Womb rental: a racket for the rich

Posted by on

Kim Kardashian is having another baby. Well she’s not actually “having” it herself. She and her husband, the rapper Kanye West, are paying another woman to give birth to it. “I’m totally gonna forget,” she explains. “Then a month before I’m gonna be like holy shit, we need to get a nursery.”

Rent-a-womb is legal in the US but should it be made legal elsewhere? At present, surrogacy is only permissible in the UK, fot instance, on an altruistic basis: surrogate mothers can only be paid expenses. But the Law Commission – a panel of five men – is now reviewing surrogacy law, and rather than follow the example of Sweden, which has proposed banning surrogacy altogether, it seems to have made “streamlining” the law a priority. That sounds very much like a green light for a profitable industry in UK womb rental. Yet you only have to look at the international surrogacy racket to know what the motor force behind that industry will be: financial desperation. It’s that which drives Greek, Indian or Ukrainian women to become “incubators for rich couples”. Is that what we want for Britain? (Catherine Bennett, The Observer and The Week, 14 Jan 2019).

My comment:  I found myself  asking the question, “is this ethical; indeed, is it moral?

–    I agree with Catherine Bennet  – a woman would only agree to bear someone else’s baby if she was desperate for money.    This raises yet again the question of inequality and treatment of the poor, which has become an urgent issue in most places in the world.

–   How can you justify, for money, possibly subjecting a poor woman to possible complications in childbirth, or even death – in return for money? It sounds obscene.  Then, afterwards, there will be feelings, forevermore, of the birth mother who has handed over her baby, and  cannot watch the child grow up.

–   There is an argument for asking why, if a woman is barren or over the age of childbearing, should she not accept her fate with grace and enjoy life in other ways?  ( having children is not the passport to bliss sometimes imagined.  It’s hard work, for a start).  Millions have mental or physical disabilities and have  to live with them in resignation and silence – why not childlessness?

– If you are that desperate for a child are there not many thousands of orphans who, arguably, should be looked after and be placed in a nice home.

I don’t think this is a good idea.

Stay out of other people’s bedrooms and private lives, please!

Posted by on

Family planning clinics that provide abortions or refer patients for abortions will not be eligible for certain federal funds under a new rule finalized by the Trump administration.  Under the rule, women’s health clinics must be “physically and financially” separate from abortion providers to be eligible for Title X Family Planning grants, which fund organizations providing reproductive health services to low-income women.

Clinics will also not be allowed to refer women to other facilities for abortions, or promote or support abortion as a method of family planning. The long-awaited changes to the Title X program had been pushed by conservatives and anti-abortion groups as a way to partially defund Planned Parenthood, which serves about 40 percent of Title X patients.

While not all Planned Parenthood clinics provide abortions, some do, and those clinics would become ineligible under the rule, which takes effect 60 days after being published in the federal register. “This rule could deprive Planned Parenthood of $60 M. dollars a year.

My comment:

What a woman does with her body is not the business of political busybodies. Nobody wants to have an abortion. It is a traumatic, miserable and sometimes dangerous procedure, never to be forgotten. Women seek abortion for good reasons and, mostly, after a lot of anguished thought and discussion. Whether they are desperately poor, cannot look after the children they do have, or have been raped, they make their decision to terminate feeling helpless, scared and alone.

The other side of the coin is that there are too many children growing up as it is, feeling unwanted and a burden on their mothers. How can you, in all conscience, bring an unwanted child into this World? It is cruel, it is a sin. Period! Moreover (and I have only common sense to guide me, not statistics), I suspect that some of the disaffected young men committing mass murder by gunfire are quite probably alienated, fatherless and feel unwanted and angry with the world.  No wonder. Such cruelties, encouraged by people calling themselves “christian”,  have unpredictable effects for years.

This is, I believe, how Epicurus would have reacted, only in ancient Greek.

Poor, beautiful Venice!

