fertility issues
 

I have a friend who is trying to get preg. They already have a 2 or 3 yr old, and have been trying to repeat for months with no success. So they're going to see a fertility specialist. I am pretty sure that i don't approve of this. and those slobs with the sextuplets make me want to hurl.......what do we think about this?

I think it's alright..

Generaly the cases of people having 50000 kids was due to the birth control pills not due to fertility specialisits.

what? how do birth CONTROL pills contribute to multi's? I'm pretty sure that it is a result of mass in vitro fertilization. I think that if your bodies won't produce offspring together through conventional means, then you should accept it and adopt.

Actually, If I remember correctly, those large multiple pregnancies were not due to IVF, but due to fertility medications which caused the release of multiple eggs, all of which were fertilized.

Dagney

What Dagney said...

But wasn't it also in part due to the women being previously on birth control and them suddenly stopping to take it at least being part of the release?

I maybe totaly wrong, the issue was never of much importance to me.

That can be 'part' of the problem, but the megatuplets are generally caused by fertility meds. Twins and Triplets are often attributed to stopping the Birth Control Pill which in turn turns off the ovaries. Gives em a jump start - so to speak.

Damn hormones, crazy things I'll tell ya.

It depends. They can choose what they want to do. In our case, our oldest was born when my wife was 39. 2 1/12 years later we were trying for a second and it wasn't happening. Mrs. Dallas' ob-gyn advised that at her age, we should go ahead and see a fertility specialist if she was not pregnant after 6 months of effort. We decided beforehand that we would not attempt IVF or any other heroic measures. After some tests & stuff & more unsuccessful attempts, the specialist suggested that at least some of the factors we were dealing with would be addressed well by artificial insemination. So we did it, and it was successful. As I recall she did take some fertility drugs to ensure ovulation on cue, but we were never in danger of having nontuplets. (I think we were slightly more likely to have twins.)

So don't automatically assume your friends have gone off the deep end.

By the way, I may regret starting this, but I have no patience for people who say that septuplets are "God's will" after they've gone through fertility treatments to address the fact that they couldn't have a baby--which circumstance was also, presumably, God's will.

Re: fertility issues
 

As long as they can afford a possible multiple pregnancy and not ask for outside help. Sorry, but if you need to put out the call to help raise kids, then maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have them in the first place.

Re: fertility issues
 

So, why are you against it?

So... would you also say that if your body won't produce the antibodies to cure a deadly disease, you should accept it and die? As opposed to using safe, established medical processes to solve the problem?

I don't mean for that to sound snide, I'm just trying to understand the logic of your comment... it isn't compatible with my brain. If technology isn't going to solve problems to make our lives better, then what's the point?

I suspect another "it's not natural" argument. Which, of course, I equate to mean, "I think anything coming from humans is evil and corrupted, even though Biology 101 says that humans are a part of nature."

But I sincerly apologize if that's not what you mean. :)

Re: fertility issues
 

Ain't nobodies business but their own.

Yeah, buce it's THEIR business, and I would never presume to judge them or tell them about how I feel about such a sensitive issue. And Juju, it IS basically an "it's not natural " line of thinking. Sorry if you've heard this before, and if this is a tired argument, I'll gladly read old threads and not run you through it again. But, I was a little vague in my initial post on purpose. My opinion is based mainly on gut feel, and I don't have lots of info or fact to support it. That's why I ask how "we" feel. I think there is something to be said for the philosophy of " if it feels right, do it"......so why SHOULD I be OK with it. If i'm accurately interpreting your tone to mean that you would defend it?

Re: fertility issues
 

I suspect, your friend will waste money at the fertility clinic. Have her peruse Dr.Mirkin's website about common causes of infertility.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is one such cause, that is really common and easily tratable with anti-biotics.
These links may be of some help....


http://drmirkin.com/archive/6958.html
http://drmirkin.com/women/w128.htm
http://drmirkin.com/women/8124.htm http://drmirkin.com/women/8836.html

thanks, scope, but i think i'll leave the reccomendations to their doctor. They're friends, but not really close friends...I don't think they want any advice from me about it.

It just got me thinking, I guess




PS> Jinx is watching "Babe" on TV right now.

Re: fertility issues
 

Re: Re: fertility issues
 

Re: Re: Re: fertility issues
 

Read the articles.. From what I've hear from Dr. Mirkin, there are nuances in the contributing factors that antibiotics can treat. PCS ...can be caused by a hidden infection...can be caused by diatary factors.... Usually a fert specialist will prescribe an antibiotic sweep (with settling time) before attempted pregnancy ( according to Mirkin's Radio show - he's retired it)

Great Guy

Well, I judge things based on reasons (or at least, I try to). To me, saying that because the baby was helped along by chemistry, which was created in an evil, corrupted human lab, is just silly.

