World's First Baby Born With New '3 Parent' Technique (newscientist.com) 203
A five-month-old baby boy has been revealed as the first kid in the world with three biological parents, reports New Scientist. The baby boy was apparently conceived by a technique that has been legally approved in the UK, and lets parents with genetic disorders have healthy babies. Though, the method used in this particular cases was slightly different from one legalized in the UK. From the report: Zhang (a doctor) took a different approach, called spindle nuclear transfer. He removed the nucleus from one of the mother's eggs and inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting egg -- with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor -- was then fertilised with the father's sperm. Zhang's team used this approach to create five embryos, only one of which developed normally. This embryo was implanted in the mother and the child was born nine months later. "It's exciting news," says Bert Smeets at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The team will describe the findings at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's Scientific Congress in Salt Lake City in October.
Zhang (a doctor) (Score:2)
Call me strange but... (Score:5, Insightful)
>> "It's exciting news," says Bert Smeets
I REALLY don't get how making more humans (even wierd hybrids) is meant to be somehow self-evidently always a good thing.
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Particularly when it leads to definitional collapse leaving people with (or making them realize they always had) the question of what specifically justifies for them and their particular DNA pattern the specially-treated category of "human".
I suggest the differentiator of a "soul".
Your mileage, and your logically-unavoidable results, may vary.
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> I suggest the differentiator of a "soul".
Which is what exactly? I mean there is no proof that it even exists, let alone a good definition of exactly what it is.
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>> NDE studies quantifying direct eye-witness (i.e. themselves) experience of the soul,
Oh studies "quantifying" direct eye witness accounts? It totally MUST be legit then!
For someone with apparently not the first clue of scientific rigour, you have a very ill-suited username.
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Exactly how is any evidence accepted by science NOT covered by the description of "studies quantifying direct eye witness accounts"?
Data recorded of a chemical reaction in a lab is a direct eye witness account.
Conclusions from that data are studies quantifying direct eye witness accounts.
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Metaphysics and Philosophy are not science.
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To be exact, Science is a subset of Philosophy and Metaphysics.
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That's how science got started. Currently, it's its own thing, and philosophy has been largely redefined. There is a philosophy of science, but the practice of science is not normally considered the practice of philosophy, and the scientific method is largely absent from most modern philosophy.
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Claims that it is it's own thing, disregards the concept of what a Philosophy *is*.
The scientific method is a philosophical argument in and of itself. All axioms are. Thus, because the scientific method is a philosophical argument, science is a philosophy.
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In which case, me beating the crap out of you would be practicing philosophy. I have an ethical framework, which is inherently philosophical, and beating the crap out of you would involve ethical thinking. (It's strongly against my ethical framework, which is one reason I wouldn't do it.) Reading a book about something is nothing but applied epistemology. Talking about nothing important to someone would be practicing philosophy (consider the problem of joint perception of the world). You're stretching
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> Metaphysics and philosophy determine what science is
Bullshit.
Science: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.
Re:Call me strange but... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, as a matter of historical fact, came from philosophy.
Odd that your implicit assertion would be that it came suddenly from nowhere.
But if we're going to play dictionary games, here's Merriam-Webster:
noun sci-ence
Popularity: Top 1% of lookups
Simple Definition of science
: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation
: a particular area of scientific study (such as biology, physics, or chemistry) : a particular branch of science
: a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.
Does this scope specifically and only to the specific form-hypothesis-test-repeat steps (choose your alternate permutation of steps of which you claim there in only one standard) referred to as scientific method? No.
But then, no need for that. Such scoping is irrational and would immediately destroy science, if strong but untestable inference from established tested knowns is excluded.
Or, you can throw away, for one, most of Quantum Physics, particularly the core Interpretations, i.e. Copenhagen, Everett, etc., etc.
This physics is not science? Do you want more examples?
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And is thus a Philosophy.
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> And that, as a matter of historical fact, came from philosophy.
Yes it has its roots there but Philosophy doesn't determine whats science or not.
> This physics is not science?
