Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

Go Shrink Yourself

Here's an idea for saving our planet: make people smaller.

Sounds crazy, right? Nobody wants to be small. Everybody wants to be big. How would you make people smaller, anyway? Genetic modification? Wouldn't it be horribly risky? Even if it worked, wouldn't it be embarrassing and dangerous to be smaller than other people? I can already hear you snickering, "You first."

You're right. It's dangerous and crazy. But it might be less dangerous and crazy than the alternatives.

Our planet is in trouble. We're overheating its atmosphere. We're exhausting its resources. Just about every analysis suggests that we have no hope of averting disaster using known technologies. Solar power, wind, carbon caps—we should do all of that. But it won't come close to being enough. And even if we invent some brilliant solution to climate change, the next environmental crisis is just around the corner. There are simply too many people using too many resources. We're overtaxing our planet.

Could we get more resources from other planets? Theoretically, sure. But right now, we can't even afford to go back to the moon.

This is where contrarian thinking comes in handy. Maybe we don't have to find more resources. Maybe we can reduce the number of people.

That's the agenda of the Optimum Population Trust, which has just released an analysis of the environmental costs of bringing new children into the world. "Contraception is almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies as a means of combating climate change," says the trust's press release. Likewise, other environmental challenges—soil erosion, water shortage, deforestation, fish depletion, starvation—"would be easier to solve with fewer people."

The argument is totally, screamingly, urgently correct. Yet, as David Fahrenthold reported in yesterday's Washington Post, the Obama administration won't touch it, and a U.N. official calls it "an insult to developing countries." Why the resistance? Because everyone fears coercive population control. The only thing more hard-wired than our desire to procreate is our desire to fornicate.

So: If we're devouring our planet, and we can't find more resources, and we refuse to have fewer children, where does that leave us?

Hence my proposal: Shrinking our numbers isn't the only way to reduce our environmental impact. Another way is to shrink our size. Don't tell me it's impossible. Look what we've done to dogs.

If you come up with a less crazy solution, let me know.

The Two-Child Policy

Oops!

Remember that Chinese policy of restricting most couples to one child? Apparently, the bean counters in Shanghai (actually, they're human-being counters) have changed their minds. According to Reuters:

Shanghai is urging eligible couples to have two children as worries about the looming liability of an aging population outweighs concerns about over-stretched resources, a city official said on Friday. The policy marks the first time in decades Chinese officials have actively encouraged procreation. ... More children would help relieve the heavy pressure from aging people, said Zhang Meixin, a spokesman for the Shanghai Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission ...

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in April that by 2050 China ... will have just 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 and above, compared with 7.7 in 1975. ... China's underfunded state pension system and shrinking family size has removed a traditional layer of support for elders, leaving society ill-prepared to cope with an aging population.

You don't say.

This is the main problem with central family planning (if you don't count the tyranny). Centralized systems are more farsighted but less sensitive and adaptive than decentralized systems. Look at abortion rates in nontotalitarian countries: They go up or down in conjunction with economic indicators. Each woman decides how big a family she can afford and whether now is a good time to have a baby. Sure, there are outliers and mistakes. But overall, the crowd of procreators acts prudently. And when circumstances change, family size adjusts accordingly.

Centralized systems interfere with this natural dynamic. They make it harder to change course. And they never seem to learn that the problem is centralization itself.

So good luck, Shanghai being counters. May your generational ledgers even out, despite you.

Surrogacy and the State

Is the global market in womb rentals out of control? Does it need regulation?

I wondered about that three weeks ago when I saw this Reuters story: "Poverty Makes Surrogates of Indian Women in Gujarat." The $4,000 to $8,000 paid to successful surrogates in India is "a huge sum of money in a country where many live on less than $2 a day," Rina Chandran reported. But compared with U.S. rates, it's cheap. That's why foreigners have begun

to flock to [Nayna] Patel's clinic, drawn by the lower costs, relaxed attitude toward surrogates and lack of legislation. A draft bill on surrogacy is pending before parliament, and meanwhile, hundreds of clinics have mushroomed across the country, with critics saying touts promoting this "reproductive tourism" care little for the health or rights of the surrogates. ... Patel has a list of nearly 200 [would-be surrogates] and is seeing more women walk in everyday because they are feeling the pinch of the slowdown.

