There are many of our current "Intellectual Elite" that believe that most of us should die. This is mind blowing. If reading this does not scare you, nothing will. These are the people that create and experiment with these different deadly bugs.

Link to the article posted below from the Drudge Report.

http://story.seguingazette.com/drudge.html
    

Rainbow Six??????

Text of the article posted below.   


The Seguin Gazette


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UT professor says death is imminent

By Jamie Mobley
The Gazette-Enterprise

Published April 2, 2006

AUSTIN - A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

"Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk" - a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.

Though his statements are admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he embraces.

Indeed, his words deal, very literally, on a life-and-death scale, yet he smiles and jokes candidly throughout the lecture. Disseminating a message many would call morbid, Pianka's warnings are centered upon awareness rather than fear.

"This is really an exciting time," he said Friday amid warnings of apocalypse, destruction and disease. Only minutes earlier he declared, "Death. This is what awaits us all. Death." Reflecting on the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times," he wore, surprisingly, a smile.

So what's at the heart of Pianka's claim?

6.5 billion humans is too many.

In his estimation, "We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable," all the while leaving the planet parched.

The solution?

A 90 percent reduction.

That's 5.8 billion lives - lives he says are turning the planet into "fat, human biomass." He points to an 85 percent swell in the population during the last 25 years and insists civilization is on the brink of its downfall - likely at the hand of widespread disease.

"[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity," Pianka said. "We're looking forward to a huge collapse."

But don't tell local "citizen scientist" Forrest Mims to quietly swallow Pianka's call to awareness. Mims says it's an "abhorrent death wish" and contends he has "no choice but to take a stand."

Mims attended the educator's doomsday presentation at the Texas Academy of Science's annual meeting March 2-4. There, the organization honored Pianka as its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist - another issue Mims vocally opposes.

"This guy is a loose cannon to believe that worldwide genocide is the only answer," said Mims, who filed two formal petitions with the academy following the meeting.

Joining the crusade, James Pitts, who recieved a Ph.D. in physics from UT-Austin, became the second to publicly chastise Pianka when he filed a complaint Saturday with the UT board of regents. He insists a state university is no place to disseminate such views.

He writes:

"Pianka's message does not fall within the realm of his professional competence as a biologist, because it is a normative claim, not a descriptive one. Pianka is encouraged to use his ecological expertise to predict the likely consequences of certain technological and reproductive strategies, but to evaluate some as good, bad, or worthy of prevention by genocide is the realm of philosophy or political science, not science. His message falls no more within his professional competence than it would for a physicist to teach religion in class or a musician to encourage racism."

But Pianka, a 38-year UT educator, maintains he's not campaigning for genocide. He likens mankind's story to an unbridled party on a luxury cruise liner. The fun's going strong on the upper deck, he says. But as crowds blindly absorb the festivities, many fail to notice the ship is sinking.

"The biggest enemy we face is anthropocentrism," he said, describing the belief system in which humans are the central element of the universe. "This is that common attitude that everything on this Earth was put here for [human] use."

To Pianka, a human life is no more valuable than any other - a lizard, a bison, a rhino. And as humans reproduce, the demand for resources like food, water and energy becomes more than the Earth can sustain, he says.

Ken Wilkins, a Baylor University biology professor and associate dean, agrees the inevitability of a crashing point is unarguable.

"The human population is growing," he said. "We will see a point when we reach the carrying capacity - there aren't enough resources."

But resources aren't the only threat, Pianka says. It's the Ebola virus he deems most capable of wide scale decimation.

"Humans are so dense (in population) that they constitute a perfect substrate for an epidemic," he says.

He contends Ebola is merely an evolutionary step away from escaping the confines of Africa. And should an outbreak occur, Pianka assuredly says humanity will quickly come to a "grinding halt."

The professor's not the only one who can articulate this concept. Because Pianka includes his doomsday material in his coursework, Ebola and its potential play a notable role in some students' studies. A syllabus for one course reads:

"Although [Ebola Zaire] Kills 9 out of 10 people, outbreaks have so far been unable to become epidemics because they are currently spread only by direct physical contact with infected blood. However, a closely-related virus that kills monkeys, Ebola Reston, is airborne, and it is only a matter of time until Ebola Zaire evolves the capacity to be airborne."

