Old Age Security with Fewer Children
Less developed countries can promote reduced fertility and slower population growth while still supporting the idea of old age security through children. If parents have enough children to provide a high probability of one son surviving until the father is age 65 they will have had many children even if the father has a vasectomy once having reached the larger family size. The interval between generations will be short and natural increase rapid. Instead governments should encourage couples to adopt the "always a son" strategy whereby parents have a son as soon as possible and then practice contraception as long as he survives making use of only reversible contraceptive techniques. This strategy is in accord with most traditional societies values since it means having children soon until a son is born who survives and hence is presumbably more readily acceptable. Less developed countries and citizens can and perhaps should rely upon surviving children to support older parents. Insofar as security through children is practical governments should refrain from introducing financial systems of old age support that are premature given the development stage of the national economy. This strategy is comparable with the slow population growth rate necessary for accelerated economic development if life expectancies at birth are not very low. A national objective of lower mortality rates is compatible with reduced fertility for economic development and sufficient fertility for old age security. With lower mortality rates parents can achieve their old age insurance goals yet have their children late which means fewer children die that have to replaced. Spacing not only prevents unwanted births but also reduces the number of needed births.
The Role of Bonuses and Persuasive Propaganda in the Reduction of Birth Rates
Bonuses and persuasion should not be considered as alternatives in efforts to reduce birthrates. There should be plans to use both of them in meaningful quantities until the margin is approached at which point decisions can be made about their joint use. Thus the task is simplified and the employment of bonuses and propaganda persuasion can be considered separately. Enke was the first to maintain that an underdeveloped country can afford to pay large sums as incentives to prevent births because the payments are only transfers rather than real resource costs. Enkes reasoning is flawed yet a different sort of calculation yields estimates of the same order of magnitude as Enkes. The critical point is that everyone agrees that a large bonus to prevent births is beneficial. The only disagreement is whether the ceiling to the bonus is high or higher. Focus here is on what is solidly known what is believed and what is unknown about bonuses. Political leaders in less developed countries as well as scientific leaders in the birth control movement believe that bonuses will be ineffective because of a natural human revulsion against the practice. 2 obstacles exist to actual experiments with bonuses: the long time period required for testing and evaluation; and the "injustice" to other communities of giving bonuses in test communities. A 2nd reason for nonimplementation of bonus schemes is that the response function is unknown i.e. how many "sales" would be made at different bonus prices. Another issue with bonuses is that of whom they should be paid to. The ends of public policy can probably be best served by offering different size bonuses depending upon age and number of children. A 4th issue concerning bonuses is whether the bonuses should be paid only to "salesmen" or whether the family should receive the bonus directly. Finally bonus implementation plans must be developed to make bonus schemes feasible. By persuasion is meant all kinds of personal and impersonal communications except basically informative messages that tell people what birth control is how it works and how they can obtain it. The outlook for persuasion is not hopeless. The well known persuasive device of the testimonial will affect the behavior of some people who otherwise would not accept contraception as evidenced by data from a Turkish survey. The differences in persuasive power of the various Turkish sources of influence showed that effectiveness varied considerably among persuasive messages. The importance of the content of persuasive messages suggests that advertising people should be hired to construct the messages. Any decisions about expenditures for propaganda campaigns must depend upon estimates of the effectiveness of persuasion (of the best techniques available). When assessing the effect of any campaign of persuasion one must consider the long run result. Finally the total costs of a persuasion campaign are not obvious.
A functional comparison of human Fc-receptor-bearing lymphocytes active in natural cytotoxicity and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity.
Natural (or “spontaneous”) cytotoxicity against the K-562 myeloid cell line and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) against sensitized Chang liver cells were monitored simultaneously in a 4 hr 51 Cr release assay, using the same preparations of normal human peripheral blood lymphocytes as effector cells. Both types of cytotoxic activity were expressed by lymphocytes bearing receptors for sheep erythrocytes and for the Fc portion of IgG. Up to 80% of the total natural killer (NK) cell and K cell (ADCC) activities were recovered in E-rosette pellets separated under optimal conditions. Since the ability to form rosettes with sheep erythrocytes is primarily a marker for human T cells, it seems likely that both NK and K cells are in the T cell lineage. Further, both NK and K cell cytolytic activities were severely depressed after brief exposure of lymphocyte suspensions or rosette pellets to ammonium chloride solutions. Both activities returned to normal values after 24-hr incubation at 24°C. Such sensitivity of human lymphocytes to ammonium chloride solutions may explain why other investigators have failed to observe NK or ADCC activity by E-RFC. When lymphocytes bearing Fc receptors were adsorbed onto plastic surfaces coated with a monolayer of immobilized antigen-antibody complexes made up of TNP and rabbit anti-TNP serum, both NK and ADCC activities were simultaneously depleted. Such depletion was completely blocked when Staphylococcal protein A, which binds selectively to the Fc portion of IgG, was incubated on the antigen-antibody monolayers before adding the lymphocytes. This confirmed that both NK and ADCC activities were mediated by effector lymphocytes bearing Fc receptors. When protein A at concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 100 µg/ml was added to the 51 Cr release assays, ADCC was significantly inhibited, presumably due to binding of protein A to available Fc sites of the sensitizing antibody. However, protein A had no effect on NK reactivity at any of the concentrations tested. When lymphocytes were treated for 30 min at 37°C with purified trypsin or α-chymotrypsin at concentrations from 0.01 to 10 mg/ml, NK activity was significantly inhibited whereas ADCC was unaffected. Other enzymes depressed (pronase, subtilisin) had no effect except at high concentrations (lipase), or stimulated (neuraminidase) both NK and K cell activity similarly, and therefore failed to distinguish between the effector cell types. Thus, our data indicate that effector cells in NK and ADCC are in overlapping, if not identical, subpopulations of Fc receptor-bearing lymphocytes of probable T cell lineage. The cytolytic mechanisms in NK and ADCC appear to be distinct, since we have been unable to find evidence for an “arming” antibody involved in this NK system.