Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on November 12, 2003, 04:32:15 pm
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In the Uk, the ..er.. thingie commision has recommended that sex selection for children should be made illegal, except in certain cases (i.e. hereditary conditions affecting certain sex children)
Apparently, it is legal in some other countries, including the US.
What do you think?
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I think yes, but only for medical purposes...
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This is news to me..
I didn't really know that was possible, at least now.. but.. why not?
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... Let everyone decide for him or herself ...
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Pardon my ignorance, but what's sex selection?
EDIT: Ooooh, gender changing!
Yea, sure, if they want to. It's their life, after all.
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Natural selection is there for a reason. If this goes through and suddenly (for whatever reason) everyone wants a boy - what are you going to do, force people to have girls to keep the species going?
I'm against it unless there is a good medical reason.
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as long as they are adults and the taxpayers aren't paying for it... i still don't really like the idea, however
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Nonono! :) It's choosing the sex of your baby before conception, through gene manipulation. Test-tube baby type-stuff, but at a whole new level. I don't think it's a good idea (unless it's for medical reasons), 'cos there'll be "trends", and we'll end up with a horrible imbalance of the sexes. Which isn't good. Also, you could get some psycho dictator guy building a massive army for his take-over-the-world bid in 20 years' time. :D
(OK, not very likely, but you know what I mean) :)
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An army of savage, sex crazed girls. ;7
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
If this goes through and suddenly (for whatever reason) everyone wants a boy - what are you going to do, force people to have girls to keep the species going?
Actually families wanting boys might be our onlt hope. You know it's possible for two women to have a female baby by splicing the DNA from one in to the egg of another? Once they realise that, men are doomed :(
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Oh, if it's choosing your baby's sex, I am by FAR AGAINST IT. I put down the wrong vote, tho :(
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Actually families wanting boys might be our onlt hope. You know it's possible for two women to have a female baby by splicing the DNA from one in to the egg of another? Once they realise that, men are doomed :(
Suddenly lesbians seem less appealing, if only slightly.
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Lesbians are only amusing for eyecandy, and that's if they're hot. But the entire point of lesbians is that they won't date you. :p
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
[...] if only slightly.
good man :D
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yeah Shrike, that's true. but if it's two ugly lesbians, it's disgusting :ick :blah:
Bi-sexual isn't bad either ;)
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
An army of savage, sex crazed girls. ;7
I don't see that as a bad thing... :nervous: :D
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Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Actually families wanting boys might be our onlt hope. You know it's possible for two women to have a female baby by splicing the DNA from one in to the egg of another? Once they realise that, men are doomed :(
So are women once they figure out how to grow a baby outside the womb:p
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like in the refridgerator? :p that would be freaky...
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If abortion is legal--and its a far more drastic thing that this issue--then sex selection should be legal.
Natural processes are there for a reason. Mankind has developed sentience and the ability to manipulate his genotype/phenotype through these natural processes. There is no reason why He should not do so.
To argue that it is unnatural is to argue that flight is unnatural, cars are unnatural and submarines are unnatural. All of these things are Man making crude tools to make up for a deficiency in Himself (the inability to live underwater, fly or move fast over land). What is sex selection but a tool for correcting a deficiency in the species?
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...why do we want to **** with nature? People confuze me.
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look at it this way, people:
if someone wanted to change your gender without your permission, should they be allowed to do it? if you vote yes in this pole, then that's exactly what you're voting for. think about it.
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Originally posted by PhReAk
as long as they are adults and the taxpayers aren't paying for it...
i agree. a child being given the right to change his sex is just...wrong. Adults should be given the freedom of the choice but kids...just... no.
anyway, how can a dude turn into a girl; a dude is still a dude no matter how much he changes his behavior or how many body parts are cut off. He was still born concieved with a XY chromazone (did i get that right?)
on the second point; im gonna have enuf taxes to take care of when G Bush's new Medicair taxes are take effect (or are they already). If a child was given the "right" to change his sex and his parents didnt want to. it would: A. 1 more step to destroying the institution of the family B: would make someone else pay for it; mainly the taxpayers. :shaking:
EDIT:
Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
...why do we want to **** with nature? People confuze me.
yes, ppl can be irrational somtimes
Originally posted by Carl
if someone wanted to change your gender without your permission, should they be allowed to do it? if you vote yes in this pole, then that's exactly what you're voting for. think about it.
hmmm... that is a good point....
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Woah, I'm not going to quote you Drew because that's a little more than disturbing. We're talking about this happening at the embryonic stage, not some little boy saying "mommy I want to be a girl." In response to Carl, it's not quite like that, because the embryo/fetus isn't actually altered in any way. In other words, if your parents had undergone this selection when they concieved you, and wanted you to be a girl rather than a boy, there is a 0% chance that the mass of cells that you started out as would ever have left the test tube. The choice is not whether to make a baby a boy or a girl, it's choosing whether you want your offspring to be male or female. There isn't technically a sex change, it's [simply] choosing to implant a viable embryo of a desired gender rather than one at random (as in natural fertilization). Now this is all the more disturbing from the pro-life camp, because to actually make this choice multiple embryos have to be fertilized and incubated to a certain point, at which time all but one are disposed of. From the perspective that life starts at conception, you're killing off several dozen (maybe even hundreds, depending on the scale of the incubation project) "unborn children". I personally see this argument as being very stupid, but there are a lot of people who see it this way.
