Thank You for Shopping At WANKMART

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Washington Post:
A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16492832/page/2/

Here we have it….Genetically engineered beings the likes of The Boys from Brazil. No more quandering over what your baby’s physical appearance or emotional characteristics will be. Now you can pick your childs hair and eye color straight from a catalogue. There are even estimates for your potential childs IQ level based on the mental traits of the sperm and egg donors.

So far, Ryan said, she has produced one batch of 22 embryos using an egg donor in her 20s from Arizona and a sperm donor from Fairfax Cryobank, a sperm bank operated by the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax. He is a 6-foot-tall lawyer with blond hair and blue eyes. She is a student with brown hair and hazel eyes.

In this instance 2 individual beings have potentially reproduced 22 children, and that only relates to this ONE batch of fertilized embryos. What if all of the children from one set of donors wanted to have their real mothers and fathers over for dinner on Christmas day? It would be psychologically disturbing to have people that raised you from a small child inform you that they aren’t your real parents. I myself would be on a lifelong quest to find my true mother and father. I agree that people incapable of having kids should have the opportunity to do so, especially considering the state of technology that we have developed, but to turn it into an-on-shelf-bargain-basement type scenario is appalling.
There is even an estimate of a cash savings of $7,500.00 dollars by using the embryo bank in place of in vitro insemination.
Whats next….drive through impregnation? Just pull up your car,.. insert your bankcard, enter your pincode and accept the same fate as Julie Christie encountered in The Demon Seed. If human life becomes an over the counter consumers commodity, there will be no boundaries as to in which direction that this acceptance will lead us. If a woman is paid to be a childs surrogate mother and the child has been preordained to be an organ donor, slave, sexual object, etc….Who will ever know? If there are going to be Embryo Banks, there should be strict governmental conditions imposed on them and a list of requirements needed to be fulfilled by any prospective parents.

From the song Acid Rain by Bob Calvert:

Fresh embryo’s are frozen…
And placed in fetus banks…
Heredity is chosen…
By anyone who wanks.
And acid rain is falling.

We miss you Bob.

http://www.sperm1.com/sebnj/sebnj.html

[devilchicken]

Did you read the other thread about scientists trying to 'un-gay' sheep?

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Yes....but I thought that thread only applied to Scots in r-r-ubber-r-r boots.
Considering the time and money being spent torturing livestock, my first thoughts were to glue on plastic horns and apply waistbelt strap-on's to the ewe's in order to arouse the males.

[lemec]

-well, there will still be regular folk, they can't force everyone to use this method, not yet anyway.

There is always that random "chaos" element to consider. hehe!

-plus if you go by th donor,you can't know the whole ancestor line, like if they want their kid to be tall,they still could turn out short.

-but this is what we have be warned about in many science-fiction ideas.

They will probably doom the human race in the end, it is probably not a good thing to mess with. I can understand medical research genetics,but something like this is not needed. (not that I feel they should experiment in that either,I just understand it.)

Even the military has no use for making a race of super-beings,in modern times,it does not really matter how tall or strong you are,or if you are a genius or not.

It is all pretty crazy,no matter how one looks at it.

If they started making "enhanced" humans,then many other problems will occur and a great injustice.

It could be like in Gattica, only the ones with supior genes can perform certain jobs,while the non-enhanced are used as servants to the enhanced.

[UncleDes]

On the other hand...

... I knew a guy (at a certain University in the Midlands), who was short, balding, podgy, unattractive, who was told he could no longer donate his sperm as he had "reached his limit" of number of children fathered. To protect his identity, I won't mention Jim's first name.

Luckily he was not requested to actually make withdrawals from the sperm bank.

I still think the vast majority of people will want "draught": should be enough to keep the pot melting.

UD

[Theocrat]

Here we have it….Genetically engineered beings the likes of The Boys from Brazil. No more quandering over what your baby’s physical appearance or emotional characteristics will be. Now you can pick your childs hair and eye color straight from a catalogue. There are even estimates for your potential childs IQ level based on the mental traits of the sperm and egg donors.

”All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
-Karl Marx

There is, of course, a persistent 'commodification of everything'.
Which is appaling and disastrous.
Question is: How, and should(?), one reverse the process?
Should everything be turned into a commodity for profit and convenience on the market? I hear people (especially the yung'uns) talk about 'looking good on the market' when it comes to trying to find a mate.
People don't seem to have time/space for expressing or sharing their feelings. This could all be a trend, if I'm not mistaken, (I sure hope it is though). Their is a trend of dumbing down that makes you wonder if the movie 'Idiocracy' is right? But from a cultural standpoint, I would say, rather than genetic.

I feel 'ikkey'... I'm gonna take a shower..

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Theocrat Posted:
But from a cultural standpoint, I would say, rather than genetic.

What culture...the culture of Status Quo? It is time for us as parents to give our children lessons in being bonafied human-beings and not commodity carnivores seeking the goals that are endlessly engrained into their minds openly and subliminally by the countless media sources.