You need to stop muddling the process and the result. As long as the process you're following can lead to a formally provable result then its fair to say its science. Until it has produced a formally provable result then all you've got are just a bunch of hypotheses. Studies such as philosophy, metpshysics, psychology etc dont
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Ah, no, you are muddling the issues here.
First of all, there is no hypothesis is science that has a "provable result". There is current correspondence between empirical information and a given scientific model, which is -permanently- provisional and open to new data.
Luminiferous Ether was, per all testing of the model at the time, "proven". The Steady State model of the universe was, by per all testing of the model of the time, "proven".
And both were false.
As for what a hypothesis "can lead to", if presen
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> You don't really understand the words you are using here trying to address what philosophy actually is, since "metaphysics" is a core branch of of philosophy
I absolutely do, and your quite correct point is exactly why metaphysics is NOT a science.
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Even that you get wrong.
Science is what philosophy says it is, and the correct branch it's under is epistemology.
Repeat your circular, coming-from-nowhere, demonstrated-wrong scoping and definition, though.
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> Science is what philosophy says it is,
Again, bullshit.
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The ultimate metaphor for a Slashdot discussion of many debatable science findings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Experimental psychology is a legitimate science. There's been a lot of non-scientific psychology, but there's been good experiments and statistical analysis of results for a long time now.
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I'd like to know how you can make that claim since most of Psychology is based on comparing a control group with an experimental group, and if there is 5% or more difference then your hypothesis assumed to be correct.
Firstly 5% is just flat out arbitrary.
Secondly, in all the Psychology experiments I've ever seen anyway, there are nearly always other equally credible reasons/explanations for the cause of the observed difference, yet these are always conveniently ignored.
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I don't think the Luminiferous Aether or the Steady State theory were considered proven. Both had puzzling aspects, and the Luminiferous Aether was the best explanation they had. I'm not even sure what is meant by "scientifically proven".
I do know something about the philosophy of science. Science is a process of falsification. Something isn't science if it isn't falsifiable. If it's not falsifiable, science really has nothing to say about it. QM is science. The many-worlds interpretation isn't.
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Nope. Philosophy explicitly can't be proved by scientific method. That's exactly why its philosophy and not science.
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> You do, on some level, have to accept on faith that the devil isn't keeping your brain in a vat, tricking you into finding all this science stuff.
No I don't because faith isn't science. I accept that science hasn't proven all things, but I certainly don't need to fill that vacuum with faith.
Re:Call me strange but... (Score:4, Informative)
No, there are no such studies. There are studies confirming that a drop in oxygen levels to the brain, often concurrent with someone about to die, will lead to some pretty wild hallucinations, but what you wrote is just pure bullshit. There is nothing to indicate in any research that the mind is anything more than the sum of actions of several different parts of the brain.
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And keep lying. [newscientist.com]
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"Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE"
So, we have 4 PhD's and MD's, peer-reviewed, and published in likely the most authoritative medical journal in the world, showing "hallucinations" that just happen to correspond specifically to the predictions of the theological model, along with perceptions of events expected to be unperceivable by the unconscious person, from a fully-experienced sense of complete personhood from a vantage point outside of
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Putting that quote into context, what it means is that they could not predict who would have an NDE based on medical factors. It's the first sentence of the "Discussion" section, and the rest of the paragraph makes it clear what is meant. It does not mean that NDEs are inexplicable by medical factors, although it does cite some puzzling events (such as apparent knowledge of what was around the patient when the patient had a flat
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Perhaps you are mixing up soul with spirit.
Something like a Spirit, Chi/Ki etc. we all have. But a soul ... that we only will know when we die, or perhaps not even then as when we might be reincarnated our spirit has completely forgotten his past ...
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Can you define what "consciousness" is?
Not with any more precision than I can "soul", but neither of us doubts it exists.
Notably, that it doesn't exist is one of the required "stances" , which end up being rather overtly indefensible, as an alternative way to rationalize the dilemma posed by the Mind-Body Problem.
If you want to delve into the question deeper here, googling "Mind-Body Problem" or "Cartesian Dualism" will provide you with all the background information on historical vetting of this issue you
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The Mind-Body problem is very likely an illusion. There's no problem with the idea that the mind is a function of the body, particularly since we've gotten to know something of the incredible complexity of the brain, and seen what software on computer hardware can do. The soul would then be no different form the mind, and it would end at physical death.