As for "sex change" operations; these are only half-truths. You don't actually turn a man into a woman through any operation in any way other than cosmetic; the genetic structure is preserved in its entirety and all reproductive functions are permanently lost. A man who undergoes a sex-change operation is still a man (from a cellular sense and in many ways a hormonal sense as well) and vice-versa, despite what proponents of the procedure would have one believe. It's basic biology; we can't do full-scale genetic replacement (nor would we want to) nor can we reproduce the different configurations of organs (between male and female) as they develop naturally over the course of aging. The whole argument about legalizing it/making it illegal is more a legislated morality issue than a scientific one.
EDIT: My thoughts on the whole messing with nature business are mixed too; [no one hit me for this] the whole Women's Rights movement (as in freedoms, specifically the freedom for a woman to control her own body) has pretty much f***ed the natural order anyway. So from that standpoint, why not throw in the towel. At the same time, I don't really trust the institutions that are making these services available to do as good a job as mother nature (and besides, it really defeats the purpose of sex, something that in truth should never have left the realm of reproduction to begin with), and I really don't like the idea of "test tube babies" because of that.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Natural selection is there for a reason. If this goes through and suddenly (for whatever reason) everyone wants a boy - what are you going to do, force people to have girls to keep the species going?
I'm against it unless there is a good medical reason.
Exactly - look at China; their one-baby-per-household policy means that boys outnumbering girls at an ever-increasing rate. So either China is going to conquer Asia with a 200 million strong army within 20 years, or they're going to die out from inability to breed.
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I think population dieoff is exactly what China is going for though. They're overcrowded, and the land is broken up too many ways. Forcing families to merge rather than continually fracturing is something the higher-up in that country have been aiming at for years. (Yes, I know China is communist. But they still have some issues with land ownership and the tradition of at least passing on the family name, thus the problem of no one actually wanting girls). However, it would create quite a problem if in, say, 50 years, China has a population crash of monumental proportions; I don't think any government could hold out under the strain. What'll happen, though, is children born before this rule went into effect will age to realize that there are far too many men in China and have daughters, or the government will give it's birth-control policies up as futile.
And that was completely OT :D
EDIT: And I'll quote this too
Originally posted by Kalfireth
Natural selection is there for a reason. If this goes through and suddenly (for whatever reason) everyone wants a boy - what are you going to do, force people to have girls to keep the species going?
It's not really about this "going through"... this sort of thing is (and has been) legal for quite some time. This law is more important because it sets the precident for a government to regulate reproduction, in which case I'm against it (no matter what the law happens to say, for or against choosing the sex of a child). This falls under the realm of "mind your own business" as it's one of those things that starts a ball rolling from the top of a hill. It's an unstable equlibrium, once it starts to move, it will never stop.
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i believe it should only be done for medical purposes. there's more but what i have to say has already been said.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Exactly - look at China; their one-baby-per-household policy means that boys outnumbering girls at an ever-increasing rate. So either China is going to conquer Asia with a 200 million strong army within 20 years, or they're going to die out from inability to breed.
This is OT but oh well... if youv ever read Orwells 1984; Communism would kill to be able to control birth and the creation of human beings. Communism strips away intividuality and forces unity of a group by law. If a person was "grown" instead of born, he would have almost no identity for himself, ex. no family history. He would only be another person serving Government... its a scary thought....
BTW, if youv never read 1984, you should. ;)
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Originally posted by Carl
look at it this way, people:
if someone wanted to change your gender without your permission, should they be allowed to do it? if you vote yes in this pole, then that's exactly what you're voting for. think about it.
Dunno about you, but I've already been born. :p
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o way. There'd be trends, it'd be unavoidable. Population balance'd be skewed, and it'd be a downward spiral form there. Medical reasons would be probably the only loophole because there are sex specific genetic diseases, but ideally (in this case anyway) cure'd be better than prevention.
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You are aware that, given modern technology and politics, by all rights we should be disparate clouds of heavily irradiated vapor somewhere in the stratosphere right now? Give humanity some credit; we're dumb, but not a billionth as dumb as the techno-alarmists would like to pretend.
Me, I don't see the problem. With exactly two options there's no way you'd see "trends" ("Ooh, male children are, like, so in this month!"), and even if that were even a remote possibility, this isn't exactly something every pregnant woman on the planet is gonna have access to. Hell, half of 'em can barely get inoculations and hospital treatment for their babies, and that's in the rich countries- do you really think the urban poor are suddenly going to start modifying their fetuses at will? You think even the average middle-class suburbanite will be doing this sort of thing? This will, at most, be something the stupid rich do because they can and something that'll go over big in China because it beats hell out of killing your girl children after going through all the effort of giving birth to them. And if the stupid rich die out- what could be more in tune with natural selection? I don't think there's a chance in hell of the Chinese dying out any time soon. Any rational basis for banning treatments like this falls flat at the slightest examination, and all you're really left with is the same half-baked moralization and same tired fear of new things we've seen in bureaucrats from time immemorial. Why we pay a bunch of fat old assholes to sit around and tell us what's wrong and evil and we absolutely can't do for no readily available reason is beyond me- hell, I wouldn't let 'em pay me for the privelidge.
Me, I can't wait 'till the day I can get a baby with spikes. And maybe acid blood or something, I dunno.
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I voted yes. To be sure, I personally don't think it should be done; but to make it illegal would go against the progress this world is making in giving the next generation unparalleled choice. Whether the ability to choose has been good or bad is debatable, but humans will always seek for it. I think it ruins many good things, but go for your life if that's your choice.
