The Transformation of Medicine Into a Tool of "Liberation"
I have posted on the Nadya Suleman matter and her having eight children via IVF. I have also done several radio interviews and have made the following points. First, this is an unregulated field and doctors can basically do just about whatever they like legally. Second, why should we be surprised? We have created a culture steeped in terminal nonjudgmentalism where moral judgements about the "choices" of others are deemed out of bounds and literally hateful. This is leading us toward an anything goes culture. Third, to accommodate the fulfilling of all desires and urges--the "hedonism" aspect of the coup de culture I have been warning about--we are literally transforming medicine beyond its roles of healing and palliating, into an industry of "liberation "to fulfill on-demand lifestyle choices.
And to make sure that no one gainsays these decisions, doctors now face potential consequences for saying no--as Secondhand Smokette points out in her excellent piece on this matter in today's San Francisco Chronicle. From Debra's column "Dysfunctional Familymaking":
Doctors' understandable desire to help infertile couples conceive children has led to medical advances that are not necessarily healthy for children. The new order is great for adults, who now can have children without a partner and in defiance of age limits, but it is not necessarily in the best interests of the children they bear. We have created a society that dictates that all reproductive wishes should be answered. Then we criticize an over-her-head mom--whose own mother fretted that she was "obsessed" with having kids--when the inevitable horrors happen...We can either have a society based on reasonably enforceable norms in which we can obtain much of what we desire--but probably none of us can have everything we want. Or, we can focus obsessively, as we do now on radical individualism, in which the most important value is allowing everyone to indulge nearly every personal desire--and no tyranny of the majority to inhibit their personal choices. But that leads to the end of society because eventually there is no commonality. That is one of the fallacies with transhumanism: The idea is for ever individual to recreate themselves into their own designed radical self image--but in all that "me," where does that leave the "us?"
You can say her fertility doctors--whoever they are--should have refused to impregnate an overburdened single mother. They should have. However, in August, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a San Diego fertility clinic had no right to refuse to inseminate a lesbian in a partnership on religious grounds. What happens if doctors refuse a single mom, who can sue based on state law banning discrimination based on marital status?
Moreover, now that we have unquestionably opened that door, we are finding no solid philosophical ground for inhibiting "choices" that many would see as destructive. (For example, we have already seen deaf parents use IVF and genetic testing to ensure that they had a deaf child. Their response to criticism was that a deaf child was the kind they wanted, and who is anyone to assume that it is better to hear than not to hear.In the current milieu, that's a hard argument to rebut.) In fact, the Oprahfication of culture often celebrates decisions made far outside the mainstream--as with the "man" (really a woman) who gave birth.
Some of the people squawking the loudest about Suleman's choice to have fourteen children are the most vociferous howlers for unfettered lifestyles. I have one question for them: What do they expect?
Labels: Nadya Suleman. IVF. Octuplets. Coup de Culture. Terminal Nonjudgmentalism.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:59 AM
28 Comments
28 Comments:
It's one thing for anyone to be able to have, or try to have, what they want. It's another thing for no one to have the right not to give it to them.
If people have a problem with octuplets, the answer is NOT to limit the number of embryos one should implant; it would be to limit the number of embryos one can CREATE. In Italy, IVF clinics create only those embryos who are intended to be implanted, rather than the horrific practice of creating a surplus, implanting a few, and killing the rest. This woman didn't want any of her embryonic sons and daughters killed. While having octuplets is rare and difficult, she should be commended, at least, for her stance against choosing some of her children over others.
She had no business being implanted, period. She had six kids already.
Innocent kids should not have to suffer because the "mother" is totally irresponsible.
bmmg: Well, they've got more sanity, and better medicine, in Italy than we have here. I still think we shouldn't mess with this stuff at all in the first place. But as long as it's going on, a point seems to be getting less attention than the controversy over whether she should have had them, whether the doctor should have cooperated, whether she should be allowed to have them, whether society should allow everyone to do whatever they want, etc.: THESE ARE EIGHT NEW LIVES. THEY SHOULD BE WELCOMED INTO THE WORLD. And you're right, BMMG, it's admirable, rather than the opposite, on her part that she wanted them all to live. I don't care how selfish her motivations may have been, how stable or unstable she is, who's going to pay for them, how much trouble it's going to be to take care of them, they are here now in life, they are our fellow humans, she HAD them. All other considerations re this situation now are secondary to their existence.
