Scientists take a step closer to an elixir of youth with "IMMORTAL CELLS", page 6

Citizens in industrialized and educated first world nations also tend to have far less children. Average birth rates in the US, England, Japan, France, etc have been on the decline for several decades now. In first world nations, the general focus tends to be centered around getting and education, a career, and a portfolio. Family time is often scarce, and increasingly intermittent - especially since the economy and people's budget management schemes tends to support the two income family setup. It's extremely hard for an average woman to be a stay at home mother while trying to support the household only on the father's income (if there is spouse at all)

People by and large simply don't have the time or resources to manage large families which were common to their forefathers while also balancing personal goals like careers/further education.

However, in poorer and generally more agricultural or sweatshop based countries - large families are a blessing as they can help with the farm work, the house work, or gain employment to help support the family. People in these nations tend to pursue their daily survival - rather than higher education or careers. This would help to explain why birth rates in many poorer nations are on the rise. There's also an issue of medicine to consider as well. Having a large family means that it's less likely for all your progeny to be wiped out by disease, war, accident or famine which will statistically claim some of them simply due to inadequate medical care. In the richer first world nations, medical care is much much better, and severely decreases the likelihood that your smaller family will be wiped out by treatable disease or physical ailment.

What does this have to do with immortality? It allows people to spend more time chasing their careers, their dreams, or their education. They can spend more time establishing themselves a place in the economy and society before thinking about raising children. If some radically advanced and effective treatment for mortality were created, I would expect to see the rate of birth continue to fall in industrialized nations. After all, you don't have a short 30 year window in which to create a family... you have, well, however long you want. I don't think it would be moral to limit families to a certain number of children, but perhaps a certain number of children in a certain timeframe. To cut a family with two children off from having future children (such as though forced vasectomy or hysterectomy) leaves that family vulnerable to a quirk of fate destroying any chance for progeny - and it's morally unethical (in my opinion) to create such a limit in the first place.

If you want to have a family with 10 or 20 children, you should absolutely be allowed the right to have that many. However, it's clear that we are nowhere near the technological level yet to address rampant overpopulation created by deregulated population increase by "immortal" citizens. I would propose that until we DO have some working and reliable accommodations for burgeoning populations - that there be some form of enforced or encouraged time interval between children. Say... two right off the bat, and another child could be born to the couple once every 75, or effective immediately in the event of an accidental death of one of the current children.

One technology that's still in it's infancy now which can help alleviate some of the problem is genetic engineering. I wouldn't go so far as to say designer babies, but certain choices... such as the eradication of genes which make one predisposed to life threatening diseases such as cancer or heart disease. Etc. We could also potentially direct the selection of sexual orientation of the child before conception to avoid situations where a families have 3-5 female or male children before getting one of the opposite gender.

And of course, special concessions or regulations should be made in the case of multiple births - such as triplets, quadruplets, or octoplets. I would hope that nobody would seriously, even for a moment, think of consider mandatory abortions in the case of multiple births from the same pregnancy putting a family "over the alloted limit".

[edit on 25-11-2008 by Lasheic]