John B. Hall

John B. Hall argues in the following viewpoint that because of the terrible effects of overpopulation, people should sacrifice their freedom to reproduce and governments should institute mandatory fertility control programs. However, Hall does not support China’s fertility reduction program, in which the government interferes directly in people’s reproductive decisions. Instead, Hall, a professor of microbiology at the University of Hawaii, suggests the possibility of creating a contraceptive vaccine and then engineering a virus that could carry this form of contraceptive throughout the globe, thus reducing fertility levels worldwide.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Hall, people have become numb to the enormous amount of human suffering in the world and have ceased to respond to the pain of others. What problems has...