Anonymity in BC

If one misguided person gets their way, it looks like the last sperm donors in Canada will lose their right of anonymity.

For what appears no better reason than the rather selfish "But I want to know!" One lawsuit threatens to screw a lot of good people who desperately want to be parents and haven't the biological wherewithal to produce children the old fashioned way. Cui bono? To whose benefit? It's a big lose-lose all round.

This is wrong on so many levels that it makes my eyeballs spin. Stripping people of their anonymity where no wrong is either intended or done is counter productive, and will ultimately force childless couples south of the border in search of genetic material to father a child they cannot produce themselves.

This is not to say that there should not be some form of regulation regarding donors. Whilst there is no issue with donors needing proper testing to eliminate genetic diseases and potentially harmful recessives, what does bother me is the trivial nature of the lawsuit, and the law of unintended consequences lurking just around the corner.

The UK has made this mistake, with the effect that sperm donation has dropped off the face of a cliff, thus reducing the gene pool available to potential parents. Said potential parents are now reduced to going to less well regulated clinics outside of Britain. No-one wants to give, free of charge, their own bodily secretions to have the result turn up on their doorstep demanding recognition some twenty or so years later. I mean think of the awkwardness factor alone. How would they introduce themselves? "Hi there. I'm your ejaculation." springs to mind. No doubt once the door of donor anonymity is prised open, another lawyer will be after financial support from sperm or egg donors.

One more good reason for the judge to dismiss the plaintiff's case; families are complex and fragile things. Who can tell how one's spouse of the moment would react if, in your forties, a young man or woman turned up on your doorstep, barging their way into your family life and demanding recognition? I've seen what my wife's ex did to his daughters with the revelation of a new half sister. Speaking as an interested bystander, I was not impressed. Neither were my stepdaughters.

There is so much more to being a parent than mere biology, as I've found out for myself. A simple biological contribution isn't enough to qualify. Being a parent is about mutual learning, shared affection, commitment, and a whole Himalayan sized spoil heap of heartbreak, joy, and sheer hard bloody work. It's not just an issue of gametes. Only a complete Sociopath looks at it that way.

As for the facile "If you don’t want to be identified, don’t be a donor." statement on the part of the plaintiff. That demonstrates outright contempt for the rights of others. People have the right to a past, they have a right to family life, they also have a right to privacy providing they have committed no crimes, and to steamroller over those rights just because one person has to know is just plain wrong and ultimately to the detriment of many others, past and future.

I'm sorely tempted to call the plaintiff in this case a silly selfish entitlement-seeking bitch, but I'm far too polite for that.

Maybe it's not about the money

Sometimes you read a piece that reeks so much of disingenuousness it stinks to high heaven. Namely the proposal to pay egg and sperm donors up to GBP800 for their donations because there's a 'shortage'.

But the low payment is thought to be behind a shortage in egg and sperm donation which is driving infertile women and men to overseas – often unregulated – clinics, according to research.

If memory serves me correctly sperm and egg donation dropped like a rock when the right of anonymity was stripped from donors around 2005 (ish, I think).

The point is, you can chuck as much cash as you want at the problem, but no one with any brains wants some 'in vitro' fertilised person suddenly turning up on their doorstep twenty years later demanding to see their 'real' parent or the CSA or equivalent demanding payment for same. Family life is complicated enough as it is without having to explain; "It was a sperm / egg donation okay; I was broke at the time." or more comically; "Look who's come to dinner dear, It's one of my ejaculations." to one's startled spouse of the moment.

Sperm and egg donors are going to overseas clinic to donate, not merely because they get paid more, but because outside of the UK's ridiculous rules, their anonymity is better protected. Which only goes to show that one persons 'closure' can be another's can of worms. Maybe that's a more potent reason why so many fewer people in the UK are donating sperm and eggs.

You what?

This comes under the heading of 'Whoever dreamed this up has lost it big time'.

