Live data from Hacker News

Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

nytimes.com

61–70 of 106 posts

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#61
post #54
post #12

In its long term effect this fraud is similar to serial rape. But that's also true of serial seduction under false pretenses. Should the punishment for these things also be similar? I don't know. From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, since reproducing copiously is worth dying for. The only effective punishment would involve also killing or sterilizing the resulting children ... which is…

There should be a moratorium on invoking evolution unless you're an evolutionary biologist. It's quite telling that whenever I read the word 'Darwin' on this site I immediately go 'aw shit, I'm not going to like this' and it never fails.

Would you like to share with us where the parent poster made an error?

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#62
post #47

People at 23AndMe could run an anonymized query on their dataset to extract networks of lineages and see highly connected individuals. It would be fascinating to see some people with hundreds of offsprings because they are sperm donors. What if their own children become sperm donors, etc. If two persons are born from sperm donors I imagine they have to check in case they are siblings or closely related.

> run an anonymized query ... see highly connected individuals Doesn't sound very anonymized to me.

As the genetic sequencing graph grows, the odds of maintaining anonymity rapidly drops to zero. Poor choice of words on parent’s part, but I think one can understand what they were trying to convey (datamining the genotype matrix).

Disclaimer: Interviewed at 23andme a decade ago. Good folks.

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#63
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify your rationale about why France banned paternity tests?

They believe what makes you a father is that you accepted that social role on the day of birth, not the bloodline. You have an opportunity to ask for a blood test before you make that legal compact but not after.

Since a ban was necessary, clearly many men don't share that belief.

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#64
post #19
post #12

In its long term effect this fraud is similar to serial rape. But that's also true of serial seduction under false pretenses. Should the punishment for these things also be similar? I don't know. From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, since reproducing copiously is worth dying for. The only effective punishment would involve also killing or sterilizing the resulting children ... which is…

> From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, Darwinism has no bearing on legal matters. In fact the entirety of laws are opposed to darwinism Plus we re probably the last generations that care for darwinism? It won't take long before it becomes normal to engineer your children.

Capital punishment is/was considered a deterrent because we are programmed to attempt to avoid premature death by natural selection.

That's not to say people always understood this or even that today it is the way most people think about it, but at least according to a mechanistic/biological view of behavior, that is the basis.

Note that natural selection did NOT necessarily put a desire to pass on our genes into us, since that wasn't necessary. It simply put such things as a desire to continue living, a drive to care for children (which can easily be transferred to non-biological children, and we can easily ignore that drive for biological children that we don't bond to), and a drive to have sex.

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#65
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of my hypocrisy, but I would honestly rather live with primal tribes and not stress about all the shit happening with the world. I mean, what kind of a society will my eventual children grow into? 1984-Big brother world. Jesus. I would rather hunt a bear, then eat it for a week with my tribe, and then dance around the fire while drinking some psychedelic drink in the warm night, seeing all the stars and mi…

Right up until you die of a infection resulting from a minor scratch.

Acceptance of germ theory (and the subsequent use of antiseptics) really only came about near the end of the 19th century. The hardships of pre modern life are frequently overblown in my otherwise baseless opinion.

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#66

Why is DNA testing not a mandatory part of the process? I thought embryonic genetic testing for show-stopping diseases was one of the major selling points of IVF. Would that not immediately set off alarm bells for paternity/maternity mismatch?

PGS is offered as part of IVF protocols, but not required. There is some risk to damaging the embryo as there is a biopsy.

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#67
post #19
post #12

In its long term effect this fraud is similar to serial rape. But that's also true of serial seduction under false pretenses. Should the punishment for these things also be similar? I don't know. From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, since reproducing copiously is worth dying for. The only effective punishment would involve also killing or sterilizing the resulting children ... which is…

> From a Darwinian perspective even the death penalty is insufficient, Darwinism has no bearing on legal matters. In fact the entirety of laws are opposed to darwinism Plus we re probably the last generations that care for darwinism? It won't take long before it becomes normal to engineer your children.

>In fact the entirety of laws are opposed to darwinism

I don't see how this is true. Can you explain this position?

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, once you reach maturity, why should you have any right to the estate of your deceased relatives?

Because they decided to put you here while you had no choice? What does maturity have to do with anything? Many people of whatever age have issues taking care of themselves. Not after being deceased but where would Trump be without getting bailouts from his fathers estate? I guess it depends what you are used to anyway. For me it seems weird as I am born in a country where it is illegal to cut your spouse and kids, f…

If you loath life so much, there is a simple solution.

Or you could just quit your belly-aching and find a way to appreciate being given the opportunity to live at all instead of demanding fiscal compensation!

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#69
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://veryshortscifi.blogspot.com/2015/08/not-even-their-ow... Ghengis Khan was the world's greatest Dad, in sheer numbers. Well, he was, 'til this creep started getting off on actual reproductive success. Sicko. Got his jollies breaking into sperm banks. They caught him of course, but not before he had fathered over 700 children. That we could identify. Not all of his sons felt the need. Some were really nice kids.…

The Genghis Khan thing doesn't really say much - there's a statistical near-certainty that liteally everyone today is descended from every single human that 7000 years ago (whose line didn't die out obviously).

That’s assuming that the human population is well-mixed; it should be obvious that e.g. aboriginal Australians and native Americans will not have a common ancestor that close by

For example suppose you have two containers filled with elastically colliding particles. Over an arbitrarily long time you can say that each particle has surely collided with every other particle, however if each container is closed then clearly particles from one container will not have collided with those from the other container over any amount of time

Re: Fertility Fraud: Artificial insemination doctors who used their own sperm

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Darwinism has no bearing on legal matters. While some laws are created to protect the weakest; a lot of inheritance, marriage and family laws follow their rationale directly from Darwinism.

Marriage and family laws predate Darwin and have nothing to do with "Darwinism". They are products of, in anything, human social psychology.

With Darwinism he obviously doesn't mean the field of study, but rather the subject of the field of study, which was already happening way before Darwin's discovery of it, shaping among other things human social psychology...
Post reply on HN