The two Americans who received this year's Japan Prize did a first by appearing afterward at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to highlight their visions — one of hope in medical breakthroughs and the other in the inevitable doom of mankind.
The prize went to professors Dennis L. Meadows, 66, author of the controversial and shocking 1972 report "Limits to Growth," and David E. Kuhl, 79, a radiologist, for his contributions to tomographic imaging in nuclear medicine.
But whereas Kuhl, of the University of Michigan, talked of medical progress and the chance of future cures for serious diseases, Meadows, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, despite being awarded for his "contribution for a sustainable world," warned of humankind on an unsustainable trajectory. He has forecast human demand exceeding the Earth's supply, and doom by the end of this century.