It is here that some say Pianka ventures from provocative food for thought to, as Wilkins said, "very extreme material" that violate many people's views - including his own - about the treatment of human life. While many praise Pianka's boldness and scientific know-how, others say he crosses an ethical line in his treatment of Ebola's viability as a killer.

In an evaluation of Pianka's course - performed anonymously in keeping with university policy - one student offered:

"Though I agree that conservation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90 percent of the human population should die of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness."

Mims says he's seen countless doomsday predictions come and go. But Pianka's is different, Mims said. Pianka, he insists, exhibits genuine cause for alarm.

Mims worries fertile young minds with a thirst for knowledge may develop into enthusiastic supporters of a deadly disease, advocating the fall of humanity.

"He recommended airborne Ebola as an ideal killing virus," Mims said. "He showed slides of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and human skulls. He joked about requiring universal sterilization. It reminded me of a futuristic science fiction movie with a crazed scientist planning the death of humanity."

But as confident as Mims is in his assessment, he faces one unarguable fact: Most of Pianka's former students are bursting with praise. Their in-class evaluations celebrate his ideas with words like "the most incredible class I ever had" and "Pianka is a GOD!"

Mims counters their ovation with the story of a Texas Lutheran University student who attended the Academy of Science lecture. Brenna McConnell, a biology senior, said she and others in the audience "had not thought seriously about overpopulation issues and a feasible solution prior to the meeting." But though McConnell arrived at the event with little to say on the issue, she returned to Seguin with a whole new outlook.

An entry to her online blog captures her initial response to what's become a new conviction:

"[Pianka is] a radical thinker, that one!" she wrote. "I mean, he's basically advocating for the death for all but 10 percent of the current population. And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

Today, she maintains the Earth is in dire straits. And though she's decided Ebola isn't the answer, she's still considering other deadly viruses that might take its place in the equation.

"Maybe I just see the virus as inevitable because it's the easiest answer to this problem of overpopulation," she said.

Though listeners like McConnell may walk away with a deadly message, Pianka maintains this is inconsistent with his lecture. One UT official said Pianka is likely well within his rights as a tenured educator.

The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure - a set of guidelines recognized nationwide - guarantees college professors vast classroom liberties. But Neal Armstrong, vice provost for faculty affairs at UT, said even this freedom is not without limits.

"Faculty members have the right of free speech like anyone else," he said. "In the classroom, they're free to express their views. There is the expectation, though, that in public - especially when speaking on controversial topics - they must make every effort to be clear that they are not speaking on behalf of the university."

Students should be able to discern on their own the validity of views like Pianka's, Armstrong said. But if allegations of Pianka actively advocating human death were to be confirmed, he said "there might be some discussion about the appropriateness of that subject."

"I would hope that's not what's intended," he said. "I don't think that's appropriate for the classroom, but that's my personal statement."

Robert K. Jansen, chair of the section of integrated biology under which Pianka is classified, said his understanding of the doomsday material left no cause for concern.

"It's important for students to get all opinions, and they have to do that on a daily basis," he said. To hold a classroom's attention, Jansen says educators must often "speak their mind" in a fashion bold enough to garner a bit of shock.

The Texas Academy of Science uses a similar approach in defending its decision to honor Pianka with the Distinguished Scientist award. Though TAS offered no direct comment to the Gazette-Enterprise, an email sent from TAS President David Marsh to Mims in response to Mims first letter of protest reads:

"We select the DTS speaker based on his/her academic credentials and contributions to science. We do not mandate the subject he/she decides to address, nor will we ever. I would suggest that one of the purposes of any such presentation is to stimulate discussion - which indeed it did."

In his petitions, Mims inquires about the group's stance on Pianka's talk, asking if the recent honor should be interpreted as an endorsement by TAS. Marsh responded firmly, saying the award does not represent any formal backing of Pianka's ideas.

But despite the academy's flat denial of any wrongdoing, Mims maintains his stance. He said thus far, he's seen no response to the second petition.

"I completely agree with one assertion made several times by Dr. Pianka: ‘The public is not ready to hear that he hopes 90 percent of them will be exterminated by disease,'" Mims said.

