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To: Physicist
You said

IVF is an end run around the disfunctioning of the body

That is, you used the term "disfunctioning of the body." For "disfunctioning" to have meaning, there must be a (presumably proper) "functioning."

Specifically, you have said in essence that IVF is a way around the bodily "disfunction" manifest as infertility.

Is it any surprise that there will be significant variation among individuals with respect to complex traits such as fertility? How, then, is infertility "disfunctional"?

120 posted on 11/29/2001 8:59:23 PM PST by aposiopetic
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To: aposiopetic
All lifeforms, by virtue of the fact that they live at all, have been selected for the property of survival. (This is so self-evident that it is sometimes called a tautology: evolution is the survival of the survivors.) So insofar as any lifeform can have a function, that function is to survive and pass along its genes.

Some species (for example, bees) have evolved such that some members of the species pass along their genes, not by breeding, but by assisting the breeding of a close relative. But human beings are not bees; we have evolved to pass along our genes by breeding directly. As such, it is a logical impossibility to inherit infertility. Even if an infertile human "gets lucky" and reproduces once, it is a trait that is doomed to be rapidly weeded out.

We therefore must conclude that all human infertility is acquired (through mutation, injury or environmental interference) and not inherited. Because such an acquired trait interferes with the sole (epistemological) function of the human organism, it must necessarily be called a disfunction by any standard.

121 posted on 11/30/2001 5:45:09 AM PST by Physicist
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