Að sjá möguleikana

Það eru fréttir sem þessi sem birtist nýverið í Viðskiptablaðinu sem gera mig bjartsýnan á framtíðina.  Að enn séu til menn sem horfa fyrst og fremst af því að sjá möguleika, að snúa óhagstæðri þróun til betri vegar og snúa mínus í plús ef svo má að orði komast.

Það eru vissulega stór tíðindi ef hægt er að hagnýta mengun til þess að framleiða eldsneyti.  Er það ekki það sem við myndum kalla að slá tvær flugur í einu höggi?

Það er líka áríðandi að unnið sé að lausnum sem tryggja í senn minnkandi mengun og not fyrir mengunina, þess vegna er þessi lausn svo aðlaðandi.

Hér er ekki verið að reyna að setja stopp á uppbyggingu, heldur leitað leiða til að uppbygging geti orðið grundvöllur enn frekari uppbyggingar.

Ég þekki ekki á hvaða stigi þessi tækni er, sjálfsagt á eftir að leysa einhverja hnökra og sjálfsagt er framleiðslan dýr á fyrstu stigum, en óskandi er að vel gangi og þetta er verkefni sem þarft er að styðja.

Næst hlýtur svo að vera að snúa sér að mengun frá álverum og annarri tilfallandi mengun á Íslandi.

En ef einhver veit meira um málið, kostnað og annars slíkt væri fengur í að heyra um það.

P.S.  Hélt að metanól og etanól blöndun lækkaði oktan í bensíni, öfugt við það sem ég les í fréttinni, veit einhver meira um það?

 

 

 

 

http://49beaverbrook.blog.is/blog/49beaverbrook/entry/341834/

Hvers vegna er matvælaverð að hækka?

Ég hef ritað aðeins um hækkandi matvælaverð, og ýmsar "heimsendaspár" sem fram hafa komið, sumar til að knýja á um auknar greiðslur til bænda á Íslandi.  Það er hins vegar alltaf fengur að góðum greinum um málefnið, og eina slíka mátti finna á vef Globe and Mail, í gær.

Það er óneitanlega nokkuð merkilegt að lesa að það sé reiknað með því að 15% ræktanlegs lands í ESB verði notað til eldsneytisfrmleiðslu árið 2020.  Það má ef til vill segja að það sé röng forgangsröðun, eða hvað.

Eins og þar kemur fram, eru margvíslegar ástæður fyrir hækkun matvælaverðs, en hvað þyngst vega þær sem eru af mannavöldum, og þá helst ásælni í matvæli til eldsneytisnotkunar.

"How did it come to this? Surging food prices, now at 30-year highs, are actually a relatively new phenomenon. In the mid-1970s, prices began to fall as the green revolution around the world made farms dramatically more productive, thanks to improvements in irrigation and the widespread use of fertilizers, mechanized farm equipment and genetically engineered crops. If there was a crisis, it was food surpluses — too much food chasing too few stomachs — and dropping produce prices had often disastrous effects on farm incomes.

By 2001, the surpluses began to shrink and prices reversed. In the past year or so, the price curve has gone nearly vertical. The UN's food index rose 45 per cent in the past nine months alone, but some prices have climbed even faster. Wheat went up 108 per cent in the past 12 months; corn rose 66 per cent. Rice, the food that feeds half the world, went "from a staple to a delicacy," says Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon."

"Food prices in the first three months of 2008 reached their highest level in both nominal and real (inflation adjusted) terms in almost 30 years, the UN says. That's stoking double-digit inflation and prompting countries such as Egypt, Vietnam and India to eliminate or substantially reduce rice exports to keep a lid on prices and prevent rioting. But, by reducing global supply, this only increases prices for food-importing countries, many of them in West Africa.

Throughout history, the world has seen food shortages and famines triggered by drought, war, pestilence, crop failures and regional overpopulation. In the Chinese famine between 1958 and 1961, an estimated 30 million people died from malnutrition. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, severe food shortages hit India and parts of southeast Asia. Only the emergency shipment of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grain from the U.S. prevented a humanitarian disaster. Drought, violent conflict, economic incompetence, misfortune and corruption created deadly famines in Ethiopia and Sudan in the first half of the 1980s.

In each case, the food shortages were alleviated through emergency aid or investment in farming and crop productivity. While no one so far is dying of hunger in this latest crisis, the UN and agriculture experts predict years of pain, at best, and severe shortages, possibly famine in the worst-hit countries. The reason: High prices are likely to persist for years.

Swelling population explains only part of the problem. The world's population, estimated at 6.6 billion, has doubled since 1965. But population growth rates are falling and, theoretically, there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet, said Peter Hazell, a British agriculture economist and a former World Bank principal economist.

