The Gazette-Enterprise

AUSTIN — University of Texas professor Eric Pianka is used to doing the talking.

A highly regarded figure in the science community, Pianka is no stranger to crowded rooms and eager listeners. With 38 years of teaching, writing and speaking about his extensive research, there’s little wonder why.

But Pianka found himself in a role reversal of sorts Monday.

Local “citizen scientist” and Gazette-Enterprise columnist Forrest Mims and UT graduate James Pitts voiced stern scrutiny over the professor’s assertion that “the world will be much better off when there’s only 10 percent of us left.” And when the doomsday prediction went flooding across the Internet, responses came flooding into Pianka’s inbox.

“I’m up to my eyeballs in reporters,” he said, referring to public outcry in wake of what he calls his “doomsday talk” — a lecture in which Pianka confidently predicts 90 percent of humanity is on an irreversible path to death in the not-so-distant future.

News of the talk garnered media attention and roused a surge of vicious banter on Web sites. Emails bombarding Pianka’s inbox even included death threats.

But despite a verbal onslaught among laymen, scientists nationwide had even more to say. Several among the 19 graduate students who have studied under Pianka’s guidance said they’re confident in their mentor’s motives.

Kirk Winemiller earned his doctorate from UT in 1987 and worked as a Fullbright Research Scholar in Zambia in 1988-89. He said alarm over the professor’s lecture is, very simply, “making a mountain out of a mole hill.” Furthermore, he warns that encroaching upon scientists’ freedom could inhibit the important role they play.

“There is no controversy in stating that increasing population density tends to be followed by increasing rates of disease transmission and increasing risk that genetic variants of pathogens might quickly spread from one host to a new one,” he said.

“We’ve seen this happen in recent years with several nasty viruses, including avian influenza, SARS, etc. I am assuming that Dr. Pianka was using hyperbole in stating that, in the event that an epidemic were to wipe out 90 percent of the human population, natural systems might be allowed to recover in the absence of impacts.”

A doctoral graduate from 1977, Anthony Joern said the swarm of public outrage is not unfounded — it’s displaced. He agrees with his former professor’s assertion that overpopulation places humanity in grave danger. But lack of public concern, he said, should be just as alarming as the professor’s cautionary message.

“I expect the prospect of what was reported to be shocking to many individuals,” he said. “But isn’t it also interesting that the scenario sketched by Pianka is shocking to many, but the lack of real action — politically or otherwise — regarding the human contribution to global climate change or loss of species worldwide is met by a yawn at best, even though the effects will be just as devastating?”

Attempts to obtain comment from the University of Texas were met with no response. Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs Neal Armstrong told the Gazette-Enterprise last week that, “It’s pretty unlikely someone will comment on that.” The school did, however, respond to Austin TV station KXAN and said it stands by Pianka.

“We have a lot of different points of view on the University of Texas at Austin campus, and we certainly support our faculty in saying what they think,” UT spokesman Don Hale told the news organization.

But Glenn McGee, editor of the American Journal on Bioethics, disagrees.

As director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute, McGee’s forte is analyzing matters of practice in the health science industry. McGee’s reaction to the professor’s conduct described Pianka as an educator “who is spewing venom.”

He went on to compare the situation to doctors in Nazi Germany.

“The difference is that they wanted to find pure blood, where Pianka just doesn’t care that the poor and vulnerable would die first and worst under his scheme,” he said. “The argument that there are too many people seems plausible. Few non-Catholics would disagree. But there are means and then there are ends.”

During a speech at St. Edwards University Friday, Pianka insisted the world would undergo the crash of humanity in the coming years.

The professor weighed the killing power of various diseases such as bird flu and HIV, insisting neither yield the needed results.

“HIV is too slow. It’s no good,” he said.

But midway through the speech, Pianka began reciting the merits of an Ebola pandemic to accomplish the requisite “collapse.”

“We’re doomed,” he said. “The microbes are gonna get us.”

Since then, questions have swirled about whether Pianka sought to advocate the human-imposed release of a deadly virus or if he merely intended to underscore the “unsustainable growth” in the human population.

Pianka says he is in no way an advocate of human death and merely aims to tell the world truths about the planet “that everyone needs to know but nobody wants to hear.”

Until recently, Pianka’s university Web site detailed evaluations from past semesters indicating some former students believed the professor was, in deed, advocating “90 percent of the population should die of ebola.” But Monday afternoon, the evaluations were removed.

The Gazette-Enterprise originally linked to archived versions of those evaluations. Those disappeared on Tuesday. The text of the evaluation can be found below.

“Pianka has crossed over into that rare category of scientist who serves as lightning rod,” McGee said. “His claim is stupid, irresponsible, and casts doubt in the minds of the public on what it is that scientists like him do in the first place: It makes people wonder whether or not every scientist with a big beard, who worries about the biological balance of the earth, is actually planning a holocaust of the kind Pianka appears to want”.”

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