Restaurants in Scotland are going to be threatened with legal action if their portion sizes are above a government prescribed limit according to this article. Scottish Supermarkets are going to have to put 'unhealthy' food off their shelves? Sorry, I just burst into uncontrollable giggles, which is most undignified for a man of my maturity.

Right, so the Scottish National Party led Government has decided that instead of combating things like crime, urban and social decay, poor road infrastructure, or public transit issues it is going to effectively institute rationing in the country that gave the world the deep fried Mars bar? (See above picture) Oh for crying out loud!

Well here's a piece of news for you boys and girls of the SNP. Legislate all you want. Cut portion sizes. Forbid the selling of sweets or anything remotely fatty. Until you cut the social budget, and stop making it so easy for people to sit on their arses all day, you'll be stuck with an 'obesity time bomb'. Off with their massive plasma screen televisions. Take the handcuffs off business so they can afford to employ more people, and thus get all the tubby people working off a few excess calories. Unless of course you want to get massacred at the next election for being a bunch of control freak wank artists. No pressure.

More US jobs to be lost

Have just seen the news that the White House will be spending more of the 0.53% of the federal budget earmarked for NASA on 'Climate change'. My jaw dropped as I read the news that there will be no funding for the ARES and Constellation programmes which will be spent instead on 'fighting climate change'. Does the current US administration not understand basic economics? Don't they understand that projects which pioneer Space exploration has massive spin off potential, both in terms of employment and technology? Even India has a manned space program planned, yet the White house appears to be backing away from investing in manned exploration?

"We certainly don't need to go back to the moon," said one administration official. Yes you do, or you'll end up begging rides to the ISS from the Russians and Indians. Never mind nebulous hopes for a 'Heavy lift' platform. I thought that was the whole premise behind ARES. The Obama Administrations only alternative appears to be 'outsourcing' the space programme. Is this the 'Change' the US electorate voted for? Apparently so, because change is all they'll have left.

What would have happened if Columbus and Cabot had not obtained funding for their voyages to the riches of the new world? By not funding extraterrestrial exploration, the Obama administration threatens to put the USA, and hence the western economic sphere down in the economic doldrums for decades, picking up scraps from other's tables instead of making the running.

Well maybe people like Scaled Composites will step up to the plate and deliver. Maybe a private consortium will develop a 'better, stronger, faster' means of off world exploration. For myself, I doubt it. Miracles of technology aside, only Governments have the funding necessary to set mankinds metaphorical feet firmly on the road to the stars. Without that impetus, this dooms Homo Sapiens to being an evolutionary footnote, just another layer in the fossil record. We are an expansionist species. We must spread out or die out.

There is no net economic benefit from spending US taxpayers (or anyone else's) money on fucking totally discredited claims of anthropogenic climate change. The only 'green jobs' will be taxpayer funded, and that will take necessary investment capital which in turn creates employment for US citizens out of the system, even I understand that. FFS If what the surfacestations.org project indicates is true, then the claims of nought point whatever temperature change are completely unverifiable. The US temperature record alone is not reliable enough to say that global temperature is actually rising out of control, even by tenths of a degree. The biased siting of many Weather monitoring stations helps put all those prognostications of climate doom in doubt.

All we see happening are cycles that repeat the weather patterns of the 1920's and 30's. Any bloody idiot can verify that for themselves by checking out news sources from that period.

Clucking bell. Someone in the White House has been talking the stupid pills. When the USA needs all the economic clout it can muster, what it doesn't need is an administration which removes fuel from the economic powerhouse.

By verifiable example; 7,000 Jobs at the Kennedy Space Centre (Ironic that Kennedy was a Democrat) will be lost when the Shuttle program ends in September 2010. Other related industries will also have to shed workers. More people on the breadline, taking social security and contributing nothing in return. But what the hey, maybe those redundant space industry workers can get jobs with the Indian program, eh?

Just as a matter of interest; here is a list of spin offs directly attributable to NASA's space program.