Why millions may go hungry, he said, is because prices are so high, food is becoming unaffordable in some parts of the world.

The "rural poor" (to use the UN's term) in Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, Senegal, Cameroon and some other African countries exist on the equivalent of $1 a day or less. As much as 70 per cent of that meagre income goes to food purchases, compared with about 15 per cent in the U.S. and Canada. As prices, but not incomes, rise, the point may be reached where food portions shrink or meals are skipped. Malnutrition sets in.

The dramatic price rises have been driven by factors absent in previous food shortages.

They include turning food into fuel, climate change, high oil and natural gas prices (which boost trucking and fertilizer costs), greater consumption of meat and dairy products as incomes rise (which raises the demand for animal feedstuffs), and investment funds, whose billions of dollars of firepower can magnify price increases.

Driven by fears of global warming, biofuel has become big business in the U.S., Canada and the European Union. The incentive to produce the fuels is overwhelming because they are subsidized by taxpayers and, depending on the country or the region, come with content mandates.

Starting next week, Britain will require gasoline and diesel sold at the pumps be mixed with 2.5-per-cent biofuel, rising to 5.75 per cent by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with European Union directives. Ontario's ethanol-content mandate is 5 per cent. As the content requirements rise, more and more land is devoted to growing crops for fuel, such as corn-based ethanol. In the EU alone, 15 per cent of the arable land is expected to be devoured by biofuel production by 2020."

"But Mr. Currie of Goldman Sachs dismisses the theory that funds are pushing prices higher than they would be otherwise, though the funds can make prices rise and fall quickly in the short term. "The simple truth is that the funds don't take delivery of the commodity," he said in an interview. "Therefore they cannot sit on them and put them in silos. Therefore they can't affect prices over the long term."

In other words, the rally in food prices is being caused by demand exceeding production, resulting in dwindling food stockpiles. UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, for one, assumes prices will stay high for as long as 10 years.

Agriculture economists and the UN have not lost all hope. New irrigation systems are inevitable in Africa and have the potential to boost crop production dramatically. Ditto for the use of fertilizers. Only three to five kilos of fertilizer per hectare is used in Africa, compared with about 250 kilos in the U.S. The problem with using more fertilizer is cost. Fertilizers such as urea are derived from natural gas, and gas prices have climbed, too. The price of urea has almost tripled since 2003, to $400 a tonne.

Dr. Hazell said some big countries, notably the U.S., Canada and Ukraine, have the capacity to increase crop production substantially. Already world cereal production is on the rise, although not nearly fast enough to end the crisis. The Food and Agriculture Organization yesterday forecast a 2.6-per-cent rise in cereal production in 2008.

Cutting back on ethanol production alone would go some way to restoring supply-demand balance in the food markets. "If we decide to do something about it, we can just use less food for fuel," he said."

 

 

 

Hættur dihydrogen monoxide

 Ég get ekki stillt mig um að birta hér tvö myndbönd sem fjalla um hættur sem eru fylgjandi notkun dihydrogen monoxide. Ég vil hvetja alla til að horfa á myndböndin, það tekur ekki nema nokkrar mínútur.

 

 

 

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Það er rétt að taka það fram að bæði myndböndin fann ég er ég var að lesa blogsíðu Ágústs H. Bjarnasonar, en þar er margan fróðleik að finna og vil ég hvetja þá sem hafa áhuga á "hlýnunarumræðunni" að heimsækja síðuna. Þar er margur fróðleiksmolinn á borð borinn.

Íslendingar í Kanadíska mósaíkinu

Kanadabúar eru "samsett" þjóð, hér má finna allra þjóða "kvikyndi", hér ægir öllu saman og blandast, en marigr halda þó sínum séreinkennum.  Það veldur ekki tilfinnanlegum vandræðum, þó að vissulega kraumi á stundum.

En nú eru "sjáanlegir minnihlutahópar" í Kanada komnir yfir fimm milljónir ef marka má nýjasta "manntalið", eða "sensusinn". 

Eins og sjá má í frétt Globe and Mail, þá hefur innflytjendum fjölgað mikið á undanförnum árum, og þá helst frá Asíu, þó hefur þunginn einnig flust til innan álfunnar.

Nú kemur stærsti einstaki minnihlutahópurinn frá "S-Asíu", það er að segja Indlandi, Pakistan, Sri Lanka og Nepal.  Ekki veit ég hvor að þessir hópar séu sáttir við að vera spyrtir svona saman, en það er alla vegna gert í fréttinni.

