Overcrowded cities are spawning increasingly lawless suburbs. Waste is accumulating in and around them, straining the capacity to deal with it.

Although attracted by the humanities, I had chosen medicine as a career, seduced by the image of the 'man in white' dispensing care and solace to the suffering. But science was lurking around the corner, in the form of an unpaid student assistantship in the laboratory of physiology.

We have access to practical, ethical and scientifically established methods of birth control. So I think that is the most ethical way to reduce our population.

I promptly fell in love with scientific research and soon had assigned myself, as a major vocation, the task of elucidating the mechanism of action of the antidiabetic hormone.

The war broke out, and for a number of years I lived in darkness, with the memory of the lakes, the trees and the skies of Sweden, until I returned in 1946 to spend two unforgettable years in the laboratory of Hugo Theorell.

Vast areas are witness to the struggles of destitute populations trying to survive under unlivable conditions.