Primary Mother Care - subtitled Primary Disentrapment is a paramedical obstetrics and gynaecology for the developing world, particularly Africa. It discusses normal and abnormal deliveries, and family planning, including the postcoital methods, in all the necessary detail. It much concerned with teenage pregnancies, the STDs, and the ethics of sex. Its most notable chapter is however Chapter 2 called "How Many children?" This is based on the disentrapment of Malawi as an example of a trapped community. It also serves as a Primary demography, to introduce such concepts as population momentum, population age structures and the demographic transition, etc., in a way in which they need to be understood by the the health workers of Africa.
The draft of Primary Mother Care caused heated argument. All the arguments brought up, including for example, the argument that entrapment is racist - are dealt with and to defused in Section 2.16 called 'Defusing dynamite'. The aim being is to discuss all arguments, and to exorcise the demons.
This book has has a stormy passage. It is presently (March 2002) with Oxford University Press, and thanks to the integrity of that distinguished Press, seems likely to be published. It is the only book - so far - which discusses demographic entrapment, and what to do about it.
Primary Mother Care is on this website as .PDF files. Here is . Chapter Two How many children? and its contentious Section 2.16 Defusing dynamite
Are the colleagues corrupt? The disciplines of demography and development economics certainly are, they never discuss demographic entrapment! So also are some of the UN agencies is - especially UNDP - and the World Bank, they never discuss it either! I argue that the demons are so powerful l that it is not possible for the individual in an agency or in academia to break free from the Demons and become so politically incorrect as to discuss demographic entrapment.
I have had the great good fortune of being an outsider, and of working in a small and weak department (no peer pressure, Demon 17), although in an excellent University, and especially in having plenty of time - and very good luck. For example, I had the opportunity of spending eight years in Geneva, a while my wife was working for WHO, which prove an admirable place in which to study the politics of a entrapment - especially at the time of the Cairo conference in 1993. Even so, breaking free from Hardinian taboo was a slow process and remarkably difficult
Models of how the Hardinian taboo might be lifted. It is already remarkably patchy among the general public. When for example I used to say on a bus in Geneva "Je m'occupe de la population, la surpopulation et la piege demographique" - "I am busy with population, overpopulation and the demographic trap" - everybody knew what I meant.
Many demographers are also aware - privately - of demographic entrapment. They are also aware - and do not dispute - that demography is corrupt by not recognizing demographic entrapment. When, at two recent demographic meetings, I pointed out that demography is corrupt, nobody has disputed it.
Entrapment is also beginning to be discussed more openly at in medical circles, probably as a result of recent papers -{55} {54} {13}{36} {39} 1-child families are also beginning to be discussed in countries other than China.
However, progress is slow, and the need for disentrapment programs ever more urgent.
There is the business-as-usual, or 'treacle model', in which I feel I am wading through treacle, and achieving too little, too slowly and too late. There is also the 'keyboard model' in which I think of myself searching for the right keys to press on a keyboard - whereupon the taboo would lift instantly. Much the best example of this would if be the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan were to ask UNDP (The United Nations Development Program) to report to him and the world on entrapment. This might lift the taboo universally and instantly . However, any senior politician, Minister, or, academic who 'came out' and demanded that demographic entrapment be addressed, could also have a substantial affected in lifting the taboo - especially if several did so simultaneously.
If you are a student, be sure to ask your teachers: "What do you think of what this fellow Maurice King has to say about demographic entrapment?" - and be quite sure that you get straight answers!
The complex of Demons might seem so overwhelming as to make it impossible to lift the Hardinian taboo on entrapment. There are however signs that it may be beginning to lift. Entrapment is beginning to be talked about - thanks to the courage of The BMJ. {36}{39}{13} All that it probably requires to start the dialogue on entrapment going properly, is for an imaginative and free-thinking NGO, such as OXFAM, or a major journal or institution to commit itself to lifting it. Active dialogue would then start, and probably escalate rapidly.
The significance of the GoldenDarn logo. All good websites have a logo. This one makes an attractive item of costume jewelry - for both sexes. It is also an excellent talking point - for discussing the virtues of the sustainable lifestyles and spreading the message. Most haberdashers stock inexpensive imitation gold thread. I'm told that the real thing can only be obtained in Lyon Lyon. Carry some little cards in your pocket with a needle and some thread wound round it to present to anybody you meet at the market, or in the lift who asks: "What is that curious thing you are wearing?"
