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Are Men Obsolete?
webword writes: "BBC News Online is reporting that Dr. Orly Lacham-Kaplan, from Monash University in Melbourne, has developed a technique to use any cell in a body to fertilize an egg. According to the story, theoretically 'lesbian couples could give birth to a baby girl without the need for a father'. In particular, she has been able to fertilise mice eggs in lab cultures using somatic cells. (Aside: Here is a little article on the ethics of cloning using somatic cells.) While this is not quite bokanovskification, it seems to be a step in that direction."
From the article, re: lesbians having babies
"However, this could prove problematical as aspects of development are controlled by a paternal gene."
From the article, re: asexual reproduction
"However, the use of chromosomes from the same person massively increased the risk that a baby would suffer from genetic defects."
It also doesn't mention if there are side effects long term (as in cloning) from this technique. They use a chemical process (similar to what happens in natural conception) to seperate the two sets of chromosomes from a cell (essentially creating a sex cell), but does the process alter or damage the genetic info?
Of course, if it works fine and there is massive male sterilization and we cure a few diseases...
Sex all the time, baby!
The only downside of having sex will then be psychological; and, well, we can just breed a superior race of uber-psychologists to deal with it.
IANAL, but I play one on
Does this mean that if a psycho date collects some DNA from me they can produce a child that I am geneticly related to? What sort of legal defense is there other then "she's a goof and I had nothing to do with this" ?
Remembering back to XY chromosomes, gee... that child of lesbians would be what gender?
And Jebediah begat, well, there was a whole lotta begatting since there was so much DNA just laying around...
Wheeeee
Yes it is true that you can not speak of ALL men and women as being a part of a monolithic group. But I was only highlighting the fact that the majority of creative and innovative contributions to society are from men. This is an average, and neglects to mention the achievements of women. I am sorry. Women do achieve great things, but I was speaking for the down-trodden men, justifying their continued existence.
Troll? Im not even sure what troll means. Is there anything in particular that you disagree with in my post? I'd be curious to know what that is...
- Women are damned good looking.
:)
In the positive for women section. Of course this also can cause conflict and strife. Hehe.It is if you have sex at the same time. There's nothing about screwing with human ova anywhere in the Bible.
--
-- SIGFPE
I highly recommend it to science fiction fans out there. The ending blows goats, as with most David Brin books (not that it's BAD, per se, but just that it's kind of useless), but all in all it's a fairly good treatment of a society in which the importance of men has been reduced. He also has an afterword in which he describes several difficulties with cloning humans, which from the sound of the article, are still very much present.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Oh, not "MAN" as in Mankind, the species. "MAN" as in, males :) You know, the obsolete half? ;)
;) Men have their uses *grin*
-= rei =-
P.S. - I'm just kidding
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
You still need one of us to carry the child ;)
;)
So, no, that logic wouldn't work in that case.
Obsolete (n): no longer in use or no longer useful
If this technology would be in place, yes, men could be made to be obsolete. However, women could not.
Additionally, a child of two men has a 1/4 chance of dying right-out from being YY. That Y chromosome wouldn't really be a necessity if this were to talk off
-= rei =-
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
Ah, but those don't exist, and don't look like they will any time soon ;)
-= rei =-
"This may be presumptuous..." "That's my favorite kind of 'This'."
..........no it's just too damn easy.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Yes. Kill them all now.
Problem solved.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
I wasn't gonna post to this article, due to lack of time, but when I saw the number of articles I knew I had to do it:
Are Men Obsolete? by michael on Tuesday July 10, @02:34PM EST 42
So, did Douglas Adams knew this all along, and he was warning us about it?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
But we are still pretty decorative, and some of us dance well.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Instead, I thought I would come up with some good reasons to keep men around, and some of the contributions men give to our society.
- Men are the great innovators of our society. 90% or more of successful business men are, well, men.
- Men are more creative than women. Hold on there bucko. Lets take one important metric. Nobel prizes. Men overwhelmingly win nobel prizes, and it could be because of genetic advantages, hormone levels, or a combination of the two. It's also interesting to note that men have larger brains than women on average.
Of course on the flip-side there are very important advantages that women hold over menOf course some of the reasons lesbian feminists give for the redundancy of men are valid. For example, that men will not be needed for reproduction in the future. This is undoubedtly true. But in light of all the great, vital, unique, and utterly essential contributions men give to society, I would say this is a paltry reason to give up on men. Men are here to stay, unless for some strange reason women suddenly turn into lesbians, or lesbians reproduce faster than hetersexual women.
So lets get over this lesbian feminist, anti-male propaganda. It's worthless and will end up hurting society and further the rift between the sexes.
Sex is sinful. If we can remove sex from procreation we can produce humans untainted by Original Sin and the world would be a better place.
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-- SIGFPE
By the same logic couldn't I argue that females are obsolete?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
This would be actually *more* fun. Think of it. Get a vasectomy when you're young. Don't worry about the pill, or condoms, or gels, or creams, or diaphrams, or withdrawal (Vatican Roulette). When you want to have a kid, just get a cell from somewhere and do it.
And finally, if men are really obsolete that's a pretty good excuse to get out of housecleaning and yardwork. "Sorry honey, we're going to have to find someone else to mow the lawn. I'm OBSOLETE, you know."
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.