En Íslendingar sjást ekki í fréttini, enda varla sjáanlegur minnihlutahópur.  Eftir öðrum leiðum fékk ég þó upplýsingar um hvernig tölur varðandi Íslendinga koma út "sensusinu".  Þær niðurstöður má sjá í lítilli töflu hér að neðan.  Því miður fékk ég ekki sundurliðun fyrir aðra staði en Manitoba og Toronto.

	Total Single
	and Multiple	Single	Multiple
	Ethnic Origin	Ethnic Origin	Ethnic Origin
	Responses	Responses	Responses
Canada	88,875	9,950	78,925
Toronto	3,240	305	2,935
Manitoba	30,550	4,465	26,085

Það er rétt að taka það fram að þetta er ekki niðurstaða rannsóknar, heldur þess hvernig íbúar Kanada svöruðu í "manntalinu"  Eins og sést í töflunni eru þeir sem gefa sig upp sem "Íslending" rétt tæplega 90 þúsund í Kanada, 1/3 þeirra býr í Manitoba, en rétt um 300 hér í Toronto. 

Hafa ber í huga að bæði er hér líklega um að ræða, þá sem eru aðfluttir frá Íslandi, og svo einnig hina, sem eru afkomendur Íslendinga sem hingað flutti fyrir 4, jafnvel 5 kynslóðum, en hafa einungis "Íslenskt" blóð í æðum.  Þeim einstaklingum fer óðum fækkandi, en ég hef þó hitt þó nokkra, bæði hér í Toronto og sömuleiðis þegar ég heimsætti Manitoba síðastliðið sumar.

En í frétt Globe and Mail, má lesa m.a.

"The number of visible minorities in Canada has cracked the five-million mark for the first time in history, representing 16.2 per cent of the country's total population, new census data released Wednesday show.

The growth in the visible minority population, driven largely by immigration from non-European countries, soared 26.2 per cent between 2001 and 2006, five times faster than the 5.4 per cent increase for the population as a whole, Statistics Canada reports.

And for the first time, South Asians became Canada's largest visible minority group in 2006, surpassing Chinese.

Nearly 1.3 million people — a 38 per cent increase over 2001 — identified themselves in 2006 as South Asian, which includes Canadians who hail from such countries as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal."

"If those numbers surprise you, it's likely you live in rural or small-town Canada. Just under 96 per cent of visible minorities live in a census metropolitan area, compared to 68.1 per cent of Canada's overall population. Most are concentrated in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Almost half, 46.9 per cent, of Toronto's population is made up of visible minorities. Conversely, for the entire Atlantic region, it's only 2.6 per cent."

"The definition of visible minority is taken from Canada's Employment Equity Act, which refers to "persons, other than Aboriginal persons, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour." The term includes Chinese, South Asians, Blacks, Arabs, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Latin Americans, Japanese, Koreans and other visible minority groups such as Pacific Islanders.

Other highlights of Wednesday's census release:

• There was a 33.1 per cent increase in the number of mixed unions (marriage and common-law), with Japanese, Latin Americans and Blacks most likely to be involved in a mixed relationship, although they still make up a small percentage — 3.9 per cent — of all couples in Canada. South Asians and Chinese were least likely to form a union outside their ethnic group.

• More people than ever are reporting multiple ancestries. "Canadian" remains the most frequently reported ethnic origin, followed by English, French"

Kræðusnúðar

Stundum fæst ég við þýðingar, sérstaklega á ýmsu smálegu.  Oft er það eitthvað sem Vestur-Íslendingar hér í Toronto hafa í fórum sínum, eitthvað sem forfeður þeirra hafa skilið eftir sig, bréf, eða stuttar ritgerðir, jafnvel ljóð.

Ég reyni eftir besta megni að koma þessu þokkalega óbrengluðu til skila, en stundum lendi ég í vandræðum með ýmis orð sem notuð hafa verið hér á árum áður, en ég kannast hreinlega ekki við.

Svo er með orð sem ég rakst á í dag.  Kræðusnúðar.

Ef einhver lumar á vitneskju um hvers kyns hnossgæti þetta er, en slíku er haldið fram í textanum, yrði ég ævarandi þakklátur fyrir frekari upplýsingar þar að lútandi í athugasemdum.

 

Hvert fara peningarnir?

Ég var í síðustu færslu að tal um að bloggið færði okkur mismunandi sjónarhorn og ýmsan fróðleik.  Stuttu síðar rakst ég á annað mjög fróðlegt blog, sem leiddi mig svo hingað.

Þetta er gríðarlega gott framtak og á alla athygli skilið, raunar þyrfti að fjölga dæmum og uppfæra og skipta þeim út með reglulegu millibili.