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I guess the question was a bit isleading RE: changing you sex (i.e. transexuals) vs selecting your childs'. For point of referecne, I met the latter (selecting your childs sex before birth)
I'm firmly against it except in the case of hereditary defects affecting male / female children.
Firsly, because I think it sets a dangerous precedent - the next step could be selecting facial appearance, or changing skin colour, etc.
Secondly, because it seems to trivialise the whole issue - I think a parents love for a child should be unconditional, regardless of what sex, colour, appearance or defects they may have/be born with. If a set of parents are only prepared to accept a male child (for example), they shouldn't be allowed to have one.
Thirdly, i think it risks encouraging (or facilitating) sexual descrimination with certain ethnic / religious / social groups.
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I'm not particularly worried about gender imbalance as a result of sex selection being allowed. In fact it would be quite darwinian if such a trend did get started.
Lets say that a certain ethnic group likes to have male children because girls have to have a dowry when they marry (there are several cultures that do this so it makes a good example). So everyone starts having boys. Anyone who chooses to have a girl instead has got it made. When the girl reaches marrying age the father can set a dowry of 1 penny and he'll still have millionaire families trying to get their sons married to his daughter because they have no other choice within their ethnic / religious / social group.
Seeing this more people whould choose to have daughters. Basically evolution would favour those people smart enough to go against the gender imbalance every single time.
I agree with Aldo that it sets a dangerous precedent and that's why it should be stopped.
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I don't see any problems with it, if the technology is there and you don't use it then you still selected not to change the gender, so you still have a choice and you decided to make your kid, whatever. as far as the whole, "oh no, people will start electing the color of ther childerens skin" bull, if there that concerned with that what are the chances that they are going to select for a mate someone who's skin color is diferent from there own, think about it.
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Originally posted by Shrike
Lesbians are only amusing for eyecandy, and that's if they're hot. But the entire point of lesbians is that they won't date you. :p
No. That's the fun in lesbians. They're like a hurdle on your way to declaring yourself the Ultimate Stud™. You must cure at least 3 lesbians before you can claim the much covetted title.
As for the sex-selection thing, if people choose to have sex with their ki......*is informed by lackeys*......Oh, right. Err.
In that case, as things are in other areas of genetics, I am wholey against it.
In everything regarding genetics you should be forced to go either fully for it or fully against it. Either legalise it all and let people go wild making super-people and super-crops and super-cars and ****, or outlaw it all and stick to nature.
You can't decide to allow people to choose the sex of their children and say it's right; Then deny a farmer the right to modify his cows so they're more healthy and tell him it's wrong.
I'd consider choosing a male baby to avoid hereditary disease to be using genetics to make a stronger and healthier baby. And if that's the case, then why not go full-hog and totally re-engineer it's genetic structure.
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You guys ever see the movie "Gattaca" ? It was about gene engineering. Honestly, I think it could very well get to that. Perhaps not as exxagerated as the movie but close.
I don't agree in genetic engineering except for medical reasons. And even then I'm a little hesitant.
I'm sure the Church is having a field day w/ this...
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Originally posted by pyro-manic
Also, you could get some psycho dictator guy building a massive army for his take-over-the-world bid in 20 years' time. :D
(OK, not very likely, but you know what I mean) :)
Knowing some people in this world, pretty likely....
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Natural selection is only way
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Originally posted by J3Vr6
I'm sure the Church is having a field day w/ this...
The church could never be THAT retarded.
If they start making a ruckuss, all anyone has to say is "Wow, I thought you guys woulda been all for this. I mean, the parents would be guaranteed a healthy, happy, supple, tender, sexy, little boy"
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Um (this is sort of a summary) - normally I'm actually pro genetic stuff (for example, where a plant can be engineered to grow in very arid conditions and thus help relieve famines), provided it's not done solely for profit.
But in the case of 'cosmetic' modification on humans (and I include gender selction in this), I think it's better just to let nature (or God, depending on your relative beliefs and soforth) take it's course.
Another point that just occured to me is that, by giving an ever-increasing amount of control to the appearance (etc) of a child, you risk them being regarded as 'products' by future generations.
And in most (if not all cases) the people I've seen who want to select their childs' sex are doing so to fill some sort of percieved 'gap' in their life - for example, the loss of a child, or several same sex children (i.e. a large family of boys). In many cases, I reckon that these people believe this is a sort of 'quick fix', and that they will become resentful if the child doesn't fill this perceived hole in their life.
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Oh, don't even get me started on the "We lost out little baby girl" people.
That couple who wanted to clone their dead kid should be taken out back and ****ing shot.
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oops i misinterpreted this topic
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Yeah, that 'selection' bit kinda gets lost when you read it too quick.
I read about half the thread before I realised.
Oddly enough, your reply still makes sense.
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I think only for medical purposes makes sense. If/when you have children you get what you get. There isn't a disadvantage to one or the other and we shouldn't seek out a system where that notion may be promoted.
There may come a time however when this technique may be needed to redress gender balance. I've things stating that for the first time in history, there are more females than males. If this ever became a serious problem (currently its probably less than a percentage point - its still interesting) then obviously the technology to redress that balance is available. Pretty sure it had to do with all the hormones in our food - also why we keep getting taller.
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Pfff. Barring a cataclysmic even which targets only one gender, there will never be a serious gender imbalance. If there are more women, then men just screw more and the laws of probability take effect to rebalance numbers, and if there are more men then as a consequence there will be more wars (and/or women will be encouraged to have more kids by way of propoganda) and again, the laws of probability sort things out.