And yet, Chandran noted, Patel "draws the line at gay couples."

Cheap reproductive labor for wealthy foreigners, but no gay parents allowed? For the usual incoherent combination of lefty reasons—not enough private discrimination in working conditions, too much private discrimination in family values—I felt the urge to support regulation of the industry.

Then, yesterday, Reuters published another investigation of overseas surrogacy conditions, this time in China. "With China's rising affluence, increasing numbers of infertile couples have been seeking surrogate mothers," James Pomfret reported. "Surrogacy agencies have been recruiting girls, often from poor villages, to have babies on behalf of prospective parents."

Should the government do something about this? Actually, authorities are already on the case:

In the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, three young surrogate first-time mothers were discovered by authorities hiding in a communal flat. Soon afterwards, district family planning and security officers broke into the flat, bundled them into a van and drove them to a district hospital where they were manhandled into a maternity ward, the mothers recounted to Reuters. "I was crying 'I don't want to do this'," said a young woman called Xiao Hong, who was pregnant with four-month-old twins. "But they still dragged me in and injected my belly with a needle," the 20-year-old told Reuters. ... Another of the surrogates, who said she'd come from a village in Sichuan province, recounted how officers made her take pills then surgically removed her three-month-old fetus while she was unconscious.

This isn't the kind of policing liberals have in mind when they call for tighter regulation of the fertility industry. But the tricky thing about official intervention is that once the state gets its foot in the door, you don't necessarily get to dictate what it can and can't do.

Every time the global market in human body parts and rentals looks ugly enough to regulate, I'm reminded how much uglier things can get when the government steps in.

A Black Market in Children

If the government stopped you from bearing a child, would you buy one instead?

Before you say no, look at what's happening in China, as reported by Andrew Jacobs in the New York Times:

The Chinese government insists there are fewer than 2,500 cases of human trafficking each year, a figure that includes both women and children. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands. Sun Haiyang, whose son disappeared in 2007, has collected a list of 2,000 children in and around Shenzhen who have disappeared in the past two years.

Where are all these kids going?

[M]ost of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say. The demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country's strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business.

The family-planning policy fines most couples who bear more than one child:

[I]n many rural areas, including Anxi County, a resident whose first child is a daughter is allowed to have a second. Having a third child, however, can mean steep fines as high as $5,800 and other penalties that include the loss of a breadwinner's job. A boy, by contrast, can often be bought for half that amount, and authorities may turn a blind eye if the child does not need to be registered as a new birth in the locale. In some cases, local officials may even encourage people desperate for a son to buy one. After their 3-month-old son died, Zhou Xiuqin said, the village family planning official went to her home and tried to comfort her and her husband, who was compelled to have a vasectomy after the birth of the boy, their second child. "He said, ‘Don't cry, stop crying, you can always buy another one,' " Ms. Zhou recalled.

And that's just what the couple did. They bought a 5-year-old boy for $3,500.

This is what happens when you block legal access to what people desperately want: You create a black market. That's true of drugs, abortions, and even children. The black-market problem doesn't settle any of these policy questions. But before deciding on the policy, you had better take it into account.

Some Chinese parents are trying to defeat the human traffickers by catching kidnappers on surveillance video. Other activists are "agitating for the establishment of a DNA database for children." One activist tells Jacobs, "If the government can launch satellites and catch spies, they can figure out how to find stolen children."

Can a totalitarian regime of cameras, DNA databases, and forced vasectomies stop a black market in children? I don't know. But it sure can start one.

