Every life prolonged causes 10 deaths in the crunch.
Ehrlich, 74 – Professor of Biology @ Stanford (Paul, New York Times)
Furthermore, there are other pernicious fallacies in the “what we as Americans can do about the world population program” game.  Let’s start with a fallacy that the authors helped to create-the idea that we might successfully pressure governments of developing countries into launching effective population control programs.  In the first edition of our book “The Population Bomb,” it was suggested that the United States try to use its food aid as a lever to get recalcitrant governments moving on population control programs.  The logic then (as today) was impeccable.  If you deluded people into thinking that either the U.S could ( or would) supply food in perpetuity for any number of people, you were doing evil.  Sooner or later, popualation growth would completely outstrip the capacity of the United States or any other nation to supply food.  For every 1,000 people saved today, perhaps 10,000 would die when the crunch came.  Simply sending food to hungry nations with population explosions is analogous to a physician prescribing aspirin as a treatment for a patient with operable cancer-in deferring something unpleasant, disaster is entrained.  Yes, send some good- but insist that population control measure be instituted.  But despite the logic, no one in the U.S. Government paid the slightest heed to that suggestion ( or to related proposals by William and Paul Paddock in their 1968 book, “Famine-1975!”) , and the point is now moot, since we have no more surplus food.