Quite an achievement it was, all of them live births, apparently (at least thus far) healthy, the excellent work by the army of doctors and nurses at the hospital where they were born, and her father's immediately seeking further employment to help support them is also admirable. Yes, it's concerning in terms of "What next?" and in other ways as well; for one thing, one might wonder whether anyone along the line on the medical side here was bucking for bars, trying to prove anything, experimenting to see how far things could be pushed, or whatever.
But do we want a society in which one CAN'T have as many children as one wants? That question supersedes even how one has those children, and, as I've said, I don't think this is the way to have them, and I oppose i.v.f., flat out. I was an only child myself, as she was, and I took the opposite only-child route in terms of wanting children, but she's said why she wanted a lot of kids, and whether or not she has a hormonal situation that interacts with depression and mania in terms of procreative-desire-and-ability-in-overdrive or not, everyone is not the same, everyone is not supposed to be the same, and it's within range of human attribute, desire, and behavior for some women, for whatever reason, to want more children than "the norm," and to be able to bring them into the world. I don't hear anyone congratulating her and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the; maybe I've just missed that, maybe people are doing it, but all I've heard on the news is controversy, her mother says she told her not to, who's going to pay for it, now the doctor's in trouble, etc., etc.
Meanwhile, many suffer great anguish over infertility and are desperate to have even ONE child, and babies are something a lot of people WANT. Yet eight of them have just come into the world and I haven't heard cheering about these new arrivals, just carping, speculation, criticism, debate, etc. That speaks volumes about the loss of regard for life in this society. How sane she is or is not, what anyone thinks about whether she should have had them, etc. is irrelevant to the difference between what's going on about them and the fuss that used to be made in the media when triplets or more were even BORN. "Here they are!" "Aren't they cute?!" "Look at all those adorable babies!" "Gee, the parents are going to have her hands full, aren't they!" "Everybody is sending diapers and formula and contributions to help them along" -- that's how it USED to be before the COD took over. If this exact scenario had happened 20 years ago, THAT's how the media and the public would have reacted.
But now, there is debate over whether they even should have been born, THAT's what's concerning. This isn't the first time the public till may be resorted to by a mother with too many kids, no job, no husband, the first time more babies than planned arrived via i.v.f., the first time anyone had 14 kids. Up to now, the National Enquirer along with the rest of the media, and society, would have kvelling over them and been calling them "the miracle babies." And who's going to pay for them, the grandmother was against it, she's not married, is she stable, and why she did it would have been at most sidebars. But now, look what we've got -- "Should she have been able to have them?" Should anyone be able to have what they want? That these babies were purchased and made to order is concerning, but what bothers me even more is that anyone is even discussing whether eight new members of the human race should have been born.
Also concerning is that this is a step along the way to mass breeding, more egg-harvesting, acceptance of use of embryoe in research because they can be produced plentifully, more artificial creation of life, further devaluation of life, etc., but I haven't heard anyone raise those issues, just the issues of how nuts she is and should she have been able to have them. It's nuts to want to be a mother now? That's a cage canary. The whole reason everyone is jumping up and down about this event in the first place is that what she did is NOT usual; why the concern, then? Sometimes a dog has 14 puppies instead of 4, or 8. Things happen; they don't happen every day. I understand of course that people are concerned about the future implications, and there are probably those who are concerned that the uproar over this will lead to restriction on i.v.f., to which they want to be able to resort for more "normal" breeding purposes, or for research. In fact, the last group may be especially concerned about this.
