{"id":9112,"date":"2007-05-26T04:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-26T11:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9112"},"modified":"2007-05-26T04:42:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-26T11:42:00","slug":"lip-service-dan-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=9112","title":{"rendered":"Lip Service [Dan Collins]"},"content":{"rendered":"

First up, Ace has a post about a story treating the soaring demand in the UK for . . . elective genitoplasty, or as he puts it, ”designer vaginas<\/a>”:
\n<\/p>\n

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\nRising numbers of women are asking the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday.
\n
\nWriting in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of ”labial reductions<\/a>” carried out in NHS hospitals had doubled to 800 a year over five years.\n<\/p>\n

\n“More and more women are said to be troubled by the shape, size or proportions of their vulvas”, wrote Lih Mei Liao and Sarah Creighton from London’s UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health.\n<\/p>\n

\n…\n<\/p>\n

\nThe authors said women seeking surgery were being influenced by idealised images of genitalia shown in pornography and on private genitoplasty Web sites.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nSo, I imagine the same women who want their upper lips to look as pregnant as Angelina Jolie’s gourami face after having been whacked full-frontal with a 2×4, simultaneously want their nether ones svelted.  I suppose that this is a matter for the NIH, because it affects their psychological well-being.\n<\/p>\n

\n*GASP* Is that a Jean-Claude Cocteau original?  I’ve never done one before.  May I?
\n
\n<\/i>
\n
\nAt the same time, we have this slippery-slope report<\/a> on the intersection between high-tech in-utero visualization and insane self-regard:\n<\/p>\n

\n

In England, it now seems, a baby can be aborted for not being pretty enough. Maybe this was inevitable as genetic screening and techniques such as ultrasound advanced.
\n
\n The London Daily Telegraph Web site reports that the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has licensed a fertility clinic to screen embryos for a genetic defect that causes a severe squint.
\n
\n A squint? The aborting of babies with undesired characteristics is hardly new. In China, where people have a strong preference for boys, so many female babies have been aborted that a serious imbalance between the sexes exists. Babies with fatal conditions have been aborted. We now seem to have invented cosmetic abortion.
\n
\n The man to whom the license was granted, professor Gedis Grudzinskas, was asked whether he would screen babies for hair color. He replied that hair color “can be a cause of bullying, which can lead to suicide. With the agreement of the HFEA, I would do it.”
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\n As medical genetics advances, it will become possible to predict more and more characteristics of an unborn child—hair color, height, likelihood of obesity, perhaps intelligence. Presumably, it will then be possible to try again and again until you get your ideal baby. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nWill anyone want the stem cells from an aborted, sub-prime baby?\n<\/p>\n

\nMeanwhile, as the husband of a red-haired woman, I’d also like to point out this article<\/a>, which pretty much explains “the Celtic Condition”: Color Vision Drove Primates to Develop Red Skin and Hair\n<\/p>\n

\nUPDATE: Mona shows up at Unqualified Offerings<\/a> to quite agree<\/i> with Jeff’s post from yesterday<\/a> (on CIA-media anti-administration complicity, also responded to by TBogg), in what can be fairly characterized, I think, as a textbook example of tendentious argumentation.  My opponent believes that category X ought to be installed in position Y.  I find someone who self-describes as category X whose views disagree with those of my opponent, and go with it.  Hey, Andrew Sullivan thinks he’s a true conservative.  Fred Phelps believes he’s not an asshole.  Mona thinks she’s intelligent.  It would be a simpler, but less entertaining world if it were not so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First up, Ace has a post about a story treating the soaring demand in the UK for . . . elective genitoplasty, or as he puts it, ”designer vaginas”: Rising numbers of women are asking the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of ”labial reductions” carried out in NHS hospitals had doubled to 800<\/p>\n

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