More Bird-Flu (and Other) Stupidity. India, a country in which tens of millions of people live perpetually at the edge of starvation, is killing and throwing away hundreds of thousands of chickens because of irrationally excessive fear of bird flu, even tho not one single person in the entire country's population of over a BILLION has died from it!
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There is a vaccine against bird flu that is 100% effective.
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Moreover, even if some chickens are infected, it doesn't mean anything:

In countries where avian flu is present in poultry, the virus may be present in meat and eggs from affected birds. Even if the virus is present in meat or eggs, several factors will contribute to preventing or limiting its effects on people. First, the virus is easily killed by cooking. Second, even if it is still present after cooking, the virus is destroyed by saliva and by gastric acid, as well as the fact that there are very few receptors the virus needs to enter the body in the gut.

Human stupidity, cowardice, and irration know no bounds.
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In the U.S., iWon.com's Internet poll today showed 57% of Americans "Somewhat" or "Very" concerned about the spread of bird flu to the United States, even tho we haven't found so much as one single case in any of billions of birds that live in or overfly this enormous country.
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I hate stupidity. I hate cowardice. I hate irration. Can't we selectively breed away stupidity?
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We really do need a major eugenics push. On a planet as overpopulated as Earth, we really need to find ways to stop stupid people from reproducing and encourage smart, sensible people to do more than replace themselves. We need a massive shift from a predominantly stupid to a predominantly smart population, but are getting the opposite.
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With the advent of many contraceptive devices and techniques, smart people have put off having children to permit them to establish themselves. Sometimes they find they have put it off so long that they lose interest or become infertile.
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Stupid people, however, do not use contraception, and do not plan for the future, but bring multiple children per stupid female into a life of hardship and, all too often, neglect and abuse.
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Vasectomy of husbands accomplishes nothing, nowadays, given that a large majority of children in the U.S. are being born out of wedlock or as the result of adultery. Fortunately, that is less common in traditional societies in the Third World. But still, anyone who has had cats knows that it is not enuf to sterilize some of the males. As long as you leave any male fertile and do not spay the females, you're gonna get kittens. Since only women have babies, it is women's fertility that controls whether babies are or are not conceived.
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So we've got to find ways to induce stupid human females to have themselves sterilized, at least temporarily. There used to be a device, Norplant, a long-term hormone delivery system inserted under the skin that kept women from having babies for five years at a time. But, like everything nowadays, some adverse impacts (apparently not including death) caused the manufacturer (Wyeth, headquartered about 15 miles from me) to withdraw this option from the United States and even subsidize the removal of the implant before its expiration date. It established the Norplant Foundation for that purpose, then changed its name to the Contraception Foundation.
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It's hard to know if the health objections to Norplant were legitimate or just more of the irrational caterwauling we hear endlessly from the big babies that almost everybody in this country seems to have become.
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Tubal ligation (a woman's having her fallopian "tubes tied" as to prevent pregnancy) is 99.9% effective. The 0.1% failure rate occurs because the surgery is performed improperly or, in rare cases, the body finds a way to create a new channel between ovaries and uterus. Epigee.org says of costs:

The initial cost of a tubal ligation can be expensive [s/b "high"; "costs" are not "expensive"], ranging between $1,000 and $3,000. However, because the effects are permanent and long lasting, it may be a more cost-effective solution for some women. Some private insurance companies may also cover some of the cost.* * *

For women that are sure that they do not want any more children, or any children at all, having a tubal ligation can be a successful means of birth control. Although tubal ligation reversal surgery is available, all women should consider having their tubes tied as a permanent solution. Therefore, it is best to take your time and talk with your doctor as well as your partner so that you can be sure that this is the right decision for you.

WebMD, however, is not so dire about the irreversibility of tubal ligation. It asks, but does not in absolute terms answer, the question "Is Tubal Ligation Reversible?" It seems to say it is.

The surgery to reanastomose tubes is called 'tubal reversal surgery'. * * *

The hospital stay may be as short as one or two nights. Postoperative recovery may take three to six weeks. The price is somewhere around $7,000-$10,000, and it's usually not paid for by insurance[ ] companies.

Other websites say it is reversible, but with difficulty and expense, and not always successful; or successfully reversible in 60 to 80% of cases.
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But even if tubal ligation cannot in a particular woman be reversed, in vitro fertilization ("IVF") may still be possible, since the eggs are still in her ovaries and can be removed from them, fertilized outside her body, then reinserted into her uterus, in effect taking a surgical detour around the blockage.
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Discussions of tubal ligation — to snip or not to snip? — typically do not put things in context. For one thing, infertility occurs naturally in a significant number of people. For another, pregnancy entails serious health risks, and childbirth is still a major cause of death around the world. Moreover, having babies is medically expensive, and raising them is phenomenally expensive.
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Consider naturally occurring infertility. Even if some women who undergo tubal ligation are rendered thereby permanently infertile, except perhaps via IVF (an enormously expensive and often failed technology), so what?

6.1 million people [were] infertile in the US 1997 (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

10.1% of reproductive age population infertile in the US 1997 (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

Infertility equally affects men and women in the US (American Society of Reproductive Medicine)

Because one or both partners of a couple interested in having children may be naturally infertile,

About one in six couples are experiencing difficulties in conceiving a child.

So being unable to have a child is not a unique tragedy. Moreover, there are a great many orphans and abandoned children in the world who could be adopted by naturally childless people (couples or individuals). In the United States alone, a country of excellent health conditions and relatively little orphaning thru disease, civil disturbances, and natural disasters,

About 130,000 of the 540,000 children in foster care nationwide are waiting to be adopted. About 50,000 a year actually get adopted, says Carol Emig of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care.

In the past five years, thanks largely to increased federal financial incentives and state initiatives to adopt, 33 states and Washington, D.C., have doubled their adoptions from foster care, Emig says.

But experts note that many children — especially those who are older and disabled — remain unadopted [permanently]. "There is no line at the door for kids with special needs of any age," Pertman says. "People want healthy infants first and then move on from there."

In the rest of the world, there are huge numbers of orphaned and abandoned children, literally millions who will never find adoptive parents in their own country. Yet we continue not only to let just anybody have children but even permit the infertile to spend tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments per couple and produce litters of five and even seven children due to fertility treatment gone mad.
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Infertility is a blessing upon this planet. We need more infertility, not more children; more smart people and fewer stupid people having children; and more responsible behavior on the part of childless people regarding children already here.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,288.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:13 PM