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Only two groups of people think about their mitochondria DNA.
1) scientists studying mitochondria
2) people with malfunctioning mitochondria
There is no failure of definition here, the DNA that defines human form and function is entirely the merge of a half set from the father and a half set from the mother. Just as through a natural conception. In theory, it should be possible to extract mitochondria from the father and implant those into an egg cell to maintain even more familial connection, but such a pro
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AC... suitably... arbitrary.
Seems it comes down to who gets to choose in the end.
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I have nothing to defend.
The line of the thread is clear, I thought. What categorization of yourself is available based on material inference from your DNA, such as, say, how anyone should consider you required to be treated in any way other than any other categorization of a pattern of DNA?
Just say what you are, and justify that with reference to your DNA, if that's what you acknowledge you have available to reference, as the material origin of what you are. Particularly, by way of inquiry, which nucleot
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Okay, let's be clear. -You- replied to -my- broad high-level statement of logical implications of manipulating genetic processes in a general sense, for which my post was expanding on an even more broadly-stated parent post.
I do not know why you didn't post your as a reply to the originating article summary--that makes a lot more sense than to my particular post, for which it is an irrelevant focusing on a particular technique, and skipping my comment entirely, apparently with an air of "I know a lot about
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So, editing the irrelevancies, your point to all this is to say that this particular medical/scientific process does not lead, in your mind, to the definitional questions of "what does 'human' mean exactly" posed by genetic manipulation in general (as also widely noted and discussed by others), that my actual post was addressing.
Noted.
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I've got soul. And I'm super-bad.
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Bring lots of friends to the Disco Inferno, then.
Preferably ones I'd be interested in. You can stay behind.
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To know me is to love me.
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I'm in the same boat. It's hard to be humble, but I'm doing the best that I can.
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I REALLY don't get how you found a dictionary that defines exciting as good.
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The positive note was self-evident in the article.
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Yep, because you got here and get to experience the world so who cares about anyone else, right?
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Of course, I had two children with my wife, when we were both over 35 without really trying, so the genetic imperative wasn't really an issue for me. I'd like to think I would be just as fulfilled with adopted kids, or no kids,
Re:Call me strange but... (Score:5, Informative)
Well TBH the summary omits the most major point of the thing. Which is the REASON WHY!
Here, dear readers, is the reason why they did it:
- The mom had been pregnant with about five other kids before. They all died early, before three years of age.
- She has a condition that all her past babies are guaranteed to be born with, and remember they will all die early.
- So that gene was removed from her eggs and replaced with a stable gene from another.
- She gives birth to a disease free child.
That's why it's "good news" to her and the doctors. Any exaggerative thoughts about super-babies, etc is just worrysome fodder.
TL;DR? read the article.
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Remind me again why society thinks everyone who wants a child MUST get one? ...or why they couldn't have adopted?
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Because the making is done in countries where the population is shrinking or can barely be hold constant by immigration.
OTOH the planet easily can hold 3 - 5 times the population. Get out from under your rock, we are not n the 1970s anymore ...
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> Get out from under your rock, we are not n the 1970s anymore ...
Wow what a dick you are.
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Actually the Dick is you or the parent of me, your choice.
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Are you like 12 years old or something?
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In some developed countries, in any given year, there may be no children awaiting adoption at all.
I live in one of those countries. Here, it's quite okay to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or it's quite okay to be a single parent, so babies are rarely (if ever) abandoned or put up for adoption. It's pretty rare for both parents to die leaving orphans, too, and in those very rare cases, the child's grandparents are usually able to adopt the child immediately.
This leaves thousands of childless couples just a
It takes a village (Score:3)
It takes a village...
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In Debbie's case, all of Dallas.
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... and she still didn't get pregnant.
This Creature Is Going To Hunt You Down (Score:2)
And then eat your brains. You should find a good place to hide Mr. Doctorman.
