Today, whilst reading the local papers, this advertisement caught my eye and quite frankly, I was shocked, sickened and disgusted. Here is a copy of the advertisement. Basically, this company is offering potential new parents a chance of determining the sex of their yet to be conceived children. They boast a 98.7% success rate and a 100% back money guarantee. Yawp, you get to chose the sex of your child for a mere RM1520 or US$400!! How's that for technological advancements?

So it started me thinking, do we have a right to play God? OK OK OK, so I don't prescribe to any religion, but do we have a right to change the natural order of things? Change fate? We play "God" heaps of times e.g. wars which kill thousands upon thousands of people at time, abortions, mercy killings / euthanasia, shotty building construction (e.g. the collapse of Highland Towers), terrorist bombings (like September 11) etc. Whilst the things I mentioned above are rather sickening to a degree, giving potential new parents the choice to choose the sex of their child just leaves me with an astronomically repulsive feeling. If this kind of technology is permitted to continue, it will never end. Remember that movie "Gattaca" starring Ethan Hawke? The one about genetic engineering and the social acceptance of it. You can read more about it here.

Let it be known that I am an advocate for abortion in certain instances, I mean what's the point of bringing a terminally ill or unwanted child into the world? Would you want to give birth to a baby if you are currently smack in the middle of a war? Isn't that cruelty?? What if you were raped by a HIV carrier? Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind. Euthanasia, well, in the simplest of forms, it is better to terminate pain rather than prolong it. We do that to animals, so why not to humans right?

Photo by: Gordon Young Source: http://www.bunaken.fsnet.co.uk/sss-gy-fish-01.htm

Think about it... every single creature on this earth was designed in such a way whereby, genetically, they are designed to sustain its existance. Take the bumphead parrotfish for example. These are shoaling fish, which means that they move around in groups. In any group, the largest of the fish is the male. When the male dies, the next largest female "changes its sex" to be the next male, the leader of the shoal. I don't know why this is but I assume that Mother Nature did this so there is harmony within the shoal i.e there won't be any clash for leadership. Egg laying fish can lay hundreds or even thousands of eggs per cycle. This is to ensure survival of the species as (in general), egg laying fry are small and thus, have a higher mortality rate. When it comes to breeding, corals can produce millions upon millions of eggs during a single reproductive cycle. Sperm is released at the same time and the probability of an egg finding a sperm isn't very high as there are factors such as water currents, fish feeding etc. So, Mother Nature designed corals to reproduce this way. Some species such as ants do not need their eggs to be fertilised. FYI, males ants are the product of unfertilised eggs. This phenomenon is known as parthenogenesis (or apomixis) which is procreation that occurs from unfertilised eggs, seeds or spores. Every single species on earth has its own reproductive process and history has shown that when mankind interferes in this process, sh@t happens.

In the cycle of things, we do not know enough about the other species cohabitating this place we call Earth. In the name of technological advancements, we do stupid things, thereby, wrecking nature's delicate balance of life. Take oysters for example. Oysters can change sex a fair few times during their life cycle. In general, if food is abundant, oysters become females, the larger of the two sexes. When food is scarce, as a means to protect itself, oysters become males, as they need less food. Of course, the temperature of their surroundings is also a factor in the sex of an oyster. Anyways, due to stupid things such as trawling, coral bleaching, fish bombing etc the amount of food for the oyster is on a decline. Then, global warming is heating up the world... so in the simplest of form, are we eventually going to end up with a batch of single sex oysters who can't procreate?

Anyways, that illustration is an extreme one but serves as an example of how mankind is screwing up the general order of things, whether on purpose or not. I can go on and on and on about how we are screwing up the livelihood of other species but I am not going to as that would be a Phd length thesis in itself.

Human Intervention