Preface
This story is a narration of the history and development of a major disaster, perhaps the biggest to befall the human species. As has been found to be the case in most disasters, there were several warning signals that led up to breaking point. In retrospect, the fact that we were blind to the early indications of the ensuing crisis, only serves to make it more tragic.
Yet, as sad as it may be, it is important that the story be told. This is an age of rapid technological change, characterized by the constant rate of new inventions and discoveries. It has long been known that we have been altering the world we live in. Some of our inventions have effects upon our very bodies, altering our physiology and biochemistry - not always for the better. The crisis in question is an example of such change. It is regrettable that the few individuals that advocated caution, were perceived to be resistant to change, and labelled reactionary.
Perhaps this crisis will serve as a lesson, a learning experience for our species to avoid such calamities in future. Assuming, hoping, of course, that our species survives to see the future.
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Sunday, February 25
Tokyo - 8:00 P.M.
If he'd realized he was covering what was to become one of the biggest crises ever faced by human civilization, perhaps he wouldn't have been cheerful. Or perhaps he'd have been ecstatic. After all, the success of a journalist's career was generally governed by how many ‘exclusives' he or she could get. Evidently, in the information age, nothing stayed exclusive for long, so it generally came down to the number and magnitude of the stories one could get, and how quickly one could get them.
Takeshi Kawakami was well aware of that, which was why he was particularly happy - he'd got an angle and a story that nobody else had. And he'd just spoken to the Assistant Editor on the phone, who said that it was definitely a great story. With a decent job at The Asahi Shimbun, the most popular paper in his country, Takeshi was already doing pretty well. But with an exclusive like this, he was surely on his way to success.
It occurred to him to thank his mother, since she was the one who'd led him to the idea. Of course, she'd really just been nagging him as usual about getting married and settling down, but if it hadn't been for that, he probably wouldn't have thought of it then. He picked up the phone to call her, blissfully unaware of the chain of events he had set in motion.
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New York – 6:10 A.M.
Brenda Miller was up, even though it was Sunday, and she paced around her kitchen impatiently. Her husband was still asleep, and it was pretty much the only day of the week when they were actually at home together. But she didn't want to wake him up herself, since he'd been very tired when he got home the previous night. Ever since he was promoted at work, he had 18-hour workdays and was usually tired.
Brenda was an editor with the International Herald Tribune, coordinating international news between IHT and its various partners; she also wrote a weekly op-ed column. So she had a very busy schedule herself, which made spending any time with her spouse that much harder. Sighing, she decided to get some work done, and went up the staircase as noisily as possible, hoping he'd wake up. She picked up her laptop, shuffled around the room, then came back down and got started.
Skimming through the entries in the online database, she browsed region-wise, going from east to west, as was her habit. One item from IHT's Japan partner, Asahi Shimbun, caught her attention. When she read the subtitle under the caption, she froze, gaping in disbelief.
"Oh my god!" she thought, "I am definitely picking this one up." Silently, she worked rapidly, trying to race her fingers faster than they could go.
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Tuesday, February 27
Geneva – 2:00 P.M.
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Birth Rates Crash Globally
Brenda Miller International Herald Tribune
Monday, February 26, 2007
Birth rates in several countries across the world have plummeted dramatically over the past month, falling at an unprecedented pace. Countries that have so far reported a steep decline in births include the U.S, U.K, and several other European Union member nations, as well as East Asian countries and South Africa. In many cases, birth rates have dropped by over 90%.
The sudden drop was first brought to light by The Asahi Shimbun, the IHT partner in Japan. Public Health officials in Japan confirmed to an AS reporter that the total number of births recorded have fallen drastically over the past month. IHT correspondents investigated the matter further, and uncovered the fact that the severe decrease is not limited to Japan alone. Health officials in New York, California and Texas were able to verify the fall in births. There has so far been no statement from the White House on the issue.
Officials across the world seem to have been taken completely by surprise by this abrupt and rapid decline. The cause of this decline is not yet clearly known. However, a medical expert in New York stated that it might be caused by an unknown virus or pathogenic agent.
"Right now, we don't know what's caused the drop, or how long it's going to stay this way. But it's definitely a very serious situation. If the trend continues, it'll be a major crisis," said Dr. Donald Carter of the New York State Department of Health.
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Staring unhappily at the article on his monitor, David Farrow sat in his office in the large building on Avenue Appia. A scientist at the World Health Organization, Farrow was deeply troubled by the major media hubbub. If it turned out that the crisis might have been avoided, or that it'd been caused by some lapse on the part of monitoring agencies, that would be an embarrassment to the U.N. and WHO, not to mention several governments across the world.
