Speaking of things that will end badly, how about this one: this poor 20 year old soldier gets killed in action, and his morbidly monomaniacal parental units have the cold, dead corpse’s shrivelled scrota pumped for sperm, which the hospital then holds for whatever nefarious purposes hospitals need dead boys’s sperm for, but the parents sue, claiming (not without some justification there, it must be said) that those are their genes, not the hospital’s, which suit they win, and, upon gaining custody of the precious vials of spooge they then proceed to advertise them internationally in, I suppose, the personals section of Goth magazines and such, looking for a zombie-positive woman with, presumably, no real-life prospects, and who wishes to give birth to the child there is no evidence this poor kid ever wanted.
Lesson: wank before war, boys! If whatever creepy Doctor Phibes impersonator the parents hired had not found any sperm, all would have been well. You know this is gonna be one hell of a Jerry Springer show!
From the BBC. I have no idea how I got there, and if I did post the intermediary websites, no doubt they’d all deny it!
The lawyer of an Israeli couple who won the right to use their dead son’s sperm to inseminate a woman he never met says the case is a boost for family rights.
Irit Rosenblum told the BBC the landmark ruling meant family lines could continue even without the written consent of the male prior to death.
The dead man, soldier Keivin Cohen, was killed in the Gaza Strip in 2002.
You may now commence retelling your J-Date horror stories, but no way will they top this. This one’s got a lock on the Controlling Mother of the Year Award.
raincoaster 
God, that’s creepy. I posted about this in a forum I frequent, and of course some crazed mom had to respond with “I would totally do that if that had been my son.” Thanks for sharing, Vampira. The parents of the dead soldier want to be “involved” in the kid’s life, of course. What a moral and ethical nightmare. I suppose it was as close as to cloning their dead kid as they could get.
But even creepier. I mean, what if he would have hated the woman? And what if the kids die? Are the grandparents going to have the girls opened up and pumped for eggs? God took the wrong members of this family.
If this were a film or a book it would be criticised for being way too far fetched to be believed. I know that grief does strange things to people but where is it said that grieving whackos should get to do whatever they want?
At the bank. It always works at the bank counter.
OK….
I notice the statement that with this decision “family lines can continue without the consent of the male”. There are two huge problems with that, possibly three in Israel.
“Family lines” descend from anyone who inherits the genes, not just the XY ones.
Without the consent … this isn’t just vaguely necropheliac (although without a corpse I suppose it isn’t that, either). It’s the genetic equivalent of rape.
The Jewish tradition is matrilineal, isn’t it?–not that I’m a scholar or anything, but that suggest to me that that argues more for pickled eggs than frozen sperm.
And if the line has to be patrilineal, what if the kids are all girls? Of course I doubt the element of chance will be a significant factor in this threatre of the grotesque.
How long d’you think it will be before some mother-lover blends his sperm with his dead mommy’s egg to create the perfect little girl who can grow up to be his wife AND mother?
Ugh! Urgh!–runs away to wash psyche out with vinegar.
I’m not an expert in Jewish tradition but I believe it is patrilineal. And also that with IVF you can wait to see which sex the embroyos are going to be before implanting. So they can even do eugenics on these poor little embroyos.
You’re right, though. It is the genetic equivalent of rape.
I totally forgot about this story! Hey, what’s the use of sperm if it doesn’t talk back or talk out the trash?
Is that a trick question? Uh…paying for dinner?
Even better! Man, you’re smart!
Foot rubs, too?
Scraping bugshit off the windshield?
Yes, and yes. And reaching things on high shelves, too. That’s important.
“A person born to a Jewish mother who is an atheist and never practices the Jewish religion is still a Jew, even in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox.”
From http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm .
But as you state, with genegeneering, it doesn’t matter anymore.
However, I think that this is where we have to say “no more” and plant our feet. Otherwise Anne Coulter might use her own eggs and her own sperm to fertilize herself …
Curls into little ball on the floor, sucking thumb, eyes wide and weeping in horror.
No, their Jewishness is inherited from the mother, but everything else goes along patriarchal lines. Ever heard of the Line of David? The head used to live in Ottawa, Dr. Greenblatt. I believe his son lives in Jerusalem now, though. But the daughter, although older, was never in the running for the title (honorary though it may now be).
