October 4, 2009
Cass R. Sunstein
c/o Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10015
Dear Dr. Sunstein:
I read your book Going to Extremes with interest. You make a very strong case for the degree to which people reinforce each others attitude when they are in communication and how this can override the kinds of principles of decency we all believe we believe in.
My older brother, when I was young, informed me that there were people in our very town who would be willing to run a Nazi style death camp under certain circumstances. I wondered how it could be otherwise, one group of people not being that different from another. More recently I have discovered that the fertility of a couple depends more than anything else on how closely related they are. There is a narrow band that is viable. Closer and more distant couplings have fertility reduced below what a community needs to survive. The details are on the enclosed DVD. It takes about ten minutes and is easy to understand.
Morally speaking, withholding this information from the community at large is tantamount to running a secret death camp for babies. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but reason it out. And you can easily verify that I am telling the truth because there are good references on the DVD.
As you described in the Stanford Prisoner Experiment, you can divide people into guards and prisoners. In this case the guards are the doctors, scientists, politicians and academics who control the flow of information. In an ideal world, once any of them got wind of the facts I have just given you about fertility, that authority would not rest until the word was widespread. Keeping the rest of the world ignorant keeps them chained and dying.
I have found a distinct lack of enthusiasm for pursuing this. I have worked on it for years. My opinion now is that every authority I have approached not only would run a death camp for babies but is running a death camp for babies and can’t be shamed by having the fact pushed into her or his face.
Your description of the Stanford study suggests that when guards did speak up it accomplished something. I have not had that experience. They don’t even call me up or send me hate mail. (A couple have been polite, so I should make exception. I mean it as a general rule.)
So I appeal to you. Stop doing that. Help me get the word out. Give me a phone call and make common cause. Or at least send me a nastygram telling me why you won’t. I could work with that. Whatever you are thinking is probably about the same as what everybody else is thinking. And it is certainly an extreme position as it has destroyed so many babies that nations totter. Until I know what that position is, I can’t make any adaptive change in my approach.
I am posting this letter with about a dozen other open letters on nobabies.net which is my web site. You will find more information there, but the DVD is a lot quicker.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD
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