MEDICINE GOING ASTRAY

Michael Jackson promoted bad plastic surgery.



We are in an era as a species that encourages selfishness over social consciousness on a large scale. This can be seen in many areas of media debate and commentary. The predominance of corporate capitalism and its accompanying greed promotion enhances this wave of "me first" or "yes, but I want..." thinking. This thinking may well be the undoing of our species.

 

BBC World Service featured a piece this morning about a lesbian who describes herself as celibate. She mentioned having a female partner at one point, so I do not understand how she envisions her celibacy, but no matter. This woman is selling her eggs at 750 pounds a pop to a fertility company. She has sold 14 so far. He eggs have produced three children from other mothers.

 

I admired her frankness about her acknowledged incapacity for having or rearing children. This shows some personal insight and effort to develop as a human being in society. Society does not need more children, born of mothers who are not capable. However, I question her sense of responsibility to the planet and the rest of the human species.

 

The interviewer and the young donor on BBC repeatedly referred to a woman's "need to have children". This is most often trotted out by pro-life advocates and anti-feminists who maintain that this "need" to procreate is unmanageable, irresistible and harmful if not actualized. There is little or no hard science to support any of these old assumptions. In fact, childless women have been shown to enjoy prolonged lives, better economic profiles and decreased risks of some diseases associated with pregnancies, especially multiple pregnancies.

 

Much of the medical establishment operates on antiquated social assumptions. Medical culture associated with child-bearing is a particularly backward. The human species is vastly overpopulating the planet. There is absolutely no need for the medical establishment to be marketing artificial pregnancy, other than profit. It can be argued that it is actually bad for the natural biological evolution of our species. As long as fertility rates are still too high in underdeveloped countries, the medical establishment could ethically be promoting adoption over fertility treatments in developed countries. This could be a major step to controlling the current waves of illegal migration. However, the medical establishment is doing the reverse.

 

I no longer feel the medical establishment is living up to its touted guiding principle, "Do no harm." It is doing harm to the planet by encouraging overpopulation. It is doing harm to elders by promoting plastic surgery over education/support around aging. It is doing harm to some gay/lesbian people by promoting surgical intervention when homophobia is confused with "gender dysphoria", a medically devised notion to support that surgical intervention as a superficial solution to a more complex problem. The medical establishment has become enslaved by big pharmacology and bioengineering corporations.