Posted by xanadu on October 13th, 2009
tags: eggs, ethics, fertility, mother, nine, noctomom, octomom, pregnancy
2 Comments »
It’s Dr. Amber here with another question of medical ethics –
So the other day I was discussing prehistoric fertility art – as I do sometimes. My main squeeze – yes Dr. Amber has a squeeze who I’ll refer to here as MS (for main squeeze and not multiple scleroses in this case) – is something of a rock hound and clovis point collector. Ask him about the Anasazi and just pull up a papasan because… my dear reader you will be in for a treat and a half.
Anyhow – MS and I happened to speak over brunch about the Venus of Willendorf? – you ever seen this lady? now that is a real woman – she has more curves than a San Francisco avenue. No face though – men and their fantasy faceless ladies – they all have something – (not telling about MS’s proclivities – but early morning discussion of the Venus of Willendorf should give you some idea).
So imagine how I felt when the following day we admitted a woman pregnant with Nine and ready to pop – Noctomom. That’s what we dubbed her for the press. Now that’s a modern goddess of fertility – and she didn’t even need a man to pull this off – just some nicely donated sperm. And soon ladies, we won’t even need that – we’ll be able to synthesize that stuff using stem cells. Don’t worry MS we’ll still need you to kill the odd spider.
So because of a first class fertility clinic in Fresno there will soon be a full litter of little lads and lasses for the television to fawn over at our little hospice! What’s wrong with that? The more little ones means the more love, right? And love makes the world go round and that’s how you teach the world to sing… right?
However, it turns out Nocto can’t even take care of the kiddlets she already has – (Two others – and adding this nine puts her at an even 11 oh!).
I put it to the forum – what are the ethics here? Can we ban someone from using their eggs and scrambling them with a little love batter for the purpose of having a “man vs food” sized omelet of kids? Or does she have an unalienable right to squeeze out as many little dolls as she wants?
Posted by mimi on September 2nd, 2009
tags: beauty, doctor, ethics, grotesque, health care, patient, plastic, skin deep, surgery
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I honestly thought we, as a community, had sorted all this out after the “nipple explosion” of ’02. The scornful outrage, the indignant accusations, the fascist repressive chauvinism…
I agree, we should not be slaves to any sort of artificial superficial subjugation.
I share your sentiments of balking at the unnatural. But isn’t self-improvement an inherent part of our nature? Haven’t we been struggling, withstanding, evolving through history to better ourselves, our situation?
We have shaped the world to our ideas: tamed rivers with bridges, watered deserts with irrigation, leapt past our gravitational limits and embraced the sky with flight, and even comforted our lonely moon with companionship. We shape the world in our images.
Only the short-sighted would classify beauty as skin deep. Beauty is much more than that. It IS a state of mind. An expression of our ideals, which is why in so often we hearken back to the Greeks. The wave of partially or completely decapitated mannequins with nipples that popped up everywhere in ’02 was an absolute homage to the paragons of the ancient Athenians.
And this procedure, this transplant is its own homage to the sublime. This lovely woman doesn’t want to be a super-model or a grotesque monster. She wants to be… normal. She wants to shape her life. And if the simple act of removing her damaged head and replacing it with one from a lovely cadaver (see Lego head switch maneuver), can help her do this, shouldn’t we support that?
Dr. Mimi Ismayne, Plastic Surgeon
Posted by xanadu on September 1st, 2009
tags: accident, ethics, model, radical, surgery, transplant
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Dr. Amber here with another medical conundrum.
You may have heard about the truck full of hogs that turned over on Highway I-9 on Wednesday between Charlottesville and the exit for the Canterbury Mall. Well, it was a major collision. Ham was everywhere – the smell traveled for miles and those with their mouths watering turned in horror, when what appeared to be possibly the odor of a church picnic, was in fact a devil’s playground.
Three were left dead and several were injured including a Ms. Wheeze of Cobble Court Road – who was on her way to a modeling job at Sears. As Ms. Wheeze is a Mannequin, they rushed her here to Indemnity General to see what we could do to help.
The case was dire – she was rushed to the ER, her sternum cracked and her face scraped almost hockey-puck flat. We stabilized her and when she finally came to – we had to tell her the bad news. She would never model again.
That was when she asked about the controversial Face transplant surgery. True it had been done on a woman in
Cleveland.But it was a huge risk. Right now the patient is stable and we can keep her alive, but if she elects this risky surgery… She may die.
The face would have to come from a cadaver and we do have some transplant candidates available, but what about the family of the person whose face would be donated (seen below)? What are their rights? What would be the protocol if someone was walking around with the face of your sister – or your mother… would you be comfortable with that – would you expect a relationship with that person?
Ms. Wheeze is still in the hospital and insists that the radical full face surgery be tried.
I am still not one hundred percent comfortable with it – so I open it up to the forum….