The Temptation of Totalitarian Birth Control

People in a democratic country wouldn't let their government restrict family size ... would they?

Yes, they would. Agence France Presse reports:

More than 80 percent of Filipinos support family planning and almost half believe the government should limit the number of children a couple can have, according to a survey released here Monday. ... 44 percent believed that "the government should pass a law specifying the number of children."

Why would Filipinos say this? "The Philippine population now stands at around 90 million, with an annual growth rate of 2.04 percent, one of the highest in Asia," the article explains. And guess who's behind the high birth rate?

The findings come despite a widespread campaign by the dominant Roman Catholic Church opposing a draft law that would make family planning services more widely available in the Philippines. ... The Catholic Church, which counts over 80 percent of Filipinos as followers, has said the reproductive health bill, which has been pending in Congress for months, is headed for defeat after a high-pressure campaign by bishops.

What a mess. On one side, we have the Catholic bishops, who are so adamantly opposed to contraception that they're blocking the provision of birth control for voluntary use. On the other side, we have an emerging near-majority of the population that now favors coercive limits on family size. Do the math: The Church claims to represent 80 percent of the population, yet more than 80 percent reject its teachings on contraception, and 44 percent think the government should impose laws in precisely the opposite direction. It looks as though the bishops' anti-contraceptive absolutism is driving their own flock into the arms of a totalitarian remedy.

But in a modern society, no government could really enforce a cap on family size, could it?

Sure it could. Look next door at China, which uses state-controlled subsidies to punish couples who bear more than one child. It's quite effective. And here's what's really scary: The Chinese government has learned to treat children like any other state-allocated resource. It doesn't just impose a quota. It does what it can to guarantee your share. This helps the population accept the system.

In effect, China provides a "warranty" on children: You're limited to a state-prescribed quota, but you can refill the quota if you lose your child under specified circumstances, such as last year's earthquake. And what a warranty! The central planners don't just offer you the right to have another kid. They really deliver. Here's the report from Xinhua:

Officials of the National Population and Family Planning Commission told a conference here Friday that 757 Chinese mothers who lost children in the May 12 quake have become pregnant again, reflecting special exceptions to national and local population policies. As of Dec. 31, the officials told the agency's annual work conference, 5,724 bereaved mothers had received free reproduction services, including counseling, guidance, health exams, sterilization reversals and fertility treatments.

This is exactly what the government promised seven months ago. And, sure enough, according to the New York Times, the regime has "sent teams of doctors to carry out reverse sterilization operations." Now, that's what I call service. The state uses financial penalties to close up your reproductive system. Then, if you end up below quota, the state reopens you for business. In fact, if necessary, it does the business itself. Even the fertility treatments are free.

But state manipulation of family size is just an Asian thing, right? It couldn't happen here.

Think again. Guess which country now has Europe's highest birth rate? France. How has it achieved this? "State-provided child care and family support payments," including "nanny subsidies."  Australia has "cash payments for newborns." Spain pays "2,500 euros per new child." Austria offers "monthly payouts of $547 for the youngest child until the age of 3, and additional monthly checks ranging from $132 to $192."

These are governments that think they need more births. Most governments think they need fewer. If their citizens decide to support state-enforced limits on childbearing, and if agencies help each family fill its allotment, it's easy to envision a world where population growth is finally brought under control by the financial power of the state.

Slate V: Wall Street's big swinging digits and other science news from Grand Unified Weekly:

Unnatural Family Planning

Friday morning, I thought I was all done investigating the ins and outs of the Chinese one-child policy. And then this happened. On Friday evening, Xinhua, the state news service, reported:

China's family planning authority are to send a medical team to conduct surgery to reverse sterilization operations on parents wanting another child in China's earthquake zone. Zhang Shikun, director of the science and technology bureau of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said, "The team, comprised of experts on childbearing, will conduct surgery in the quake-hit areas to provide technological support for those wanting to give birth to another." The team was part of the commission's plan to provide free reproduction services, including counseling, guidance, surgery, and the implementation of artificial reproduction technology, for those who wish to have another child, she said.