The darn indicates that all material objects are used and repair it, until they drop,thus greatly saving materials and energy used for manufacture term, transport, and destruction.
Gold symbolizes the eternal value - especially to posterity - of living a sustainable lifestyle.
The steel of the needle indicates the hardness and difficulty of the task.
The needle remaining in the darn is to prick the conscience. Alas, it also pricks the finger !
The vertical position of the needle symbolizes the number '1' - for 1-child families.The green of the garment symbolizes the sustainability. Much the most important aspect of this, is the minimum consumption or fossil fuels, the minimum production of C02, and the minimum contribution to global warming. All other green objectives come second to this.
To what extent does the the author of this website himself lead a sustainable lifestyles? How hypocritical is he? I greatly doubt if I reach the sustainable level of 2 tonnes of CO2 per year. However, I do what I can, and must work out what my CO2 production actually is.
It is now March, and its jolly cold! I am presently clad in four layers of jerseys, a thick waistcoat, a scarf and and a woolly hat in in this unheated former coal cellar at a temperature of 10 degrees Centigrade - 'at the coal-face' as my wife says! I do have an electric blower fixed under my desk for emergency use, but I never use it for more than a minute or two.
We do have central heating but it is presently turned off. Woe betide me if I don't turn it on for a couple hours before my wife returns at the end of the week! When she is here we heat one room at a time.
We do have a 21 year-old VW Golf car, and very occasionally use it. It is presently so covered with lichens that it is to be recommended as an ecosystem of special scientific interest - an SSI !
We live on an excellent bus route and always use it. I am a frequent cyclist.
For more than 10 years I have had a cold bath every morning - and don't notice it - especially if I'm thinking about something else!
If, by this stage, a touch of humour has leaked into this website, remember that, as T S Elliott wrote "Humankind cannot bear too much reality" - the rest of this website is, alas - the only too real! "
Demon 18 - institutional conformity
Lady M. "Why does not the London School of Hygiene, defect en masse. They have nothing to fear from the Americans, and they have known about your work on entrapment for ten years now".
Maurice King. "In addition to the bonds of friendship, there is also Demon 17 - peer pressure, and conformity to institutional norms. The stronger the institution the stronger the bonds. I doubt if it were possible for the lockstep to be broken from within the London School of Hygiene, or the Harvard School of Public Health, or in any UN institution. I had the great good fortune to work in a splendid University, Leeds, but in a small and weak department. There were no institutional bonds".
"I received a letter from Anthony Bryceson, of the London School of Hygiene, congratulating me on my first entrapment paper. 7 When I said "Why not open up discussion at the School?" there was no reply".
In earlier years, when I was working on bush surgery, I used to feel, when I visited the School, that its very walls looked down on me saying "What you are doing is not epidemiology, you just listen to what other people have to say and write it down". Students in strong institutions have to be remember that while they are undergoing what the French would call their formation (being trained) - they are being formed or moulded, besides being 'taught'. At the same time they are inevitably undergoing their deformation. To be taught to be think one way, makes it more difficult to think in other ways. Strong institutions have strong bonds, and it is difficult to defect on an issue as emotive as this in the London School of Hygiene".
Lady M. "Why do you think that Basia Zabia continues to teach that carrying capacity has no relevance for man?" See.
Maurice King. "Until someone devises the necessary psychological tools to determine just which demons are bugging particular people, one can only guess. I would guess that in Basia's case it is about equally conformity with other demographers (Demon 17), conformity with the norms of the London School (Demon 17), the feminist agenda (Demon 8), and the human rights problems of fertility control (Demon 7), combined with the narrowness of her formation as a demographer. When I first started to work on entrapment, Philip Payne of the London School, told me that he was constantly telling his demographer colleagues what a narrow subject they had, obsessed with making the best of bad data, and how necessary it was for them to look more widely. In particular they assume that development is going to take place and making local carrying capacity irrelevant, when there is no hope of this taking place sufficiently fast to avoid starvation and slaughter - Demon 12.
