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Rick Reuben wrote:Your math looks way off: If 46,000 couples get treatments worth $6,000, then the total costs are not $280,000. ( I'm switching to $ because I don't have the pound key. ) $280,000 would be 46,000 times six, not times 6,000 . Can you fix up your math? 46,000 couples receiving treatments costing $6000 equals $276 million dollars.

simmo wrote:In comparision, the NHS offers one free fertility cycle treatment to couples seeking IVF. The costs of one cycle rarely reach £3,000, and about 46,000 couples seek IVF treatment each year. That means total costs spent on patients amount to around £140,000 annually.

I have indeed made a massive mistake, my apologies. Maths really never was my strong point. Funny thing is only one person picked up on it!

So it would seem that the UK is spending around £138 million a year on fertility treatments, compared to £375 million on services for parentless children.

Apologies again.

Rick Reuben wrote:the soaring number of kids and pre-teens doped up on SRI's and other ADD ADHD drugs.

There was a great episode of Frontline last night on this very topic. Absolutely tragic.

Skronk wrote:I'd rather have social services do it's job if necessary, instead of diminishing or halting a person's natural ability (right) to procreate. Why does sterilization make sense to you, Earwicker?

Well it boils down to two controversial points.

First is around whether there are there too many people? Well, globally I would say yes and more locally I am inclined to think so too. Globally food and water shortages are looming - hello war - and locally, in our society, pension, health and education crises await. there's lots of reasons for that - not least the corruption of big business, banks and politicians but it's also cause there's too many people (in my opinion)

Second is this - children who are not brought up by their parents are, for want of a much better way of putting it, a burden on the rest of us. Again, granted, not as much of a burden as corporate fraudsters etc but a burden all the same.
I know it sounds harsh and I know the kids don't ask for it and of course they should be given as much support as possible once they're here but if you can do something about them being here - why not?
They aren't here so you're not trampling over their rights or anything.
Now I get frustrated about people who have kids they're not able to bring up but I'm not suggesting sterilisation. Education and financial insensitive to not have children would be preferable - like the Chinese - but I'm not suggesting sterilising them.

However, some scum who's done the bad things mentioned above, to me has forfeited the right to bring more of his spawn onto the earth for the rest of us to look after, or for him to have any influence over, and just to ensure that they'll never be able to drop one on us I'd chemically cut their balls off.

My question really is - why wouldn't you if you could?

The argument that it opens a slippery slope etc doesn't necessarily stand up and also side tracks the basic moral issue. It's like when people argue against capital punishment by bringing up wrongful convictions - it sidesteps the issue of state killing.
Imagine for one second that there could be and would be no slippery slope to death camps - would you sterilise the fuckers then?

If procreation were curbed voluntarily, I don't think I would have a problem with that. Financial incentives, voluntarily sterilization etc.

I can't in good conscience support any sterilization that's forcible, physical or chemical, whether it's on a criminal or not.

I don't believe it's right to forcibly forfeit a person's right to have children, only if he or she chooses not to.

Skronk wrote:I don't believe it's right to forcibly forfeit a person's right to have children, only if he or she chooses not to.

Yeah but why?

And i am suggesting this for someone who has already practiced that right to have children and abused that right. Why should they have the right again?

I understand what you're suggesting, Earwicker.

This goes beyond mere arguments about "rights", it's about bodily integrity, freedom to choose, among other things.

I can't really give you a better reason beyond my view that it's morally wrong. I don't have empirical data, since it's fortunately not something that's gained widespread practice.

My main point, I think, still stands. It's not about sidestepping the issue, it's just focusing on the ramifications of it. If we're to use sterilization on criminals, whose to say that's where it'll end? What if it gets used on a entire race, or people with behavioral, or mental problems?

It's happened to the Native Americans, and I can't say it won't happen again on people.

Glenn W. Turner wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote:the soaring number of kids and pre-teens doped up on SRI's and other ADD ADHD drugs.

There was a great episode of Frontline last night on this very topic. Absolutely tragic.

Yeah, we watched that last night. My favourite part was the little boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder who was eating a healthy meal/snack of a corndog, Gatorade, and Goldfish crackers and cookies. I enjoyed that his families activities consisted of watching television with his lardass mother and downtrodden, defeated-by-life father. The parents were also the mirror image of every evangelical couple I've ever bumped into, so much so that I called where they lived before I looked it up online out of curiosity.

People who feed their children shit like that and then complain that they're hyper and uncontrollable and need to be medicated should be sterilized. In fact, at this point, I'm fine with sterilizing every person on earth and just letting the species die off. It's for the best, really.

Skronk wrote:I understand what you're suggesting, Earwicker.

This goes beyond mere arguments about "rights", it's about bodily integrity, freedom to choose, among other things.

I can't really give you a better reason beyond my view that it's morally wrong. I don't have empirical data, since it's fortunately not something that's gained widespread practice.

My main point, I think, still stands. It's not about sidestepping the issue, it's just focusing on the ramifications of it. If we're to use sterilization on criminals, whose to say that's where it'll end? What if it gets used on a entire race, or people with behavioral, or mental problems?

It's happened to the Native Americans, and I can't say it won't happen again on people.

Skronk, have you heard of the eugenics program in the U.S.? There's a book, War Against the Weak that does a pretty nice job of describing it, though it is a lengthy read. The best part is that the rich industrialists who supported it also contributed to the path of the current public educational system.

Wow. I feel like Rick Reuben, going all conspiracy theory here.

I haven't read that particular book, but yeah I do know about the sterilization program that happened here. I just meant offhand I didn't have the data. Thanks for the link.

Mandroid2.0 wrote:

Skronk wrote:I understand what you're suggesting, Earwicker.

This goes beyond mere arguments about "rights", it's about bodily integrity, freedom to choose, among other things.

I can't really give you a better reason beyond my view that it's morally wrong. I don't have empirical data, since it's fortunately not something that's gained widespread practice.

My main point, I think, still stands. It's not about sidestepping the issue, it's just focusing on the ramifications of it. If we're to use sterilization on criminals, whose to say that's where it'll end? What if it gets used on a entire race, or people with behavioral, or mental problems?

It's happened to the Native Americans, and I can't say it won't happen again on people.

Skronk, have you heard of the eugenics program in the U.S.? There's a book, War Against the Weak that does a pretty nice job of describing it, though it is a lengthy read. The best part is that the rich industrialists who supported it also contributed to the path of the current public educational system.

Wow. I feel like Rick Reuben, going all conspiracy theory here.

The British were the leaders in the field of eugenics. See Sir Francis Galton. These studies provided much of the basis of the Nazi's theories on race.