly the kind of quote he was looking for: lots of deaths from hunger-related causes. Except for that “Hunger” word there is no reason whatever to cite the obscure Health News, since the daily toll of “40,000 child deaths” has been reported hundreds of times in scores of articles, journals, and books, which are not only more readily accessible but whose citation would carry greater weight.

What does UNICEF actually say about the world’s yearly child mortality toll?

In 1987 UNICEF stated that “ … more than fourteen million children are now dying every year. They are dying in the final coma of dehydration; dying in the extremities of respiratory infections; dying in the grip of tetanus spasms; dying in the distress of measles; dying in the long-drawn out process of frequent ‘ordinary’ illnesses which steadily weaken and malnourish the body …”7

In 1988 UNICEF reported that “ … each week … more than a quarter of a million young children still die … from frequent infection and prolonged undernutrition.”8 UNICEF explained that “the major cause of undernutrition in the world today is not a shortage of food …,”9 [but] “ … the frequency of infections, especially diarrhoel disease and measles, which can reduce the appetite and the intake and absorption of food.”10

In 1989 UNICEF said that “ … in the last 24 hours, approximately 40,000 children under five have died — over 80% of them from one or more of six causes — tetanus, measles, whooping cough, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections or malaria, often in association with some degree of malnutrition.”11

Unable to back up his starvation/hunger-death claims, Ehrlich has advanced the thesis that the various diseases which are killing the world’s children are actually hunger-related diseases. If the children were not starving or malnourished they would not get the disease in the first place, and they would be far less likely to succumb to it, so goes the argument.

But UNICEF, while admitting that malnutrition, undernutrition, starvation and hunger do play a role in some deaths, expressly notes that the malnutrition which often accompanies death is usually the result of the disease and not its cause. According to UNICEF, “Measles and diarrhoel disease are now known to be major causes of malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency .…”12

UNICEF goes on to state that “ … two and a half million children are still dying each year from dehydration, and even larger numbers are being left malnourished by frequent diarrhoel disease.”13 Two paragraphs below, UNICEF says “ … the fact is that diarrhoel and vaccine-preventable diseases are together responsible for almost half of all child deaths in the world and probably as much as half of all child malnutrition.”14

UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) also reported on disease-caused malnutrition in a 1988 joint publication,15 and stated that “… even children who survive these diseases [measles and whooping cough] are weakened by them and may die later from malnutrition or other illnesses.”16 The two organizations noted that “Measles is also an important cause of malnutrition …”17

According to UNICEF and WHO, “Diarrhoea is also a major cause of child malnutrition,” and they speak of “malnutrition caused by diarrhoea.”18 Again, they report that “ … diarrhoea can lead to serious malnutrition …,”19 and that malaria yearly “ … caus[es] hundreds of thousands of child deaths and many more cases of child malnutrition.”20

UNICEF/WHO flatly state that “More than half of all illness and death among young children is caused by germs which get into the child’s mouth via food and water.21 Clearly, most of the deaths of the world’s children are directly caused by diseases which can be easily immunized against, and diarrhoea, which can be treated by oral rehydration salts. These diseases are a consequence of poor sanitation and unclean water, and any associated malnutrition or hunger is most often a result of the disease and not its cause.

Nevertheless, acting as if they have proven their hunger/starvation claims, the Ehrlichs, immediately following the third of their four citations, state: “The number ‘at least 200 million’ is based on an average of 10 million deaths annually for 21 years.”22 But, as this analysis has shown, the Ehrlichs most certainly have not documented 10 million yearly deaths from “hunger and hunger-related diseases.”

Incidentally, Ehrlich’s hunger/starvation claim of “an average of 10 million deaths annually” is considerably lower than his previous assertions that “Up to 20 million people — mostly children — starve to death every year.”23

The Ehrlichs’ fourth reference states that “More than 11 million children under the age of five die every year in the Third World. Malnutrition and infectious diseases are responsible for 50–90 percent of these infant and child deaths.”24

Although there’s no controversy regarding the “11 million” childhood deaths, which is 3.6 million lower than the Ehrlichs-UNICEF-WHO claims, the alleged causes of “50–90 percent of … [them]” is open to some question.

First of all, World Resource’s source for its “Malnutrition and infectious diseases” claim, actually uses the words nutritional deficiencies and communicable diseases.”25 Although “communicable” and “infectious” may be interchangeable words, “nutritional deficiency” is not always synonymous with “malnutrition.”

Consider, for instance, the recent rash of deaths in the United States among people on “liquid diets.” Those obese persons were certainly not suffering from malnutrition, but, as a result of their “diets,” they succumbed to fatal “nutritional deficiencies.” Many third-world peoples similarly die from various vitamin deficiencies although their daily caloric intake would ordinarily be more than sufficient to maintain life.

