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To: one_less who wrote (727)	6/20/2008 12:54:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 3816

What's particularly heinous is the fact that the sex selection is by destroying fetuses or embryos (or as was pointed out, in China already born infants). There are some methods that can be used with IVF that would select for sex without such killing (selecting for "male sperm", or "female sperm"). I'm not promoting or cheering such methods, but I wouldn't describe them as heinous. Edit - But if widespread and if tilted strongly towards one sex (most likely male) than the social effects of sex selection can be very negative.

To: one_less who wrote (727)	6/22/2008 4:25:40 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3816

Using up words like "heinous" on a perfectly sensible thing to do leaves us short of words for things which actually are heinous. We'd be left saying "I'm lost for words", which is not a particularly informative way of communicating. Have you seen "Every sperm is sacred"? youtube.com I was part of those discussions on "Who gets born" in the "framing" stages of the public discussions. I was pleasantly surprised that there were intelligent discussions rather than ideological dogma from religious bosses. Also, there was a lot of thought that governments should not dictate to parents how to run their and their children's lives. The word "eugenics" is these days used like the word "racist" as an instant argument winner. But in fact, eugenics is practised all day every day by billions of people. Women are the main proponents of it, but plenty of men are selective about where they cast their sperm. Most blokes are well aware that women are strong advocates of eugenics and they can attest to much rejection by desirable women who the blokes, using finely tuned eugenics senses, consider should carry their wondrous sperm. Many desirable women apparently have had males of less than desirable status paying unwanted attention to them. Heck, even Google knows which women are "hot": images.google.co.nz I am sure those women have all conducted eugenics operations, selecting swarms of men OUT of the gene pool. Women constantly select the best genes available out of the miserable lot on offer. They are conducting eugenics but it's not called that. It would be much better if women could do it more scientifically by inspecting the actual DNA to see if there are any nasty recessive genes lurking beneath a lovely book cover by which the blokes should NOT be judged. Hooray for eugenics! It's what got us from being chimps to being human. The job is obviously only half done and now that women can not only check genes for suitability, but also do some genetic engineering, we should get a very rapid improvement from the motley mess of random, cruel, merciless winnowing process which mindless nature has forced on people. Gung Ho, Mqurice