The 19th century was the European century; the 20th century was the American century and the 21st century could be the women’s century. This is a conclusion drawn from a combination of several factors: the nature of the global economy, the particular qualities of women and the requirements of world development.
The concept of the “self” has always fascinated me. What is it that defines you or I? What applies to all of us, but is unique to each of us, and describes any of us as a “self”?
The issue of gender selection has once again made an appearance in the Canadian media. Rajendra Kale, an interim editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, recently called for a ban on disclosing the sex of a fetus until 30 weeks, before which time it is difficult to obtain an abortion. The idea is to prevent Canadian parents from engaging in gender selection by means of selective abortion. The overarching fear is that boys are being favoured over girls in some ethnic communities, causing a gender imbalance which could result in a number of social problems.
I encountered an opinion piece in the Catholic San Francisco Online Edition written by Sandro Magister. He was, according to the head notes, summarizing part of a talk by French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj. Fabrice argues that the term “transhumanism” was coined by Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous Huxley, of Brave New World fame); the first director of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and supporter of eugenics.
Thanks to genetic research, we may soon see people with the money to do so making sure their kids are born-to-succeed – parents paying to guarantee their kids have the right stuff. I’m not talking about a straightened spine or a functional optic nerve. I’m talking about designer kids: those made with healthy bodies, intelligent minds, and perhaps a certain specific ability to boot.
I think abortion should be allowed. And I think prenatal harm (especially that caused by ingesting various legal and illegal substances while pregnant) should not be allowed. Some accuse me of hypocrisy or, more accurately, maintaining a contradictory position: either women have the right to control what happens to their bodies or they don’t. No problem. Women, and men, have that right except when it causes harm to someone else: I can move my arms any way I want except straight into your face.
The combination of longer lives, lower fertility, relatively low economic mobility, and high correlation between economic and political power, has left the United States in the novel situation of being (at least partially) a sort of partially gerontocratic democracy in which the 1940’s and 1950’s excert a degree of political influence over 2012 which the 1910’s and 1920’s did not have over the 1980’s.
Lauren Davis reopens the debate started by Zach Zorich at Archeology and continued by yours truly over whether or not we should clone a Neanderthal. She does a nice job compiling a list of yays and nays, including this gem I hadn’t much considered:
The future will not be a monopoly of the current superpowers, but lies in the hands of tech-savvy youth from around the world, trying desperately to survive at all costs in an increasingly asymmetrical world.
“That woman in Cairo,” I wonder as I stare at the dramatic photo in Washington Post, “the one with the Egyptian flag and the black headscarf… does she have a clitoris?”
Eggs were first. Millions of years before mammals, eggs existed, their hard shells protecting the incubating embryo inside. Egg Mom wanders mobile, light in her anatomy—unlike her mammalian sister that waddles around, heavily crippled with the burden of her womb. Eggs were an evolutionary smart idea.
The morning-after pill known as Plan B is steeped in controversy again. The Department of Health and Human Services has taken the rare step of overruling the Food and Drug Administration and its science advisors and will not allow the pill to be sold over the counter in drugstores unless a woman can prove she is older than 17.
In a poll that was split almost exactly evenly between five different answers, only 40% of respondents said they were in favor of requiring prospective parents to first obtain licenses. Another 40% oppose licensing but would like to see more parental education opportunities, while the remaining quintile says we’re out of line even to discuss the matter.
The American Food and Drug Administration has required the Genetics and IVF Center in Fairfax, Virginia, to stop offering MicroSort for family balancing. Currently, the procedure is available only for “couples attempting to prevent sex-linked or sex-limited disease.”
The 50th Anniversary of the Pill was last year. Lots and lots of people mentioned how good, bad, unimportant, or essential the Pill has been. Our society changed the way it thought about sex, about reproduction, even about love and relationships.
Recently, three emerging technologies made headlines in Washington state and were reported by Tacoma’s paper, The News Tribune. The issues and controversies they stir are examples of the challenges that transformative technologies will face in going mainstream.
Are men expendable? After millennia of vigorously hoisting their species to the top of the food chain, is XY now a barrier to additional progress? Has the ball game for “dudes” expired? Will the future be self-reproducing super-women? With males”¦ extinct?
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