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Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population | 
 enlarge | Author: Matthew Connelly
Publisher: Belknap Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 44442
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.8
ISBN: 0674024230
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.9
EAN: 9780674024236
ASIN: 0674024230
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
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Product Description
Listen to a short interview with Matthew Connelly
Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane Fatal Misconception is the disturbing story of our quest to remake humanity by policing national borders and breeding better people. As the population of the world doubled once, and then again, well-meaning people concluded that only population control could preserve the "quality of life." This movement eventually spanned the globe and carried out a series of astonishing experiments, from banning Asian immigration to paying poor people to be sterilized. Supported by affluent countries, foundations, and non-governmental organizations, the population control movement experimented with ways to limit population growth. But it had to contend with the Catholic Church's ban on contraception and nationalist leaders who warned of "race suicide." The ensuing struggle caused untold suffering for those caught in the middle--particularly women and children. It culminated in the horrors of sterilization camps in India and the one-child policy in China. Matthew Connelly offers the first global history of a movement that changed how people regard their children and ultimately the face of humankind. It was the most ambitious social engineering project of the twentieth century, one that continues to alarm the global community. Though promoted as a way to lift people out of poverty--perhaps even to save the earth--family planning became a means to plan other people?s families. With its transnational scope and exhaustive research into such archives as Planned Parenthood and the newly opened Vatican Secret Archives, Connelly's withering critique uncovers the cost inflicted by a humanitarian movement gone terribly awry and urges renewed commitment to the reproductive rights of all people. (20080114)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 International Organizations = Interest Groups July 6, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
The author makes a compelling case that population control groups are accountable to no one. Driven by their own particular ideologies, they operate with little regard to either the welfare of individuals within nation states or the overall interest of the countries they seek to influence.
The larger point is that international organizations behave in similar fashion to interest groups: i.e., controlled by elites and driven by narrow ideologies.
 Narcissistic and flawed. July 3, 2008
14 out of 21 found this review helpful
In as much as hysterics over global population have been with us a LONG time, and in as much as hysterics over a coming ecological meltdown have been with us for quite some time as well, this book provides a decent overview of what the author seems to regard as extreme views in the population debate.
However, that said, this book's author takes a tone that is inappropriate for a dispassionate scholarly work. One reviewer of the book, Dr. Jay Winter of Yale said that Dr. Connelly's work was "disturbing, angry, combative, and important." With all due respect to Dr. Winter, I only agree with first three descriptors.
The central thesis of this book is this: population growth is not the problem the doomsday prophets proclaim that it is, because access to voluntary contraception and abortion has successfully put the breaks on growth. Therefore, imperialistic and immoral programs of forced "population control" are totally unnecessary.
However, the population controllers are only one of the villains in this narrative. While, on the one hand, the vicious and evil population controllers are painted as imperialistic and repugnant, on the other hand, Dr. Connelly paints an equally "disturbing" picture of the evil, myopic, and power obsessed Catholic Church. The "disturbing, angry," and "combative" tone are evident throughout the book when addressing these two opposite, and in the author's mind equally destructive, agendas.
However, history ought not be angry, combative, and emotionalistic. Rather, scholars like Dr. Connelly should first seek to UNDERSTAND who and what they are writing about before putting pen to paper, and when they do finally getting around to telling their story, a dispassionate and removed scholarly tone is far more appropriate. Dr. Connelly has failed miserably in this task, and the entire work crumbles as a result. As a staunch and orthodox Catholic, I have difficulty believing that the population controllers are as evil as Dr. Connelly seems to want to pretend. My personal experience with those who advocate population control is that they seem to be good people who are perhaps easily scared by prophesies of coming environmental and/or demographic disaster due to some imagined population "bomb." More often than not their views are "theological" in that they have bought into an ideological scientism that is neither especially logical, nor open to rational argumentation.