The age of relativism. Demon 14 is busy
Lady M. Why don't your great institutions tackle the problem?
Maurice King This is the age of relativism. There are no absolutes any more. One of the absolutes that has perished is the absolute quest for truth, however disturbing it might be - the courage to contemplate and debate anything, whatever the consequences. It is the courage to get in among the nest of vipers, and the legion of demons - and the determination to tear the lighted fuse from the dynamite.
I suspect that Demon 14 is at work here - the metaphysical position of late capitalist man - What are we here for anyway? One has to be pretty certain of what we are here for (see below) to tackle the demons - absolutely regardless of what happens to oneself. I also suspect a secular shift (a change over time). I imagine that my teachers would have been much better able to deal with the demons than we are. I Think particularly of Lord Adrian FRS, the Nobel Prizewinner, who taught me at Cambridge (one lecture!). The orator at his funeral (Owen Chadwick, Professor of Divinity) observed that he did not know what wisdom was, but he new that Lord Adrian had it. I wish we could call Lord Adrian up up from the grave to hear what he has to say. Where have the wise men gone? They have left only us.
Meanwhile, such is now the temerity of the intellect that the greatest institutions in the land keep their silence - in England the Royal Society, no less, The Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, and The London School of Hygiene. In the US the Rockefeller Foundation, the Population Council and even Harvard are all tightly lockstepped.
The world has two great problems, population and global warming. Entrapment is the key to both. All other problems, even disentangling the human genome are trivial by comparison.
There is another reason. This is the age of the narrow specialist scrambling for research money, and so driven by the agenda of the funding agencies that research takes precedence over thought. There are thus powerful disincentives to getting ones mind round problems as distasteful as entrapment
The Lugano Report: On preserving capitalism in the 21st Century.{ 98}
By Susan George.
Susan George hopes that you are chilled by her Lugano Report - I was frozen stiff. She reminds us that the fossil fuel based economic activity of the present 2 billion 'haves' who burn that fossil fuel, is destroying the world, and that the 9 billion, who by 2050 will want that economic activity, will destroy the world even more disastrously - with no adequate means of either controlling or sharing such economic activity as the world might support sustainably. Meanwhile, the 'have nots' who will not enjoy such benefits are likely to become increasingly violent, North and South. The market economy is therefore destroyed either way. She concludes that we cannot both sustain the liberal free-market economy and continue to tolerate 'the superfluous billions'.
The Lugano report is ingenious. She imagines that some major commercial companies - the economic masters of the world - have asked an imaginary group of experts to report on the dangers to the survival of the liberal free market economy - 'the market', and how these dangers might be dealt with.
These experts start by reminding us that the biosphere or global ecosystem is a closed system, apart from the energy received from the sun, but that the economic activity within it is is an open system, which uses inputs of fossil fuel, materials, labour and capital, to produce goods and services - and waste, particularly the CO2. As the major greenhouse gas CO2 is already changing the global ecosystem irreversibly. If the economy is small, the ecosystem can contain the waste and environmental destruction that economic activity causes, so that there are few problems, which are mostly local. But if the economy enlarges so that it approaches the limits of the global ecosystem, there are great problems. Economic activity has increased 25-fold since 1900, and presently doubles about every 25 years. The limits of the global ecosystem have already been reached - the world is heating up, the weather is changing, glaciers are melting, trees and fish stocks have already mostly gone. Many species have gone for ever. There is also the prospect of much worse to come, especially if the permafrost melts and releases its frozen methane - an alarmingly efficient greenhouse gas. Once this starts to happen there is the danger of a positive feed-back loop which will heat the earth even more. Far from being controlled, economic activity and CO2 production is escalating, as 'the market' globalizes. Large firms take over small ones to become TNCs, transnational corporations (multinationals) some with economies which are larger than many states. Globalization is gathering speed. World Trade Organisation (WTO) hopes to make the world into one single economic system, with no barriers to trade in goods and services anywhere - even health services are to be privatised and made subject to market forces. 'The market' has, until now, so hugely benefited the 2 billion 'haves' who have been able to enjoy its benefits, that economic growth has become the global objective, regardless of its disastrous ecological consequences, and the impossibility of its being shared by everyone.