Secondly, World Resources’ source for its “50–90 percent” statistic simply makes that assertion26 and cites yet another source which does not fully substantiate those numbers.27 One is reminded of those food chain diagrams in which the big fish swallows a smaller fish which is swallowing an even smaller one, right on down the line to a very tiny fish. Thus when one sorts through all the sources it turns out that that “47%” of all the “underlying cause[s] of death” of children under five years is connected with “nutritional deficiency as [an] associated cause” and no specific disease has an alleged percentage higher than “62 percent.”28 Nowhere — not in the Ehrlichs’ citation, World Resources, nor in that reference’s secondary source, nor in the ultimate underlying source — is any proof given for the “90 percent” upper limit of childhood deaths allegedly caused by malnutrition and/or nutritional deficiencies.

Of course these figures are not quite “good” enough for the Ehrlichs’ purposes — 50% of 11 million child deaths would “only” yield 5.5 million “malnutrition and infectious diseases” deaths annually, while the Ehrlichs have set their sights on “10 million hunger-related deaths.” Perhaps this is why they don’t bother to quote a single word from World Resources, but just off-handedly say one should “[s]ee a discussion” in that reference.29

The Ehrlichs admit that “The exact number … [of starvation/hunger deaths] can never be known with precision,”30 and refer readers to another note in which they own up to the fact that “… it is impossible to estimate accurately the number of people who starve to death annually.”31 Now they tell us!

The Ehrlichs charge that not only do “Governments [not] publish statistics on how many of their people have died from lack of food” but “officials try to cover up” such circumstances.32 According to the Ehrlichs, “Nature aids them in that cover-up, since malnourished people don’t ordinarily die from starvation, but from the attack of some disease-carrying pathogen — such as diarrhea, measles, or pneumonia — that easily overwhelms immune systems compromised by malnutrition. Thus officials can credit the deaths to ‘disease’ when lack of food was the basic cause.”33

As usual, the Ehrlichs fail to provide the slightest evidence of any such “cover-ups” by governmental officials, and one can only wonder if the alleged “cover-ups” could ever match the mass of starvation numbers invented by the Ehrlichs.

However, a study34 which has been cited as the one that “has yielded the most reliable information on the causes of childhood mortality,”35 discloses that “nutritional deficiency” has actually been overstated as the underlying cause of death, at least in the various South American countries examined.36 Indeed, the study found that deaths reported on death certificates as due to nutritional deficiency as the “underlying cause” of death had been overstated by more than 50%, and the deaths in question were actually due to other causes, most often “infective and parasitic diseases.”37 Additionally, a check of more than 35,000 child deaths, which included examination of more than 27,000 death certificates, disclosed that little more than 3% of those deaths were caused by “nutritional deficiency” as the “underlying cause.”38

Now we are not denying that some children, and other people, are malnourished and do in fact die of starvation. Some. And certainly UNICEF doesn’t deny the fact of starvation/hunger-related deaths. But, contrary to the Ehrlichs’ assertions, 200 million people did not starve to death or die of “hunger-related diseases” in the past 22 years. There is simply no credible evidence whatever to support the Ehrlichs’ claims.

Practically all the famine and starvation deaths which have occurred in recent years are due to various civil wars, and the genocidal policies of certain governments. Any such deaths are indeed tragic, but they most certainly are not due to an alleged population vs food imbalance.

IS LAKE ERIE DEAD?

One of the sillier assertions made by Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb, concerned the alleged death of Lake Erie.

According to Ehrlich, “… Lake Erie has died. The snakes are almost gone, as are the fishes on which they fed … No one in his right mind would eat a Lake Erie fish today, if one could be found.”39

As a matter of fact, in the year 1968 when Ehrlich wrote those words, Lake Erie fishermen managed to find some fish — 39,415,250 pounds, to be exact, of “commercial landings” in the Canadian waters of the lake alone.40 The next year, 1969, the total Canadian commercial catch jumped to 48,035,996 pounds.41 (Canadian fisherman are the ones “who are catching, commercially at least, most of the Lake Erie and other Great Lakes’ fish … [as U.S.] commercial fishing is heavily regulated to save the fish for sports anglers.”)42

Records going back over a century indicate that Lake Erie waters annually have produced 25,000 to 50,000 tons of fish,43 the largest catch of any of the Great Lakes.44 Lake Erie was never “dead,” although it was damaged from pollution. Lake Erie today has been cleaned up and “turned into a thing of beauty .… Biologists now estimate the western Lake Erie walleye population to be an amazing 33 million fish.”45 In fact, “the water in all the Great Lakes is cleaner now than at any time in recent history.”46