You stated, "If a child with natural musical gifts is adopted by a family that sees no value in spending money on violin lessons for a four-year-old, we could lose the next Joshua Bell. Likewise, if a family of violin virtuosos adopts a child from a non-musical family, forcing a musical education on a child without the natural gifts to benefit from it may prove both frustrating for the parents and psychologically damaging to the child, whose true gifts may reside elsewhere, undiscovered. Hogwash! The same could be said about bio parents. About all bio parents can hope for is the kid inherits some semblance of Aunt Gertie's petite button nose rather than grandpappy's honker.
In case you haven't suspected, we have an adopted child. We're thankful the great medical profession couldn't find the problem with the natural way, because we probably would have created who knows what and we wouldn't have found our child. Yes, OUR child. Call it a cosmic blip or her guardian angel was a doofus, but this child couldn't be a better product of our family tree. You tell me why she's the spitting image of my granny and has her likes and mannerisms to the point of humming the same little made up ditties never mind granny died before this child was born. Even the family naysayers are convinced there's been a reincarnation. I've seen other adoptive kids who have the same physical characteristics as their adoptive parents and bio kids who looked more like the mailman.
BTW, back to your musical genius scenario. Just throwing out suppositions, but I imagine adoptive parents are more willing to and encourage their children to explore their true gifts and potentials more than bio parents who have preconceived notions of which instrument little Johnny must play.
To add my .02 to the cloning issue: cloned organs - ok, cloned humans - ok since I agree with you that they wouldn't be any more alike than twins and even less so because the clone would be growing up in a new era.
Which you don't quote. I will. I wrote:
Currently a couple who have barriers to normal reproduction for a variety of reasons must either remain childless or graft a child from some other family into their own family and hope the transplant will work. The euphemism for this act of high charity and blind faith is "adoption."Preserving a natural family line is not merely superstitious worship of blood. Adoption is a wonderful thing for some parents and some children, but adoption does not preserve a family’s natural traits.
So is my "adoption bs" my calling adoption an act of "high charity and blind faith"? Or was it when I said that "adoption is a wonderful thing for some parents and some children"?
I love it when people kneejerk react to things that weren't actually part of what I wrote.
What I did suggest is that adoption is not risk-free, that there are such things as natural traits, and that in the absence of institutional memory within a family to know what those natural traits are, they might remain undiscovered and undeveloped.
Of course no truth today can be stated if it does not go along with the politically correct, and completely unscientific assertion, that all human beings are born tabula rasa, and that any child -- if just given enough love, prenatal Mozart, and educational mobiles hung above the crib -- has an equal chance as any other to have Stephen Hawking's mind or Michael Jordan's jump shot.