McConnell said the TAS audience, unlike Mims, was in awe of Pianka's words. They offered a standing ovation, and enthusiastically applauded Pianka's position, Mims said.

"There was a good deal of shock and just plain astonishment at what he had to say," the student said. "Not many folk come out and talk about the end of the human population in as candid of a manner as he did. Dr. Pianka received a standing ovation at the end of his talk, if that says anything. What he had to say was radical, no question about it, but that is not to say that at least some of what he had to say is not true."

Though Pianka turned down requests for a sit-down interview, he maintains he is not advocating human death.

Does he believe nature will bring about this promised devastation? Or is humanity's own dissemination of a deadly virus the only answer? And more importantly, is this the motive behind his talks?

Responding to these very questions, Pianka said, "Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people."

As of press time, Pitts - who sent his appeal via email Saturday - had received no response from the university, but he says, "It's too early for any responses to have been made." Meanwhile, Pianka urges humanity to heed his call to be prepared, saying "we're going to be hunters and gatherers again real soon."

"This is gonna happen in your lifetime," he told his St. Edward's audience. "Do you wanna go there? We've already gone there. We waited too long."

Read more about Pianka by visiting his lab page at: uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/

Read more about Forrest Mims at:

www.forrestmims.org or visit the Citizen Scientist at http://www.sas.org/tcs/index.html

Editor's note: A correction was made to this story to reflect that while Pitts got his Ph.D. from the university, he is not a professor there.



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Copyright © 2006 The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise

>"He recommended airborne Ebola as an ideal killing virus,"<

airborne Ebloa

 may just do it incubation  period is fair around 2-21 days need a least a week or two to do a more complete job fro sure speading around the masses.
bird flu has got also that longer incubation period..


http://microvet.arizona.edu/Courses/MIC419/VaccProp05html/Ebola.html
>The incubation is 2-21 days (CDC 2004). Severe symptoms usually appear around 4-6 days<

The human species is definitely in overshoot.  We have exceeded the capacity of our environment to sustain us.  Only the fact that we are milking accumulated resources has permitted us to achieve this degree of overshoot.

I vastly prefer the professor's honesty and clarity about what is meant by various code phrases tossed about by some of the more prevalent politcal factions these days, especially by people who profess a "culture of life". He is simply spelling out the actual result of the current expression of political atitudes prevalent in Wahington now.  I regularly hear many of the people who use the term "Intellectual Elite" in the manner above also use terms like "let nature take its course". Its obvious these people don't give much thought to the end result of their world view, which is what the professor is elucidating.    Well, killing off 90% of the population when the ecology is overloaded IS NATURE'S COURSE!  And its not real selective when nature does that. In just one of the many areas of world problems, it doesn't work to say "well, people could get healthcare if they worked hard enough", because if a new disease emerges from a population with no healthcare, its not gonna check your political viewpoint ("oh I worked HARD, I don't deserve BF or Ebola- go away!").  The diseases that brew in poor populations anywhere in the world, whether they WON'T or CAN'T get healthcare, will affect everyone at some point. (as well as the ones that brew in major corporate farm practices that ruin the use of antibiotics, brew new pests and pestulance - those corporations gonna foot that bill? Can you spell "bankruptcy with golden parachutes?). And when you lose the cheap labor and cheap resources enabled by poor and desperate populations that make countries like the USA operate lavishly in what I call a "careless" fashion, your gonna have some problems too.  When you use resources beyond their replacement ability, you are going eventually driving into a brick wall.  If "capitalism", as currently practiced, does not take ALL of the costs of certain practices into account (and I don't see that it does the way we do it now),   it will go the way of the dodo when those unpaid costs come to collect. 

Well, its seems that most people agree with the professor,

"Responding to these very questions, Pianka said, "Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people."

I cant believe that I am the only person in this post who thinks that this is a bad thing for a university professor to be teaching our children.



