A Herald-Sun columnist, Jill Singer, wrote an opinion piece on the negative aspects of IVF (“The IVF revolution is money badly spent”, 26/3. And has it aroused the ire of the “IVF lobby” mentioned in the article, if the comments are anything to go by! Clearly people with more emotion than sense; it seems that the reproductive urge brings out the worst irrationality in many. She notes some points that I did in my last (23/3) entry. I feel it is outrageous that taxpayers have to fund what is not a life-threatening, painful or disfiguring condition. She should not feel she should apologize for her views in the article, though!
No other country is as generous as Australia when it comes to pouring taxpayer dollars into the lucrative baby-making industry. We are subsidising the creation through technological intervention of more than 11,000 babies every year.
Medicare rebates cover the bulk of scheduled fees and the Medicare safety net kicks in to cover 80 per cent of out-of-pocket costs once a patient has spent just $1111.60 in any year (a mere $550 if you’re getting family tax benefits). What’s more, patients can elect to have an unlimited number of fruitless IVF cycles subsidised, regardless of their relatively advanced age or how many children they might already have.
Not surprisingly, the axe is hanging over the funding scheme for IVF as the Federal Government examines ways of reining in the annual $300 million safety net. Equally unsurprising is that IVF lobbyists are working overtime to ensure the status quo remains.
She notes that IVF children have a higher incidence of various defects:
All IVF carries risks for children, however. A systematic review of IVF studies conducted in 2005 revealed a 30-40 per cent increase in birth defects when comparing IVF and ICSI babies with naturally conceived children. The fact is that we are paying to create a faulty gene pool, turning Darwin’s theory about survival of the fittest on its head. What other species would be so foolish as to encourage this form of un-natural selection?
One commenter castigates her for advocating “eugenics”, but I can’t see anything wrong with that. It’s the same sort of irrational nonsense that the prospect of “designer” (genetically-engineered) babies arouses (“Fears over ‘designer’ babies leave children suffering”, New Scientist, 21/3). If I were to have a child (which I am not), I would make full use of genetic engineering if it were available (I would like to change a few things about myself).
“Population will pass 30 million by 2056”, The Age, 26/3. Disheartening predictions of Australia’s seemingly inexorable population growth, but no suggestion is made in the article that it should be reduced, only planned for. Another 3 million people in Victoria will make the state unliveable – it is bad enough now.
Even the most conservative estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest Social Trends report has the population skimming 30.9 million by 2056. That figure factors in a decline in the overall fertility rate from the present 1.8 babies per woman to 1.6, and a drop in overseas migration. Should more women suddenly start having more children and the number of migrants coming to Australia balloons to 220,000 a year, that figure could reach as high as 42.5 million by 2056.
A letter response from a member of the Public Population Forum:
We do have choice
Demographer Peter McDonald (“Population will pass 30 million by 2056”, 26/3) appears not to acknowledge that Australia does have a choice and can plan for what its future population will be. It does not have to be big. Mr McDonald talks up infrastructure as a way to prepare for a population 50 per cent higher than it is now in less than 50 years. No mention is made of any natural constraints to Australia comfortably supporting a significantly larger population. The question of the most critical resource – water – immediately springs to mind.
– Jill Quirk, East Malvern
“God ‘will not give happy ending’ ”, BBC News, 26/3. While I’m not religious, it’s noteworthy that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, feels compelled to warn of dire times ahead for the human race if it does not desist from harming the environment, and that no deity will intervene to save us from ourselves (save an Artificial Intelligence or aliens).
Speaking on Wednesday he said just as God gave humans free will to do “immeasurable damage” to themselves as individuals it seemed “clear” they had the same “terrible freedom” as a human race.
[…]
Without a change of heart, Dr Williams warned, the world faced a number of “doomsday scenarios” including the “ultimate tragedy” of humanity gradually “choked, drowned, or starved by its own stupidity.”
