Alan Gregg: Humanity as a Cancer of the Earth
I propose to offer only one idea regarding the population problem... It is... the view of one who has had a medical training - a single idea around which subordinate reflections of a rather general sort present themselves...
New growths of any kind... involve an increase in the number of some one kind of cell and, hence, a corresponding increase in the size of the organ or tissue involved... In all but one instance, organs and tissues in their growth seem to 'know' when to stop. The exception, of course, is... cancer...
What are some of the characteristics of new growths? One of the simplest is that they commonly exert pressure on adjacent structures and, hence, displace them. New growth within closed cavities, like the skull, exert pressures that kill, because any considerable displacement is impossible. Pressure develops, usually destroying first the function and later the substance of the normal cells thus pressed upon. For a comparison with a closed cavity, think of an island sheltering a unique form of animal life that is hunted to extinction by man. The limited space of the island resembles the cranial cavity whose normal contents cannot escape the murderous invader. Border warfare, mass migrations, and those wars that are described as being the result of population pressures resemble the pressures exerted by new growths. We actually borrow not only the word pressure but also the word invasion to describe the way in which new growths by direct extension preempt the space occupied by other cells or types of life. The destruction of forests, the annihilation or near extinction of various animals, and the soil erosion consequent to overgrazing illustrate the cancerlike effect that man - in mounting numbers and heedless arrogance - has had on other forms of life on what we call 'our' planet.
Metastasis is the word used to describe another phenomenon of malignant growth in which detached neoplastic cells carried by the lymphatics or the blood vessels lodge at a distance from the primary focus or point of origin and proceed to multiply without direct contact with the tissue or organ from which they came. It is actually difficult to avoid using the word colony in describing this thing physicians call metastasis. Conversely, to what degree can colonization of the Western Hemisphere be though of as metastasis of the white race?
Cancerous growths demand food; but so far as I know, they have never been cured by getting it. Furthermore, although their blood supply is commonly so disordered that persistent bleeding from any body orifice suggests that a new growth is its cause, the organism as a whole often experiences a loss of weight and strength that suggests either poisoning or the existence of an inordinate nutritional demand by neoplastic cells - perhaps both. The analogies can be found in 'our plundered planet' - in man's effect on other forms of life. These hardly need elaboration - certainly the ecologists would be prepared to supply examples in plenty of man's inroads upon other forms of life. Our rivers run silt - although we could better think of them as running the telltale blood of cancer.
At the center of a new growth, and apparently partly as a result of its inadequate circulation, necrosis often sets in - the death and liquidation of the cells that have, as it were, dispensed with order and self-control in their passion to reproduce out of all proportion to their usual number in the organism. How nearly the slums of our great cities resemble the necrosis of tumors raises the whimsical query: Which is the more offensive to decency and beauty, the slums or the fetid detritus of a growing tumor?http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/citation/121/3150/681
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