Population and “The Pill”

The Time Has Come is a book, in many ways good, in one way remarkable. It is unusual to find so sticky a subject treated with the objectivity which Dr. Rock, a Catholic, applies to his discussion. Some aspects of the human situation as it concerns the practice of medicine and the problem of human survival seem inevitably to bring out our worst natures. Everyone, for example, seems to be determined to be either wrong or right at the top of his voice when we deal with vivisection or nuclear warfare.

This is not the author’s method. Coolly, writing in a sparse and quite unrhetorical style, he covers the controversy on birth control in so reasonable a way as to bruise but little even those who do not presently agree with his conclusions. One cannot help but attend the thoughts of one who has for so many years worked with and reflected on the diverse aspects of his subject. Some of his material is startling. Malthus may yet discover us eating our words of ridicule concerning his fears. It took some 800,000 years for the earth to acquire a population of three billion. The leap to six billion will take but forty years.

RN

About the Author

Robert J. Needles

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The Time Has Come is a book, in many ways good, in one way remarkable. It is unusual to find so sticky a subject treated with the objectivity which Dr. Rock, a Catholic, applies to his discussion. Some aspects of the human situation as it concerns the practice of medicine and the problem of human survival seem inevitably to bring out our worst natures. Everyone, for example, seems to be determined to be either wrong or right at the top of his voice when we deal with vivisection or nuclear warfare.

This is not the author’s method. Coolly, writing in a sparse and quite unrhetorical style, he covers the controversy on birth control in so reasonable a way as to bruise but little even those who do not presently agree with his conclusions. One cannot help but attend the thoughts of one who has for so many years worked with and reflected on the diverse aspects of his subject. Some of his material is startling. Malthus may yet discover us eating our words of ridicule concerning his fears. It took some 800,000 years for the earth to acquire a population of three billion. The leap to six billion will take but forty years.