Letters to the Editor

• More from the "ME! ME! ME!" generation

  [Read the article: Test-tube nation]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Ms. Kohl's defense of her own IVF is very interesting in this light. It is all, of course, about HER and her own desires for a child and not at all about the right vs. wrong elements, about selfishness ("my genes are all important") and it is certainly not written with a shred of concern about the environment or the greater world.

  Whenever she faced a moral roadblock, either from her rabbi or the local Catholic Church (though why a Conservative Jew would think the Catholic Church would be MORE liberal than a rabbi, I cannot imagine), she decided they were full of shit, because they didn't encourage her.

  I can't have any inside information on her medical condition, but polycystic ovary disease -- especially in a 20-something -- is very treatable. It seems unlikely that it caused permanent infertility. It seems more likely that Ms. Kohl and her husband simply were too impatient to try more conservative, patient methods of concieving. IVF is fast, presumably she's from a state where it is paid for by insurance, and most importantly, I think the patients have the powerful feeling that "they are doing something" about their problems, whereas simply going on with your life, having ordinary sex and waiting for the results feels passive and useless. If you have "baby fever", you want to be pregnant NOW, and damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

  I suspect that the reason for a high level of birth defects and learning disabilities in IVF babies is that we are circumventing the most obvious aspect of regular conception, which is that it is a battle among sperm for the healhiest and strongest to reach the egg. We take out that competition, use the nearest available sperm that isn't obviously deformed, and figure "good enough". But that's not how human beings are supposed to be created. We know a lot now about human conception, but we are very arrogant if we think we know it all.

  Increasingly, I see families (in malls, etc.) who clearly have more, sometimes many more, than two biological children. They are not all wealthy either, and certainly not all white. People are irrationally optimistic if they think that the world of the future will be hospitable to such large numbers of "echo boomers". We already compete fiercely for such things as placements at desirable colleges, for affordable housing, jobs, health care -- do you really want 3-5 kids to grow up into a world that is WORSE than it is now? How does Ms. Kohl expect to work on problems like global warming when she is selfishly bringing extra children into the world? I know it makes her and her husband happy, but what about the lousy world that these kids will have to inhabit as adults? Does that even matter? Or does she tell herself "we're wealthy, they will inherit our wealth, so no matter what they will have more than others".

  It's a pathetic joke if you recycle paper, cans and plastic...buy carbon credits....and carry your hemp bags to Whole Foods....if at the same time you overpopulate the world with extra human beings. Human beings who will grow up to drive Hummers, most specifically.

  The sad fact is that good potential parents such as the Kohl's routinely bypass the hundreds of thousands of available children -- children who are FREED FOR ADOPTION (i.e., no parent can possibly come back to claim them) and who can be adopted for very little cost, often for free, and often with benefits such as free health care -- because those children have too much melatonin in their skin cells. Or they are not infants (or both).

  This planet is not big enough to support the 6 billion plus people already on it. We can already see MEASURABLE results (shrinking ice caps, etc.) of that strain. The earth is a self-sustaining ecosystem, and Mother Nature a stern but fair goddess -- is it possible that higher rates of infertility, in part, are an attempt by the larger ecosystem to CUT DOWN on surplus population, and in our human arrogance, we are interferring in that necessary process? What price will we pay for our arrogance and selfishness?

  We can be sure Ms. Kohl won't be writing about THAT, because it would get in the way of her "personal happiness", and gosh, we wouldn't want anything to upset her little apple cart.

  Permalink Friday, August 17, 2007 06:52 AM