But there are good reasons for your line of thinking, I think. Like, you could bring up potential medical dangers. Or the increased risk of having sextuplets (though I don't know the percentage risk that is).

I mean, I'm not saying one way or the other. As long as the medical procedure produces a healthy child, then I think it's completely moral and okay. But if there are potential problems with it, or there are always sextuplets, then obviously that's not okay.

BTW, I kind of touched on my thinking on the "natural" subject here:

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3883

I didn't say anything about evil or unnatural. And as it relates, I am a minimalist when it comes to medicine. I'm no Jehova's witless, but I think we are a little big for our britches.

I think it has more to do with my belief that nature works like it does for reasons we can't understand sometimes. We had a big long discussion about gay marriage, for example. That issue reminds me of ancient Greece and the prevalant homosexuality that existed. jinx and I pondered over this and decided that our best guess on the reasons why had to do with limited space and population control. There are frogs that can change sex if the population is too lopsided for the species to continue.

So, I think Nature (or GOD if you prefer) has it's own set of controls within the chaos. We have survived as a species this long without the benefit of modern medicine. and yet, People recognize that there are problems, big problems in the world. And these problems have largely manifested themselves since the time that we began overriding nature with science and medicine.

If two people have to resort to heroic measures in order to reproduce, who can say we SHOULD override nature?

It sounds a little harsh even to me, and if it was me in that situation, I can't say I wouldn't be on the other side of the fence on this. Who can say unless it REALLY happens to you?

At the same time, if the problem that causes this is bacterial or physical, and a simple treatment can restore the normal physiology of the patient,.....I'd do that if it were me.

I said in my first post that i was pretty sure that i disapproved. In thinking about it a little deeper, I think it comes down to the specific situation and reasons. Yet, I still think In vitro is pushing it.

Most importantly, my opinion on the matter is irrellevant and I wouldn't presume to condemn or even discourage anyone else from their freedom to do what they choose with their body unless it effects someone else's rights.

No. My first thought was to not post but then I realized I do have an opinion, which is *they* are the only ones that have all the factual and emotional data needed to make this decision. :cool:

It's not possible to override nature with science and medicine, because science and medicine are a <i>part</i> of nature.

In fact, I'd say that it's not possible to override nature at all.

But yeah, I agree that it depends on the situation and how dangerous it is. Your opinion is relevant, though. That's what this board is all about. :)

when I say nature, juju, i mean what would happen naturally if a human did not intercede using science or medicine. And dont say that humans ARE natural and therefore can't interfere with themself. we'll never get out of that spiral argument.

We have acheived a level of knowledge that allows us to alter almost everything we can touch. we genetically modify vegetables, for christs sake. there is a line where something is natural and something that would not ordinarilly occur meet.

I see. So knowledge is bad, dangerous, and not to be used?

What do you mean when you say "natural"? In your attempted definition, you used the word "natural" in the definition. You can't do that! Not if it's to be official, anyway.

i'd prefer if you didn't attempt to put words in my mouth. knowledge is good. playing god is bad.

is this the kind of shit that dave used to call you a retard over?

i think you understand from my explanation how i intended the use of the word natural in my post......

I wasn't <i>saying</i> that you said that. I was just asking if that's what you meant. I'm just trying to understand.

Really, though, I don't understand what you mean by "natural". I figured a definition would prevent further misunderstanding.

Whats wrong with playing god given that there is no god?

You know thats a whole nother ball game.

Just leave that out of here.

That causes to many arguements.

this:

By that idea we should go back to the prehestoric ages and go hunt wild animals for food...cause thats natural...

A lot of people would die a lot sooner.Almost nothing you or I do during the day would ordinarily occur without science.

if we could keep this within the context of what we are talking about, it makes much more sense.

im not saying we should remain cave men, or to shun science.....i'm saying when it comes to reproduction.....maybe there is a reason why it's not working.

don't pick fly shit out of pepper

And what's the reason it's not working?

Mother nature? GOD?!

Can you be any more supersticious please?

Shit maybe it's the computer radiation...gah

It's the same argument, whether you're talking about reproduction or airplanes. Maybe there's a reason man doesn't fly. Maybe the reason reproduction isn't working is a low Ph level in the womb that can be fixed with drugs.

"Maybe there's a reason it doesn't happen already" isn't a reason not to do it if you can.

im saying that i don't know the reason......and i wouldnt push past a simple cure with advanced medicinal regimens and surgery -esque in vitro or test tube babies......

......maybe You've had too much radiation.......

i am as unsuperstitious as they come.....i don't believe in "GOD" in a conventional sense......i do, however beleive that nature should not be trifled with lightly.

What is nature?


Things happening randomly.

Thats it.

Whats wrong with adding some order to it?

You sure sound supersticious to me. "Mess with nature and bad things might happen!"

bad things like overpopulation, excessive health care costs for the masses, and 2 hour tv specials about sextuplets? yeah, you got me...i'm superstitious.