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The curent gender imbalance only exists due to the fact that women live longer. AFAIK there is no imbalance amongst people of reproductive age (and even if there was would anyone here complain if there were two women for every guy?)
As I said above any gender imbalance would create a very strong selection pressure for the other sex anyway so it would all resolve itself.
Originally posted by aldo_14
And in most (if not all cases) the people I've seen who want to select their childs' sex are doing so to fill some sort of percieved 'gap' in their life - for example, the loss of a child, or several same sex children (i.e. a large family of boys). In many cases, I reckon that these people believe this is a sort of 'quick fix', and that they will become resentful if the child doesn't fill this perceived hole in their life.
Good point. What do you do if you sex select for a girl and she turns out to be a bit of tomboy instead of the living barbie doll you were after? It's pretty likely anyway since by the time you select for a girl you've probably already got 3 or 4 boys anyway.
Medical reasons are pretty much the only reason for sex selection and even that should only be a stop gap while we do research to find a way to dead end the genes for these horrible diseases by only implanting children who won't carry them.
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I've got a way to stop hereditary diseases.
It involves 500,000 shotguns, 500,000 troops, 50 tanks, a really long list of names and a hippo.
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Originally posted by an0n
...and a hippo.
We've got one of those here on the board IIRC... :p
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You know Kam's sensetive about his weight.
*runs*
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People can do whatever they want to themselves and their kids, just as long as they don't start imposing it on other people.
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
An army of savage, sex crazed girls. ;7
Well if they are hot that would be great. ;7 :D
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Originally posted by Dark_4ce
People can do whatever they want to themselves and their kids, just as long as they don't start imposing it on other people.
:wtf: You mean people are free to monkey about with their unborn kids but not other people? At least other people get a say.
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Originally posted by Knight Templar
An army of savage, sex crazed girls. ;7
Already done. Have you been to any US high school? :D
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well, IIRC this whole procedure was done by selecting sperm cells by mass or something, so human rights organisations would have to get an egg for every sperm cell if they wanted to say this was murder or something.
and i feel fine about this, really, where is the problem? to much guy's, some will stay bachelor. to much girls, where's the problem?
since there is no risk of death, disease, mutulation, mutation, or **** like that, i am fine with this. slecting the gender isn't anywhere near changing select property's. to change eyecolor, you'd have to edit the DNA. to change gender, you need another sperm cell with XY instead of XX chromosoms.
edit: err, X instead of Y, a sperm cell has only one chromosome.
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Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
...why do we want to **** with nature? People confuze me.
Cancer Therapy == ****ing with nature
Flight == ****ing with nature
Space exploration == ****ing with nature
Removal of Congenital defects == ****ing with nature
braces == ****ing with nature
hair dye == ****ing with nature
plastic surgery == ****ing with nature
circumcision == ****ing with nature
clothing == ****ing with nature
computer == ****ing with nature
cars == ****ing with nature
mining == ****ing with nature
boats == ****ing with nature
drugs == ****ing with nature
cities == ****ing with nature
roads == ****ing with nature
fences == ****ing with nature
houses == ****ing with nature
What in the world ISN'T ****ing with nature? If a natural creature can do it (man is a natural creature) its not ****ing with nature. Its the natural result of nature.
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I don't really like this idea. Of course, I don't like many ideas people have. Too much room for abuse. And Drew? I sincerely doubt we'll ever reach the extremes found in that book.
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Originally posted by Drew
This is OT but oh well... if youv ever read Orwells 1984; Communism would kill to be able to control birth and the creation of human beings. Communism strips away intividuality and forces unity of a group by law. If a person was "grown" instead of born, he would have almost no identity for himself, ex. no family history. He would only be another person serving Government... its a scary thought....
BTW, if youv never read 1984, you should. ;)
Point of fact: 1984 was not about Communism. It was about rampant Socialism. You need to read more about Orwell.
I think you should also read Brave New World. It is a better fit with the 'grown vs born' concept. Of course, BNW and 1984 should be read back to back anyway, to get the full, hot flush of raw horror.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Point of fact: 1984 was not about Communism. It was about rampant Socialism. You need to read more about Orwell.
dude, "negative utopia" is Communism. Thats the exact term Orwell used to define the state of government in 1984.
Anyway mik, the socialism in 1984 is much more akin to Communism, wouldnt you agree?
and no kidding with the "horror"......
btw i have read animal farm as well mik...
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I this tweaking really necessary?
At this time I find it's just another opportunity to make a hell of a mess without much to gain.
:no: (unless its by doctors orders)
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What makes y'all think parents need to genemod their kids in order to treat them in a ****ed-up fashion? Every single example that yo listed, every one, can be seen day-to-day right here and now. I'd say a large majority of parents put their children up to unrealistic ideals, or ones that have nothing to do with the child's wants and needs. A fair-sized minority do this badly enough to give their children neuroses that manifest later in life- look at all the soccer moms, the kids dragged through the whole acting bit until they're ****ing insane, the little boys dragged off to get their spines telescoped by larger, foul-tempered children because their dad wants them to be football players. What, exactly, would change here? The ****ed-up people will remain ****ed-up, no matter what, and they'll manage to act in a ****ed-up fashion whether you give them the ability to act on one manifestation of that or not. Ban something because the ****ed-up people might abuse it, you're just depriving everyone else of a useful item or technology. It's misguided at best, actively the most harmful thing modern industrialized governments do to their people at worst. And it's terribly patronizing, too- not all of us are that ****ed-up, not even a notable minority are that bad- it'll be, once again, those nutty upper-middle-class housewives and such who want to live vicariously through their children, and ruin their lives in the process. And, once again, they don't need some fancy technology to do that, they get along fine.
