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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1998)
talion inion Page 9 • Monday, September 21, 1998 ibryo selection suggests frightening implications 3 qualify for the: T "I •-*••• • cess for choosing infant s gender opens door for genetic discrimination 'necologist in Lon- R(K»3n lias begun hat he calls the ; first 100-percent m ; . ?ed sex-selection for couples who ke to choose the . ‘. icir baby before it M f RoomrrMsi ***;, • rding to a Website v - ng the procedure, Rainsbury uses the existing in- rtilization technique to take eggs ’ rm from a couple, fertilize the eggs aratory and then choose the em- th the preferred sex and implant it m mother’s womb, ays this is a rather simple process 1 help improve the quality of life for aople and will only cost them the . ;ent of $25,000. - ^orTaer- sbury seems to have forgotten one hough — he is not God. right now the choices are limited ex of the child, but what next? Sort- ' embryos based on hair color? Even- . arents may be able to tweak their d sperm until they get the perfect TUi>. Future parents could purchase the ) guaranteed to produce a son that the captain of the football team and iter guaranteed to be Miss America ly. The world would eventually be ■*n with a bunch of people who all le Barbie and Ken. onceive a child is a beautiful thing, - ciding whether to have a male or fe- reduces that beauty to going q.' o the Chevy dealership and deciding —?r to buy a truck or a car. allC'. : , ems t ^ at j n thejj- haste to create a e everyone will envy, people are WEI® beginning to go overboard. It is bad enough people are compelled to impress each other with material possessions, but now they want to go out and purchase the right embryo. Rainsbury said that “his clinics have a place in a world where sex selec tion is already practiced, but in a cruel and in humane way be cause of pres sures to produce a male heir. ” Making sex selection avail able prior to birth is not go ing to solve this problem. It will contribute to it. For example, people in China are persuaded to have one child in an attempt to control the pop ulation size, therefore, every one wants a male heir to per petuate their family’s name. If everyone is given the opportunity to choose the sex of their children before they is born and everyone chooses a male child, there would be a some serious ramifica tions down the line. It is simply wrong for doctors to give people who discriminate against women a new tool to use in that process. That is exactly what giving people the opportunity to choose the sex of their baby prenatally would do. The goal is not to make it easier to dis criminate against women, but to put an end to discrimination and eventually have women across the globe considered equal to men. By advocating this practice, doc tors are confirming the misconception that women are less desirable and competent than men. It is understandable parents want to plan the perfect family with two-point-five kids and a dog in the backyard. The desire to control everything, including the future, is part of human nature. The world is full of sur prises, though, and it is those little surprises that make life so won derful. Think of all of the wonderful people in the world who would not be here had there parents been giv en the chance to sort through their embryos and choose a child. Everyone on earth right now is here be cause nature was al lowed to take its course. If you asked most people, they will probably tell you they are pretty glad they were given that chance to a life. So what makes people think they have the right to interfere with another’s chance to live. This is not about giving parents the choice of their chil dren’s sex, but taking away the surprise of discovering a new human being, which is an injustice to the parents and especially the unborn child. Elizabeth Strait is a junior journalism major. ELIZABETH STRAIT Graphic by Brad Graeber/The Battalion MAIL CALL od drive helps lident victim name is Helen Huddleston. -•* "• ^ear on Sept. 20, 1997, I , i automobile accident, cnnsty. ir Deople offered to help me. -named Jennifer Luton con- nt fimir/illr several people for me. as ngncuiih^ {wou|d |jke to thank Jen ication: R.: )r helping to organizing the antact Perse d r j ve with the American Red i° ne: 84s: and ji ie Bryan-College Sta- •b*Title ■ ancl The Battalion for an Date:Asking information about the ities: Surplus drive. I would like to thank a purchasings ody for the support by do- ntrai receive: as extraordinary as jperty deca; bleed. You saved my life, by Ss'aX:™ 6 3 P art ° f V° urSelf - 50 pounds. eked scfte# Helen Huddleston r k 1:00P.M.toSi Local resident srnoon. liberal police 'tect Americans lore are poonse to Josh Maskow’s .. .8 column: n offended by Josh Have YOU(t DW ’ s “Federal police cause ssness” column. To com- Faciillv Xmerica ’ s p resent |aw en ' 1 nent agencies to those Yes,itiMcted under Adolf Hitler is ■j s ci b! t * liore illfonfe FBI and