There’s a feature in today’s Ottawa Citizen about a doctor who is celebrating his 25,000th vasectomy. (Called “The vasectomy king,” for some reason I can’t find it online).
Here’s the quote I found interesting. The doctor says:
If men had to bear kids, we wouldn’t have a population explosion.”
To this I would say, um, we don’t have a population explosion, my friend. We have very low birth rates. Nothing exploding here.
Interesting how old “truths” die hard.
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Tanya adds: Old truths die hard because Al Gore is walking up and down Pennsylvania Avenue wearing a sandwich board. On the front, it says “the end is near!” On the back is a graph which has no basis in reality showing that the population of the world will grow to over than 10 billion by the year 2050.
Oh, make that 9 billion. (I guess even he couldn’t sell his original figure of 10 billion).
by 
Andrea,
Out of fairness, if you take his comment separately from his practice and assume he is talking about men as a gender all over the world, I’d wager it *would* have an effect on the countries where populations are booming.
As far as performing vasectomies on Westerners is concerned, you’re right to point out that it’s “help” in the wrong place. It’s like giving a healthy patient the cure instead of the sick patient.
I don’t have anything against men getting vasectomies, I think it is a personal choice.
However, the doctor’s comment was out of line. I found it to be pretty sexist, actually.
Ha! Me too! I respect a man’s right to choose! (Especially since, unless I missed something, vasectomies rarely involve any existing fetus…)