Congratulations (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations, Ms Singh, your newborn child has been engineered to be superior in every way. And yes, 'Khan' is an excellent name.
Hurray (Score:2)
One thing that needs excised from DNA is the lizard-brained drive to spread our bloodline above all else, damned be the cost or consequence.
Knife - Wound - Turn (Score:2)
The resulting egg -- with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor
Popular donor, Luke Skywalker will be.
Wow (Score:2)
That's a heck of a way to have a three-way. Doesn't sound like it's as much fun though...
Sequel (Score:2)
Heather Really Has Two Mommies!
Not meaningfully different from in-vitro (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, a lot of work went in, but ultimately, all of the *significant* genetic material came from two parents. Passing on your mitochondrial DNA doesn't do anything to really shape your offspring (unless your mitochondrial DNA is just *really* messed up). Now if the donor egg somehow had defective Mitocondrial DNA, ok, this is at least somewhat useful.
But pretending this offspring has three equally biological parents is disingenuous.
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But pretending this offspring has three equally biological parents is disingenuous.
They're not equal in parentage, but they're definitely equal in being biological donors whose DNA pass on to future generations.
I don't think anything equates them as being equal, but it's still an awful lot of genetic material to not be considered for biological parentage at all.
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they're definitely equal in being biological donors whose DNA pass on to future generations.
Passing on mitochondrial DNA doesn't really count.
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I count it. You don't. Without any useful argument, that's pretty much it. Mitochondrial DNA carries all sorts of information setting up how metabolism is carried out, which is as much a part of a person as how their kidneys are made.
Too much office work (Score:2)
Now all the usual forms and databases are going to have to be reworked. And they may not stop at 3 parents, so design it for many parents.
Next the baby will be able to be its own parent, creating recursion. You go to print out a family tree, and get a Stack Overflow error.
"First"? This was done in the 1990s. (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, this may be the world's first baby, but there are apparently 30-50 teenagers with three parents.
The girl with three biological parents [bbc.com]
The technique was pioneered in the late 1990s, but then the US FDA said "please cut it out", and as far as we know everyone did.
So, yes, the future looks bright for this new baby, given that several dozen other beneficiaries of this technique seem to be doing quite well in their teenage years...
Inconceivable! (Score:2)
Lots of government preprinted forms might need replacing. :-)
This will cost us a fortune.
As for the Subject, in this case, Inigo Montoya, it really is.
Great (Score:2)
I've been telling my wife for months (Score:2)
that we should bring another woman into the bedroom. It's in the service of science!
A five-month-old baby boy has been revealed as the first kid in the world with three biological parents
and how many thousands from the old method? (Score:2)
"More research is needed to determine the extent of the reaction." (tm) (c) all academia
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One in the slit, one in the shit.
Re:Or they could have just adopted (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly fair to call the baby malicious names even if you disapprove of this medical technique. If you must; bash the doctor and the parents, but the baby is innocent in this.
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He called it a monster because he's terrified of it. He's afraid of a baby.
Re:Or they could have just adopted (Score:4, Informative)
Hardly fair to call the baby malicious names even if you disapprove of this medical technique.
The same thing happened back in 1978, when Louise Brown [wikipedia.org] was born. Today everyone accepts IVF as routine. This time will be the same: The first baby is on the front page, the 2nd baby is mentioned on page 6, and the 3rd baby is ignored.
Re:What selfish bastards (Score:5, Insightful)
There is more demand for adopting babies than babies available. It can be a challenge.
Now older kids... they get the short end of the stick, very few people want to adopt an older child; part of that is that they often come with emotional and mental challenges due to being orphans and passed around without a real home for much of their childhood... and not getting adopted adds to that.
If someone wants a baby, it may be easier to get medical help than adopt. You could say they should adopt one of the older children available for adoption instead... and that would be nice but some parent's aren't willing to adopt a troubled older child rather than start with a clean slate who they can mould into their own child.
Re:What selfish bastards (Score:5, Interesting)
There is more demand for adopting babies than babies available.
Indeed. My wife and I looked into adoption, and we were told it would be a long arduous and expensive process, and in the end we would probably be rejected because of my age (50+). So we got a dog instead.
