Odd baby born Nepal

[Prettysenshi]

Anyone saw any of those movies with a kid with no lowed half of the body who becames a skateboarder or something?
That a movie like this was made - you know, that could be considered an act of trying to avert people to such problems.
But several sequels were made... and there's no other way I could interpret existance of sequels as that film became somewhat popular because people were watching it as a geek show.

I saw this one show where a woman with no lower body gave birth to a kid. No joke. I feel sorry for that baby if it isn't a photoshopped picture. Hopefully, he'll live a somewhat happy life.

His mother must be a strong woman. I'd never ever have the strength and patience to raise a kid like that. Honestly.

[Mr.Bob]

If I wanted to be a hermit, I'd look into the national parks service. You get paid to spend a month in a lookout tower in the middle of the Olympic Rainforest, and it counts as an internship.

Internment more like.

[Vorticus]

If I wanted to be a hermit, I'd look into the national parks service. You get paid to spend a month in a lookout tower in the middle of the Olympic Rainforest, and it counts as an internship.

Internment more like.

*CG rimshot*

If you don't know, look it up it's in the wiki

[Escushion]

I saw this one show where a woman with no lower body gave birth to a kid. No joke. I feel sorry for that baby if it isn't a photoshopped picture. Hopefully, he'll live a somewhat happy life.

Um... he died. Page 1 of thread.

[Kisai]

I read a better book where the corperations bought all the clean water supplies of the world in an attempt to monopolize all water.

By Clive Cussler? I know, I know, off topic, but I had to ask.

It had the word "Blue" in it I think, involved among things, a plane crash, with the inventor some some water purification system on the plane and being adopted by some natives, and then gets kiddnapped from them and forced to develop her technology in an underwater base that's under a lake... That's the just one dimension of the story.

My dad is really into books about terrorists and modern-day wars, so of about a dozen of them he gave me, I picked the one that started with a woman being the main character. Anyhow, the premise of that book was that the "evil" corperation was buying all the worlds water supplies to sell it back to them at high premiums, and this womans invention would eliminate the need for fresh water, since it can purify any source of water or something (think ocean water)

I also have another book written in the 70's called "The Wave", which half takes place in BC, canada (In fact takes place in several areas along the Columbia River, where I was living at the time), the premise of that book is that some terrorist blow up one one of the resevoir dams which causes a land slide that displaces all the water in the resevoir and causes "the wave" to race down the Columbia river, taking out every city on the way. The other half of the story is in Washington/Oregon, where a Nuclear reactor (that in real life was still under construction at the time of the books writing) was on the columbia, and it causes a LOCA accident because the water+sodium coolant = bad. That book ends with the americans using "the bomb" to blow up the mountains before the wave reaches the ocean as to not contaminate the pacific ocean.

[Yeahduff]

I disagree, but then I'm an atheist. Disease exists, and it controls populations, but there's no reason.

There is a reason, and it has nothing to do with religion.
It's the natural order of life.

It's the same reason why predators can never exceed the prey, or why predators exist in the first place, or why things evolve over time. These things were not forged by the hand of god, but rather a force just as powerful - necessity.

I don't think that's a reason, I just think that's the way it is. There's no force sending disease into action except a population with a suceptablity to that disease. You touch a railing on a bus, you eat a twinkie before washing your hands, you die of ebola. No reasoning, just cause and effect. Just like evolution. The monkees with the larger brains survived and passed their genes instead of the monkees with the beautiful harmonies not because of some plan or reasoning, but because that's how it happened.

I think people easily forget just how insignificant we are in comparison to the planet itself. Here we are, hairless monkies not even a million years old, and in our arrogance we underestimate the planet and think we can actually hurt something that has survived billions of years and pummelings a thousand times worse than all nuclear weapons combined.

I know athiests don't believe in god, but do you believe in a gigantic rock that you are little more than a flea to?

