Month: March 2009

So there’s a major brouhaha over a fertility clinic in which a doctor is claiming that he can help would-be parents determine, not only gender, but eye color, hair color, and skin color.

My initial reaction was not being sure how to react to the prospect at all. Naturally it raises specters of a race of supermen, and not the cool, faster-than-a-speeding bullet kind. So that was enough to engender a certain amount of squeamishness. And there’s the further gut reaction that there are simply some things that people should not be able to control. Things that mankind was not meant to experiment with, as someone who was raised on 1950s B science fiction films can readily attest.

However…however…

While there is something to be said for dangerous precedents over genetic manipulation of such attributes…there’s also something to be said for dangerous precedents over refusing to allow it.

First: If you’re telling a woman what she can and cannot do in terms of “designing” her fetus, aren’t you laying groundwork for saying that she doesn’t have the right to decide what to do with her body? The consequences of which can range from governments that tell you you cannot have an abortion even though you feel you have too many kids, to governments that tell you you must have an abortion because you have too many kids.

Second: Closing the door on the genetic manipulation of surface characteristics can also threaten to close the door on research into—for instance—detecting and curing in utero such diseases as spina bifida, or cystic fibrosis, or cerebral palsey. Sure, it might seem common sense to say, “Well, nobody would oppose curing disease in the womb.” The answer to which is:  Sure they would. There are plenty of people who would assert that you play the hand that God deals you, and altering a child-to-be for any reason is a sin.

Ultimately, what we’re discussing here in terms of practical application is a tiny, tiny minority of babies born. The existence of the technology is not going to result in the creation of Khan and the advent of the Eugenics war anytime soon.

Bottom line: I have a feeling that no matter which side one comes down on, it’s a mistake. So if there’s going to be a mistake made, my tendency would be to err on the side of scientific research and personal freedoms.

Thoughts?

I checked with John Jackson Miller who knows more about comic book sales than just about anybody.  And he said that since 2001, unit sales on comics are in fact on the increase.  The numbers he quoted are as follows:

2001     66.92 million copies
2002     73.72 million copies
2003     73.02 million copies
2004     74.14 million copies
2005     76.13 million copies
2006     81.85 million copies
2007     85.27 million copies
2008     81.34 million copies

Granted, 2008 was a drop off.  But it’s ridiculous to try and pin THAT on the internet with the struggling economy.

I should not have made the assertion that sales were dropping without double checking.  stand corrected.

PAD

Yesterday was Saint David’s day, the annual celebration dedicated to the patron saint of Wales.  The day is celebrated by wearing a small onion called a leek on your head.

Granted, I’m not a saint, but I feel a certain obligation due to the name.

So go and take a leak and think of me when you do.

PAD

One would think that with a message thread of over five hundred entries, I would have responded to every aspect of a topic imaginable.  (Not that responses really matter to the hit and runners who come in with their minds made up, don’t read the thread, hurl invective and boycotts and then split.) But in cruising around the blogosophere that currently portrays me as being so poisonous that a tarantula could bite me and die, there is apparently one aspect that I have yet to address.

It has been wondered in several places whether I concur with the concept that is popularly referred to as “Byrne Stealing.”  Namely, John Byrne’s philosophy that reading through a book on the stands and then putting it back is basically theft.  Was I, in letting Marvel know about a potential copyright violation, saying that Byrne was right?

Continue Reading “Byrne Stealing” →