But what's most worrisome is that babies aren't the big deal they used to be any more, just as the elderly and disabled get euthanized rather than venerated and helped across the street, and THAT is scary. As long as there is i.v.f., I say, good for her; I just don't think that there should BE i.v.f. Then she could sit in a shrink's office weeping over not being able to have 14 kids before her biological clock runs out, and it would be her own business, which would be better than a societal assumption that she should have had her head examined for wanting to give life to a greater numerical extent than the average, "normal" woman does. Because now, delaying childbearing and relegating it to a spot on one's schedule preceded by "career," having fertility problems because of age and environmental factors, using fertility treatment, having one or two kids who have to be perfect specimens because one doesn't have time to have and raise a brood, and if they're twins and delivered by caesarean all the more convenient, are "NORMAL." No more wonderment at what the stork brought, now it's "how is it going to be paid for?" LOOK what the stork just BROUGHT. But that miracle has been pushed to the back of the bus in all this debate. Because babies, and life, aren't a miracle any more; utilitarianism, "quality of life," "cost," and convenience first.
Who are the two women in the photo? It looks like a reference to the mother receiving counselling? I'm not sure. Everybody and their brother has to get counselling, of course, now, because nothing is one's own business any more. It's bad enough that pregnant women and new mothers have to put up with everyone putting in their two cents worth all day long (the same goes on when one is looking out for an elderly parent; everybody has an unsolicited opinion about whether one should be "giving up one's own life" and doing it, and that's consistent with the contemporaneous existence of the current controversy over these new lives, and all of that is concerning). Now the whole world is checking in, not with the usual butting-in pregnant women and new mothers traditionally have had to put up with, but with "Should these children BE?"
It would be a whole lot healthier society if people were talking about what she should feed them, are they getting their pre-natal checkups, volunteering child-rearing tips, etc., instead of what's happening here, which is just another version of the "quality of life" shibboleth and propaganda. In a healthy society, there is an assumption of the sanctity of and the a sacred right to life, a respect for the elderly, a reverence for those who have lived long, awe for the creation of life, acknowledgement of the maternal-offspring bond, and that "Mother knows best." Instead, now before mother conceives, she is supposed to check in with a shrink and put up with every Tom Dick and Harry saying whether or not she should hage reproduced. THAT's the most significant problem here.
We've GOT i.v.f. now. Someone used it to produce a lot of babies. One would think that between terrorism, economic problems, and the election of a mistake, the media, and people in general, would be more concerned about those issues and regard this phenomenon as a joyful event to balance the stress of concern over those more pressing problems. But it's being made an issue of as a deliberate distraction from those problems that the bad choice is making a mess of handling, and to further the COD agenda of which he's part and which he and his administration are going to further. The same electorate that put him in office doesn't even see what is going on and make the connection, and is going on as if the birth of these babies is worse than, God forbid, Bush who just left office. Nor is it, God forbid, the mother's own business, it's everybody's right to chime in on the subject. Just what Obama and the media that campaigned for him want.
Susan: I totally agree with you. But this is about the bigger picture, which explains how something like this could happen and the woman get on network TV.
Everyone in an uproar whether some babies should have been born, next step is the whole public chimes in even more than is already happening in subtler but lethal ways about whether old people and the disabled should be able to live. That's why the "counselling" and it's not just her own business aspect of this is bad gungee. If the picture is of this new mother and a shrink, or "counsellor," or is supposed to represent that scenario, or the scenario of any woman who has to get counselling before bearing children (does SHS think that's a good idea and how things should be, or note?), its very relevance to the issue of child-bearing in any way is a warning bell. Already, you take an older person, and probably also a disabled person, to the hospital, and are harassed by meetings at which they try to get you to override their own wishes and "make them DNR," you are hounded by 16-year-old residents informing you that there is such a thing as death, social workers, the works.
Medical care was medical care before all this butting in by people who frankly just need jobs because women entering the workforce have disrupted alot of things, and a whole genre of them, if they don't become real estate agents, go into "helping professions." It used to be housewife or nun, and I'm not saying women shouldn't be able to work, but hospitals and medical care WERE a lot more ethical when that was the social order, and "health care" hadn't become an industry littered with females who need salaries at every turn. Insurance, "billing," social service, social work, you name it, they're all over the place. Often very talented, but not even aware of what they are in the middle of and why the agenda their presence helps to promote is wrong. And as "counsellors." Whatever that means; it's a license to chip away at the sense of individual sovereignty and integrity and further the acceptance of "relative" moral values and the degeneration of society.
