Reproduction

October 29, 2004 · Filed Under In the News 

I’m currently taking a course, “Measures and Models of Demography,” and today we were discussing calculating fertility and birth rates and how these calculations have had to change quite a bit for developed countries recently because of technology and cultural changes. Combining this with my reading of books on genetics like Genome, The Red Queen, and Adam’s Curse (all worth a read), I’ve started thinking about reproduction and new reproductive technologies.

We now have the ability to allow infertile people to reproduce. On the one hand, this seems counterproductive to the survival of the species, because the children produced will likely be infertile or have fertility problems. But then again, they will have access to the same or better technologies, so should these people really be considered infertile anymore?

Then there is adoption. Adopted children generally replace biological children that would have been produced by the adoptive person. So, from a genetic perspective, these people are sacrificing their resources to aid the spread of other individuals’ genes at the expense of spreading their own. I suppose this is good for the species as a whole, but doesn’t seem good for the adopting individual. Additionally, it would be smart for the individual giving the baby up for adoption, because they are spreading their genes without having to give up any resources for child-rearing, allowing them to produce more children than they could raise on their own.

I know that reproduction and adoption are not just thought of from a genetic level; that we need to provide families for all children and that raising any child (whether genetically your own or not) is satisfying. These are just thoughts I’ve been having.

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