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There is more demand for adopting babies than babies available. It can be a challenge.
Now older kids... they get the short end of the stick, very few people want to adopt an older child; part of that is that they often come with emotional and mental challenges due to being orphans and passed around without a real home for much of their childhood... and not getting adopted adds to that.
If someone wants a baby, it may be easier to get medical help than adopt. You could say they should adopt one of the older children available for adoption instead... and that would be nice but some parent's aren't willing to adopt a troubled older child rather than start with a clean slate who they can mould into their own child.
That depends on where you are talking about. While there may be a shortage of babies in the West, there ain't such a shortage in Asia i.e. China, India, et al. So GP makes a valid point. In this story, the parents in question are Jordanian. There is no shortage of Syrian orphans in Jordan that they could have picked from. But then again, adoption is a practice that was ended by Mohammed in Islam, so that's probably out the window.
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That doesn't bother me near like what articles like this: "Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster" https://amp.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
World wide we have a shitload of extra people that would love to have a job. It's not necessary to go oh crap we aren't going to have enough people in 20 years because that is NOT what's happening. Just increase immigration to compensate and better outcomes for all.
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Just increase immigration to compensate and better outcomes for all.
RTFA. This procedure is illegal in the USA, so the parents went to Mexico. This baby IS an immigrant.
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Wow thats crazy!
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1. The article says that this is a Jordanian couple who sought treatment from U.S. doctors, and that the U.S. doctors chose to perform their work in Mexico.
2. The article doesn't suggest that anyone was an immigrant anywhere (def'n: "a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.). People appear to have temporarily traveled to do stuff, then returned to their respective homes. So, the baby
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So, the baby is an immigrant to where?
No, the baby is not an immigrant. I was making a joke. The GPP's suggestion that families desiring healthy children should instead just support a more permissive immigration policy is so patently absurd that I didn't think it deserved a serious answer.
30 year old woman to boyfriend: I want to get married and have a baby. ... or we could just make a campaign contribution to Angela Merkel.
Boyfriend: Sure, we could do that
Woman: Okay, that would be fine, the end result is the same per capita GDP, and that
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> Just increase immigration to compensate and better outcomes for all.
Yeah because look how well that worked out for Germany and France. NOT.
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Not sure what you're referring to exactly. Here in the US the example often provided is remember what happened to the native americans (aka indians)?
No it didn't work out well at all which is partly why every country AFAIK has their own immigration system to limit the number of additional people moving in from other countries.
but if you need an extra 30,000 300,000 people a year it's pretty easy to just let them in and you get to cherry pick who you let in for the skills you want backgrounds whatever.
I real
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> Not sure what you're referring to exactly.
The 3 million immigrants that Merkel let in and subsequent massive rise in rape and other crime in Germany, The islamic terrorist attacks (most usually by recent immigrants) in cities all over the EU, most notably Paris. The way that islamic immigrants are not integrating at all into their host countries and are instead forming their own Sharia-law ghettos in in cities like Tolouse (FR), Brimingham (UK), Amsterdam (NL), and have stated their objectives are to s
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The 3 million immigrants that Merkel let in and subsequent massive rise in rape and other crime in Germany,
Germany has 80 million inhabitants.
If Merkel "had let in" 3 Millions that would be roughly 5% of the original population, in other words for 100 Germans there suddenly would be 5 "strangers"
You must be able to suck on your middle finger and make a smart face and figure by your self that this idea is ABSURD.
Where ever you got that number from, I suggest to burn that newspaper.
The islamic terrorist att
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> Where ever you got that number from, I suggest to burn that newspaper.
Germany let in 884.9 thousand in 2014 and over 2 million immigrants in 2015 alone. Those are the EU's own figures. Go suck your own finger.
> First of all: there where like 4 during the last 5 years. So: not really a threat.
Tell that to the families of the 12 people who died during the Charlie Hebdo attack, or the 130 that died and the 368 (80â"99 critically) injured November 2015 attack. Fucking insensitive wanker.
> How do
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The EU let in 900,000 in 2014 and over 2 million in 2015, not Germany.
