The Possibilities for Social Progress

Linus Pauling

(Second International Congress of Social Psychiatry, London, 4 August 1969)

During the past century man has achieved the possibility of determining his own fate to an extent far greater than was possible before. The discoveries of scientists have led to an understanding of the nature of the physical and the biological world far greater and deeper than was possessed at the beginning of the 20th century. This understanding has led to great increases in the available energy and in the variety of substances, with special physical or physiological properties, than can be used for the benefit of man.

Despite our increasing power over nature, the amount of human suffering in the world remains very great. We are not using our knowledge in an effective way for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

The major reason for the continued misuse of our power over nature, for the continued existence of a great amount of human suffering, is that the world is not operated on the basis of an accepted ethical principle. It is, instead, operated in an immoral, unethical, and irrational way, on the basis of individual selfishness, corporate selfishness, and national selfishness.

I believe that it is possible to formulate a fundamental principle of morality that is independent of revelation, superstition, dogma, and creed, a rational ethical principle acceptable by all human beings.

The evidence of my senses tells me that I am a man, like other men. When I cut myself I am hurt, I suffer, I cry out. I see that when someone else cuts himself, he cries out. I conclude from his behavior that he is suffering in the same way that I was. None of my observations leads me to believe that there is something special about me that sets me apart from other people; instead, I am led to believe that I am a man, like other men.

I want to be free of suffering to the greatest extent possible. I want to live a happy and useful life, a satisfying life. I want other people to help me to be happy, to help to keep my suffering to a minimum. It is accordingly my duty to help them to be happy, to strive to prevent suffering for other people.

By this argument, based on the methods of science, I am led to a fundamental ethical principle; that decisions among alternative courses should be made in such ways as to minimize the amount of human suffering.

This principle is, of course, not new. It is equivalent to the Golden Rule, a part of all the major religions. It is accepted and used to some extent by individual human beings; but not by business corporations or by national governments. In business the principle of maximizing profits takes precedence over the principle of minimizing human suffering. In the actions of governments, patriotism takes precedence over morality: governments strive to do harm to people of other countries with apparently greater zeal than to do good for the people of their own countries.

Militarism is one of the major causes of human suffering. In addition to the suffering caused by the death and injury of millions of people in the wars that are now going on, there is a tremendous amount of suffering that results from the waste of a large part of the world's resources in war and militarism, resources that in a peaceful world could be used for the benefit of the people of the world. Militarism now costs the world over $250,000,000,000 per year. This amount of wealth, wasted on war and militarism each year, is greater than the total annual personal income of two-thirds of the people of the world.

The policy of militarism followed by the leaders of the great nations is a policy of insanity. The existence of stockpiles of nuclear weapons greater than needed to kill every person on earth makes it necessary that the great nations refrain from war with one another, and forces them to settle their disputes by negotiation, by the application of world law. They have followed this course successfully for a quarter of a century, and they will continue to follow it. But the national leaders have not taken the logical, rational, and moral course of decreasing military expenditures. The United States continues its war in Vietnam, despite its immorality and despite the irrationality of spending $30,000,000,000 per year in attacking a country which has a total wealth of only $9,000,000,000. The nuclear stalemate between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. will not be changed by refining the weapons or by defense efforts such as antiballistic missiles. But the militarists and politicians insist on wasting billions of dollars per year in this way.

We must strive to bring the politicians to a state of good mental health - to pull them out of the old world of war and power politics into the new world of peace and reason and morality, in which the wealth of the world is not wasted on war and militarism, but is used for the benefit of humanity.

In addition to the misuse of a large portion for militarism, the maldistribution of the rest of the world's wealth is one of the greatest causes of human suffering. In the United States, for example, five percent of the national income is allotted to (or seized by) one third of one percent of the people, and another five percent is the total income of 20 percent of the people, those at the bottom of the totem pole. Thus there is a factor of 60 in the incomes of the rich and the poor. The factor is still greater in many countries: as great as 600 in Peru, for example, where, in addition, the miserably poor constitute over 90 percent of the people. In the world as a whole two-thirds of the people, the miserably poor people of the world, numbering 2,300 million, have an income equal to only 10 percent of the world's income. An equal total income, 10 percent of the world's total, is enjoyed by a minuscule group, the unconscionably rich, who number only one-tenth of one percent of the world's people. The ratio of average income of the world's rich and the poor is thus about 700. In this classification the economic middle class, a heterogeneous group, constituting one-third of the world's people, have an average income somewhat less than the geometric mean for the unconscionably rich and the miserably poor.

I have reached the conclusion that the scale on which wellbeing, that is, happiness and suffering, may be measured in relation to income is approximately exponential; the state of wellbeing of a person is proportional to the logarithm of his income, with, of course, various modifying factors determined by his own nature and the nature of the environment. This logarithmic dependency is such that the addition of a finite increment to the income leads to an increase in wellbeing which is smaller than the decrease in well-being that would accompany the decrease in income by the same amount. For example, let us consider a man with income of $200 per year. He would be made happier by an additional $200 per year; but his misery at having $200 less would be greater in magnitude than the increase in happiness. The exponential relation equates the increased happiness on doubling his income to the increased suffering on halving his income; that is, an added $200 has the euphoric equivalent of a subtracted $100, with the opposite algebraic sign.

The consequence is that a great decrease in the amount of human suffering could be effected by only a moderate redistribution of the world's wealth. I have found it useful to formulate a quantitative expression for well-being as a function of income: the wellbeing index equals 20 times the natural logarithm of the annual income divided by $30. The scale of wellbeing thus has the values 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, for the annual incomes $30, $80, $220, $600, $1,640, and $4,440, respectively. On this scale the average income of the world's poor, 67 percent of the people, corresponds to a wellbeing index of 21. A transfer to them of part of the income of the unconscionably rich 0.1 percent, leaving this small group still affluent, would increase their wellbeing by 14 points, to 35. This transfer would increase the average wellbeing for the people of the world from 42 to 51, with a correspondingly great decrease in the amount of human suffering.