It seems that Dr. Connelly wants to demonize both positions because he seems to want to paint himself as above the fray. When one reads a text critically, the hand of the author tends to emerge. This author engages in a kind of "all knowing" critique of opposing views in the population debate that is both narcissistic and off-putting. Furthermore, the data do not support what he has to say.
I cannot speak for those who advocate population control. However, if Connelly was as "fair" to them as he was to the Catholic position, then they surely do have reason to criticize this work. Take Connely's two pages on Humanae Vitae as an example. There are so many fallacies that totally ignore contemporary scholarship on the encyclical, and contemporary practice of natural family planning, that it is amazing that the work is the result of a professor at a school with the reputation of Columbia.
Consider the following fallacies:
Connelly seems to believe that the Church teaches we should all have as many children as biologically possible. This is false. Parents should consider grave reasons to space or limit the size of their families. For those living in poverty, grave reasons certainly can include the inability to feed or educate or nurture children.
Connelly seems to believe that the natural methods of contraception the Church advocates all need Basal thermometers, are all very onerous, and all even require rectal temperatures. (HE ACTUALLY SAYS THIS). He did NO research into this topic.
On the contrary, the FACT is that Mother Theresa of Calcutta and her nuns achieved a 90% effectiveness rate (higher in many cases than artificial contraception in practice) after having taught women the Billings ovulation method of natural family planning. The billings ovulation method requires neither a thermometer (Basal or otherwise) nor literacy, as one does not even need charts! The 90% effectiveness rate was achieved by using clinical experience rules derived from observation of mucus signs to predict fertile phases. Dr. Connelly did NO research on Mother Theresa's nuns, even though the study of their success with Billings was widely publicized.
Connelly seems to believe that natural methods are ineffective because men in poor countries are incapable of continence for one or two weeks out of every month. I find this amazing. Not only does Mother Theresa's experience belie this claim, the claim is downright bigoted. Most of the world's poor are people of color and are front continents like Africa and South America. The idea seems to be that these folks are animalistic and unable to control themselves. This is silly.
It is especially silly since we know that among American teenagers, the pill is only 50% effective in preventing conception. Why? Because kids don't take their pills accurately. The 99% effectiveness statistic artificial methods advertise are "perfect use" statistics, that rarely, if ever, hold up in the field. Given the fact that artificial contraceptives give people license to have sex during the fertile time of a woman's cycle, and give the fact that in the field these methods often fail, it should come as no surprise that Mother Theresa's effectiveness rate was HIGHER than artificial methods for the poor in India trained by her.
In fact, Dr. Connelly ONLY did research in the Vatican Secret Archives. He consulted no Ob-gyn's or other medical professionals familiar with natural family planning, nor any contemporary philosophers or theologians who are familiar with the nuances of Church teaching. Dr. Connelly's resulting analysis of the Catholic Church is simplistic, error ridden, emotionalistic, and judgmental. The key word that jumps to mind here is narcissism. Only a narcissist seeks to condemn others before trying to understand their position, especially in a so called "academic" work. However, this work is not an academic work. It is simply a screed in favor an agenda.
For a better look at population figures, and the negative ramifications of population control, an excellent work is Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits This book was not carefully written or thought out.
A tired `anti-imperialist' screed divorced from environmental reality June 16, 2008
17 out of 31 found this review helpful
Connelly manages to write a massive volume without substantively addressing several key issues:
1) the finite availability of natural resources and the limits to growth it imposes
2) the role of religious & cultural superstitions in fighting voluntary population control
3) the unlikelihood of people accepting a reduced standard of living
4) the relative value of informed versus uninformed decision making
Connelly analysis is essentially cornucopian. He shows no understanding of such concepts as ecological carrying capacity or the fact that critical fertiliser resources like phosphorus or potash (potassium) have a very limited supply relative to feasibly extractable resources. His 'development' solution for population control ignores the inability to provide anything more than a poverty-ridden, subsistence existence for the bulk of humanity at past let alone future population levels.