Oh, I believe in the planet, I just don't believe it's sentient and can do anything about us consciously. I agree with you and George Carlin that the planet's gonna be fine, it's us who are fucked, though. But to be fair, the planet's pretty insignificant too, particularly without us humans here to lend it significance with our minds.

If evolution didn't make us better we'd be still running across the savannah screaming and flinging our excrement like our tree and jungle dwelling cousins. Intelligence is part of evolution too, y'know.

Oh, certainly, but evolution, at its core, is less about making a species better and more about making the remaining population of a species more likely to survive the given circumstances. If it comes to be that quick instinctual reaction will make you more likely to survive than logical thought, than intelligence will be breeded out of the population. Which, in my opinion, would not make us better.

Except we evolve anyway. When a species dominates it's environment, it evolves to be larger and larger until it becomes an inefficiently big, slow witted monster. It happened to the dinosaurs and it's happening to us.

To avoid this, we need another direction. Intelligence, compassion, empathy, strength... Whatever. If we don't start chosing where we're going to evolve to (or learn how to re-tool our genetic code) we'll simply become too large and unwieldy to function as we do now.

Of course, I reckon we've a bit of time yet. Probably a couple of thousand years at least.

I think I'm more with McDuffies's and Neko's idea of our current state of evolution. I don't think we're getting dumber, not at all. We still have many very intelligent people running around. And it's not like intelligence was oozing out of the average medieval serf's ears. I dunno. I think I'm running out of steam here, so whatever.

[Dutch!]

I saw this one show where a woman with no lower body gave birth to a kid. No joke. I feel sorry for that baby if it isn't a photoshopped picture. Hopefully, he'll live a somewhat happy life.

Um... he died. Page 1 of thread.

Actually...I saw something very similar over here recently on telly. A woman born with lower body deformities and problems. Her parents eventually decide to amputate her legs. When she is about ten, she decides herself to remove all artificial legs and has lived the rest of her life with basically no lower body.

At the time of the television special, she had a six year old boy, perfectly normal. As for her...I think she's a trained mechanic.

[Vorticus]

I saw this one show where a woman with no lower body gave birth to a kid. No joke. I feel sorry for that baby if it isn't a photoshopped picture. Hopefully, he'll live a somewhat happy life.

Um... he died. Page 1 of thread.

Actually...I saw something very similar over here recently on telly. A woman born with lower body deformities and problems. Her parents eventually decide to amputate her legs. When she is about ten, she decides herself to remove all artificial legs and has lived the rest of her life with basically no lower body.

This was also mentioned earlier in the thread. We've got the full list of surviving ones said.

[Hollowghoul]

This is what I get for not checking this forum more often: I am too late to express a timely opinion on subjects I find really interesting.

Nonetheless, let me make some comments: the nepal baby is, in my opinion, a fake, not a photoshopped image but a mannequin: he is too big, and his mouth and nose are too well formed and large: they resemble something you could find only in children much older. Besides, his arms are way too long to belong to a newborn.

Secondly, please do not justify that crowd: if they are carrying aroud a real dead baby just because he was born deformed they are doing a crude, detestable thing; it is not a matter of opinions, neither of culture, for in every context, even in the western world of two hundred years ago, such parades were considered barbaric.

In third place, there is a reason for not inflicting permanent mutilations on criminals: this is because the punishment is supposed to correct them, and castration, as Sortelli said, is not a measure capable to stop them from harming others. In this regard, a capital "P" branded on the forehead of the culprit would be more effective; that comes with a price of a even deeper alienation, of course.

A final consideration: why you people hold your race in such a low regard?
"Man is but a fragile cane, yet a cane that thinks." and for that, I think, he is far more valuable than the rock he sits upon.

[ShardZ]

Secondly, please do not justify that crowd: if they are carrying aroud a real dead baby just because he was born deformed they are doing a crude, detestable thing; it is not a matter of opinions, neither of culture, for in every context, even in the western world of two hundred years ago, such parades were considered barbaric.