Now THEIR careers, along with the doctors', matter, more than the patient's, and more than the value of life. In between, nurses struggle to do their jobs and have to see their good work undone over and over, and with the whole proper order of a hospital disrupted, and a shortage of nurses that is part of the whole sceenario, bad ones are able to do great damage. Women wanting to have "careers" want to be more than "just nurses," and have all kinds of extra additions to "nurse" (you know, someone who cares about the patient and takes care of them) in their degrees and titles, and get involved with hospital adminstration, and then there are "ethicists" running around the place -- and one wonders why hospitals are enabled to commit euthanasia? The "health care system" that has mushroomed in the course of all this has made possible the concept Obama has in mind, and what we're on the way to is it's no one's own right and business any more whether they can have children, or to be able to live for as long as they want to.
I hardly see what this woman did as the big problem. I've just said what the real problems involved are here.
I understand SHS's concern about rampant unfettered consumerism. But that's what we GET with i.v.f. and the rest of the "wonderful medical advances" philosophy that are part of the utilitarianism and COD that rightly concern SHS. It wouldn't be an issue whether she should have had them, what their futures will be, etc., and this whole brouhaha couldn't be a red herring to distract from Obama's agenda, if there were no i.v.f. The kids are here now, the mother has parents who obviously are willing to be as supportive as they can, relatives and others are willing to pitch in, and it would be a much healthier society if it were evident in the media that more people were thinking, "all those adorable babies, I wonder if I can help," setting up a fund for them, offering to adopt if the enterprise becomes too overwhelming, etc. than that everybody and his brother has an opinion about it.
Of course she's going to need help. Of course she may not be able to handle it. We don't know how things are going to shake out, and it's no one's business except that family's, frankly. There ought to be enough people who love babies in this country so that if problems arise, help comes from all directions (the whole world knows about it at this point, doesn't it), maybe even from the "health care/ helping profession" types I just mentioned. It would have been nuns in the old days, and they would have done a good job. Maybe some of them are still around; can't tell because they no longer wear habits, and many who would have gone into the convent over a generation ago are in the jobs I noted above now, making a mess of everything and careers out of "end of life" enterprise and agenda in one way and another.
Anyway, the more criticism this poor woman receives (imagine just having carried and given birth to eight babies and the whole country is debating your sanity, the media is in an uproar, etc.; I wonder how many congratulations and flowers she's received), the easier it's going to be for Obama to nationalize health care, abortion to be pushed more and more, care denied to the disabled and the elderly, and plugs to be pulled. That's reason enough to cheer LOUD AND CLEAR for the new mother and her octuplets and wish the little lady luck, and stop going along with the same media (first criticism I heard of the new mother was from female tv newscasters) that gave us the scariest president since sliced bread, in all respects, including those SHS is concerned about.
The kids are here; they are not the problem. The mother isn't the problem. The criticism and debate are the problem; they enable a new president who's a problem to further a lethal agenda. If people had enough sense to realize that they wouldn't have put him in office, and they wouldn't be following the lead of the media, or at least now that they see what they elected they would be focusing on getting him impeached before it's too late, and they would be congratulating this new mother. For the sake of self-preservation.
First paragraph above, among other typos, of course I meant 26-year-old residents, not 16-year-old ones.