The logarithmic relation between wellbeing and income was suggested to me by the results of a study that I made some years ago of the average expectancy of life of people of different countries in relation to their average income. The relation is a logarithmic one, such that the average life expectancy is increased by nearly three years by each doubling of the average income. Comparison with the wellbeing equation shows that for each increase in wellbeing by five points there is an average increase in life expectancy by one year.

The average life expectancy in the United States is five years less than would be expected from comparison with European countries, with correction for average income. This indication of poor health agrees with others, such as the low position of the U.S., 15th among nations, in infant mortality. The explanation is probably the larger range of incomes in the U.S. than in the European countries and the poorer system of medical treatment available to most of the people. Adjustment of the nation's income and improvement in the system of medical treatment would lead to a great increase, by 25 points, in wellbeing.

The poor people of the whole world get a bad start in life. Fetal and childhood starvation and malnutrition lead to poor bodies and poor minds. Most of the people in the world suffer from a decreased mental ability because of early malnutrition. With a present total of 3,500,000,000 people we are straining the resources of the earth. I believe that we have passed the optimal population, not only for the world as a whole, but for nearly every nation. In every nation, and in the world as a whole, governments should set up commissions to study the question of what number of people would be optimal, would lead to the smallest amount of human suffering and the greatest amount of wellbeing.

Studies should also be made of the relation of environmental factors and habits to wellbeing. Over a century ago an Englishman named Gompertz discovered that the age-specific death rates are an exponential function of the age. A doubling of the death rate, and also of the rate of incidence of various diseases, is found for each 8 1/2 years increase in age. The curves for different populations are similar in shape, but may be shifted along the age axis. The Gompertz curve for a population of one-pack-per-day cigarette smokers is shifted by eight years from that for nonsmokers, and the curve for two-pack-a-day smokers is shifted by 16 years. On the average, the one-pack smokers die eight years earlier than nonsmokers, and the two-pack smokers die 16 years earlier. At a given age the one-pack smokers have twice the incidence of illness of nonsmokers, and the two-pack smokers have four times.

I have no doubt that the relation of the incidence of mental illness to cigarette smoking is similar, and that this great drug addiction is accordingly of importance to social psychiatry. I may say that I am disturbed whenever I see a cigarette between the lips or the fingers of some important person, upon whose intelligence and judgment the welfare of the world in part depends.

Let me return to the matter of malnutrition. Most of the people in the world are half-starved; they do not have enough to eat. Their food supply does not contain enough protein to permit the optimal development of their bodies, including the brain, nor enough fat and carbohydrate to provide the energy for their optimal physical and mental functioning. It is imperative that the rate of change of the population and the distribution of wealth be regulated in such a way as to give every person the possibility of leading a good life, unhampered by the debility and misery of semi-starvation.

Moreover, both the physical and the mental wellbeing of nearly everyone in the world could be improved by an improvement in the quality of his nutrition. In particular, I have reached the conclusion that the usually recommended amounts of certain vital substances, especially some of the vitamins, are far less than the optimal amounts. Even affluent people, ingesting what is generally considered to be an adequate diet can, I think, be improved both physically and mentally by a greatly increased intake of some vital substances.

Ascorbic acid, Vitamin C, is an example of such a substance. The usually recommended daily intake of this vitamin is 50 to 75 milligrams. I agree with Dr. Irwin Stone that the optimal daily intake for most people is probably about 100 times this great. The daily ingestion of three to six grams of ascorbic acid leads to increased vigor, to increased protection against infectious disease, including the common cold, and to increased rate of healing of wounds. The mental as well as the physical manifestations of scurvy are alleviated by small doses of ascorbic acid. Katz and his collaborators have reported a significant increase in IQ in non-scorbutic Texan school children following the addition of orange juice to their diets. Hoffer and others have reported improvement in some patients with mental disease when they have been given three grams of ascorbic acid per day. My colleague, Professor Arthur B. Robinson and I have found an abnormally low level of ascorbic acid in the body fluids of about one-third of the schizophrenics whom we have examined, verifying the reports of other investigators.

I shall not repeat here the several arguments presented in my 1968 papers on orthomolecular psychiatry and orthomolecular medicine in support of the thesis that the optimal amounts of ascorbic acid and certain other vital substances are far greater than the amounts normally ingested and normally recommended, and even greater than the amounts synthesized by prototrophic animals. I cannot refrain, however, from mentioning the success reported by Hoffer and Osmond with many schizophrenic patients treated with large daily amounts (three grams or more) of niacin or niacinamide, as well as ascorbic acid, as an adjunct to the customary therapy.

On the basis of studies of microorganisms, I am tempted to make a quantitative estimate: that an improvement in both physical and mental health corresponding to an average increase of 10 units in the wellbeing index could be achieved by including the optimal amounts of ascorbic acid and some other vital substances in the diet. The present price of a year's supply of ascorbic acid at three grams per day is $3.50, and the price would be much less if the use were to increase. Can the world afford to ignore this easy and inexpensive way to achieve a general improvement in physical and mental wellbeing?

What would be the consequences for the world if the national leaders and the people as a whole were to think more clearly, even only 10 percent more clearly? Surely we could then move rapidly toward the goal of a rational and just society, toward a world from which the evil of war had been abolished, toward a world of justice and morality, in which all human beings cooperate to keep the amount of human suffering to a minimum.