Natural Human Balance

"The fact is - and I challenge anyone to deny it - we are busily engaged in weakening the human race. For years the natural balance of nature kept populations in check. When the birth rate became too great there were famines to offset it. It's the elimination of the weak.
When there was a plague or an epidemic it was the weak who were wiped out and the strong survived. Other illnesses did the same thing: there was a level maintained - nature's level. And because of this, it was the strong who perpetuated themselves. They were the ones who sired the next generation.
We are moving towards degeneracy, at least in the Western world. We're preserving the cripples, the weaklings and the disease-ridden. We are accumulating burdens on society, non-producers - the unfit, unable to contribute anything to the common good. Tell me - what purpose does a sanatorium or a house for incurables serve?
I tell you, medicine today is preserving people who should be allowed to die. But we're helping them to live, then letting them spawn and multiply, passing along their uselessness to their children and their children's children."
"You say that illness and disease are nature's levelers. But many of these things haven't come to us in the natural course of nature. They are the result of man's own environment, conditions he's created himself. Bad sanitation, lack of hygiene, slums, air pollution - those are not natural things, they're man's creation."
"They are part of evolution and evolution is part of nature. It all adds to the balancing process."
"If you are right, then medicine is a part of the balancing process too. Because medicine is a part of evolution. Because every change of environment that man has had produced its problems for medicine to face and to try to solve. We never solve them entirely. Medicine is always a little behind, and as fast as we meet one problem there's a new one appearing ahead."

VOCABULARY

Weaken: make weak
Offset: counterbalance
Sire: procreate
Cripple: disabled, having a handicap
Sanatorium: hospital
Spawn: make progeny, descendants

QUESTIONS

1. How is the natural balance maintained, according to the text? (4 points)
2. Is this balance preserved in Western countries? Explain how. (4 points)
3. "Because every change of environment that man has had produced its problems..." Explain with one or two examples. (5 points)
4. What is your opinion about the author's idea of natural balance? (7 points)

NB: Avoid copying the text in your answers. Try to build your own sentences