And what is this **** about it being done "against their will"? A fetus doesn't have a will, not one that's of any concern to anyone else, anyway. Were we to let babies have their way, they'd all chew on ****ing electrical cords and die. After ****ting all over the house and wrecking stuff to the point where they wouldn't be missed. A baby is an undeveloped mind- they do not have reasoning capability, they do not have a distinct personality, they have not developed into an intelligent organism whose concerns in these matters is of any importance. Well, okay, some importance when whatever the action is doesn't have a direct positive bearing on the child's health, but what are you gonna do? Poll the fetuses?
It's not like they'd have an opinion, anyway. Sexual identity starts developing well after birth- it's all quite the same to an unborn child, in fact later in life they'd have no conception of what life'd be like the other way. You wouldn't get, say, any more transsexuals or other people with gender identity problems in a gene-modified population than you would in the regular one as a whole. They'd be normal men and women like you and I- provided the surgery was successful and didn't have any wierd side effects, which is a whole other story altogether. Basically, you're projecting your personal reactions to such a thing onto an entity that would not share them in the slightest.
Moral qualifiers ("it's unnatural" is basically the more PC evolution of "it's against God's plan", which is a bull****-laden way of saying "I don't like it and can't be bothered to find a real reason why) don't factor in here- if you think something should be banned for all people just because you personally find it wrong, end of story, please, I beg of you- never, ever vote. Or participate in politics in any fashion, ever again. You people are what comprise the everpresent threat of theocratic dictatorship. If there is a reason you find it wrong- fine, find a reason. State it. But if it has anything to do with what some ****ing book says, or your personal unbased gut reactions to something, don't even think about trying to force that on me or anyone I know or I part your hair with a shotgun. And that is my moral code.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Sexual identity starts developing well after birth
thats the part i dont get, how can a kid decide his gender.... Hes a dude if he has a dick, shes a girl if she has...well.. u know...
even if you wanted to swich those 2 around [cut, snip/paste ;)] wouldnt a guy, no matter how deformed, be a guy? (and vice versa)
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Wow, that's the most ****ed up argument I've seen here in a long time. You are completely right of course, with the exception of the surgery bit at the end; as I have said before it's selecting an embryo with the desired gender chromosomes, not actual alteration of the embryo at any stage. This of course means a lot of embryos grown which will never have the oppertunity to grow into a human being (bring on the religious right) but I really don't have a problem with that. I really can't see the argument that [conscious] life begins at conception as holding any water whatsoever, since there isn't even a primitive nervous system in place for much of the first trimester. And once it's there, it still takes some time to reach a level of development where it can be argued that you have a human life.
EDIT: You beat me to the punch Drew, that part above is in response to Stryke 9's post, not yours. What he means by sexual identity isn't so much the sex of an individual, it's the way they conform to gender roles and the way their bodies develop (through puberty) into a mature adult of one gender or the other. Like it or not, when we were 5, the difference between us and a girl of the same age had more to do with whether our parents put us in blue jeans and a t-shirt or a dress and how they decided to cut our hair. The reproductive specilzation doesn't fully come about until much later.
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Moral qualifiers ("it's unnatural" is basically the more PC evolution of "it's against God's plan", which is a bull****-laden way of saying "I don't like it and can't be bothered to find a real reason why) don't factor in here- if you think something should be banned for all people just because you personally find it wrong, end of story, please, I beg of you- never, ever vote. Or participate in politics in any fashion, ever again. You people are what comprise the everpresent threat of theocratic dictatorship. If there is a reason you find it wrong- fine, find a reason. State it. But if it has anything to do with what some ****ing book says, or your personal unbased gut reactions to something, don't even think about trying to force that on me or anyone I know or I part your hair with a shotgun. And that is my moral code.
I would mostly tend to agree with you, until you realize just how stupid people are. They will follow any trend, any fashion or whatever, no matter how blatantly stupid. Some things are just very wrong or very stupid or both. There are plenty of sick assholes in this world, and their idea of being unique usually involved doing something very repugnant to themselves or to someone else. I believe that I should be able to say "look, this **** is stupid. The people who do it are stupid. Now wash of the black nailpolish, take those spikes out of your dick, and behave like a human being." Case in point, body modification.
Its the natural evolution of tatoos, piercings etc. Not that I have anything against tatoos or piercings, but thats cause I was born in the 80s, so I'm a modern guy. 50 years ago, people would be disgusted by what is today normal. Now, I saw a website (I didn't go looking for it, just saw it on someone else's comp) set up up to showcase the crazy **** people do to themselves. Most of it, you would not believe. A lot of it had to do with mutilation of ye dingly dongly, and its really not pretty stuff. These people think that they're unique or cool or something, but anyone with half a brain can immeditaly tell you thats its wrong and stupid.
Now, what I'm afraid of, is that in 20-30 years, this **** will be as common as tatoos are today. And people won't mind. For the first time in my life, I can relate to that old guy sitting on the park bench, yelling "the world has gone to ****" cause I see a future that I don't like. However, everyone will be used to it, and people won't mind.
Please don't make me post the URl to prove my point, cause I really don't wanna get banned and/or disgust people.
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Oh and, back on topic :D :D
For medical purposes yes, otherwise no.
