Posted on 01/13/2012 4:19:44 PM PST by wagglebee
Humanity has long dreamed of perfection, striving to be faster, stronger and brighter, pushing nature to the limit. Four centuries before people were conceived in a petri dish, Swiss alchemist Paracelsus claimed flawless little beings could be grown in pumpkins filled with urine and horse dung, but there is no record he produced a crop.
With the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the test tube finally succeeded where the pumpkin had failed, and the year she turned 11, scientists moved beyond making life in a lab: They found a way to peer into an embryo's genes and predict what that life might be like.
That ability is now morphing into a whole new approach to baby-making, one that gives people an unprecedented power to preview, and pick, the genetic traits of their prospective children.
Just as Paracelsus wrote that his recipe worked best if done in secret, modern science is quietly handing humanity something the quirky Renaissance scholar could only imagine: the capacity to harness our own evolution. We now have the potential to banish the genes that kill us, that make us susceptible to cancer, heart disease, depression, addictions and obesity, and to select those that may make us healthier, stronger, more intelligent.
The question is, should we?
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
More precisely, the middle class is not having many children, because they feel they cannot afford to. They cannot afford to because they are taxed to subsidize the unproductive.
See my post #20. As for what changes in policy I recommend, I recommend a phase-out of welfare, coupled with a reduction of taxes.
What welfare does is it makes bad choices viable. It makes a teenage single girl think that she can make it as a single mom, and have sex with all the exciting bad boys of the neighborhood.
Take away welfare, make it clear that if she gets pregnant then she has to support the kid all by herself from her wages at McDonalds, and suddenly the idea of being a single mom loses a lot of attraction.
Are you ignorant of the case of Caesar, in which Caesar’s mother did not survive. Modern antiseptic/aseptic surgery did not exist. Nor would I call it a vanity for a mother under such conditions to not attempt an “abortive remedy” but to sacrifice herself so that her child might survive her.
I'm going to presume that you understand that there are quite a few elective c-section deliveries now, having nothing to do with necessity, but rather the desire to avoid the possible effects of natural delivery upon their genitalia.
That would be the vanity to which I also referred.
And if a birth that could be undertaken normally was c-sectioned in modern times for the sake of health or cosmetic after-effects, call it vanity or not, what skin is that off of either your nose or Darwin’s nose?
Before I bid you adeieu for the day, I’ll refer you back to my original reply upon the matter. Uneccesary c-sections, among other procedures and interventions, will lead to a tragic circumstance when the day comes that such procedures are no longer available in their current form. There are quite a few women and infants in my family cemetery due to dying in childbirth, from the 18th century all the way up to the first decade of the twentieth century, including my own grandfather’s first wife. It was a painful fact of life little more than a century ago, and ignoring traits that lead to difficulty in childbirth will make it even moreso in the absence of modern medical treatments and surgeries.
You seem to have fixated on the Darwinian aspect of it. I don’t see Darwin in having to consciously choose a wife with childbearing hips to avoid their meeting the fate that befell so many women before, I see acknowledgment of reality. Where I don’t see acknowledgment of reality is in acting as if such concerns no longer exist.
That is the point I sought to make. Now, you have a pleasant Saturday afternoon. We’ve had many agreeable exchanges and agree upon many things. We likely don’t disagree as much here as you seem to be erroneously perceiving, so try to keep it civil.
Regardless, I’ve said my peace.
Child support payments have the exact same effect.
To my earlier reply, I would add: eugenics-based population control is what we currently have. I propose to end it.
What is eugenics-based population control? It involves granting to a favored group incentives to reproduce and/or disincentives to a disfavored group that inhibit the likelihood of reproduction. This is what we CURRENTLY have, with the welfare class as the favored group showered with incentives, and the taxpayers being the disfavored group.
I bid you adieu as, with many misspellings, you leave with a hat tip to Darwin.
As would alimony. Surely this is not an orgy of throwing babies out with bath water is it?
Childishness doesn’t become you.
Childishness turns into you, instead.
Have you been drinking?
Not at all. But neither is that the alternative to changing the system.
Oh, you tried it?
Just stop. It’s really not flattering to you. Or to me for that matter, and you’re not proving anything at all by continuing this.
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