And of course they got their pre-natal checkups; I meant whatever babies are supposed to get at this point, and maybe people here and there sending a dollar or two if they can spare it. Because this IS a phenomenon, and those babies and that mother naturally are going to need all the help they can get, and of course it should be in the media. But not like THIS. First give the newly delivered mama and babies their due. Then, if people want to debate it, do it after a decent respectful interval. (Respect for life, now there's a lost concept.) It would make more sense, not to mention be more decent, respectful, and polite, to wait a bit and see what happens before jumping up and down about how terrible this was. OR ARE THE OBAMA/MEDIA CREW AND THE COD ARE AFRAID THAT THIS MOTHER AND HER BROOD JUST MIGHT MAKE IT? I've seen how vicious those who advance the COD can be. Sure, give the new mother more stress. Throw in red herrings so that the idiot public is condemnatory rather than supportive. Distract attention from the truth that they just elected an unqualified president who's issuing exeutive orders and freaking out every five minutes, making scary and eminently questionable appointments, and that Nancy Pelosi is saying 500 million jobs are going to be lost if the port-laden "stimulus package" isn't rammed through immediately, though there are only 300 million people in the whole country. Increase the stress and negativity in the atmosphere by saying how bad the economy is and how impossible it will be for it to recover. Have people say "crisis" and "catastrophe" over. Has Obama by chance said congratulations and good luck, new mama, you've got a tough road ahead of you and so has the country, but we'll all get through it? Maybe, but if he has, I haven't happened to hear about it. Destroy the new mother and create a national expectation that these kids don't have a chance in Hades of making it and having good lives. Why? Because it makes it easier to advance the notion that it's ok to destroy embryos, they're just masses of cells that can be used for experimentation, there is something wrong with a woman who wants to give life, a family's business isn't its own, abortion is a good idea, life doesn't have intrinsic value, there is no privacy, people don't have a right to make their own decisions in favor of creating life and, when they are disabled or old, staying alive, and euthanasia is ok. If the notion that others have a right to have opinions about and a say in things like this is legitimized via this situation, the COD is going to be able to exert even more influence than it already has.
We'd be a lot safer and have less cause to worry if the new president were saying yes we're in an economic crisis, but let's do everything we can to make sure it doesn't become a catastrophe, and we can do it, Americans can do amazing things, look, a lady just had eight babies via the achievements of our wonderful science, everybody pull together now, and give that new mama your support, and we've got to get this economy back on track so that those eight new Americans can have a bright future along with the rest of us, we can do it, and remember, there is a future, look at those eight new babies. Etc. We can't afford any other kind of attitude and rhetoric, and we desperately need that positive, life-affirming approach. But instead, he's going negative, everybody's going negative about the octuplets and their mother, and it's all part of the same syndrome and the same agenda. It may have been unwise and irresponsible and ill-conceived for this new mother to have embarked on the path she did in the first place, but all that is irrelevant to the core of the issue at hand; even if she's completely nuts and thinks the CIA is talking to her through the television set and the fillings in her teeth, if the nation doesn't cheer her, a lot more people than those eight babies are going be at even further risk than they are now. Meanwhile, mother and octs, and the rest of that family, need and deserve (they are, after all mother, babies, and a family) as much help, support, and positive energy directed at them as we can send their way. If and when it turns out that they can't make it, then, when there is proof that it was a bad idea, is the more proper time for the debate that's going on now, if there ever is one. How would anyone like to have been born into the circumstances those babies were and have the beginning of one's life marked by the public comments that are being made now? How considerate of them, and of the right to and value of life, is that? It's just plain rude, and to be rude to innocent babies and a new mother is definitely not appropriate, and trumps the question of whether or not the mother's actions were appropriate. There will be plenty of time to say, "I told you so," if and when problems of the sort that have been predicted manifest, and we should all hope that problems don't arise, because these are after all human beings, and mother and octs fall, according to what the critics themselves are saying constantly, into the category of the vulnerable, whose rights, human exceptionalism holds, are as important as those of every other human being. Multiple-birth kids face enough challenges as it is. Babies, whether they are born singly or in a litter, need and deserve to be born into a welcoming world, no matter how they got there. And how likely is it that another woman will embark on a similar enterprise?