Of late, there'd been a lot of pressure from higher administration to avoid precisely that sort of thing. Not surprising, considering the major loss of image that the U.N. and its agencies had suffered in recent years. The top brass was surely going to try to regain credibility, and he had just been put in charge of the face-saving operation.
But he wasn't worried about any of that. David Farrow was scared - he was afraid he knew exactly what was responsible for the crisis.
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Washington, D.C – 8:00 A.M.
Sunlight filtered into the room through the large windows of the oak panelled room, giving it a warm look. If it weren't for the central heating though, it would've been quite cold. Despite it being the end of February, winter was just subsiding and spring hadn't yet set in.
But the four people in the room had their thoughts elsewhere as they sat at the elegant conference table. All were aged between 30 and 40, and seemed to be slightly uncomfortable - not just because it was the first time in the White House for some of them. The seriousness of the crisis hadn't sunk in until they were brought here, and –
"Good morning, everyone," said an elderly, dignified looking man as he walked in. "I think you know why you're here. You're all recognized as experts in your respective fields, and you've been invited to serve on this advisory committee. Your recommendations on uh… this issue will be placed before the Domestic Policy Council and the President. Thank you all for coming; your time is much appreciated. So, without wasting any more of it let me introduce all of you."
Starting with the man on his left, he went on clockwise.
"This is Dr. John Wenger, Reproductive Health Expert, Centre for Disease Control. Dr. Nicole Davis, Statistician, UC Berkeley. Mr. Alex Myers, Population Analyst, U.N. Population Division, and Dr. Cynthia Cahill, Public Health Expert, Office of Public Health. I'm Ted Bartlett, General Counsel, Health and Human Services."
"The questions before you are pretty clear: what's going on, why, how serious is it, and what should we do about it? I think our population expert would be the best person to start."
Clearing his throat, Myers began.
"According to the information we've now received, there's been a sudden, steep drop in the birth rates in countries on every continent. So far, we've got official confirmation from over 40 countries."
Handing out the list of countries, he continued, "The percentage of drop seems to vary widely. As you can see, 17 of these countries have had over a 90% drop in about a month. But even the lowest drop is over 50%, which is very high, unprecedented. If this trend continues, we might have a net population decrease of over 300 million, within a year. If it's truly global, the decrease will be over 600 million."
"The drop in birth rates translates to over 108 million less births a year," continued Myers. "Psychologically, that'll have devastating effects on societies. In a matter of five years, the set of people below 14 years of age will drop by almost 40% - over 700 million people – nearly twice the population of the United States. The proportion aged 65 years and above will nearly double. In short, this will be the biggest crisis we've ever faced. As for the cause, we don't know anything for sure, but there's no evidence to show it's a disease."
"Whatever the cause," said Cahill, "it's not recent. The causal event obviously happened around nine or ten months ago – that's when people stopped getting pregnant. There may be a small chance that we can get some idea of what's going on if we look at records of possible outbreaks or unusual activity between nine and ten months ago. Maybe -"
"Uh… I seriously doubt that, Ms. Cahill," Wenger interrupted. "There are dozens of things that can affect conception. It could be due to hormonal imbalance, testicular problems, ovarian or uterine problems, chromosomal or genetic abnormalities, or even just stress. And the number of factors that influence these things is simply innumerable."1-5
"Yes, but surely there must've been some causal event at a particular point in time. Maybe a new drug released globally, or something like that."
"I think it's not that simple to pin down a particular time," Wenger said. "If this is caused by a drug, it could be the effects of a drug that we've been using for as long as thirty years now, maybe even longer. Besides, the FDA alone approves dozens of drugs every month6-7. Even narrowing it down to drugs used worldwide, that's still hundreds, not including generics8."
Cynthia shook her head. "If it were such a long term process, why would the effects turn up so abruptly? It would've been more gradual, we'd have had signs, increasing reports of problems. Not a sudden global tumble, like this."
"Actually," said Nicole, speaking for the first time, "it isn't sudden at all. At least, not as abrupt as it's made out to be."
"It's unprecedented. There's never been such a sharp drop in such a short period of time," affirmed Myers.
"Exactly, Mr. Myers," Nicole responded, smiling.
Myers looked puzzled. "I'm not sure I follow…"
"Are you familiar with volcanoes, Mr. Myers?"
"I know a little about them, yes."
"If I lived next to a volcano, and it started rumbling, with tremors growing in number and strength, and increasing volumes of spewed smoke, wouldn't it be rather silly of me to sit right there and then be surprised when the volcano actually erupts?"
