Certainly our testimony supports the proposition that Population Control Programs involve basic fundamental questions relating to the human being and his relationship to God, his family and the State. CONCLUSION We understand that the United States Coalition for Life has called for a Congressional investigation of HEW violations of the Tydings Bill. Women Concerned for the Unborn Child would hope that such an inquiry into specific questions would first come to grips with the FUNDAMENTAL questions we have passed to this sub-committee today. Until such action is taken, we ask that no additional funding under $1708 or H11511 be approved pending a Congressional inquiry convened for the above stated purpose. Thank you. STATEMENT OF JAMES FUREY, ATTORNEY, CARROLL, IOWA I would like, respectfully, to interpose objections to that part of HR 11511, The Health Revenue Sharing Act. included under Title III, The Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1973. This title, I have been informed, is, to some extent at least, a counterpart of S 1708. A copy of the latter bill has been made available to me and my comments are prompted by a review of that measure. This statement will, accordingly, be pertinent to the extent that Title III of HR 11511 incorporates the language, objectives and procedures of S 1708. As I studied this proposed legislation it occurred to me that its authors must be conscious of some vast and pressing national problem since the programs suggested by the charter they have devised seem to me both drastic and insidious. Yet, the disaster they are designed to avoid is nowhere disclosed. What we are offered is a "solution" to a spectral or, at the least, an unidentified problem. Were the putative difficulty described rather than assumed its dimensions and the propriety and desirability of governmental intervention to solve it could be made the subject of adequate investigation and debate by the public as well as legislators. To adopt a public policy on the basis of untested assumptions and presuppositions is capricious and dangerous. This is especially true in cases where the cure tends to demean our fellow citizens and impinge upon their right to personal and marital privacy. More is involved here than mere family planning. The exercise by couples of their right to determine how many children they will have does not require so vast an undertaking. What the sponsors of this enterprise have wrought should delight the "population control" establishment now strategically deployed in symbiotic private-public strongholds. Many who have never been stigmatized as "poor" would, I am confident, bitterly resent and instantly reject government subsidized intrusion into the most intimate area of their lives. We begrudge the poor the luxury of outrage and indignation. One in need surely cannot expect treatment on a parity with that accorded his fellow countrymen and women. If her sensitivities are abraded that is emblematic of second class citizenship to which her lack of means consigns her. Let her not protest that she has been invidiously typecast by those who condescend to plan her family for her. Increasing annual appropriations are contemplated. Though there may be no problem, the situation apparently is expected to deteriorate. The remedy, needed or not, is perceived by the population explosionists in pristine light. More births are bad; fewer are good. We are dealing with a prescription for population control. Its implications are vicious. Do we wish to move toward such regimentation under the guise of family planning? Once the principle is accepted its implementation is only a matter of technical adjustment from time to time. Though its parameters are ill-defined, the text of Title III reflects the ideology of the doomsday people who broadcast the wholly unsubstantiated notion that we are somehow threatened by a growing population. We must not welcome babies; we ought to dread them. Our birthrate has been declining for years and is currently below replacement level. Why should we be obsessed with controlling our popoulation? Population control is inherently coercive. It is not content with free and voluntary decisions of family heads. Government takes the initiative. It becomes a propagandist. No longer is it neutral and disinterested. It does not merely make available family planning services to those who are interested, at government expense, if necessary. It is successful only if it involves ever larger numbers. Concern for individual freedom is supplanted by grim determination to make contraception a universal practice. This cannot be done in a context of respect for personal autonomy. No one should support this title who believes it is coercive. Unprejudiced searching inquiry would, I am convinced, show that massive promotion of contraception cannot be reconciled with respect for the freedom, dignity and privacy of those whom the state addresses. So vague are the provisions of Title III they invite the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to devise whatever programs it deems expedient largely free of direction or restraint. The power to legislate confided by the constitution to congress would be quitclaimed to the department. What are the criteria for determining whether one is "in need of family planning services"? Who is to make the determination? How will he obtain the data required to verify need? What is an "accomplishment" under an authorized program and how does one compare "accomplishments" of one fiscal year with another? How are the terms "biomedical, contraceptive development, social sciences, and population dynamics" to be defined? What is considered contraceptive and what abortafacient? Have there been abuses in the administration of similar federally funded programs? Do the administrators tend to exceed their lawful authority? Does the "population education" mandated really mean population propaganda? It is appalling that I should be taxed so that the population apocalyptics may spread their message of pessimism and near despair while other competing views adhered to by distinguished scholars, among others, frequently lack the publicity apparatus required to obtain public attention