SWAT daily go into avid \Vindf, r situations none of us would even dream of going into. Mace canisters and car alarms are more prevalent because of po lice making citizens more aware of crime, not because police agen cies are less effective. I think more research should have been done on your part as to why law enforcement is the way it is. Jared Anderson Class of '00 Cancer awareness helps students I would like to thank everyone who helped in the 1998 Testicu lar Cancer Awareness Campaign: Beth Miller for spreading the message to the entire student body through the Sept. 1 article in The Battalion. The Corps of Cadets, Resi dence Life, Resident Hall Associ ation and the Athletic Depart ment for funding the fliers. Residence Advisers, Athletics and Corps Staff for distributing the fliers. Just a reminder to everyone that if you have any questions, you can call the Health Educa tion Department at A.P Beutel Health Center (847-9242) to get answers or assistance in getting medical attention. Without the help of all these organizations this campaign could not have reached as many individuals as it has. It has al ready helped many students and is bound to help more. Knowl edge is the primary weapon in fighting cancer, and with the sup port of these organizations we are helping to arm the students of this campus. Early detection is the key. Thank you very much for help ing us help others. Margaret Griffith Health Education Coordinator Chad Steitle Student Assistant The Battalion encourages letters to the ed itor. Letters must be 300 words or less and in clude the author’s name, class and phone number. The opinion editor reserves the right to edit letters for length, style, and accuracy. Letters may be submitted in person at 013 Reed Mc Donald with a valid student ID. Letters may also be mailed to: The Battalion - Mail Call 013 Reed McDonald Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-1111 Campus Mail: 1111 Fax: (409) 845-2647 E-mail: batt@tamvml.tamu.edu Aggies may overlook technology's problems T he problem with tech nology to day is that it is not always reli able or helpful. Almost all Aggies have ex- L|SA perienced the nnoif joy of their com- puters crashing right in the middle of a large project or arriving late for an im portant meeting because their cars would not start. But there are even more frightening problems associated with technology, such as the re cent SwissAir crash that killed 229 people. These were 229 people who were planning to visit family, take a business trip or maybe just taking a break from it all. But thanks to the inadequacies of technology society takes for granted, these people never reached their destinations. The point is, society is taking these technologies for granted. Flying to a far destination, turning on the television when walking into a room and sending e-mail to a friend are all conveniences past generations never dreamed of but today’s college student could not live without. But should the average college student be able to spend time in a room without the background noise of a television? Perhaps if they did, they would find the work they produce is superior to what they do when concentrating with only half of their mind. Perhaps the reason America has such a high incidence of psy chological problems is because it is more technologically oriented than most other countries. If people are counting on Inter net chat rooms to fill the void in their personal lives, they will nev er develop the relational skills that they need. And then they go see their therapists trying to figure out what their problems are. There is a difference between using technology and allowing technology to be the master. Of course, the other extreme is no solution. Obviously, nobody in their right mind would choose the dirt and disease of the Middle Ages over a comfortable, sani tized existence. Would anyone re ally want to take a three-week boat trip, when they could save the time by flying in a plane? But in recent times, it almost seems that without technology, everybody would be lost. Studies have shown that in the past few years, American people are more obese than ever. This re ally is not surprising. If a person drives to work in the morning, spends all day working at a desk with a comput er, and goes home at night to their e-mail and their television, there can be no doubt about their physical fitness — or lack thereof. Ironically, those great modern philosophers, the Simpson family, contemplated what would hap pen if one day all the children stopped watching television. It was amazing. People went out side, started playing frisbee and talking to each other. Society was significantly improved. Now this is not as far-fetched as it might seem. There are a few people who choose not to have a television, claiming it drains time away from their dai ly life. Some people still choose to type papers on a typewriters because they find computers cumbersome. The situation calls for moder ation. There is no reason to throw out the