Malcolm Potts MD understood the most urgent world problem: overpopulation!

By Donald A. Collins | 7 May 2025
Church and State

(Image by StockSnap from Pixabay)

Back in the middle 60s I had the great honor of meeting Malcolm Potts and since then had the honor of working with him on a variety of family planning efforts which were well covered in his obituary which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 5th after his death on April 25, 2025.

As the Chronicle notes Potts was “a pioneering figure in international family planning, reproductive health and global public health”.

The Chronicle notes that “few advances in medicine have had greater social impact than family planning and prevention of sexually transmitted disease. Few individual individuals can claim a larger role in creating these benefits than Dr. Malcolm Potts, who remained devoted to improving women’s access to contraception and safe childbirth until the final month of his life”.

I had the great privilege of serving with Potts on most of the boards in family planning with which he worked. As a result of this close association, I was privileged not only to experience his brilliant grasp of these key issues, but also to enjoy his great sense of humor, his modesty and his kindness to all his colleagues and friends.

Our longest board association was on International Fertility Research Programme which later became Family Health International, then renamed Family Health International, then FHI where Potts served from 1978 to 1990 as President and CEO where, as the Chronicle noted “he led pioneering maternal mortality studies and built the largest AIDS prevention program outside the World Health Organization. He later described these years as transformative in demonstrating how community-based health interventions could save millions of lives.”

You can read the full San Francisco Chronicle obituary here.

Another close association which was not mentioned by the Chronicle was a field trip I organized to Vietnam in 1994 to study the use of a safe, inexpensive, readily provided method of female sterilization known as QS. My daughter who recalls vividly a boat trip were she and Malcolm almost tipped into the water and hysterically giggled at their dilemma of nearly capsizing! It was such fun to be with Malcolm who was always willing to take the time to push for new and safe options for women’s reproductive rights.

Our team, aided by the Vietnamese Program leader Dr. Do Trong Hieu included Potts and two veteran OB-GYNs, interviewed many successful QS women users.

Subsequently, over 200,000 women in over 50 countries used QS with no incidences of cancer based on QS’s proven science as compellingly safe and effective. Now of course these numbers of women users constitute a massive safety trial!

For non-scientific reasons QS did not gain FDA approval in 2014, Malcolm always supported QS despite vicious politics which kept FDA from granting QS a Phase Three trial.

You can learn more about QS and its significant potential to serve women worldwide who wish to have no more children here.

Malcolm understood so clearly that the primary impetus toward the so-called sixth extinction was an excess of humans on our planet, which can be seen now in the evident breakdowns at all levels of life on earth.

In his last appearance at the April stockholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, its famous CEO investor Warren Buffett specifically mentioned that since his birth in 1930 the world’s population had grown from about 2 billion soon to be 9,000,000,000 which many environmental experts have deemed absolutely unsustainable!

Yet we continue to ignore the environmental problems which these human numbers have helped create! As Walt Kelly so precisely in toned through his cartoon character Pogo “we have met the enemy, and he is us“!

This website has been particularly clear in featuring articles which pointed out the problems of overpopulation and the ridiculous claims of some that we need more people not less in order to keep up the false fantasy that endless growth is possible on a finite planet.

One current example on this web site of credible papers entitled “Is Homo sapiens an invasive species?” written by Frank Götmark – Project leader of The Overpopulation Project (TORP); Professor, Animal ecology and Conservation Biology, University of Gothenburg.

Read this compelling piece here.

Will the problems generated by the behavior of too many people on the environment, the truth of what the late Malcolm Potts told us, be increasingly evident?

The utter mindless policies of the Trump administration will accelerate climate and resource problems leading to a future falling-off-the-cliff reduction in human numbers.

The Chronicles assessment? “Throughout his life, Malcolm Potts remained modest and deeply committed to improving the lives of the most vulnerable. Typically British, he avoided self-promotion and let his work and mentorship speak for itself. His fair consideration of ideas, wry wit, and persistent drive to change the world made him a beacon for young researchers and practitioners — many of whom simply wanted to be, as they put it, “just like Malcolm.”

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, and “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?”.

CCCR 2020 Malcolm Potts – Act Now and Slow Global Population Growth

Malcolm Potts: Avoiding the Next Great Humanitarian Crisis

Dr Mumford and Dr Kessel talk about QS on CNN Take Back Live

Sir David Attenborough on overpopulation

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