To a person all the Pro-lifers I know are also pro IVF. That is until I ask them when life starts. If they answer "at conception," then I carefully explain to them that IVF is not one egg meets some sperm. The process involves fertilizing five or six eggs, then picking out the most viable and tossing the rest in the trash. So for one live birth created by IVF, there are four or five lives aborted. And Abortion is murder and murder is sin and so on.
That usually shuts them up.

Fester

zero2one

BoneshakerBaby

I was blocked unfairly.

"That male female ratio is worse than the numbers I had. More male babies are a surefire way of guaranteeing a population and societal collapse.

"The next 20 years in China and India are going to be very very very ugly."

This assumes that Chinese and Indians are unable to travel to where women are (other countries) or will be unable to import brides. As China and India gain greater wealth, many men who might be otherwise unable to find wives will likely marry women from poor nations like Myanmar and Indonesia.

Sihanouk-s-Poodle

agreed. the way it has worked in the past is that not only do you get a food shortage, but you have so many people living so close to one another, that there is a big population die out due to disease and famine, and you are left with a small group of people who now have acess to alot of food and space

though i think this all becomes distorted when u bring technology into the equation. our machines are so efficient that we can can grow alot more in alot shorter time with alot less land. we also have medical technology which is getting better all the time, and we are teaching (on a global level) plenty of people to be doctors. you can also go on line and learn about different illnesses. basically what i am getting at is, i think the population die out will be much later than it should have been, and as a result will have a much bigger impact.

jrghoull

orpahanages are a little different now, though what u said still (for the most part) applies. they tend to be kids who have parents who have either sexually abused them (which kinda plays into the artile?) or are in prison (or something like that).

jrghoull

Agreed. Most people fail to equate eugenics with animal/plant breeding programs - it's the same idea, essentially. People who support eugenics (be they nazis or seriously misinformed biological idealists) programs fail to see the necessity of certain seemingly 'benign' (non-obvious) or even negative traits. Take sickle cell disease, for example. Those who possess homozygous genotypes for SCD are at a great disadvantage health-wise, but those individuals who have heterozygous phenotypes are provide poor habitats for malaria, while the rest of us who have normal blood cells are a malaria buffet. Mutations like those coding for bizarre traits like SCD may seem detrimental initially, but can serve their purposes in evolution - ie: allowing certain portions of a population to survive potential epidemics (and other environmental events).

There are tons of examples of plant breeding (and the ensuing monocultures in crop lands) where the plant/crop in question has defects in reproduction or some various metabolic phenotype. Corn is functionally incapable of detaching its seed from the cob (disfunction in seed dispersal) and so this process must performed by human hands. The ancestor of corn, teosinte, from which the present day corn plant was bred, disperses its seeds readily. If the human race suddenly ceased to exist tomorrow, the corn plant as we know it would not persist.

Something to ponder regarding transhumanism and eugenics.

botanicidal

blurey

blurey

1. A population must show variation on a trait of one sex (breast size, tail feather coloration).
2. These variations must be associated with differential mating success.
3. These variations must be is heritable.

The only one of those five where sex even matters is the One Child Policy (because of the patrilineal institutions in most cultures in China, parents want sons), but that has nothing to do with mating success.

And as others have pointed out - "pure, wild" human populations don't get modern medicines, hospitals, nutrition, sanitation, civil order, etc. so it's a bit silly to single out IVF.

antho

Spiral

Evil Tortie's Mom

Eugenics/social darwinianism was a wacky idea promoted by white "intellectuals" (and I'm using the term facetiously here) to promote the superiority of the "white race" (whatever that is) over the allegedly inferior races. Funny how "mongrels" always seem to be more evolutionarily sound than "pure breds." Dog breeding is a great example of this. Much of our ability to resist pathogens is also a result of mixing genes, not isolating them. The problem with eugenic type breeding is that no one has a clue as to what "superior" characteristics really are surperior. So it all devolves to a strictly arbitrary judgement (almost always racially motivated) that our group's characteristics are superior to your group's characteristics.

bjarmson

zero2one

LOVED that. I'm a fellow smartie (I was like "I.Q. 138? Dumbass), but I also really want to have lots of children. I'm super-cereal, guys: I want to have like 3 or 4. There's just one tiny little wrinkle: I'm kinda gay. Any genius ladies out there willing to lend me some eggs and an oven?

frndlybnny

fiveinchtaint

92BuickLeSabre

That being said, I believe that the world human population will become a key issue soon. We are in a state where the socially responsible thing to do is to have 1 or 2 kids. This means that if you are socially responsible and limit your reproduction, you are put at a darwinian disadvantage. Our species is devolving. At the same time, our natural resources are running out. Reproduction is of course necessary to continue evolving, but at some point do we say 'ok, there are enough people'? Our current population growth is not infinitely sustainable, and we are going to feel it soon.

Gann

It is a bad scene.

braak

Annalee Newitz

Annalee Newitz

I always found the practice of sentencing people to sterilization for being poor especially classy.
-Kle.

Klebert L. Hall

+ Watch video

femto

E0157H7

picardia

braak

92BuickLeSabre

tetracycloide

picardia

In a world of wild Darwinian selection, tons of us would die from heart failure much, much younger, but instead we have pacemakers and drugs.

In a world of wild Darwinian selection, a lot of people would be functionally blind, but instead we have contact lenses, eyeglasses and LASIK.

All of the above people have undoubtedly gone on to have children they would not have had save for medical treatments that made them healthier.

This post is too freakin' vague to make any sense. Eugenics was horrible and creepy; IVF is an ordinary scientific advance; Clonaid is apparently no more than cult propaganda. So how are they listed together? Besides the obvious laziness, I mean.

picardia

tetracycloide

braak

The reason they have multiple births is the doctors and the patients are trying and have been trying for a while to conceive, so they do go overboard with drugs, and implanting multiple eggs trying for some of them to stick, most patients under going treatments deliver one or two babies, the multi-multi gestation is a rarity.

@ratlas: Awesome statement.. it is true, that is the biggest/long standing pressure being applied to the human evolution..

Maybe we could go to 10-11 month gestations and just remove all babies surgically....
Hey why am I being attacked by 9 month pregnant women alof a sudden...

DocGratis

fiveinchtaint

codydog

[en.wikipedia.org]

Dug

TheTragonDragon

Still, it's going to be problematic.

braak

That male female ratio is worse than the numbers I had. More male babies are a surefire way of guaranteeing a population and societal collapse.

The next 20 years in China and India are going to be very very very ugly.

ManchuCandidate

PVIII

92BuickLeSabre

codydog

steven522

braak

cmg

Also, Ceaucescu's Decreteii--a lot of them (a LOT) ended up in State run orphanages, purposefully deprived of nuclear families and GIVEN BLOOD TO DRINK, so that they would grow up to be invincible proletarian supermen.

braak

Mathmos

Then again, this entry may have been composed by a secret underground cabal of Nazis, hidden away, breeding their supermen, planning their return to power.

Belial

Jeff-Minor