EUGENICS WATCH:Ehrlich and Holdren: Death “Reasonable Price to Pay” for Well-being of Society

In a 1995 article written by Gretchen Daily and Ecoscience co-author Paul R. Ehrlich, the authors put forward the proposition that physicians should no longer concentrate on improving the health of their individual patients, or treat occurring infections in order to save the patients life, but rather look to the well-being of society as a whole. In doing so, say Daily and Ehrlich, “a small net increase in deaths” is “a reasonable price to pay”. Here’s the quote in its entirety (page 25): “Physicians by instinct and training focus on the health of individuals; they must learn to pay more attention to the health of whole societies and to deal with the difficult conflicts of interest that often arise between the two. One physician, Jeffrey Fisher (1994), recommends that physicians be required to take periodic recertification exams in which they are tested on antibiotic knowledge. If antibiotics had been used more judiciously over the past few decades, there doubtless would have been more deaths from bacterial infections misdiagnosed as viral, and fewer deaths from allergic reactions to antibiotics. But a small net increase in deaths would probably have been a reasonable price to pay to avoid the present situation, which portends a return to the pre-antibiotic era and much higher death rates”...

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Picture Left:Paul R Ehrlich