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Um... okaaaay, first off, I think faddish sex selection is a bit dumber than getting a tatoo, and would be a bit rarer- one is the ordinary product of a drunken night in college, is rather cheap and easy to acquire, and is generally done in a noninvasive fashion that, while you may regret it, makes it so that you're not consciously aware of it every moment of every day. Sex selection is none of these- I'm not saying stupid people won't do it for all the wrong reasons, certainly they will (look at dick piercings)- but is the very very small fraction of one percent who are rich enough to get it done, sane enough to be allowed to do it by a legitimate medical establishment (all procedures of this sort involve at least a very basic mental-health check, and nobody gets, say, artificially inseminated just because they feel like it- this is actually the point where it'll be yet rarer than the nigh-impossible-to-find cockbolt), and mentally imbalanced enough to actually want it really reason enough to ban it for the rest of the populace, when it could otherwise be a good thing in many cases? Some families do have sex-based expectations for their children, and often traumatize those who end up being of the opposite sex- this'd reduce that. Scientific progress is leaning heavily towards tinkering with prenatal biology- stopping this avenue of research up (though it seems a bit crude to me, there are a few small redeeming aspects of it) may well mean stopping up a hundred more advances that would be genuinely and inarguably beneficial. And for what? So twenty lunatics in California have to have the sort of babies they don't want?
There's not a lot of redeeming value to the procedure, and indeed I think that any one good reason why it's unhealthy or dangerous will be more than enough to ban it. But if the only reasons are the same tired bible-thumping that was used to promote eugenics back in the day and reservations about how the short bus crowd will manage to maul modern technology, I'm inclined to think that that's all the more reason to let it be legalized- it'd set a precedent where we don't have to be held back by the retards in our society, but could advance like the smart ones, and don't have to put up with empty preaching by the morally bankrupt right dictating how we can live our lives. It sure beats a society where you can get sued for not advising people that coffee is sometimes hot and we have an upcoming Presidential campaign based partly on hating gays and the rest based on hating foreigners, because it's traditional and God's way according to some rich white men in the Midwest.
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Originally posted by Razor
Well if they are hot that would be great. ;7 :D
id be your only hope wouldnt it razor :D
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Cool, he made a funny.
What makes you think Razor would have hope there? They'd just have sex with each other instead.
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Originally posted by Drew
Already done. Have you been to any US high school? :D
Have you been to any California High School? :doubt:
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My problem with sex selection is that it's the thin edge of a very big wedge. It's basically the first step down the road towards eugenics.
Currently it's only being used to test if a child is male or female but suppose people start saying "well since we're deciding which one to implant why not test to see which one has blue eyes, blond hair, the genes for intelligence, genes for athletic abilities etc". With sex selection legalised these tests would come sooner or later. You couldn't even stop them because if you've said that it's okay for parents to test whether their child is male or female testing whether they are bright or stupid is actually a test that makes more sense.
Now I have no particular problem with designer babies at all. Basically it's just a more refined version of what evolution is doing anyway (the smartest and the prettiest breed more often on average so in general the species gets smarter and prettier). What I have a problem with is that this ability to have smarter and prettier children won't be available to everyone. They would remain available only to people rich enough to afford the £20,000 it costs for a cycle of IVF. So basically you end up with a situation where the rich get smarter and prettier and the rest of the world has to muddle through on their own.
Under those conditions it would become harder and harder for anyone who isn't rich to get anywhere in life. So basically you end up with a self perpetuating underclass and then you're heading right into an Orwellian nightmare.
So until everyone has the right to do sex selection no one should have it. The only form that should be allowed for medical reasons.
See Stryke. Not everyone against sex selection is doing it because of stupid religious reasons.
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Originally posted by Drew
Already done. Have you been to any US high school? :D
No I didn't. If I would ever wanna go to one...it would probably be because:
- I would have only 4 or 5 subjects.
- I would have a lot more spare time
- I could join a basketball team because noone here ever wants to play basketball and that really stinks. :no:
Now about sex crazed girls.....I don't think they are that crazy.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Point of fact: 1984 was not about Communism. It was about rampant Socialism. You need to read more about Orwell.
It was about dictatorial / totalitarian government IIRC - Orwell was a socialist himself, but he saw the dangers of the one party state as it was applied in Communist Russia (par example). I think you can apply the logic behind 1984 to any form of government where an elite group has power - including facism (ala Italy & Germany in WW2), communism and modern dictatorships.
It probably stands stronger now than before - especially because of the date issue(the opening few pages, IIRC, describe how winston Smith only knows what the date is because that's what he's been told by the Government). It's basically about a world where the ruling class has so much power, that even something as basic as the date can be changed to suit their needs. And we're also now entering a stage where the technology needed for the total oppression described in 1984, is actually possible.
anyways, back on topic - I think a lot of people argguing for pro-choice are forgetting the impact on the child. True, we may have no choice what we look when we are born regardless but allowing parents to specify sex (as i sort of said earlier) or even more means that they will have very specifci expecations of their child. That's a very bad thing IMO, becuase it puts pressure on the child to act and be a certain way, which will either cause friction between them and the parents, or put us on the long road towards loss of individuality.
Children should have (within the sensible moral bounds that make society work as a whole) complete freedom in who or what they want to be when they go through their life. Parental selection of sex is likely to change that, because the motivations behind it will likely affect the child the parents 'expect'.
Plus, the more you can change, the more you expect......
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SOmeone JUST touched on it... About a girl being a tomboy. Guess what people, I have not done the research BUT I thik most people have gender issues about transsexualism becuse they felt they were "born in teh wrong body", ie their soul is opposite in regards to their outward form. Thus you have boys who feel that they are girls inside (not pointing fingers at anyone here ;) but would be cool to hear about...) and girls who gorw up not realising that teh reason they grew up so uncomformtable around men is that they are men on the inside...