(Maybe Obama did say that and I missed it, but if he did, the media would more likely be following suit, and if he did and the whole controversy is going on anyway the way it is, how is he going to lead the country if he can't even get it to rally around a set of helpless octuplets? We have GOT to hope and pray that they don't encounter the problems they are at risk of encountering, and do everything possible to support them and prevent that happening, not only for the sake of these helpless, innocent babies (and their mother, whom they need), but because it will help to strengthen the energy that can defeat the culture of death. It's no accident that they were born now, as the country is being subjected to negativity; thus far the country is failing the test by going negative about them and criticizing; they are an opportunity to rally around the cause of life, which can become a focal point for turning a lot of things around. If people can't forget everything else and start cooing over babies when they appear (and these ones certainly are right in our face), which is (or at least used to be, when things were normal) NORMAL, how can we turn back the culture of death which has begun to sweep us along the nihilistic path of the abnormal?
SHS: I don't understand how she could NOT get on network TV. It's octuplets; every single one of the embryoes became a live birth. The hospital where they were born did a phenomenal job. Whether or not she had other children, was married, could provide for them, etc., it's news. I've heard that she did it deliberately to get media attention; that wouldn't be very wholesome of her if it's true, but whether or not it's true, it's irrelevant; it's octoplets.
Should it not be on the news because the situation is less than ideal? Should she, and they, be punished by deliberate obscurity, be deliberately ignored? Don't those babies need public support?
That's what's troubling, that the focus isn't on support for them, but on what's wrong with the mother, regardless of the merits re the mother, her situation, etc., and on whether she had a right to have them. For one thing, if she didn't have a right to have them, they didn't have a right to be conceived, and they've got enough challenges to face without the added prospect of years of psychotherapy necessitated by the effects the current debate can have on them. Aside from that, this whole thing, and way the media is handling it leading public opinion, and the controversy, and its timing, fits too neatly into the agenda of the Obama administration not to be extremely concerning. I STILL want to know who paid for the i.v.f., and who did it. If it's been reported in the news, I missed it. I still want to know more about this family. I still think something doesn't add up, and that the "controversy" abetted by the media here is part of an agenda, and a smokescreen, and that people are falling for it. There doesn't seem to be any spirit of community here; it's all on the mother, how wrong she was, what's wrong with her, how is she going to deal with it; no hint of "we'd better help that lady" even though obviously, if she is in fact off-center, she and the babies need and deserve the help and support even more. Mothers do crazy things and act crazy all the time. Ask most people who have one. It's part of it. What happened to the inviolable status of "mother love," to "a mother can do no wrong"? Where is Walter Cronkite when we need him? In his day, it would have been congratulations to the new mother, look at the adorable wonder babies, etc.
Ianthe: Of course it is news. But it is going tabloid, and that is what is objectionable in that regard.
But the post was about why and how this comes to pass, and come to think of it, why things will keep getting progressively more extreme. No brakes!
And part of the reason they're not getting the outpouring of national affection they deserve, and being shunted to the side in terms of attention, despite the genuine concern mothers everywhere cannot help but feel about their situation, is that thanks to i.v.f., and this is part of why I oppose its existence adamantly, babies, and life itself, are THINGS now, to be purchased as if from a department store, and just as easily discounted, even discarded, as non-living material objects, even by those who use i.v.f. in a more "acceptable" way than this lady did. In fact, I've got more a lot more respect for this lady than I do for the usual i.v.f. constomer. Even if she's selfish, unrealistic, totally loony, a bad mother, or whatever she is -- or isn't. But then, I think being alive, and having the chance to be alive, is better than not being alive, and not having the chance to be alive, and that "quality of life" does not trump the absolute value of being alive or having the chance to be alive, in whatever circumstances. How old-fashioned of me.
Wesley: I'm sorry -- I don't understand what you mean about its going tabloid. I do know it's about why and how this comes to pass, and why things keep getting more extreme, with no brakes. What I'm saying is that the best way to start turning THAT around is just to focus on the babies, who, and the value of whose lives, are getting lost in all this controversy and media furor, at the same time that a new presidential administration that is on the path to making things worse with respect to what you mentioned, is beginning.
Wesley: Do you mean that she's getting rewarded by media attention after having done this outre thing?