Myers leaned forward. "I don't think that analogy applies here, we -"
"Oh but it does. Mr. Bartlett, can I use the projector? It'll be easier for me to explain what I'm talking about."
"Of course," answered Bartlett as he rose to help Nicole connect her laptop to the projector.
"There've been no indications of a sudden dive like this," Myers continued, sounding defensive. "We're constantly conducting demographic surveys and the data from each census is analysed. If there were any such indicators, they would have emerged in the trends."
"The data obtained through such surveys can be skewed, Mr. Myers. It is practically impossible to count and keep track of billions of people, with the limited resources that surveyors typically have. The final figures used are all estimates, and there're many studies showing that the estimates are often inaccurate and unreliable."9-14
"In the past years, carefully calculated projections of world population in 2010 have gone from 20 billion, to 15, to 11, to now 9 billion15. This says two things: first, we've been persistently overestimating our growth rates16-18. Second, every time we found out we were wrong – even by a magnitude of 11 billion - it didn't worry us at all. In fact, most of us were glad about it. Though it did raise a few concerns, nobody was too bothered about it."
"Even going by the data that we do have, we still had enough signs. We just didn't take them seriously enough."
With the projector set up and magnifying the laptop's display onto the large screen, Nicole brought up a graph.
[Graphs at the end]
"Here's some of your own U.N. data, Mr. Myers - a graph indicating fertility rates, and this was something we had as long as nine years ago. Look at that graph. Wouldn't you say that's a pretty steep fall?"
"And we've had lots of such indicators. I'll just pull up graphs for some of the countries on that list you showed us, at random," she said, changing the display.
"Take Britain for instance. Number of births has literally plummeted over the past decade."
"And look at birth rates in the U.S."
"This isn't something very recent either. We can identify decreasing trends even as far back as the 1950s."
"64% of the countries of European Union have birth rates below replacement level19-21. This decrease isn't limited to the western hemisphere. African and South America countries have also registered a marked decline in birth rates and fertility levels in the past years22-23."
"And as for the east, they're already having problems with aging populations and too few young people24-25. They've experienced the effects of low birth rates for a while now."
"Interesting slide show, but it doesn't help much," said Cahill. "We still don't know what's causing this abrupt drop we've witnessed over the past month."
Nicole sighed, shaking her head.
Wenger spoke up. "I think the point she's making here is that it isn't as abrupt as we imagine. We've been heading towards it for decades now."
Myers snorted. "Alright. So it isn't as unexpected as we imagine. Knowing that doesn't help us find what caused it, or tell us how to handle it."
"No," Nicole agreed, "but it does give us a more realistic idea of the situation."
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Geneva – 3:00 P.M.
Farrow wasn't feeling too good, particularly after what he'd just done. Soon, the whole world would come to know. Telling his assistant he was taking the afternoon off, Farrow made his way down to the parking lot and his car. As he got into the car, he saw a man wearing a motorcycle helmet walk towards him.
"Excusez-moi," the man said as he strode up to the car.
Noticing the business card he held in his hand, David realized he wanted directions. Bending down, the man brought up his hand to show David the card. David noticed a tiny canister in the man's hand. Before he realized what was happening, he felt a mist of colourless, bitter smelling substance spray onto his face.
Reflexively, he turned away, but the man continued to aim the spray at his face. The hydrogen cyanide was already taking effect, and Farrow collapsed, convulsing.
"Mettre toujours la ceinture de sécurité," the man muttered, as he strode away. He didn't know that the man he'd killed had already spilt the beans, but he wouldn't have cared anyway. He was just fulfilling his contract.
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Washington, D.C – 10:00 A.M.
As the discussion went on, Bartlett's phone rang. Excusing himself, he left the room.
Nicole continued, speaking quickly. "We're accustomed to thinking in terms of linearity. We draw graphs, see the straight lines and curves, and project them to where we think they'll go. We've been doing it for years, and getting it wrong for years: economic analyses, exit polls, weather prediction, stock market analysis – but we never tire of it."
"It's been mathematically proven that just a single variable in an equation can create unpredictable behaviour26-27. Typically, demographic surveys encounter dozens of variables, and the data sets have large amounts of noise. Research has shown that for complex systems, predictions made using linear methods aren't valid for long28. Complex systems may look linear for a while, but they can quickly turn erratic29 – which is what might have happened here."
Bartlett returned, carrying a sheet of paper. "I'm afraid we might have our causative agent here. Maybe you could explain it to us" he said, handing it to Wenger.
Wenger read it out loud.