'Nature' - the well-being of the ecosystem - is therefore the greatest obstacle to the future of economic activity. The message has to be 'protect the ecosystem, or perish'. Somehow, economic activity, and 'the market' particularly its most harmful aspects (fossil fuel consumption) has to be limited, if the ecosystem is to continue to be habitable. Since the quantity of economic activity that the biosphere can tolerate is finite - and has already been exceeded - economic activity will have somehow to be controlled and shared among the 9 billion. Sharing is exactly what the uncontrolled market, especially the globalized market, does not do. Such is its behaviour, is that, in the absence of vigorous redistribution, the rich get steadily richer, while the poor get relatively and often absolutely poorer. That control and sharing has to happen. Susan George points out that, if it does not happen, the world will be destroyed either by the burning of its fossil fuel, and/or by the violence of the 7 billion 'have-nots' who will not be able to burn it. The process would be bad enough were there more hope of controlling global economic activity. Presently, such agencies as might control it are powerless.
Not a happy prospect! So what should the economic masters of the world do to preserve it for the liberal free-market economy for as long as possible? It would be logical for them to maintain a vigorous 'PRS' - population strategy, so as to achieve a global population of 4 billion, by assisting the four horsemen of the apocalypse, conquest, war, famine and pestilence, to which she adds a fifth, ecological collapse, do their worst. She does not argue that this is their unwritten policy, still less does she support it, but that it would be logical if it were.
What then might be the answers to such gruesome free-market logic? She has little to say. A Tobin tax on financial transfers is long overdue. She is right about the need for population control, but not about the means. The plight of the most miserable have-nots, particularly in Africa, is that they are demographically trapped, and like China need 1-child families, if they are to avoid starvation and violence. If they are to be counseled to have them, we should all have them. If so there needs to be policy for a '1-child world', or more practically, a '1-or-2-childworld'. A healthy lifestyle now needs to be a sustainable lifestyle, and especially a low CO2 lifestyle - 'green health'. So why not update WHOs definition of health? What about "For the sake of our children and their children, and not only for ourselves, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social, and ecological well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".
Notes on agriculture
These two graphs amplify what has been said earlier about the importance of soil organic matter, and the limited and only temporary benefit of fertilizer. {146} {147} There are very few agricultural stations where studies of soil fertility have been done over many years. One of them is Kabete in Kenya from which these two studies come.
Declining soil organic matter. Various plots were treated with the farmyard manure, nitrogen and phosphate, and with nitrogen and phosphate with farmyard manure combined. There was also a control plot are treated given nothing.
Soil organic matter declined in all of them - in the control plot fastest, but also in the plot given farmyard manure and inorganic fertilizers.
Yields with various treatments Test plots were given inorganic fertilizer (nitrogen and phosphate) at two different levels, and also the farmyard manure at two different levels, alone and in combination. There was a control plot given nothing, and another in which the stover (crop residues) where applied to the land. During the 25 years of the trial yields fell in all of them - most in the control plot, but also in the plot given 10 tonnes of farmyard manure to the hectare - usually quite impracticable.
Africa's future population. See A colleague writes: "Although the UN does projections to 2150, it is so conjectural that I would never do or show it. We can do superb projections 10 years ahead, poorer ones at 50 years ahead and miserable ones 100 hears hence. You should take more demographic methods courses sometime! Here is an example: if you take the US population in 1790 and in 1890 and then project to 1990 exponentially you get an estimate of over 1 billion. If you make a linear linear projection you get about l/2 the current size."
I reply "I would hope that these projections were made neither by extrapolating exponentially, nor linearly, but rather by estimating likely trends in fertility and mortality in particular age groups, at particular dates, and projecting the future population that way".
"It is necessary to point out that - starvation and violence permitting - Africa's population will not have leveled off by 2050, and that considerable increase is to be expected thereafter - again, starvation and violence permitting".
Northern lifestyles
This is what a Northern lifestyles ought to be. It is said to be so Franciscan in spirit as to merit nailing to the door of the basilica in Assisi. Since we are so much concerned with Southern fertility, Demon 3 compels us to say something about Northern lifestyles.
Out of compassion for a beautiful world and those who come after me, I will strictly ration my fossil fuel consumption (and my global warming). I will even have a cold shower each morning (soon I won't notice it).