Wesley: If that's the case, all the more reason to focus on the babies, not her. I still don't understand who paid for the i.v.f., and while what the mother has said about her obsession from early childhood with having a lot of babies and what she has said about having been lonely as an only child and wanting a lot of babies to make up for it seem to be sufficient explanation and perfectly credible, I am not convinced that they are in fact the truth and the whole story. Again, none of that matters as much as the babies themselves do, and I still think there is a smokescreen dynamic going on here.
Ianthe: She is being interviewed by the biggest names in journalism. That's a huge high for some. And they keep doing it ever time the envelope is stretched.
Wesley: Do you mean it's a big high for her? Or just that it's a big high for some who keep pushing the envelope? I didn't realize that anyone cared WHO interviewed them; an interview is an interview. At least that's how I always thought about it.
Or is it a big high for the journalists? And is it THEY who keep doing it every time the envelope is stretched?
If all this woman wanted was to have as many children as possible, and she wasn't doing it for publicity, it's not her fault she's getting publicity and being interviewed. Do we know that she did it for publicity? Do we know why she did it, definitively? It seems to me that it's the MEDIA, the "journalists," feeding this whole thing. Because such things are news. Sometimes, I'm sure, people do them hoping to get recognition, fame, notoriety, a book deal, etc. But sometimes they are just trying to live their lives and when they do these things the media pounces on them and grabs onto them like a lion or group of lions onto an impala or a water buffalo. Or like jackals and vultures. Then the whole thing goes in a circle. Including re what the "doctors and scientists" are willing to do. I say, get rid of the media for a year, end all animal experimentation instantly, close down all the insurance agencies, fire the hospital administrators and the social workers and just about everyone who works in "elder law" and "services for seniors," and many involved with the diasabled, and we just might have a shot at turning things around.
If people have a problem with octuplets, the answer is NOT to limit the number of embryos one should implant; it would be to limit the number of embryos one can CREATE.
That number should be ZERO. Babies conceived in petri dishes typically die, since it's not the environment designed to support life. They implant the optimal number of eggs because the chances that even one will implant, let alone make it to a premature delivery, is small. Also, the egg harvesting process is so dangerous a painful for women that they harvest many, many eggs at once. There are also costs to determine endometrial thickness and put the new babies in the ripe uterus, so multiple implantations of babies that will likely die is cost-consuming. In our ME ME ME ME instant gratification culture, you implant lots of babies at once so one might survive- and of course, if a miracle occurs and more than one survives, you "selectively reduce" i.e. kill the ones you don't want by gender or any criteria you offer. All this I'm sure you knew.
The problem with this is that people are taking chances with the lives of their children that aren't theirs to take- chances they wouldn't take with their own lives. If there was an upwards of 75% chance that the mother or father would die in IVF, I guarentee you much fewer would do it, yet a vast majority of babies made (even those used) still end up dead. Would the FDA approve a medical practice that killed 75% of its participants? Yet, this elective practice kills dozens upon dozens of babies for each lucky baby that survives. No one ever died from infertility (infertility treatments, yes, but infertility, no), but babies are sacrificed daily as people abuse medical science to create children that look like them, while foster care is overexpended with children needing parents.
I understand to some degree the pain of infertility (having worked in both domestic and international adoption) and it's a horrible loss-it does not justify creating and killing your children just so your gene pool lives on.
We live in a culture that kills babies when we don't want them (abortion) and kills babies when we desperately want them (IVF). But shouldn't babies have rights, too?
With 6.7 billion people in the world amid resource depletion, wildlife habitat destruction, and pollution, fertility treatment is unethical. Add to that the reality that many children worldwide are languishing in foster care and orphanages. Banning fertility treatment is the solution. No more questions about what to do with embryoes, no more "octomoms", none of that. Problems solved.
People who are unable to have children can be encouraged to accept their situation and adopt instead.
K-Man, I agree with your position that we need to adopt kids in orphanages and foster care. It's an outrage that certain interest groups are keeping them there, especially young black children who could be adopted by white couples. I think you're going to have to go at banning fertility treatments a different way than population strains. We need more young people than ever. Birth rates are so low that we will not be able to sustain social services. Due to abortion and population control efforts, we are looking at a population bust, not an explosion. It's pretty scary. I think you're more on the right path arguing the ethics of IVF itself and the consequences it poses to the way we look at children etc.
