Originally Posted by rsl12

There is no hypocrisy, though I can see why you might think so. The same organization that is combating overpopulation is also trying to make people live longer.

If you were to think of the UN/WHO's mission as something to do with the number of people on earth, you'd be right that these are contradictory goals. But actually, the goal of both organizations (and the medical field in general) is to improve the quality of life. That is to say, to ensure that inhabitants on earth, as well as future inhabitants, live as good quality lives as is possible.

Taking some passages literally from the Bible gives the impression that Christian God is more worried about numbers. "Go forth and multiply" and all that. At one point, that was the focus of the medical establishment as well. Nowdays, the new prevailing feeling (in the United States, as well as many other countries) is that prolonging a patient's life is only part of the treatment--making sure that the patient can enjoy the extra time is just as important.

So overpopulation is a problem in terms of the quality of life--the more people there are on earth, sharing a finite quantity of resources (water, land, etc.), the more you have problems such as hunger, disease, environmental degradation, etc. Of course, trying to solve the issue of overpopulation by *shortening* people's lives would not be improving the *quality* of those lives, so some other method of curbing overpopulation has to be used!!

The health of the existing population is also an issue for quality of life: heart disease and chronic ailments not only cause suffering for the afflicted, but put burden on the medical establishment, as well as on depedents of patients.

You're wondering how the world can be overpopulated when life expectancy is going up--it's almost like asking why are people worried about the dam breaking when the water is so deep. If that's *really* the question you meant to ask (i.e., is the world really overpopulated?), let me know. I hate to threadjack.

ps. The psalms verse that's being cited is a terrible reason for thinking that God wanted us to live only 70 years. Have you read all of psalms? It's David praying to God--in this particular passage, he's comparing the everlasting presence of God to the very short life that each person spends on earth. No need to take it literally, particularly since it's not God's word--it's David's words to God.