Letter on Margaret Sanger edition

The Chemical Engineering magazine (tce) ran a series of twelve articles on Chemical Engineers who changed the world, including ones who developped antibiotics, and ones who developped the pill.  The article about the pill sang Margaret Sanger's praises, and I felt that it needed a reply, and my letter which is copied below was printed in version 837 of tce.  The reply which came the following month was given star letter status and I was not allowed the right to reply.  However although the reply to my letter looked very scientific and was complete with references, it contained some statements and inferences that could be construed as misleading, so rather belatedly, I plan to set the record straight in this blog.  I will post the reply to my letter and my reply in a later post.

Madam,
In respect of the voting for top chemical engineers, I would like to suggest that the chemical engineers who designed the reactors that allowed large scale production of antibiotics deserve votes more than those who designed the birth control pill. Were it not for the large scale production of antibiotics, many of us would not be here because either we or our ancestors have relied on antibiotics to stay alive.
The best arguments for birth control run along the lines of sustainability. Aristotle and Plato promoted population control methods such as to give stability to the ideal city state. Malthus’ 1798 ‘essay on the principle of population’, said that population grows exponentially while food supply grows more slowly, at best arithmetically and thus state redistribution of wealth was counter-productive. This idea would prove deadly when it was applied to the great Irish potato famine which ran from 1845 to 1852.
Population has increased hugely since Malthus’ day, but food production has increased much faster. Chemical engineers helped to make Malthus wrong with agrochemicals fighting hunger and antibiotics fighting disease. Chemical engineers have enabled people to do as God told the earliest people: to fill the earth and subdue it.
Malthus was followed by Margaret Sanger, a committed eugenicist who promoted population control by birth control, and abortion which claims the lives of 127 million per year worldwide. Sanger’s aim was a slow population growth, but in practise the pill is leading to rapid population decline and an aging population.
The pill enabled the cultural changes of the sexual revolution, which led to a lot of broken families and pain and a £100b/y tax bill in the UK. Natural family planning the other hand is a healthy alternative to the pill and is very strongly correlated with happy, stable families and responsible parenting.
David Ashby

Montrose, UK