[sarcasm] Right. Because those mummy-unrollings that were all the rage in 19th century Europe were completely tasteful and sophisticated. Especially when they were practically betting on what gender the mummy would turn out to be... Speaking of which, has anyone checked to see how Lenin and Stalin are doing? Think they'll hold up for the viewing of the masses for another hundred years?

But showing respect, like during the "Dia de los Muertos" festivals, is, of course, reprehensible. I guess the conquistadores couldn't reform everything about the cultures they were enlightening. At least they didn't have to confront stuff like Hinduism. After all, the worship of animals and other miracles of nature should have gone out with the Egyptians... [/sarcasm]

Sorry if I'm feeling a bit irritable, but unless (and even if) you know why the people are doing that, I don't see how you can judge them as being "barbaric." Every culture has it's own way of showing respect for the dead, and may not have the same standards of "decency" that you do regarding human remains, deformed or not. My own great-grandmother didn't want people "gawking at her dead carcass" when she died, and we respected that because it was her choice, even though open-casket funerals are still common.

Just an observation, but it seems to me that you're holding certain "races" in disregard...

[McDuffies]

Why is one-child so immoral and evil? You can make an argument for how they deal with the illegal second-child, but I don't see anything wrong with having people limit the population in this way. It'd be nicer if it were voluntary, but we've still got people in the U.S. with barely any resources or property having 14 kids.

Perhaps it boins down to the old arguement pro and against abortion. If the situation in China is so extreme that the growth of population is causing already existing members of population to live in poor condition (and I guess it is because they wouldn't introduce such measure without good reason) then we can put that next to the case of, for instance, a pregnant teenage girl who has no means to support it. Or in other world, what is right, to kill a life before it's started or to let it live knowing that it'll be a rather miserable life. I for one am glad that I don't have to answer to such question.

I saw this one show where a woman with no lower body gave birth to a kid. No joke.

I bet this kid will be freaked out when it sees people with legs.

[Rkolter]

Nonetheless, let me make some comments: the nepal baby is, in my opinion, a fake, not a photoshopped image but a mannequin: he is too big, and his mouth and nose are too well formed and large: they resemble something you could find only in children much older. Besides, his arms are way too long to belong to a newborn.

Not a fake. Just very deformed. The features of this baby are outside the norm yes, but not outside the possibilities of a full term birth and our genetic code.

[Grabmygoblin]

how sad.

I was researching the effects of fallout from the nuclear testing of the cold war, and there are some horrific stories of babies born in the marshall islands that were described as "jellyfish babies". my curious side kinda wanted to see a picture, but thankfully the babies were born still-born and were buried almost immediatly to save the family the anguish of seeing it.

as for the overpopulation thing, I'm not going to touch that. I would get all snooty and superiour and warn you guys to be careful not to head into eugenics, but that would kinda be asinine.

[Hollowghoul]

I think you misunderstood me, ShardZ; my fault, I see: I did not manage to express myself correctly. I am perfectly aware of the lack of respect shown in those... "autopsies". And I know that they resulted in generating a sudden interest for mummies in the public.
I meant to say that in every culture there is a component of morbidity that makes misshaped bodies a centre of attention, western world included. And that for every man that paid a coin to read the mysteries of mummification, or to see the elephant man, or even an hermaphrodite, there were those that thought such shows were saddening; I should have used this term instead of barbaric.
Tell me, do you believe that those people brought that baby in procession because this is part of a rite? Are all dead newborns given the same treatment? I admit I do not know, yet I do not think this is so; I think they are celebrating his deformity.

As for holding particular "races" in disregard, i think this is not the case: an act should be judged indepently from the culture in which it happens to be done. If someone throws battery acid on the face of a woman who reufuses a marriage you can not justify him, or her, because in a certain culture that woman had not the right to refuse a man.
Similarly, you can not justify the infection of unwitting men to find a cure for syphilis.
Both this cases were justified in their own country, and accepted as something "correct". The first happened in India, the second in America.
In my opinion a true respect for other cultures means that one should judge the action of those that belong to them as would judge his own.