You are an idiot.
So that Germany had 2 million immigrants the EU would need to have something like 40 million to 80 million, even you must figure: that can not be right ...
FYI: I'm german ...
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> The EU let in 900,000 in 2014 and over 2 million in 2015, not Germany.
Wrong.
http://www.dw.com/en/two-milli... [dw.com]
> You are an idiot.
Are you gonna apologise since clearly you're the one who is wrong?
> FYI: I'm german ...
That just makes your ignorance worse, since its your country.
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I'm German and live partly in France.
What exactly do you mean?
Re:What selfish bastards (Score:4, Insightful)
Just increase immigration to compensate and better outcomes for all.
Maybe, or it could me a worse outcome for all. I won't talk about race, race has been more or less scientifically proven to be a not a real thing. While there may be some clustering toward the lower and upper bounds of the normal range for various characteristics in some populations its not big enough to be relevant.
Culture on the other hand is. Europe has had a huge problem with 'multiculturalism' you can't allow just any immigrants to show up and form ghettos. Its curcial to recognize and value ones one culture and probably ones national identity. I am all for legal immigration but the people who come here (speaking as an American) so do so because they want to be Americans, not ${former nationality}-Americans, no ${former continent}-Americans, or ${ethnic-population}-Americans but just plain simple Americans. I am all for freedom of religion and am okay with whatever they want to do inside their homes, or at their meeting place on ${Weekday} or if they don't want to ${food item} etc. In general though they need to join the rest of secular society, see the same movies, talk about the same sports, eat most of the same foods, date people no from their orign group, etc. Its simply wrong to place equal value on other cultures. Western civilization is superior its brought like to a dark world that other cultures frankly have not made lasting contributions to in terms of thought and ideas since before the fall of Rome.
'We' as individuals are not better than 'them' but 'we' as a culture certainly are. If 'they' want to immigrate grate as long as their desire is to be like us. If its to come here or to Western Europe just to live in Little-${whatver} but collect a bigger public assistance check than is available back home, no we should not want them and we should not let them come. Recently cultural appropriation has been branded a bad thing. Its not its great thing, imitation is the highest form of flattery! Cultural appropriation is in fact the correct and proper way to value other cultures. You recognize what is best about them and perhaps better than our traditional way and adopt it! That is the melting pot model, we take the best ideas from everywhere and made them our own! Everyone should be welcome who wants to add and integrate. Unfortunately this idea that we have to allow them to instead replace, in the name of respect has taken hold.
Why do you hate America and its values? (Score:3, Interesting)
RE: In general though they need to join the rest of secular society, see the same movies, talk about the same sports, eat most of the same foods, date people no from their orign group,
Why do you hate America and its values?
Should we deport all the Amish? Orthodox and Hasidim Jews? Moral majority-style Christians? Mormons? Devout Muslims?
I agree some cultures are better than others, but you have American culture quite wrong.
The things we should share in common are respect for the law, right to life, liberty
Re:What selfish bastards (Score:4)
I think you kind of missed the point, which is that this lets them pass on most of their genes without passing on their hereditary disorder....
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While people who adopt are doing the world a service, but that doesn't mean that having children of one's own is doing the world a disservice. If you're going to call anyone selfish and sickening, perhaps the adults who bring children into the world that they can't or won't care for should be first on your list.
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Agreed.
I do believe, however, that those with the resources and need to conceive a child through artificial means should also have the responsibility to adopt a child in need (for when they are ready to care for a second child), or at a minimum to make a generous donation to help children in need.
Re:Why are we doing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop being selfish (needing your "damaged" genes to propagate)
The damaged mitochondrial DNA was replaced completely - and will propagate the replaced DNA as well.
There are plenty of children that need to be adopted.
A baby is a child, but a child is not a baby.
Raise one of them, and accept they won't be propagating your genes but they will be propagating your values.
Depending on the age of the child, there's no guarantee you can change/undo what's already been done.
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So is "Darwin" just a scientific challenge or your God? Because your words betray you.
The children with no parents are not the fault of the parents who want to start a baby from scratch - keep the blame with the parents that abandoned them.