NOW, if you ar open minded enough to accept this kind of "natural mistake", kind of like a cosmic birth defect (sorry!), imagine how much WORSE the situation can be if a couple decides t have a boy or girl and nature intended the opposite. You have the potential of creating a person who may grow up with unrecognized issues taht are gendr related adn suffer all through their life and may not ever have the epipanhy of (gee I am actually the opposite gender!). Especailly if mom and dad never tell their child ("and we wanted a boy so much we made sure of it") :eek: OMG! You mean you made me male/female no matter what? This could explain why I like trucks and wrestling at a young age, or ballet and tea parties... (yes stereotyping BUT I'm only trying to present a possible point of view).
Chew on that and then what do you think???
Above all I think people (no matter what age, but who completely and fully feel that thier is definately a "WRONGNESS" in their gender, need teh opportunity/technology to remedy the situation created by nature or society in order to have a better quality of life. even if this only effects a minority of those who would pursue gender reassignment for the "right reasons" and is abused by teh mass of applicants the fact that those in genuine need HAVE to be heard and helped this option has the MORAL imperitive to be viable... I mean REALLY! Would you like to be one of these people who feel trapped in the body of teh wrong gender (sexual gratification issues aside), as I man I find it thrilling only if I could "visit" on the weekends. I am a MAN, and thank the universe I AM A MAN and thouroughly enjoy my maleness and my male gender :nervous:
This is NOT an issue about POLITICS or RELIGION, it's about common sense...!
In a nut shell if teh parents want o choose fine, BUT be aware of the possible reprocussions. I do believe in genetic manipulation IF you end up with a healthier result, or to avoid a defect.
ala GATTACA (ummm a geneticly enhanced UMA THURMAN!) sexxy! (is there a drooling icon?) D'oh! :eek: LOL!
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:confused:
Ok, I'll admit, this discussion has gone in a way completely contrary to my understanding of science, religion, or any other debate. I still maintain (as I have said, what, 3 times now?) that under no circumstances would the actual genetic makeup of the lump of cells that will eventually give rise to a human being if allowed to develop naturally (commonly called a zygote, embryo, or fetus depending on the stage of development) be altered in any way. That would require complete genetic restructuring of every cell in the mass, and that simply cannot be done. That would be genetic therapy to some whole new level, and we can't even do the basic level yet. So there would be no manipulation of the developing child in the mother's womb (and there wouldn't be anyway).
However, an interesting point has been raised by Star Dragon, whether he realizes it or not. This point is the emergence of consciousness, or as Star Dragon alludes to, the origin of a human soul. If you believe that your soul is created long before you are born, then the idea of being placed in a body not meant for you is somewhat (make that very) discomforting. It's also something I can't agree with, since there are too many factors that determine who we are in growing up; things like parental and peer influences, the conditions (including religious and moral) in which one is raised, and so on. However, that is a philosophical debate more suited to an argument on those terms. To blame the existance of girls who are tomboys or people who feel the need to become transsexuals on "being placed in the wrong body" isn't something I've ever really liked either, but it does go somewhat hand-in-hand with one's soul being independend of environmental factors. I think tomboys are girls who grew up around a bunch of boys, and who never had enough experience with the social constructs of what it means to be a woman to ever take those on. And I really think transsexuals need psychiatric help, but that goes along with the fact that I believe that we are a product of our experiences above everything else, and that gender roles are a largely socially defined phenomena (although one of the oldest and most deeply rooted ones).
Originally posted by karajorma
Under those conditions it would become harder and harder for anyone who isn't rich to get anywhere in life. So basically you end up with a self perpetuating underclass and then you're heading right into an Orwellian nightmare.
Quite the opposite actually, you get a return to the aristocratic society that we all like to think we are getting away from. Orwell made the point quite clear in 1984: it isn't important who is in power, but rather that someone is in power (the parent-child association was practically gone in that book, so it's the composition of the someone that is constantly changing), and that the status quoe of someone holding absolute power remains indefinitely. In fact, one of the most discomforting images in that book was of the child ratting out his parents to The Party, and you wouldn't get that under a system where the rich and powerful are continuing a forced evolution path. What you really get happening with eugenics is an exponential stratification along socio-economic bounds, and it can be argued (quite convincingly) that this is happening anyway.
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As for the Orwellian comment I simply meant a government with absolute power over everyone else and with no way of ever removing them.
The reason why it would be different from the aristocratic societies of the past is that unlike the past the rich wouldn't just think they were better than the rest of us. They actually would be. Worse still the longer they remained in power the more different they would actually become from everyone else.
This is very different from anything that is happening now. No matter how rich you are there is a good chance that there is someone poorer, smarter and more more athletic than you. The rich people aren't particularly breeding for intelligence etc any more than the rest of us. The only thing they have in their favour is money and the benifits that derive from that (better health, education etc). There's always the chance that the common man can pull them down again if they get too high and mighty just because of their money (the example of past aristocracies are an excellent example of that happening).
But if you allow people to select for traits like intelligence the gap between the rich and poor will open up wider than it has ever been in the past and it will get harder and harder to ever pull them down.