   

Well, it looks like he has not been the only one thinking about making ebola more contagious

I must say, I get some amusement from the reactions to publishing ideas or pictures of warplanes/war-concepts/biological-warfare etc. is something bad to mention to ("teach") our children.  These ideas are so commonplace and well known among defenders and aggressors alike, and just anyone with imagination that if all professors, newspapers, politicians stopped mentioning it, that the only thing to decrease would be what scraps of rational consideration remains about these topics.  Wiping out populations with biologicals was an idea suggested in the USA in the 1700's when smallpox blankets were to deliberately distributed to the native americans.  I doubt the general required "teachers" to come up with the idea.

Fiddler, as you seem to agree with the premise of the discussion, perhaps you will share with us who is the 90% that should be eliminated?

Is it you and your family, or just everyone else who simply does not understand how you and others want to "save the world"?     

Why we have someone like this teaching in our universities is beyond me... we have enough security risks in our universities and research labs without some wako giving students and researches visiting from other country's ideas.

This guy may have all the personality of a wad of bubble gum on the bottom of your boot, but the sad reality is that we are always teetering on the edge of the microscopic wars, and guess what, sometimes, the bugs win.  What changes things is that we, as humans, have the power to think, reason, plan and prepare at all levels--and we are.  Maybe not fast enough to save everyone,  but I buy into Faulkner's thesis that even at the end of days, there will be one lonely human voice out there (probably b*tching because he can't get real wasabi anymore).

Dangerous stuff. This one has a big ego I think. We got a Uni lecturer at leeds University saying all sorts of bad stuff about race at the moment. Just been suspended. Hopefully for good. Similar circumstances as well. Lectures on Russian Language but announces racist comments I wont go into here. How do they get their positions and their funding?

'Intellectual Elite' is a contentious term. It can be taken either way. My advise for what it is worth is to avoid it.
HD, part of the intellectual elite (not really)
    

Fiddler, Pianka is a certifiable loon. What he said is not nuance. Got to his website. Read his core belief statement. He is called r. Doom for a reason.

Finally, somebody read the article and did some research.    

The link from Harp  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4838498.stm ) refers to Dr. Frank Ellis at Leeds university, who sounds like a racist idiot.  His inclusion in a discussion about Pianka, who made no racist statements at all, mades no sense. 

I'm not supporting this Dr's view that 90% of the planet's population should be wiped out, but I do worry about the effects of over population on our planet.

Yesterday, I heard on the discovery channel news that one third of the coral reefs in the Carribean are dead. It was blamed on the global warming.

Maybe the planet in a desperate attempt to protect itself, is trying to rid itself of us?

Good Job CV, you smeared a scientist (not an intellectual elitist) and may have contributed to death threats made against him. Hope your paranoia about science and “scientific elite” don’t stop you from getting medical attention if a pandemic hits. Like I posted yesterday, “Drudge Report says it all, bullsh*t. If you are getting info from that site, you will remain ill informed.” Let me just add that Drudge has posted on numerous occasions that the HIV pandemic is a good thing.

Pianka says several times that Mims (org. source for Druge) is a “crazy kook” that “distorted and changed everything I said.” The death threats that have flooded Pianka and the Texas Academy of Sciences are also a nice touch.

his twin theses that (1) a population crash is coming and (2) a disease (not Ebola, says Pianka) will do it are both highly debatable (my own view is that population is leveling off as birthrates decline due to education, and that highly virulent diseases are more likely to burn themselves out than take out the majority of the population), but these are matters to debate scientifically

There is no way to get from that to saying, as Mims and hundreds of braindead, credulous moonbats did, that Pianka advocates genocide and that several hundred scientists at the Texas Academy of Sciences applauded him for it.


Swankyc

“But lemme guess, you revere Dan Rather.....”

Yep, thought he was a good anchor. Now let me guess: you hate Dan Rather for the President and VP avoiding Vietnam…


    
    
    

I don't know about all the Rather blather but  - in the article it states that Pianka had the cameras and recording equipment turned off.  Is this true - then why?  Isn't it pretty usual to record a scientific address - certainly made by one as imminent as Pianka?  What are the true facts here?

Smeared a scientist is right!!  Start a thread about a researcher making a valuable point (Pianka) by misrepresenting that point, even when interpreted through a highly agendized and negative reviewer (Mims), then throw in a brief reference to a racist idiot (Dr. Ellis), then refer to mythical websites for non-existent "core beliefs".