Natural selection?
Seriously though, I couldn't give a fuck if people get a little help having kids. I have to wonder why so many people need it these days though.

The thing that has jims knickers in a twist about our friends and their infertility is that they are fucking up our vacation plans with it. Lemme flesh the story out a bit... They've been trying for over a year now. In October they agreed to rent a vacation house with us next sept. Agreed to the dates, approved the house, gave the go ahead. NOW (after I've signed a lease and paid half the bill) they're saying that becuase of the fertility drugs they want her to try, they might get pg in the next few months and then they won't go - but if they don't (get pg) they will (go).
To me, the issue isn't about fucking with nature so much as it is being an asshole.

Overpopulation isn't a result of technology.

It's a result of retards going out and "saving" the fucktards who breed but can't feed themselves.

It's the care bear mentality of the world that is the problem.

I say let the retards in India and Africa who breed all day long die. Let the 6 kids of the crack addict single mother die. All the technology in the world cannot save people from their own stupidity.


Care bears are the problem. Not technology.

Well, we can come up with many, many reasons why using advanced medicine and science is good for the human race, even in reproduction. How many reasons can you think of why using the same is bad? Actual, concrete reasons... not just a "gut feeling."

The only negative repercussions I can think of to medicine's help in reproduction are pretty managable:

1) Risk of sextuplets... this is a low risk, which the parents are aware of and prepared for.
2) "They could have adopted." Adopting is great if you want a kid to raise. But if you want YOUR kid, and the survival of the genes, medicine's answer is better.
3) Overpopulation... this problem would not be solved by failing to help couples conceive. Realistically, the areas where this sort of thing is offered are NOT overpopulated.

And what's wrong with "playing God" in this way, and helping nature along? Basically, there are two possibilities:

A) There IS a God(s), and (T)He(y) gave us the knowledge and means to do all this.
B) There is NO God(s), and mankind is the maker if i's own destiny.

One argument that would perhaps have merit is Darwinian... that one member of the couple has a genetic deficiency in reproduction, and should therefore not reproduce. But modern medicine fills that gap, so technically a couple with the means to pay for reproductive therapy satisfies the Darwinian equation..

i beg to differ.

if we didn't have the technology required to build shelters, farm, heal the sick, etc....people would die a lot more often and sooner.....hence, a "natural" population balance...

look at how long the native americans and aborigonal aussies existed in harmony with the land before whitey brought technology into the picture.

very well put, alan.....

this is an argument that i can respect.....as opposed to the last few......

as i said, i wouldn't push someone in either direction....i was merely looking for peoples opinions on the matter.

nice job.....

Yes and neither the native americans or the aborigines suffere from over population.

Over population is a problem in 3rd world countries...

These countries lack the technology to fully support a large population.

Instead these countries get help in barley keeping the large population alive from the more technologicaly advanced countries.

This is because US and other send money to poor countries; because "You can't just let these people die!". This is a care bear mentality. This is the problem.

Countries like India or Africa MUST develop the technology themselves. Till then their population MUST starve and die out.

so now you're saying that overpopulation IS a result of technology....at least indirectly?

No I'm saying that it's a result of care bear mentality.


It could happen without technology just as well.

Imagine a successful tribe giving a fraction of its food to tribe that sucks. The sucky tribe breeds like rabbits because they sit on their ass all day expecting food from the other tribe. The successful tribe does not have overpopulation nor technology. The unsuccessful tribe on the other hand has overpopulation because it cannot support itself thanks to breeding like rabbits and becoming dependant on the successful tribe...

Technology doesn't have to be involved at all.


We have condoms and a sense of responsiblity to control population. Over population is a problem were those things do not exist. Yet food exists thanks to care bears.

gotcha.....

so, who wants to go care bear hunting?

I want to start with that guy who does those:

"For as little as $1 a day you could feed this girl and give her a nice <christian> education."

Yeah? Can you go tie her and her mothers and sisters tube for $2 a day? If so I'd be tripping over myself to get to the pone.

This is sort of going back to that "The wrong people are breeding" conversation we have danced around in other threads. Interesting topic.

Does anyone know anything about these charity organizations ($2.00 a day to feed this little girl ones)? My guess would be that most of these end up collecting a lot more money than they end up giving to the starving children. I don't think they are altruistic enough to really effective care bears. Or, it could just be my own cynicism causing me to question that.

Well you see...funds like the "Christian Foundation" are really nasty. They claim that 90% go to "serving the children" of course of that like 70% goes to building churches and funding religion...which by the way doesn't approve of birht control...cause god has a plan for every sperm.

I suppose we could take comfort in the fact that churches aren't edible. :)

Science and medicine are nothing but man (who is a part of nature) getting a further understanding of the world around him. How can you imply that this is bad?