I think Wesley's comment "what did they expect?" is on the money. The whole situation would be hillarious if it weren't so serious. It reminds me of the moral relativists who say there's no right and wrong and then are outraged when people do things that the relativists think are clearly wrong, and can't figure out why the offenders would ever do such a thing. Ideas have consequences.
Jacque, K-Man, Don: You guys are the voice of sanity.
I saw Suleman on a tabloid tv show a little while ago. She seems pretty normal, sane, balanced, obviously loves the babies, has sense, her priorities in order, was saying that she would need help from volunteers (there are a lot of people who just love babies and would want to help that way just to be around babies, I don't know why, but there are), that she does not want to use government-fund assistance, etc. It wasn't at all as if she's in over her head. I think people should respond to this situation positively and send her and her octuplets and the rest of her family positive energy. She was asked if the doctors had told her of the risk to her heart, of ruptured uterus, etc., and she said yes. Someone mercenary also wouldn't have been as apt to give all the babies an equal chance to live, and she didn't seem at all eager for publicity. I got the impression that she's on the level. She seemed balanced and in touch with herself, self-aware, committed, realistic, etc., and as if she's good mother material. Until and unless events prove otherwise, I think this could work out. I still want to know who paid for the i.v.f., who did it, what the story is behind why there were eight embryoes to implant in the first place, etc.
Either she's a damned good actress or she didn't have any agenda beyond what she has said her intentions were, and are.
A mother wants to give life, to have more children, as many as possible, and it's a bad thing? Also, I think I heard on tv a little while ago that she was working up until the time she was pregnant with the octuplets. Yes, women work during and through preganancy. But when pregnant with eight, and having been warned of the risks to one's heart, the risk of ruptured uterus, etc., one is apt to be under doctor's orders to take it easy, at the least, and one would be concerned about giving each and every one of the the little pre-natal litter the opportunity to have as much of one's physical energy as possible, and not deprive them of the least amount of that energy by continuing one's normal routine. She had a job at the time, and she did it successfully -- gestating them. Not as apt to be able to climb the corporate ladder and break the glass ceiling that way, but which job is more important, that one, or one in "middle management" whose reward is a salary, as opposed to live births?
Don, the issues involved with funding social services pale to the pending worldwide horrors that resource wars and the lack of food and water will wreak.
The issue in not very many more years if we don't get a grip on fertility levels now won't be how to pay for Grandma's Social Security. It will be instead at what age will we routinely euthanize Grandma to preserve remaining resources for the productive. Or in a worst case scenario, we might be eating Grandma because no other food is available. Mmm. Soylent Green.
In 20 years we just might be facing the scenario in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road--with or without the nuclear war.
K-Man, I agree that we are on the verge of euthanazing the elderly, but not anywhere near a danger of food resources. We can handle twice our population without putting any more land into production-probably 14.5 billion people. We are on the verge of population freefall and it poses huge dangers for all of us. The Japanese are telling workers to go home from work early and do some baby making. Russia is imploding and so is Europe. I think Mexico is going below replacement level too. I think I heard they are down to 1.7 per woman. The next generation faces huge challenges from this and the demands of the elderly.
Well there were some things I didn't know when I was championing Octomom. For example that all her other kids were i.v.f. too, and again, I don't believe in i.v.f. to start with. It's part of the whole "choice" thing SHS decries. But again, SHS, can't have cake an eat it too! Just like with animal experimentation.
K-Man and Don: We're not on the verge of euthanizing the elderly, we're ALREADY DOING IT. I heard Ann Coulter talking about what may happen to people's parents with Obama; no, it's ALREADY HAPPENING. Nobody seems to understand that the elderly are just US in some years. If we were efficient and competent and had our heads on straight (I mean if all of us were, or those in charge were), there wouldn't BE ANY of these problems.
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