From: Natasha V. More (fka Nancie Clark) (natasha@extropic-art.com)
Date: Wed Jan 07 1998 - 13:24:31 MST
At 11:27 AM 1/6/98 -0800, Brian D Williams wrote:
>Genetically and neotenically correct. I did not phrase this well I
>mean't to suggest that women having children at progressively later
>times in life would become the norm. Some would be able to have
>their own (longer lived gene) babies, others could take advantage
>of previously frozen eggs (insurance). Either way people might
>start having children when they are better prepared, emotionally as
>well as financially. (snip)
Brian, you offer very sensible alternatives that are becoming the norm even
today. Clearly, the longer we live, the longer we will want to extend
reproductive options. This need not negate chronically young people to
continue to have children. (Emotional intelligence is relative and some
people are well-equipped to raise children responsibly at a young age.)
>>Unless some gerontology weirdly starts freezing the eggs of
>>very-late fertile women and has them (1) fertilized with old men's
>>screened sperm and (2) preferentially implanted into young women.
>>A mass market version of Heinlein's Howard Families.
Very-late fertility in women is not a handicap. Some young fertile women
carry unhealthy genes and are incapable of taking a pregnancy to term.
Statistics obviously show that very-late fertile women are more inclined to
not develop a follicle that can release an egg, fertile or not. What is
the handicap is not having adequate facilities and technologies to freeze ova.
>It might be odd but it would still work, it's not what I meant
>though.
>
>(2) Why younger women?
>Damien Broderick responds:
>If you want ova from the long-lived to supplant those from the young, you'd
>need to persuade lots of the young to forego using their own youthful ova
>and host spare gametes from the Darwinnowed old. Plus the advantage, of
>course, that youthful wombs are better able to carry healthy babies to term."
Perhaps when Richard Seed develops ways to take an unfertilized egg and
remove the genetic information from the nucleus and replace it into another
nucleus ...
Today and yesterday, an advantage is a healthy womb or as Damien says, a
"youthful" womb. Tomorrow there will be replacement wombs such as synthetic
wombs that are far more hospitable than today's biological womb. When this
happens, (and it is just around the corner), the entire act of procreation
from fertilization to delivery will occur outside the transhuman body.
Natasha Vita More [fka Nancie Clark] - natasha@extropic-art.com
Transhumanist Art Centre - Extropic Art Universe
http://www.extropic-art.com
PRESS RELEASE: Extropic Art Manifesto orbits Saturn in 2004!
"The best defense is an aesthetic offense."
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