The End of Civilization Feared by Biochemist

Nov. 19, 1970

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KINGSTON, R. I., Nov. 18 (AP)—A Harvard biochemist says civilization will end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing man kind.

Dr. George Wald, a Nobel Prize winner and antiwar figure, made the statement in a speech at the University of Rhode Island on Monday.

The problems that Dr. Wald called “overwhelmingly threatening” are pollution, overpopulation and the pos sibility of nuclear war.

It is “utterly meaningless and bankrupt,” Dr. Wald said, to believe that merely increasing food production is an answer to growing population.

“The problem is quality of life,” he said, “and that qual ity has already deteriorated within this century. We are overpopulated even here in the United States.”

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