You have to hand it to the Chinese government. First, they tell you not to give birth to more than one child (unless you run a farm, or you're an ethnic minority, or you and your spouse have no siblings, or a bunch of other exceptions). On the other hand, they're going all-out to make sure that if you obeyed that policy and lost your only child in the quake, you can get another.

Those tubes you tied, thinking you were done procreating? We'll untie them for you, gratis. Vasectomy? Schmectomy. In fact, if you're too old now to make babies the old-fashioned way, we'll provide "artificial reproduction technology" to help you along.

Now, that's what I call full-service public health insurance.

What's really going on here, of course, is public fury over all the kids who died in poorly built schools. The government limited those families to one child and then failed to protect their kids. The whole premise of Saving Private Ryan was that the U.S. government dare not cost a family its last child. But that's exactly what has happened in China, thousands of times over. According to Xinhua, family-planning authorities in Sichuan, the quake-hit province, estimate that 7,000 families lost their sole children in the disaster, and 16,000 sole children in other families suffered injuries or disabilities.

Through this combination of totalitarianism and incompetence, the Chinese government took away one of nature's greatest fulfillments: procreation. Now it's trying to make up for that theft by delivering surgeries and technologies to replace your lost child with a new one. You have to wonder what other options the government would be offering bereft parents in their 40s if reproductive cloning were sufficiently refined.

Would that be wrong, once the technology is safe? If the one-child limit is morally defensible, and if that child dies through government neglect, and if it's OK to use artificial technology to help the couple make a new child ... what's wrong with cloning the old one?

Go ahead, speak up. It's a free country.

The One-Child Warranty, Continued

Last week I wrote about the warranty on children killed by the recent earthquake in China. I referred to an exemption to the country's one-child policy, allowing parents who lost their kids to replace them. At one point, I asked, "Why should the warranty apply only to this earthquake? What about the floods of 1991 and 1998? What about the drought of 1988? How many couples lost their only kids in those calamities? Where's their compensation?"

Many of you wrote in to correct me, noting that the replacement allowance is a general rule under the one-child policy. I wasn't satisfied with these assertions, so I went to the Chinese government's Web site for clarification. After some digging around, the only direct nationwide statement I could find was in the "Population and Family Planning Law of the People's Republic of China," adopted in 2001. Here's the basic language (Article 18):

The State maintains its current policy for reproduction, encouraging late marriage and childbearing and advocating one child per couple. Where the requirements specified by laws and regulations are met, plans for a second child, if requested, may be made. Specific measures in this regard shall be formulated by the people's congress or its standing committee of a province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central Government.

And here's the sole reference to damaged children (Article 27):

Where the only child of a couple is disabled or killed in accidents, and the couple decides not to have or adopt another child, the local people's government shall provide the couple with necessary assistance.

So, the general policy is vague. Implicitly, at least, you can decide to have another child if yours is killed or even disabled, as long as the tragedy was an accident.

Slate's Lucy Morrow Caldwell contacted several China experts who helped us with the original "Explainer" on this topic. We couldn't find records of the policy being waived in previous disasters, but Vanessa Fong of Harvard and Wang Feng of the University of California confirmed that the policy has traditionally permitted a second child if the first is killed or disabled. Cindy Sun of Fudan University directed us to a May 28 statement from the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China. The statement includes a clause that an acquaintance of mine translates as follows:

To the families whose children were injured or killed in the earthquake, the benefit of additional birth should be given, according to the number, sex, and injury of the children who survived the disaster.

In other words, precise numerical replacement, with different values for boys and girls, since many rural parents are allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl.

We also found a link to the earthquake policy issued by the Family Planning Commission in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, which bore the brunt of the disaster. A second acquaintance paraphrases its main points this way:

1) A "green light" for parents whose only child was injured, disabled, or killed.
2) The government will proactively work with these parents if they wish to have another child. This includes registering them and providing reproductive services.