"I'm David Farrow, a scientist at WHO. I send you this mail because I'm not sure who I can trust, and believe you will act upon it. I don't know if what I am about to say is related to the recent birth rate crisis, only that it might be."
"I formerly headed a research study in an institute, one of the many that collaborated under WHO's International EMF Project, which was set up in 1996 to assess the effects of electromagnetic fields on health. My research, specifically, was investigating the non-thermal effects of EMR ranging between 900-2000MHz (frequency utilized by most radio communications equipment) in sex cells of mice."
"In the course of the study, I accidentally found that some gametic cells with extended exposure to EMR, underwent a sort of spontaneous self-destruct upon fertilization. When a sperm cell united with an egg, the ensuing cortical reaction was followed by the rapid disintegration of the zygote, in a process very similar to apoptosis. The zygote shrank, chromatin degraded and condensed into patches, and the zygote broke into vesicles closely resembling apoptotic bodies."
"Some mice with prolonged exposure to EMR (over 6 months) were unable to reproduce through their entire lifespan, so I suspect it is irreversible. The exact mechanism of this process is not clear, since the study didn't reach its logical end. After submitting a progress report to the Coordinating Committee, I was approached by an anonymous person who offered me money and promised a better job if I abandoned my study and destroyed the research. He threatened consequences if I refused. I'm aware that doesn't justify my actions, but I accepted the offer."
"Hopefully, the information I have provided will help you determine the cause. Thank you."
Wenger looked at the group. Everybody was pale. Myers broke the silence.
"What's ‘apoptosis'?"
"Programmed cell death," replied Cahill. "The number of cells in our bodies must be within a certain range. To function right, organs and tissues must eliminate and clean up old or damaged cells. Apoptosis is the body's way of ensuring that, but the intricacies involved haven't been fully understood. Too little apoptosis can lead to tumours or cancers. Too much can cause other problems."30-32
Myers swore. "We need to get this David guy to find out more."
"Already tried," said Bartlett. "Apparently he died of a heart attack about an hour ago."
"Yeah, right. And JFK wasn't assassinated."
For a while, the room fell silent. Nicole spoke up.
"I guess we can only wait till lab tests confirm whether apoptosis in zygotes is the problem. And pray it's not the case."
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Wednesday, February 28
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Controversy over U.S. scientist's death
By Alan Stolberg/IHT
The U.S. Department of State announced yesterday that it would investigate ‘the unusual circumstances that surround the death of David Farrow', a U.S. scientist working with the World Health Organization, Switzerland. David Farrow was found dead in his car last morning, and the coroner's report indicated the cause of death as a ‘massive cardiac arrest'. However, WHO spokespersons have remained tight-lipped about the event.
+Read Article
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Afterword
Birth rates have been declining worldwide for decades. The causes are assumed to be increased use of contraception and changing social trends, but they may not be the only reasons. Infertility has been a growing problem. The connection made here to EMR is fiction, but a lot of research has demonstrated the adverse non-thermal effects of EMR on human health33-38.
However, controversy surrounds the issue as some scientists claim the studies are flawed and the effects aren't clear. It's ironic that people find it understandable that cell phones can interfere with the functioning of electronic equipment in hospitals/aircraft, but don't believe that these same electromagnetic devices can affect the delicate electrochemical processes in our bodies.
It's worth noting that the Soviet Union's cold war practice of irradiating embassies of western countries with microwaves to induce adverse health effects was very successful39. The effects ranged from abnormalities in RBC and WBC counts, higher mutations rate in lymphocytes, testicular and other cancers, increased spontaneous abortion, and impaired reproduction. The radiation employed was in the same Hertz range as the frequencies of radio communication systems.
The reader is left to ponder the fact that the cellular network and phone industry is a multibillion enterprise.
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Graphs
G1. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision, Volume III: Analytical Report, United Nations Population Division
G2. Data for graph from: Birth Statistics – U.K. Office for National Statistics
G3. Data for graph from: (i) Vital Statistics of the United States, 2001, Volume I, Natality – U.S. National Centre for Health Statistics. (ii) Data tables, International Data Base U.S. Census Bureau.
G4. Data for graph from: (i) Vital Statistics of the United States, 2001, Volume I, Natality – U.S. National Centre for Health Statistics. (ii) Data tables, International Data Base U.S. Census Bureau.
G5. Data for graph from: (i) Demo-GeoDemo, National Institute of Statistics, Italy. (ii) Data tables, International Data Base U.S. Census Bureau.
G6. Data for graph from: Data tables, International Data Base U.S. Census Bureau.
G7. Data for graph from: Population Statistics of Japan (2003), National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo, Japan.
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