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I repeat: I don't like this because I'm cynical about human nature and I don't trust the general public to use science for proper purposes. Or to quote Agent K from the movie Men in Black: "A person is smart; people are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
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1984 actually implied that the governemnt does change, but the conditions for the people don't.... basically, that the oppressed lower class will lead to a 'revolutionary' middle class, who eventually wrest power from the ruling class. And then the middle class - now the upper class - takes power and becomes the same as those they replaced. And nothing changes for the vast majority - the proles. Of cours,e because they have no real power, the proles have the closest thing to freedom - but they also don;t understand it. I think these 2 points are referenced in the middle of the book.
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Kara: Never said everyone opposed it on purely irrational grounds, simply that I hadn't seen anything but that up to that point.
Anyway, yes, you raise a very good point. I hadn't exactly considered it from quite that angle- dunno about smart people getting laid more often or otherwise being more fertile, but other than that... it's quite possible. However, since all they're really doing is selecting from the existing fertilized eggs, they couldn't add any genes that the parents already had, and both intelligence and (to a lesser extent) athleticism are famously hard to pinpoint in the genome- we can eliminate some congenital traits, maybe select the combination of genes that comes closest to fitting some template with higher odds of producing a genius or a sports star, but that's all a matter of percentages, and in an average couple, with average genes in the family, the improvement in the odds over chance would be pretty minimal. Of course, if we got to the point where they refined the process, or started "cleaning" genes Gattaca-style, that'd be a different story, but at the moment the threat isn't quite so huge.
However, it would be a problem nonetheless, and I reverse my opinion.
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I know that the genes for intelligence are hard to find but lets face it we've only been looking for 50 years and the Human Genome Project only wrapped up a couple of years back.
As for them only having what's present in the fertilised eggs to work from I agree but if you think about it that's exactly what natural selection has to work with and look what it can do.
Add an artificial selection pressure and you can speed up things to an enormous degree. Look what we've managed to do to the wolf in only a few thousend years of selective breeding.
I doubt any major problems from selective breeding would appear quickly but I see no point in allowing it to become a big problem in a few hundred years time if it can be stopped now.
Originally posted by Stryke 9
Kara: Never said everyone opposed it on purely irrational grounds, simply that I hadn't seen anything but that up to that point.
I did mention that I agreed with Aldo that it set a dangerous precident but yeah. Even I was quite vague about what was so dangerous about it.
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Yes, they are. That's the central irony of 1984, which is paralleled in Winston's own life - the proles at large have a huge amount of freedom, but it's hidden from them. In that light, you could argue that they had no freedom at all.
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1984? Orwell knew more about the way politics works than basically anyone else I've read. The proles were free, absolutely so- as Winston said in there, were the Party to have become too bothersome they could have shrugged them off with virtually no effort at all. What kept them in subjugation was no power the Party exerted over them, but merely their own apathy- like people the world over, since time immemorial, they simply didn't know, didn't care, and didn't want to be bothered to improve their lives. Nothing had to be "hidden" from them, no real deception or oppression was necessary, just some quick diversions (i.e. the war) to keep the mildly perceptive few from noticing anything else and keep the rest busy.
To paraphrase another good (though lesser, and far less famous) writer, all the majority of people care about is decent television, spare change for some booze, and a blowjob every Saturday night. Anything beyond that is outside of their range of interest- the proles weren't oppressed in 1984, they were freely ****ing themselves with their own lack of motivation. This is the same thing Orwell, and indeed most perceptive observers of the political scene, have seen since the beginning of time- politics, the greater issues, things like "freedom" and "rights", are fought between a miniscule minority of the populace. At the utmost, the rest of the population will occasionally be dragged reluctantly into the fray by a really serious war, and even there they manage to make themselves ineffectual and largely sedentary.
The Outer Party members, on the other hand, do care- they're the ones who'd provide a threat to stability, the intellectuals who aren't actually in power, but may at some point wish to become so or influence those who are. And that's why all the horrific... "attentions" described in the book are directed at them- they're the danger. And they are not free- through a brilliantly clever combination of fabrication, police state, and manipulation of humanity's own worst characteristics (they're petty, they distrust one another inherently, they're concerned almost solely for their own safety and well-being; such a group will never rise to power, or indeed anything else). It's partly self-inflicted injury, but nothing they really could help even were they aware of it and were they to desire to, so there's no freedom there.
One thing I think Orwell missed a bit is the potential danger of Inner Party members. It's practically a truism that when you have absolute power shared among a group of individuals, there are going to be a lot of dead tyrants in very short order- megalomaniacs don't share power well. It's something that's touched upon, but not really emphasized in the book, because after all Orwell was writing it for the modern equivalent of the "Outer Party" and "Proles".
Also worth noticing is the structure that he sets up in the book isn't exclusive to Socialist dictatorships, tyrranies, or much of anywhere else- every government has an oligarchy that maintains its power, to one extent or another, by the same strategies he describes. It's a little bit silly to say it's about Communism, or Socialism, or Fascism, because whatever his intent (and he was more than clever enough to have noticed the parallels to his own government, and those around him) it's every government, and specifically every bad government, that's ever existed.
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Yeah, that's a nice sentiment, but "broke" is subjective in most cases. Half of my possessions are perfectly serviceable items someone else decided were "broke"- do you really expect people to have any better sense in the rhetorical sense?
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Some things are definitely "broke". My old DVD-ROM drive, for example.
Many things just need help. Every single economic system and government developed by man, for example.
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As I said, in most cases.
And I'm sure there's someone out there who'd say it's not broken at all, it's a perfectly serviceable doorstop.
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after 60-80 years we stop working and turn to dirt, that seems prety ****ing borke to me
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That assumes that most people ever start working. Things done in cubicles do not count as work in any meaningful way.