Connelly grossly privileges religion by avoiding any critique of how dogma plays into opposition to voluntary population control. That is intellectual cowardice at its most rank. The author can look forward to his book being used by Abrahamic fundamentalists who view population growth as an assertion of religious supremacy. Again his unwillingness to address these people, who are the opponents of the women's rights he claims to revere, is typical of academics of this blame-the-West mindset.
For all his smug posturing against `racism' he shows ironically little practical concern with the survival of our or other species as a whole. His own `fatal misconception' is that because some population control efforts have been motivated by racism or eugenic views that their overall goal is automatically invalid.
His moralising about `imperialism,' further ignores the fact that all modes of decision making are not equal. Is an illiterate peasant who sees fathering as many sons as possible for the sake of machismo and/or religious duty really as well placed to make decisions about population control as a scientists or politician with access to quality information and educated to consider longterm consequences of human actions?
Writing from a position of privilege and comfort in the West, Connelly can chastise those who dare to question the decision making ability of people engaged in a hand-to-mouth existence. Without some `elitist' intervention a great many positive social policies (e.g. women's rights, gay marriage) would never have come about. Ignoring that uncomfortable truth is the only way Connelly could justify his tired anti-imperialism rhetoric.
 Lions and tigers and too many babies, oh my! June 15, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is a beautifully written book about an incendiary topic.
Starting with Malthus many argued that population would overwhelm our resources. Life expectancy kept growing, swelling the levels of humans alive.
A vast population control movement swung into motion, bent on stamping out population growth everywhere, but especially in poor countries.
Many of the early members of the movement seemed inspired by racism.
Margaret Sanger and the eugenics theories of the 1930's wanted to see more breeding by white intellectuals, and fewer babies born by the poor. Some others stressed concern for food resources. Even in the 1960's Ravenholt, head of USAID, said that "abortion was especially appropriate for poor people, since they lacked the foresight to use birth control" (p 244).
It is fascinating reading about the unending divisions sent out by the United Nations to reduce population. There were incentives for those in poor countries who agreed to sterilization. Trained women marched through villages, passing out condoms, pills, and lots of advice. In many areas some degree of force or deception was used to reduce population. Notoriously, China introduced a one child policy and many women were given abortions under force.
Those against the population movement fought a rearguard movement with little success. Pope John Paul wrote "a new encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, (the Gospel of Life)...and pounded home his arguments in virtually every public appearance" (p 386).
It is too bad that Connelly didn't provide more information on the results of the population movement. He does point out that "the number of children per women fell between 1950 and 2000 in cuontries with strong population control programs. But it also dropped dramatically during the same period in countries that made little effort to stop population grown or even encouraged it (p 374). Connelly doesn't point out that even the UN agrees that world population will peak around 2050 due to rising life expectancy. From that time, population will start to drop like a stone.
Anyone interested in the topic will want to pick up "Disappearing Daughters" which documents the 100 million missing women in China and India. Abortion, infanticide, and poison being among the many methods used to dispose of unwanted females, leaving these countries awash in men. Another book on this topic is "Bare Branches".
Fatal Omission Regarding the Rest of Life June 6, 2008
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
I find it problematic that Mr. Connelly concludes that because reproductive rates are decreasing overpopulation is no longer a problem. While reproductive rates are decreasing the human population is still growing. Also, nowhere in this book is the rest of life mentioned. One of the problems of our massive population is the effects that humans are creating with the current loss of biodiversity. While Mr. Connelly laments the travesties committed against humanity his failure to provide any reference to the rest of life makes the rest of life seem irrelevant. I would find his moralistic outrage easier to swallow if he would show some concern for other living creatures. I'm also left wondering if some of the conclusions he reaches in this book are based on his religious beliefs. When he refers to "reproductive rights" it comes across as an indirect reference to "pro-life", much in the same way as intelligent design masks a creationist worldview. While he boasts of his credentials as a historian does he have any background in natural history or ecology?
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