helpful aid of a computer, if it does not become a required crutch. For example, if an average Joe Smith Aggie is doing his math homework and happens to have MAPLE installed on his comput er, then it is okay to use the pro gram to double-check his an swers. It becomes a different story if he has to run home every time he needs to do a math problem because he does not have the mental capacity to figure a proper tip. The computer, as every profes sor keeps saying, is not capable of being a human brain. Basically, Americans need to look at how other countries man age without the fastest, slickest, best technology available. Picture a world where there are only three television stations and they play really stupid programs. Pic ture a world where the only ac cess to e-mail is through a store that sells it by the half-hour — for very expensive prices. That world would force people to go out and find other hobbies. People would learn how to make things and build things and write things and talk about things. All of this would need to be in moderation, sure. It would be sad to have to miss the latest episode of “South Park.” Lisa Foox is a senior journalism major. STEWART PATTON Courts treat parties fairly T he nation’s crime rate has been declining for the past two years because of better crime prevention and an aging population. However, the mass of anti crime rhetoric from politicians and judicial candidates has created a monster almost as evil as the crime it has prevented: a fundamental distrust of the justice system. Many citizens view every “not guilty” verdict as a criminal “get ting away with it” and chalk up an other one for the good guys when the jury returns a “guilty” verdict. Reality does not work like old westerns, however, and the line between good and bad is not as easily discernible as the color of the hat the cowboy is wearing. When a crime takes place without any witnesses, the only people that know what happened are the victim (s) and the perpetrator(s). The purpose of a trial therefore is to discover truth. One of the sources of Ameri ca’s distrust of the justice system stems from the erroneous belief that, simply stated, “half the peo ple that really did it go free be cause of some loophole in the law. ” This remark shows several misunderstandings about how the law works. First, the stories we have all heard about the criminal who is set free because of a simple spelling mistake on a search warrant or something equally trivial are sim ply not true. The law is not as rigid and cumbersome a creature as many would have you believe. Second, nearly 90 percent of cases end with a plea bargain and therefore never go to trial. Almost all people accused of a crime choose to serve the punishment for a lesser charge rather than have their day in court. Since any rational person ac cused of a crime he or she did not commit would want to have a trial instead of serving any sentence unjustly, we can assume that the most likely scenario is that a ma jority of the accused who actually proceed to trial in fact did not commit the crime. Third, Attorney Robert Shapiro states in the prologue to his book The Search for Justice that what most people call “loopholes”, de fense lawyers call the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution emphasized criminal rights be cause they hated the abusive prac tices of British criminal procedure. We have seen what happens when an oppressive regime seizes power in a country with no Con stitutional safeguards against gov ernment power. In The Gulag Archipelago, Alek sandr Solzhenitsyn paints a horrify ing picture of the Soviet Union in the early twentieth century. Solzhenitsyn describes mass arrests without cause, torture to force pris oners to sign fictional confessions written by the interrogator, and horrible prison conditions. Constitutional protections for the criminally accused are the only barrier between our country and the Soviet Union during the reign of the Bolsheviks. The media also has played a large role in convincing America that the justice system does not work. The majority of rhetoric heard during O.J. Simpson’s trial favored the belief that Simpson had committed the crime. Rather than let the justice sys tem decide guilt or innocence, the media took that task upon them selves and subjected their biased findings to the masses. Polls during the trial showed Americans slightly favored a “guilty” verdict. Such polls are en tirely void of meaning, however, because those who participated in the polls were not exposed to every fact and argument in the trial. The members of the jury were the only people on the planet qualified to determine if Simpson did commit the murders, and we must believe that their decision that Simpson is innocent was correct. The United States has been so successful because of the guaran tees in the Constitution. If we are to remain great, Americans must have faith in the justice system and ac knowledge the truth it produces. Stewart Patton is a senior sociology major.