Posted by on

There is now a proposed minimum entry fee into Venice of $2.85, rising to $5.00 and $10 in peak periods, if you haven’t booked into a hotel or paid a $6.00 tourist tax.  The reason?  30 million visitors annually. Poor Venice! Overwhelmed by hordes of noisy tourists,  groups from cruise ships, frequent flooding (75% of the city was flooded in record rainfall last October), its environment degraded (2 million euros is the estimated cost of repairs to St. Marks Cathedral alone) by ships that are reportedly eroding the supports of historic buildings and polluting the water, and its genuine residents driven away, amny of the old house empty and abandoned.

Some year ago there were 175,000 residents; now there are 55,000.  The Mayor has now banned cruise ships sailing past St Marks Square. Some years ago a huge amount of money was raised internationally to address some of the problems – it vanished into the pockets of corrupt officials, it is thought.

And I haven’t mentioned rising sea levels.  It looks as if Venice could be doomed.  As far as I can remember, the money raised years ago was, in addition to repairs to the city, was intended for the building of a sea wall , a barrier similar to that on the Thames outside London.   The opportunity to build a defensive wall was missed.  The problem now is both lack of time, but also will donors give again, given the chronic corruption that any building scheme in Italy seems to be subject to?   Isn’t it sad that greedy and unscrupulous people could be so selfish and short-sighted.

When Epicurus said that the “goal of life is happiness”  he was referring to the happiness of all, not just to a small gang of incompetents and thieves.

Some better news – about food

Posted by on

Several new, healthy GM foods are arriving, or about to arrive, offering health benefits, increased flavour and longer shelf-life. This is a list of them:

Arctic apples, which went on sale in the US in November 2017, never go brown (Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc)

Non-browning apples: Some people dislike eating fruit with discoloured flesh. This never happens to Arctic apples. They went on sale in the US in November 2017.

Potatoes that don’t bruise: The Innate potato is less prone to bruising and black spots. When fried, it also produces less acrylamide, a substance suspected of causing cancer, than conventional potatoes do.

Wheat with “good” gluten. At least two groups worldwide are editing out the genes for the gluten proteins that damage the guts of people with digestive disorders. One GM wheat is undergoing clinical trials in Spain.

Pink pineapples: They are pink because they accumulate lycopene, the pigment that makes tomatoes red, instead of converting it into yellow beta-carotene as normal pineapples do. Lycopene is thought to have various health benefits. The pink pineapples are also said to be sweeter – and add a twist to a pina colada.

Omega-3 rapeseed (canola): This seed from the rape plant is rich in the beneficial omega-3 oil DHA.

High-fibre white bread: Gene-edited wheat yields white flour with three times as much dietary fibre as standard white flour.

Bloodier oranges: Blood oranges are rich in antioxidants called anthocyanins. Normal blood oranges only turn red if they experience cold nights while growing, regardless of the weather. The oranges are not yet on sale.

Bananas: The matoke cooking banana is a staple in Uganda. The GM variety contains provitamin A, a lack of which can lead to blindness. It is being field tested in Uganda and could be on sale in 2021.

Lower-saturated fat rapeseed oil: Conventional rapeseed oil contains 7 per cent saturated fats. A gene-edited variety will have half this amount.

Golden rice: Rice designed to reduce vitamin A deficiency has been approved in Australia, New Zealand and Canada and declared it safe for humans.

Opinion: Scientists are now confident that GM modified fruits and vegetables are totally safe for human beings, and that refusing to accept GM food is similar to climate change denial

(Michael Le Page,senior news reporter for New Scientist. Lightly edited to make it a bit shorter; nothing important omitted)

Poor diddums!

Posted by on

Watching Alec Baldwin imitating Trump on Saturday Live (simply repeating what Trump said, but mimicking his speaking voice) has gotten under the skin of the latter. who asked, “How do these networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? The rigged and corrupt media is the enemy of the people”.

According to CNN an Ipsos poll last August found that 44% of Republicans believe Trump should be able to close news outlets for “bad behaviour”.

We are in dire trouble!

Good Epicureans have a sense of humour, and part of having a sense of humour is being able to laugh at oneself, or, at the very least, take a ribbing with a smile on one’s face. One should have learned this by the age of 12.