However, when I said that baby was a fake, I was only exprssing my opinion; still, it baffles me that an anencephalic child like this has such a well-formed set of eyes, nose and mouth; I read they formed after the encephalon.

[BrownEyedCat]

If I wanted to be a hermit, I'd look into the national parks service. You get paid to spend a month in a lookout tower in the middle of the Olympic Rainforest, and it counts as an internship.

Internment more like.

Not if its voluntary.

[ShardZ]

Tell me, do you believe that those people brought that baby in procession because this is part of a rite? Are all dead newborns given the same treatment? I admit I do not know, yet I do not think this is so; I think they are celebrating his deformity.

I don't pretend to know exactly what is going on, but I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. They may be worshipping him, such as the boy born with a tail, because they view such occurences not as genetic anomalies but as natural miracles (hence my use of the term in my earlier post) and therefore venerable. Others see it as unattractive, understanding it to be a genetic mistake, and nothing more.

Or it could be a simple funeral--there are plenty of societies which respectfully honor the dead by displaying their remains before burial (or exhuming them later for a time). I was mainly focusing on the reverence and remembrance of the dead--if the child had been alive then yes, I would be gravely concerned for its health, being exposed like that. Whatever the reason, such actions are born from generations of repetition, resulting in culture, and cultural values, which vary from population to population.

I suppose I have a hard time believing that his family would flaunt his deformities, or allow them to be flaunted, for no reason whatsoever.

I think the acid-burning and syphilis infections are more in the realm of inconsiderate (at the least) behavior toward the living members of society, and again vary between cultures and eras. I can't say I condone any of it, but we are generally powerless to stop it, at least right now. Fortunately, the latter type of activity became widely recognized as inhumane and criminal (within the US, at least) as social and cultural values shifted.

Problems with cultural differences and perceived cruelty will always exist(some cultures might say circumcision of infant boys is "cruel," yet many parents do it despite a lack of either cultural/religious leaning or necessity). "We" can't expect that others will concede that we are "right" any more than "they" can hope that we will understand, but there is hope for reconciliation someday.

I've gotten off track now, so I'll just apologize again for any untoward tone... I think it was just the way you referred to "western" civilization and "two hundred years ago" that set me off as being ironic.

[Escushion]

Why is one-child so immoral and evil? You can make an argument for how they deal with the illegal second-child, but I don't see anything wrong with having people limit the population in this way. It'd be nicer if it were voluntary, but we've still got people in the U.S. with barely any resources or property having 14 kids.

Perhaps it boins down to the old arguement pro and against abortion. If the situation in China is so extreme that the growth of population is causing already existing members of population to live in poor condition (and I guess it is because they wouldn't introduce such measure without good reason) then we can put that next to the case of, for instance, a pregnant teenage girl who has no means to support it. Or in other world, what is right, to kill a life before it's started or to let it live knowing that it'll be a rather miserable life. I for one am glad that I don't have to answer to such question.

I said in the post you quoted that an argument could be made against how the illegal second-child is dealt with. I'm asking why a law that people can only have one child is immoral and evil.

[Hollowghoul]

I've gotten off track now, so I'll just apologize again for any untoward tone...

Do not. Your reaction is understandable, given the meaning my previous message seemed to convey. Again, my fault.

[CJBurgandy]

On another thing: Canada will pay immigrants to live in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps I will immigrate...

It's probably not anymore than what you get for Living in Alaska, though the money we get from the PFD basically covers up all the extra we have to pay to have food and such shipped up here on barges.

[Tellurider]

Hey wait I'm moving to Alaska. You mean I'm gonna get PAID just to LIVE there???

Sweeeeeeeeeeet.