World Health Organization

Vatican control of World Health Organization population policy: An interview with Milton P. Siegel

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• published: 24 Jan 2012
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This interview with Professor Milton P. Siegel, who for 24 years was the Assistant Director General of the World Health Organization, was recorded in 1992 by Dr. Stephen D. Mumford, President of the Center for Research on Population and Security. This is the first time that it has been made available to the public. Because of his position and the length of his tenure, Professor Siegel is considered among the world's foremost authorities on the development of World Health Organization policy. In this interview, he reveals the influence of the Vatican in shaping WHO policy, particularly in blocking adoption of the concept that overpopulation is a grave public-health threat -- a concept which, in WHO's early years, enjoyed a broad consensus among member countries. Without this separation of population dynamics from WHO public-health policy, the Vatican would have found it much more difficult to subsequently manipulate governments on such issues as family planning and abortion. National leaders would have been able to refer to the international consensus, as demonstrated by WHO policy. WHO, they could have insisted, has determined that family planning and abortion -- like clean water, good nutrition, and immunizations -- are necessary to protect public health. Professor Siegel decided to speak out on the subject. As he was involved in the WHO at an early stage, his personal experience provides ample evidence that the Vatican influenced WHO policy development from the outset, during the early period of the Interim Commission in 1946. In its 63-year history, this international health body has had a deplorable record in family planning. Its commitment has been minuscule, and even today family planning accounts for only a tiny fraction of its budget. Professor Siegel joined the World Health Organization in 1946, when it was still in its formative stages -- under the umbrella of the United Nations, created just the year before. Because of his earlier work in North America and the Middle East, he was asked, in effect, to be one of WHO's "founding fathers". So he came on board on the senior staff of the Interim Commission. Dr. Brock Chisholm of Canada was the Executive Director of the Commission, which set up the permanent organization with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Chisholm was chosen to be WHO's first Director General.