Here's his translation of the policy's fine print on injury or disability:

Medical identification shall be conducted on injured/disabled children of single-child families. If the child is certified to have second-degree or above injury or disability, the parents shall be assisted to apply for bearing a second child.

A third acquaintance translates the fine print somewhat differently:

For those whose only child was disabled in the earthquake, local Birth-Control Agencies shall record the cases and compare them to the "Medical Disability Standards for Children from One-Child Family." For those qualified, the local agencies shall help them file the applications for the birth of a second child. The Birth-Control Council of Chengdu city will perform medical assessment and approval process promptly.

One final note: Article 11 of Sichuan's family-planning regulations stipulates that couples may have a second child if "the first child has non-genetic defects and is unable to grow up to be a normal laborer."

So, here's the full policy, as far as I can piece it together from the available documents: You can replace your child (in the numerical sense) in the event of death or disability, as long as the cause was an accident. Extent of replacement depends on the number and sex of the children you lost. Replacement for disability requires medical certification that the damage is second-degree, as measured by official standards. Replacement is also available for disabling defects, but not if they're genetic, presumably because in that case the replacement might be similarly defective.

Got that? To me, it sounds a lot like the piece of paper that came with my PC monitor. So, there's your warranty. Let's hope you never have to use it.

The One-Child Warranty

A lot of people in China are angry. The earthquake that struck there two weeks ago has destroyed their entire stock of the country's most strictly rationed item: children.

Here's the background from the New York Times:

Thousands of parents have openly challenged the government over why so many schools collapsed during the earthquake. An estimated 10,000 students are believed to have died. The anguish of parents and grandparents has been compounded by the one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 to control population growth.

Imagine being one of these parents. The government has restricted you to one child, and now that child is dead. You've lost your whole family in one stroke.

But wait: The government has come up with a solution. You can replace your defunct child with a new one. The Associated Press explains the offer:

Chinese officials said Monday that the country's one-child policy exempts families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled in the country's devastating earthquake. Those families can obtain a certificate to have another child, the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee in the capital of hard-hit Sichuan province said. ... Chinese couples who have more than one child are commonly punished by fines. The announcement says that if a child born illegally was killed in the quake, the parents will no longer have to pay fines for that child-but the previously paid fines won't be refunded. If the couple's legally born child is killed and the couple is left with an illegally born child under the age of 18, that child can be registered as the legal child-an important move that gives the child previously denied rights including free nine years of compulsory education.

Got that? If your child is broken, you can apply for a certificate to get a replacement child. Or you can substitute a used child and transfer the license from your previous child, with all the attendant financial rights. However, there will be no refunds.

It reads like a warranty or a software agreement. Except we're not talking about consumer electronics. We're talking about children. This is what happens when you ration people like commodities.

A few years ago, I lambasted the one-child policy as a forced-abortion machine. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about global warming, and it occurred to me that the single most effective thing anybody has done to slow that process over the last 30 years is probably the one-child policy. I still think it's a colossal offense against human rights. And in the present context, it's a case study in the regulation of human beings as a kind of property. If you lose your quota through no fault of your own, you can get a coupon to refill it. Half of me is grateful to the Chinese government for giving these bereft couples a second chance. The other half is revolted that the government controls such things.

If you're going to replace children like broken toasters, one per customer, then you'd better standardize the warranty. When I looked for the earthquake exemption report on Xinhua, the state news agency, I couldn't find it. Then I realized why. It was granted by the authorities in Chengdu. It's a local exemption. The last thing the national government wants is to broadcast it in other provinces, where people are still being held to the one-child policy.

Sorry, but that won't do. Why should the warranty apply only to this earthquake? What about the floods of 1991 and 1998? What about the drought of 1988? How many couples lost their only kids in those calamities? Where's their compensation?

Forget it. You can't replace children like toasters. You shouldn't ration them like toasters, either.