view large HERES ONE OF THEIR "SOLUTIONS" A Texas scientist advocates killing nine-tenths of the world's population by an airborne Ebola virus, writes John Ballantyne. An award-winning Texas scientist was given a standing ovation after he advocated the extermination of 90 per cent of the Earth's population by an airborne Ebola virus. The University of Texas evolutionary ecologist, Dr Eric R. Pianka, was addressing the 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, in early March, after the academy had named him 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. Present at Pianka's speech was Forrest M. Mim III, a popular science writer and editor of the bi-weekly journal, The Citizen Scientist. He reported: "Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away. "This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind ... I grabbed a notepad ..." ("Meeting Doctor Doom", The Citizen Scientist, March 31, 2006). Pianka began his speech by condemning anthropocentrism, or the idea that the human race occupies a privileged position in nature. He exclaimed, "We're no better than bacteria!" He argued that the sharp increase in the human population since the onset of industrialisation was destroying the planet. He warned that Earth would not survive unless its human population was reduced to a tenth of its present number. He then offered drastic solutions, accompanying his remarks with a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine were insufficient for solving global overpopulation, he explained. Instead, disease was far more efficient and swift. At this point, Pianka displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls. AIDS took too long to kill people off, he explained. His preferred method of exterminating over five billion human beings was via airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and kills its victims in days rather than years. However, as Mim observed: "Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs. "After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, 'We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.' " After he finished his address, the audience burst into applause. Mim reported: "It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause. ... During a question-and-answer session, Pianka praised communist China's draconian one-child policy, and suggested that IQs are falling because only "uncaring people" (i.e., people with below-average intelligence) have large families. Mim recalls how, once the questioning was over: Dr Eric R. Pianka (left), with an appreciative member of the audience. "I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. ..." "Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern. ..." A few hours later, the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. Warning Executive director of the Society for Amateur Scientists, Dr Shawn Carlson, later warned in The Citizen Scientist (April 2, 2006): "I believe, with the terrible experience of the bloodiest century in human history behind us, that all men and women of conscious in the 21st century must be proactive in our opposition to genocidal or apocalyptic philosophies, before they have the chance to inspire some new champion with the will to take their conclusions to the next step. "When the professional scientists have lost their sense of moral outrage at such ideologies, then it falls to America's great community of citizen scientists to be the conscious of science."

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