to say nothing of public acceptance. The restriction on apportionment of funds for programs "where abortion is a method of family planning" is a cruel hoax. The assistant secretary is free to fund lavishly institutions which perform or counsel abortions. The private entity may scrupulously avoid spending government money on abortion activity since receipt of federal money frees its other assets for such use. It is only a matter of good bookkeeping. Why have the "poor" been selected as objects whose marital behavior must be assessed and regulated? Is their conduct inimical to the best interests of our society? Do they occupy some sub-status because they lack material goods? Do we cherish them and their infants or do we hold them responsible for their plight? See, "Blaming the Victim", William Ryan, N.Y.. Pantheon Books, 1971. If we, as a people, become inhospitable to life and the creative impulse, a rendezvous with death awaits us. There is no other option. AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, Hon. PAUL ROGERS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass., March 5, 1974. Chairman, Subcommittee on Public Health, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR REPRESENTATIVE ROGERS: I understand that your Committee now has before it HR 11845 which, among other things, would extend the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970. As President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I am enclosing a copy of the Resolution on support of population research adopted by our Council. In our view, it is essential that the legislation restore a specific authorization for population research, and set the funding amounts at a level commensurate with the urgency of the problems to which this research is addressed. There have been numerous estimates by different expert groups on the amounts required for an adequate scientific effort in this field, and they range from 75 to 150 million annually. I would strongly urge your committee to restore authorizations in this range. Respectfully, ROGER REVELLE, President. Enclosure: RESOLUTION 1. Population Research.-The Committee on Council Affairs had revised the resolution and recommended its adoption in the following form: Whereas the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, after a careful and thorough two-year investigation of population growth and distribution in the United States, which included the varied problems associated with human reproduction, and the social, behavioral, and economic aspects of human population dynamics, recommended substantial increases in the support of scientific research in these areas, and Whereas the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future also recommended the establishment, within the National Institutes of Health, of a National Institute of Population Sciences to provide an adequate institutional framework for implementing a greatly expanded program of population research, and Whereas major support for existing research in the population sciences is authorized in the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970 (P.L. 91–572), which expires on June 30, 1973, and which should be renewed and expanded, Now, be it therefore Resolved, That the American Association for the Advancement of Science supports and endorses the recommendations of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future that the federal government and private philanthropy increase funding for population sciences research, and that consideration be given to providing a more adequate institutional framework for implementing a greatly expanded biomedical and social science research program on human population problems, possibly by establishing, within the National Institutes of Health, a National Institute of Population Sciences. Council voted to adopt this resolution with one change, the insertion of "President's" before "Commission on Population Growth and the American Future" in the first sentence of the final paragraph, and to refer it to the Board for whatever action it might consider appropriate. Congressman PAUL ROGERS, BOARD OF GLOBAL MINISTRIES, Chairman, Subcommittee of Public Health and Environment, House Office Build ing, Washington, D.C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN ROGERS: Your bill, HR11511, re the Health Revenue Shar ing Act, is of vital concern to all of us who share responsibility for family plan ning services, particularly in low income areas. We are deeply appreciative of your efforts to extend Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970, but are gravely concerned that, even in its present level of funding, revenues are inadequate to reach many of those who want but cannot otherwise afford family planning services. Additionally, much better methods than either the pill or the IUD are needed for both men and women. Any cutback in financing this program will deny those women who can least afford to bear unwanted children the right to avoid pregnancy-a right most of us take for granted. I urge you to reconsider your present recommendation in order to expand, rather than to decrease, funds available for adequate family planning services for all those who so desire. Sincerely yours, BETTY J. LETZIG. Representative PAUL ROGERS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, Stanford, Calif., March 5, 1974. Chairman, Subcommittee on Public Health, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR REPRESENTATIVE ROGERS: I have been informed that your Committee is presently considering HR 11845 which includes among its provisions the extersion of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970. The legislation, as drafted, omitted the specific authorization for population research which was contained in the original statute. As one who has devoted his career to biomedical research to improve the regulation of fertility and a recent recipient of the National Medal of Science for my original contribution to the discovery of the first oral contraceptive, I believe it is imperative for the specific authorization for population research to be restored in this legislation in order for the field to receive the high priority which