It finally has happened a baby was born with three parents. Paint me old fashioned, but I just don’t think this is the way to go, but wait scientists are very angry this term is being used. The third parent term should probably be changed to genetically added material from a third person, this would be a lot more accurate. We are talking about a laboratory procedure here and nothing else. The reason this was done was to correct errors in a parent’s mitochondria. Most cells have mitochondria in them. It produces energy for the cells. Mutations in the mitochondria can be really terrible and cause all sorts of diseases which can affect almost every part of the body. Here is what the scientists did, they removed the DNA from the mother’s egg and from the healthy donor’s egg leaving the healthy mitochondria in the donor egg. They added the mother’s healthy DNA to the donor egg and the egg was fertilized.

It does make one wonder who is the real mother of the child. The procedure which is banned in the United States was conducted in a Fertility Center in Mexico and succeeded. Scientist’s state moving mitochondria from one person’s egg to another has nothing to do with defining us, because it is the job of the DNA to do this. Therefore they believe it is not really creating three parents, but repairing the mitochondria. One doctor stated if the United States didn’t ban this procedure we could have accomplished this birth 15 years ago.

Birth rates are surprisingly low in some places including the United States. In 2016 the birth rate was reported as only 59.6 births per 1,000 women. This is the lowest ever. Europe is no better off as more people are dying in Europe than are being born. This is not true all over Europe or even all over a European country. It is the total average for all of Europe and if something isn’t done, Europe may become the sum of those immigrants moving there which will change it entirely. Ireland is experiencing the fastest growth in Europe, but is offering a population growth rate of just enough to break even. In order for growth to occur, the population ratio has to be 2.1 children or higher per couple. At last count by the U.N. The world population increased by 1.18 percent over the years 2010 to 2015. Iraq had an increase in population during those years of 3.31 percent. Afghanistan had 3.02 percent, Angola had 3.30 percent, The Democratic Republic of the Congo had 3.17 percent, Gambia had 3.24 percent, Jordan had 3.06 percent, Kuwait had 4.81 percent, Lebanon had 5.99 percent, Malawi had 3.06 percent, Niger had 4.0 percent, Oman had 8.45 percent, Qatar had 4.72 percent, Senegal had 3.10 percent, South Sudan had 4.09 percent, Zambia had 3.05 percent, Caribbean Netherlands had 3.43 percent. Looking at the list of countries with the biggest increase in population growth one can easily see it is in the Middle East and Africa. As other populations shrink the demographics of the area these people migrate to will change and as recently seen, they will become more like where these people came from in some cases.

Sometimes preventing fertility can be very troublesome for women, but a scientist involved with particle physics had developed an app which make the old fashioned rhythm method much more accurate. It is being said the app works in 95 percent of cases. It was developed by Dr. Elina Berglund. She is the same scientist who helped to discover the Higgs boson particle which shook up the scientific world. The beauty of the app is it requires nothing else to work, no devices or pills of any kind. There are some methods of birth control which claim to be 99 percent effective, but this is not taking into account side effects.

Here is a method for increasing the birth rate you would think would do the trick. Romania took measures in 1966 to increase the population. Tax laws were passed which punished people for not having children while there were laws which awarded them for having children. Police were put into hospitals to prevent illegal abortions. If you were over 25 years old and had no children, even if you were not married, you were subject to a tax which could be as much as 20 percent of your income. Divorces became very hard to get and in the first year of the new law dropped from 26,000 to 28. This worked until the 1980s when the births declined. Nicolae Ceausescu ordered monthly gynecological exams for women to detect pregnancies at the earliest stages to make sure the pregnancies came to term. The program ended in 1989 with the ouster of Ceausescu.

It is funny in a way how too little population growth upsets governments and so does too much. China made it mandatory couples could only have one child, but this was loosened in 2013 when the regulations were changed to allow couples who were only children to apply for a permit to have a second child. It is said in China the abortion rate is 250,000 per week. India also is trying to control its population growth. In India a man has to be 21 years of age to marry and a woman 18 years. For a while men in India were given an incentive to get sterilized. If they agreed they were given a transistor radio. At the rate the population is growing in India it will be the most populous country in the world by 2030. The government is running sterilization camps for women. Woman are paid to become sterilized. There are now at least 10 men in India for every 8 women due to the fact of selective abortion and the killing of girl babies at birth.

So there you have it, some places are wrestling with decreased population growth while others have the opposite problem. Is there a place where this all balances out? Maybe you could say right here in the good ole USA. Our population is growing, but that is due to taking in immigrants not births.