I argue for the following points:

• man is a part of nature
• science, medicine, and technology are a part of nature
• everything is natural, therefore rendering the word meaningless.

Now, it <i>might</i> be true that we are fucking up the world. I would argue that we are <i>changing</i> it, and that is not the same thing. In fact, the world has gone through massive changes many, many times in the past. If you look at the history of the Earth, change is actually a constant. We're not fucking it up, we're changing it. Species will adapt to the changes we have made. Life will go on. Nothing we have done goes against the rules of natural selection.

(edit: of course, we can't violate the rules of natural selection because they're not actually rules, but selective forces. Selective forces that our so-called "unnatural" actions are helping to create.)

do you think the same applies to eyeglass wearers? if the people that have to wear glasses didn't wear them, they would probably have fallen into a ditch and been killed at a young age. they wouldn't have lived long enough to reproduce, and therefore, the bad eyesight gene would die with them.

this lends itself more toward juju's argument. it is natural for people to learn to invent things that prolong our lives and overcome natural disadvantages. has been from the beginning......ex....fire, tools, weapons, animal domestication, farming.....

this could very easily turn into a deep philosophical discussion about man's effect on darwinism, complete with circular lines of thought that keep leading back to the fact that "unnatural" is an oxymoron. As juju said in the earlier attached thread, everything on earth is,, by definition, natural....it all comes from the earth.....whether it occurs with no help from us, or it occurs as a direct result of the imaginings of our oversized brains......like the computer you're looking at.

"It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature!!!" *cue thunder clap*

Sorry, couldn't resist...:D

In a world with no science, the people with poor eyesight were (I presume) required to do other things in the hunter/gatherer society. In that world, there were no cars to drive, no books to read, no television to watch from afar. So speaking in that context, yes, the same applies to eyeglass wearers. Although I'd venture to say, if your eyesight is so bad you'd fall and kill yourself in a ditch, it IS natural selection, and probably for the best. A smart bllind person in those days would figure out how to use a stick for a cane (assuming he wasn't left to die as an infant by it's parents, a la Jean M. Auel).

To clarify, I don't think science is bad. I think we can do alot of good things with it. But I *don't* think we should be playing around with genetics as far as cloning and making babies on demand. I beleive that if a couple cannot have a child without serious medical intervention, then they should adopt. Just because we CAN do a thing doesn't mean we SHOULD do a thing.

There are many, many factors that can prevent a couple from having children which aren't passed on genetically (sterilization from some disease, smoking too much weed, seeing Rosie O'Donnell nude, radiation exposure)... your argument only applies to a minority of all cases. Moreover, your later comment, if properly applied, sort of nulls your argument anyway:
Well, a smart infertile person in these days will figure out how to seek medical help in order to procreate. How is that different? Is it because they need help from others to accomplish it? Well, who found the stick for this blind dude, or trained his seeing-eye dog? A decade or so from now, we'll probably have fully artifical eyes that can be implanted in the blind to restore their vision, they have semi-working prototypes now. Will THOSE be too "unnatural," and you'll argue that the blind should remain that way? If the technology exists to make a person more whole, and their life more fullfilling, I say Hell Yeah. That is EXACTLY the point of technology.

It seems to me that humans (and all living things, really) are built to procreate, and all other functions are secondary. Of course human intelligence has allowed us to find joy in many things besides making babies, but that still seems to be the primary goal our bodies are designed to acheive. Why else would sex be so pleasurable? Why would people go to the effort and expense of procreating if it wasn't a hard-wired behavior? One could easily argue that of all of the things a person could lose, the complete loss of the ability to reproduce would be among the most profoundly negative. So why not fix it when we can?

It's also important to remember that natural selection is NOT a moral system. It's just what happens. If something is selected for or against, it's not "good" or "bad". It just is. The goodness or badness is decided by you and me.

LumberJim, I think you're thinking with your guts and not your head. This subject has a big ewww factor for you and so you think it's wrong.

I don't think people should have more kids than they can afford. But people who can afford the heroic measures are not going to have trouble affording to raise a kid or a whole litter. It's terrifically expensive to do even once and the success rate means you likely have to do it a bunch of times (~25% IIRC).

My wife and I didn't have to go through 'in vitro', but did need help. I've got two wonderful girls out of the deal and wouldn't give them up for the world.

In the end it all comes down to "does an action leave the world in a better or worse place?" If your friends want and can afford kids, -- and can afford the medical stuff, I can't see why it would bother you at all.

If the real issue, as Jinx hinted, is that the problem really has to do with sharing a vacation, that's a whole other thing. I can understand that you guys would be disappointed, but if you've had an easy time conceiving your kids, you have no idea how big an issue it can become when you want kids and are worried that you can't have them. Everything revolves around the issue until it is resolved.

On the other hand, are they sticking you with the bill for the cabin? That would not be cool.