Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Logic and Math Becoming Extinct?
The Washington Time’s March 30, 1990 “Science/Health ” section, in an article headlined “More Species May Be Going Way of The Dinosaurs,” reported, in three consecutive sentences, that:
“With an estimated 10 million species of plants and animals, the average species life span of 10 million years means that one species should check out every year. But anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 species are dying annually.
Scientists say 113 species of birds and 83 species of mammals have died out since 1600, when natural historians began counting ” (emphasis added).
Mountains out of Molehills
“Steady Rise in Abortion Deaths in Rio de Janeiro Hospital over 10 Years,” screams the headline in the December 1990 issue of International Family Planning Perspectives, the quarterly publication of the international Planned Parenthood Federation.
The accompanying article stated that “Abortion-related deaths accounted for nearly one-half of all maternal deaths in a municipal hospital in Rio de Janeiro over a 10-year period, according to a review of maternal mortality from 1978-1987.” The review reported that over the decade examined… abortion-related deaths increased by 172 percent … at the Municipal Hospital Miguel Couto.” The hospital is located “near one of the largest slum areas in South America, the favela Rocinha, and serves a universally poor patient population.”
The quoted figures certainly do sound impressive until one delves into the underlying statistics and finds that the total number of maternal deaths during the decade was 32, and those due to abortion (47%) were just 15.
That’s 15 abortion-related deaths in 10 years, or an average of 1.5 per year! And this from a hospital serving “one of the largest slum areas in South America.”
Meanwhile, abortion propagandists circulate the most preposterous numbers of alleged Brazilian abortion deaths, as many as 400-600,000 annually, (see Popcorn, PRI Review, Vol. 1, No. 1., Jan.- Feb., 1991).
Alleged Abortion Deaths Multiplying
Washington Post syndicated columnist Hobart Rowen invariably exaggerates when he writes about population growth. Thus in Rowan’s May 9, 1991 Washington Post column (p. A21), we read that “The PCC [Population Crisis Committee] estimates that 1 million women lose their lives annually in the Third World through illegal abortions.”
A phone call to the Population Crisis people readily confirmed that they’re “still sticking to our previous figures of 100,000 to 200,000 worldwide illegal abortion deaths annually.” The PCC spokesperson knew of Rowen’s “one million abortion deaths claim” and had “no idea where he [Rowan] got that figure — certainly not from us.”
Oddly enough, the PCC has made no attempt to correct Rowan’s error, possibly because he’s heavily promoted the organization and its goals in his writings.
Incidentally, the PCC’s 200,000 abortion deaths upper limit is probably an inflated figure, as the PCC itself, in a Dec. 29, 1987 Washington Post article, reported that there were “An estimated 100,000 women [who] die every year in the developing world from the consequences of unsafe or illegal abortions .…” (emphasis added).
Zero Pop Growth Not Good Enough
Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich, the husband-wife team who wrote The Population Explosion, (see PRI Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, March-April 1991), gave their “personal opinion on [the] optimum population for the United States.”
In a report prepared for the Negative Population Growth organization, the Ehrlichs said that “No sensible reason has ever been given for having more than 135 million people. The putative reason for choosing that number is that America fought and won … the greatest war in history with that number of people.”
The 1990 census counted some 250 million inhabitants in the U.S.A. The Ehrlichs neglected to say just who of these were the superfluous 115 million, nor how they’d, ah, get rid of them. (The Ehrlichs’ report for Negative Population Growth, excerpted in The Washington Post, May 16, 1991, p. A17).
More Food Supply Baloney
Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, writing in the Feb.-March 1991 issue of Technology Review, stated that (TR, p. 43), …the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that [current] world food reserves would last only about 30 days.”
Despite Fornos’ claim, the USDA has not given any such estimate. The Department of Agriculture does not issue “days of consumption” estimates; that’s Brown’s forte (see “Lester Brown’s ‘Grain Reserves’ Shell Game”, this issue). An examination of more than 30 years of USDA grain reports found a lone instance (see endnote 27, “Shell Game”) of the USDA using Brown’s “days” thesis in an attempt to answer a hullabaloo, largely engineered by Brown, over the adequacy of world food supplies.
Moreover, Brown himself, the originator of the “days” concept, says current world grain reserves are in excess of 60 days supply, more than double the mere 30 days Fornos claims.
