Well, I lied....I promised my beloved [and hopefully still faithful] readers I'd be a better blogger in 2010, and look at it now, it's almost 2 weeks into the second decade of the 21st century and I haven't even had the time to post any holiday greetings!! So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!!!
I do hope this post finds you all happy, healthy, and of course sticking to those dreaded resolutions!! Our family has been in quarantine since finals week (mid-December) sharing our wonderful germs with each other, and likely with numerous other unfortunates that have crossed our paths these few weeks. I had a nasty cold before Christmas, was healthy for about 4 days or so, until my sister got me sick (don't worry, she's equal opportunity and infected everyone!!) and I've been fighting a sinus infection since about the 28th! Now that I'm on my 3rd antibiotic (the first didn't work, and the second I turned out to be severely allergic to!!), I'm finally recovering!! Of course now my mom is sick!!! lol
So now that I've provided my pathetic attempt at an alibi for my absence I suppose I'll discuss some things that are going on in the DC community currently.
Well, for one, Julie Shapiro is at it again, attempting to discuss WHY it is wrong for a donor to have 400+ offspring. She acknowledges that it is indeed wrong/unethical/immoral, yet she cannot place WHY she feels this way. For once I actually agree with her, however I still oppose her logic. She sees it as wrong in the instance of potential incest, as well as the likelihood of huge numbers of offspring inheriting a rare genetic defect, yet she cannot see the problem with a child having 400+ siblings and being a commodity.
Please check out her post and respond, and if anyone has any ideas they'd like to share as to WHY it's wrong for a donor to have HUNDREDS of children, comment here!
I think this is a very real societal issue that must be discussed. There is a reason that most persons are repulsed by such an idea, but what is that reason? I'm sure it's really probably different for everyone, depending on your own beliefs and convictions.
In other news.....Cryokid got a link out last month in the Genomics Law Report's article "Reproductive Genetic Screening: More Questions Than Answers"!!
Anonymity itself comes with a cost. One need only spend a little time on the website created by a donor child searching for her father and half-siblings to understand the pain some of these children feel at be deprived of the knowledge of their biological father’s identity. As the daughter of an anonymous donor put it on another such website, “[m]y mother’s need to have a genetic link to her child was valued, while my need to know, love and understand the father with whom I have a genetic link was not.” More than 25,000 such children, their parents, and donors, have registered at the Donor Sibling Registry, trying to connect donor children with half-siblings and fathers—up from fewer than 10,000 two years ago.
While I was not quoted directly, a friend caught the article and the link to my blog. I was happy to see these ideas being discussed in legal circles here in the US. There needs to be a change, and that change is not going to happen through the infertility industry, so the only way we're going to fix this failed system is on Washington.
Well, I just scanned through my last month's worth of email and realized that there really is not much else going on! Well, besides the frigid weather here in the Great Lakes, the deep freeze in the deep south, and earthquakes EVERYWHERE.......and that's for another day, another post, and likely in another field (or maybe I've been watching too many of these 2012 Apocalypse documentaries on my guilty pleasure the History channel!!! LOL)