it desperately needs. I would urge the Committee to set the authorization at a sufficiently high level to insure growth and stability in the biomedical and behavioral research related to operational matters. I am sure you are aware that the needs in this field have been estimated by various ex pert groups over the next several years at between seventy-five and one hundred fifty million dollars annually. The enclosed reprint of an article in Science which I wrote several years ago outlines the multi-million-dollar cost of developing just one new male or female fertility control agent and you will note that this presupposed perfect coordina tion and complete success. This is extremely unlikely and the seventy-five to one hundred fifty million dollar appropriation for the entire field appears to me to be almost sub-optimal. You might also be interested in looking at some of the other recommendations that I have made about changes in government policy the last section of that paper. Many of these suggestions still apply to 1974 and the dire predictions made by me in 1970 about decreased efforts on practical methods of human fertility control have, unfortunately, been proved quite correct only four years later. Yours sincerely, Enclosure. CARL DJERASSI, Professor of Chemistry. printed from September 1970, Volume 169, pp. 941-951 SCIENCE Birth Control after 1984 "It is unmistakingly clear that unless omething is done about the population -xplosion, we will be faced with an unprecedented catastrophe of overcrowdng, famines, pestilence and war. ... If ve are to significantly help in the worldwide fight to curb the population explosion, there must be developed a simple and safe method that can be -made available to populations on a massive scale." These are the words of the U.S. Senate's most vocal critic (1) of oral contraceptives, and it behooves us to consider what some of the future contraceptive methods might be and especially what it might take, in terms of time and money, to convert them into reality. There are many publications on this subject, but none seems to have concerned itself with the logistic problems associated with the development of a new contraceptive agent. In that connection, it is instructive to note that, in Platt's list (2) of world crisis problems, only total nuclear or chemicalbiological warfare receives higher ratings than the problems arising from the world's burgeoning population, and that, of the four top priority problems, only fertility control requires experimentation in humans for its ultimate solution. The surprisingly rapid acceptance during the last decade of intrauterine devices (IUD's) and of steroid oral contraceptives in many developing and developed countries is principally due Carl Djerassi to the fact that their use separates, for the first time, contraception from copulation, and it is clear that effective birth control methods of the future must exhibit this same property. A long list of new approaches to contraception could be developed from a recent World Health Organization report (3), but for the purposes of this articlethe outlining of logistic problems, the determination of time and cost figures, and, finally, recommendations for implementation-I have selected only three topics. 1) A new female contraceptive (4), consisting of a "once-a-month" pill with abortifacient or luteolytic (mensesinducing) properties. I have selected such a method because it is scientifically feasible, it should lend itself to use in both developed and developing countries, and it addresses itself to the critically important subject of abortion. I also make some mention of prostaglandins in that connection. 2) A male contraceptive pill. 3) A draconian agent, such as an additive to drinking water. I included this approach, not to justify the Orwellian overtones of this article's title, but rather to place into realistic perspective the problems of developing such an agent, which is mentioned with increasing frequency as the final solution if voluntary methods should fail. Specifically excluded from my list are sterilization, for discussion of which I lack the needed technical familiarity, and mechanical devices. My reason for excluding mechanical devices, such as IUD's, which, unlike condoms or diaphragms, fall within the definition of "contraception divorced from coitus" is as follows: their rapid introduction into public use during the 1960's is due largely to the fact that, until now, clinical research with IUD's has fallen outside the scope of government regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, it is highly likely that public (5) as well as scientific (6) pressure on government regulatory bodies will require that such devices also be brought within the scope of their control and that clinical use of these devices be preceded by the same type of stringent testing that is demanded for contraceptive drugs. I emphasize these arguments only to point out that the cost and time estimates made by me later in this article in connection with new chemical contraceptive agents probably will also apply to new devices of the IUD type. All the advances in fertility control considered by the World Health Organization group (3) are based in one way or another on chemical approaches. As I have pointed out elsewhere (7), this type of research on fertility control is exceedingly complicated, in both its preclinical and clinical phases; the required manpower and financial resources are available only in the technologically most advanced countries. I emphasized (7) the fact that the new birth control agents of the future, even though they may be used predominantly in the developing countries, will almost certainly be generated only in countries of North America or Europe. They will, therefore, be subject to the government regulatory bodies of those countries, and, The author is professor of chemistry at Stanford University, Stanford, California, and president of Syntex Research, Palo Alto, California. This article is based on a talk presented 6 May 1970 at a symposium entitled "Technological Change and Population Growth," held at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. 31-151 O 74 pt. 2 41 |