Your Health

We have always been a warring species; like too many rats in a cage, we turn on each other

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

November 12, 2021

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

What catastrophic event could end all lives on this small planet? Some say nuclear war; others, another pandemic worse than the current one that’s caused over 700,000 deaths just in North America. Still others say it is the failure to tackle the problem of climate change. Here’s a surprise. The ultimate disease is a population time bomb that keeps ticking every second of the day – and we all ignore it.

It took 123 years for the human population to grow from one to two billion people. Then, only 40 years to reach six billion, and now the population is 7.8 billion. This year, 82 million people will be added to an already packed planet. It’s like adding another city the size of Richmond, Virginia, or Buffalo, New York, to our planet every day!

Increased population is now causing huge health and migration problems. Recent years have seen enormous waves of refugees fleeing conflict in desperation using any means to get somewhere better. We’ve all seen the gut-wrenching images of flimsy boats in the Mediterranean, and now hundreds are attempting to cross the English Channel from France in the same manner. The U.S. southern border with Mexico offers more scenes of chaos. All need housing, food, and health care.

In nature, if too many deer, wolves kill them. But humans have a different problem. Too many of us, and the threat arises of our own makings: poor quality air, water, land and sea.

What is going on is frightening. Climate change is just the start. This year, the heat dome in western Canada caused 446 deaths in British Columbia. Floods in Europe and China ravaged entire villages. Massive fires destroy forests and choke the air with smoke. Polar bears can’t find the sea ice needed to keep alive.

A seminal experiment a year ago provided an important lesson about animal behaviour. Two rats were placed in a cage. They survived without hostility. With the addition of another rat or two, the fighting began for space. Similarly, humans do not fare well in confined settings when resources are lacking. Conflict inevitably ensues, not peaceful rethinking and behaviour change. We have always been a warring species. Like too many rats in a cage, we turn on each other.

So, while you are reading about carbon taxes so complex they are impossible to understand, think about what’s causing the root problem.

There will be more people on this planet. Projections suggest the global population will level out at 11 billion around the year 2100.

To do so, will we keep cutting down trees, demanding more energy, tossing more plastic in the sea? Very likely, yes. Some good people will do all they can to find solutions. But efforts to fix those problems will have little impact if we keep behaving like rats.

We can all do some finger pointing. It’s easy to find somebody else who is making things worse. We can all disagree about solutions too, but we have got to get better, and quickly, at living together without conflict every time we don’t see eye to eye.

Yet, we couldn’t do it when there were only one billion on the planet. We aren’t doing it now with nine billion. Squeezing in three billion more, what’s our plan for getting along?

We must take care of the planet. But we must also start taking better care of each other. Or are we going to be like rats in a cage?

Newsletter Signup

Stay in the loop with exclusive news, stories, and insights—delivered straight to your inbox. No fluff, just real content that matters. Sign up today!

In this article:#LatestPost

Up Next:

The other Pandemic that keeps killing; Part II

Don't Miss:

What would make your skin turn yellow? It is simply a lack of Vitamin B-12

Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

Click to comment