Ann Coulter may eugenicize her own children into being, but she’s got such a short fuse that I feel sure she’d strangle them in the cradle.
WITHOUT FURTHER ISSUE?
by Eso Benjamins
http: //cloningforpeace.blogspot.com/
The UPI recently carried a story about the mother of a slain Israeli soldier living in Ramat Gan, Israel, who won court permission to use her dead son’s sperm, extracted from his body, to fertilize a donor egg and thus create for him a son and for her a grandson. The dead soldier had not married, but had expressed a strong wish to have an heir were he killed in combat. (See http: //www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20070119-010448-3336r )
Perhaps if you are a soldier and are unmarried, you too want an heir. That should be your right, but at present your government does not grant you this right. Should you sacrifice your life in combat, your government would rather that you remain without an heir. Your semen will not be extracted from your body. Your line will come to an end.
Which brings up the point: What if you are a woman soldier and are killed? You have no semen that can be extracted. However, you do have your DNA, which—given an enlightened government—could be harvested and deposited in a DNA bank. This DNA could then be used later when cloning becomes safe for humans, and you could return to your loved ones as a newborn again.
Is this controversial? Of course it is. But why should you stay dead after being killed in combat, when the possibility exists that you could again come to life through your “offspring”—in this case, your clone.
Indeed, the issue of cloning applies to both men and women.
The slain Israeli soldier’s mother would most likely have preferred to see her son reborn rather than the son of her son (though she will love him, too). But at the present time, outdated religious scruples stand in the way of making such a course a reality.
Nothing comes without asking. A letter requesting that the government harvest your DNA, should you be killed while in service, may be in your best interest.
The letter, attached below, asks for two things:
1) that your DNA be preserved in a DNA bank; and
2) that research in cloning human beings be given the green light and proceed at full speed.
It is irresponsible and immoral of your elected representatives to send you into situations where you may have to sacrifice your life, but are offered no biological recompense when today such a recourse is possible and when with further research, cloning offers such an opportunity to both sexes.
Please read the DNA HARVESTING FOR FUTURE CLONING Request Form below and act!
DNA HARVESTING FOR FUTURE CLONING
Request Form
I, _______________________, a citizen and soldier of the United States of America, while expressing loyalty to my community and government, which loyalty includes the sacrifice of my life if circumstances demand, believe that it is my right as a member of this community to expect that:
in the event of my death in service, my community and government will offer me the opportunity to be reborn as an identical twin, i.e., a clone.
Therefore, I respectfully request that
1–my community and government pursue all phases of research in human cloning;
2–my genes be preserved in government-maintained gene banks in perpetuity;
3–when human cloning becomes possible, in the event of my death, my genes be implanted and carried by a volunteer mother;
4–following my rebirth, I find myself in a household that nurtures me and supports me through childhood and indeed is a base of support to me throughout my life; and
5–the household/community recognizes my life sacrifice and therefore pursues a course of peace with determination.
In return, I swear allegiance to my community in perpetuity.
Signed: ____________________
Date:
Your address:
Please read, sign, and mail by means of the U.S. Postal Service, to the President, your Congressman or Congresswoman, your Senator, and your favorite media outlets. This form is your direct address to the President and the Nation.
Addresses:
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20500
For your senators and representatives, check the Congressional Email Directory:
www. webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
Wow, are you out of touch.
Most of the readers of this blog are not American. That you wish to fill their minds with the concept of America as a land of people so intent on avoiding consequence or causality that they would divert the nations resources from the living to the dead is your own affair, but there are some logical fallacies and quite remarkably wide gaps in your information.
Female soldiers of course have eggs, which are nowhere near as delicate as sperm: raising the spawn of dead female soldiers is actually easier than trying to do this for men.
Either way, icky icky poo. Every “controlling Jewish mother” stereotype comes into play here, in horror-movie amplification. “Why should soldiers who die in battle stay dead?” If you have to ask that question, some meaningful part of your soul has already left this space/time continuum. And a clone is not the same person; clones indeed have personhood, but they have personhood separate from the person from whom they were cloned.
Also, give a thought to the amount of money involved. In order to maintain these “government DNA banks” the government would have to siphon that money away from services for the living. Personally, I feel if you’re dead it’s time to get the fuck over it. If you’re alive, it’s time to come to grips with the idea of dying. Deal with it; there are no alternatives.