MASS SUICIDE

Evening Star, Issue 22620, 12 April 1937, Page 12

MASS SUICIDE

END OF MANKIND ? BIOLOGIST'S THEORY A possibility that civilised man may be uoacled by inexorable laws ui iNature towards tiie destiny that befalls lemmings, little annuals in that show a tremendous, unexplained increase in population, iollowcd by mass suicide, was suggested at the annual meeting of the American Association lor the Advancement of Science by Prolessor Raymond Pearl, biologist, of John IdLopkins University, savs the New York ‘Times.’ jDr Pearl, in a symposium on Experimental Populations,’ discussed ’ Biological Principles Altecting 1 opulations,' and cited evidence that there are definite natural principles that govern the size of populations throughout Nature to which men and mice both are subject, though the principles may vary under different conditions. There has been a tremendous spurt in the increase of the world’s human population. Dr Pearl reported, and the data indicate that the spurt is only three-quarters completed. For 100,000 years, the data show, the increase of human population been very slow, but in the last 300 years it has increased fivefold. From eight persons to a square mile in 1630, the world’s population has increased until now it is 40 persons to a square mile, with most of the growth concentrated among the progressive nations. ■ . “ Zoologists have long been familiar,” Dr Pearl said, “with the phenomenon of periodic rapid multiplication of populations of lower mammals—lemmings being the classic example—to such enormous absolute sizes as to entail high densities of population within quite large but still limited habitat areas. END IN DESTE UCTION. “ These great spurts of high reproductivity end, after the density has reached a limiting height, in selfengendered destruction of the major part of the population, usually through rapid and undirected mass migratory movements out of the overpopulated areas. These mass migrations blindly push on until some obstacle like the sea or a river is reached, in which vast hordes of the mass migrants perish.” Five distinct biological stages seem to govern this drama of Nature that has as its climax wholesale race suicide, Dr Pearl asserted. First,, a population that has existed in a restricted area for a long time at a relatively constant level, as a consequence of the operation of natural checks, physical or biological, or both. Second,, during a relatively short period on the total time scale of the species—say a Tew seasons—-these natural checks are lifted or greatly abated and living becomes much easier. This means a relatively sudden and large expansion of the “ effective universe ” for the species under discussion. Third, this expansion of the effective universe ” is promptly followed by an almost explosive spurt of population growth. Fourth, the increasing density of population that follows reaches • a point where there impinges upon the component individuals a set of stimuli that lead to disturbance reactions so general as to give the semblance of a mass reaction. Fifth, these reactions, reinforced by the habits of “cohesive gregariousness that appear to be widespread characteristics of mammals generally under conditions of environmental and emotional stress,” lead to undirected mass migratory movements and ultimate destruction of major parts of the population. “ With this picture before us, Dr Pearl said, “ may I venture to suggest—as pure speculation at the moment, but nevertheless possibly worthy of some consideration —that the course of events relative to human population since man first emerged as a distinct species presents objectively a rather remarkable parallelism to the successive stages (up to the final one) in the history of a lemming population that has been depicted. “Does anyone find it difficult to conceive of men marching off in the not too distant future to a war; or to doubt that, once well started, war will entangle in its meshes the major portion of mankind before it is finished; or, finally, to doubt that the next world war will achieve a destructiveness hitherto undreamed o|£”