Hver hugleiðir að almenningur borgi u.þ.b. 6.600 kr, fyrir hvern þann sem horfir á sýningu hjá Þjóðleikhúsinu?(tala frá 2006, hefur líklega frekar hækkað heldur en hitt)

Nú eða að hver fjögurra manna fjölskylda hafi að meðaltali lagt Íslenskum landbúnaði til 112.000 kr. árið 2006?

Eða að niðurgreiðsla almennings til þeirra sem sóttu Íslensku óperuna árið 2006 hafi numið tæpum 26.000 á miða?

Hjartaþræðing kostar 200.000 (2006) þannig að það er ekki á við nema 8. óperumiða.

Háskólastúdent kostar 600.000 á ári (2006) sem er um 100.000 krónum meira en það kostaði að koma barni í heiminn með keisaraskurði sama ár, en það er sama upphæð og var notuð til að greiða  niður u.þ.b. 47 af þeim ríflega 40.000 aðgöngumiðum á sinfóníutónleika sem niðurgreiddir voru árið 2006.

Nýr mjaðmaliður (sem margir bíða eftir skilst mér) kostaði 2006 u.þ.b. 700.000 kr. Jarðgöng kosta hins vegar u.þ.b. 650 milljónir per kílómeter, þannig að lesendur þessa blogs geta þá farið og reiknað hvað hægt væri að skipta um mjaðmaliði hjá mörgum, fyrir kostaðinn við Héðinsfjarðargöng (ef þeir muna hvað þau eru löng).

En það er vissulega þarft að sjá dæmi um í hvað skattpeningar Íslendinga fara.  Það vekur þó athygli að engin dæmi eru tekin af því hvað t.d. rekstur ráðuneyta kostar, nú eða hvað meðalkostnaður er á þingmann.

Spurningin er svo hvort að menn hafi skoðanir á því hvort að eitthvað af þessu mætti skera niður?

Mánudagur allra mánudaga

Í dag var mánudagur allra mánudag, eða svo segja rannsóknir sem lesa má um á síðum Globe and mail.  Í dag var mánudagurinn eftir að klukkan var færð fram, mánudagurinn eftir að allir (það er að segja hér í Kanada) töpuðu heilum klukkutíma á miðnætti aðfaranótt sunnudags.

Reglulega hefur mátt heyra raddir þess efnis að Íslendingar ættu að taka þátt í þessum "leik".  Eins og það sé ekki nóg að vera á stöðugum sumartíma. 

Persónulega er ég mikið á móti því að vera að hræra í klukkunni tvisvar á ári, það er að mínu mati hrein vitleysa, hvort sem er á Íslandi eða í Kanada.

En hér er smá partur af því sem lesa má í fréttinni:

"In a 1996 study, University of British Columbia researchers found that the number of traffic accidents in Canada increases by 7 per cent on the first Monday of daylight time."

" In another study, Dr. Coren found that industrial workplace accidents bump up by 6 per cent in the two or three days after we spring forward.

"All this suggests that many of us are essentially impaired on that Monday following the switch to daylight savings time," Dr. Coren said.

But even employees who make it through work without a major mishap today probably won't get much accomplished.

Sleep deprivation taxes the brain's creative capacity, according to Dr. Coren, triggering poor judgment and decision making. "

"But the worst part of all comes via a new U.S. study showing that the switch to daylight time could be all for naught.

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that Indiana households adopting daylight time for the first time in 2006 spent an additional $8.6-million (U.S.) on electricity, debunking the energy-conser- vation argument governments have long given in favour of daylight time.

But don't expect lawmakers to heed the study and ease workers' suffering any time soon. Provincial governments across Canada followed the lead of the U.S. Congress and actually added four weeks to daylight time last year.

How should you cope with this dreaded day aside from avoiding the roads and begging off work?

"It's not rocket science,"

Dr. Coren said. "If everyone just went to bed an hour earlier, these problems wouldn't happen." "

Garson Romalis: Hvers vegna eyði ég fóstrum?

Stundum les ég greinar í dagblöðum, í tímaritum, nú eða á vefnum sem mér þykja hrein snilld, svo vel fram settar að þær hrífa mig með.  Ég rakst á eina slíka í kvöld, á vef National Post.

Greinin er skrifuð af Kanadíska lækninum Garson Romalis og er í raun ræða sem hann flutti nýlega í Toronto háskóla.  Yfirskrift ræðunnar er (lauslega þýtt):  Hvers vegna eyði ég fóstrum.

Þetta innlegg í umræðuna frá lækni sem sem hefur framkvæmt fóstureyðingar í áratugi og tvisvar sinnum verið sýnt banatilræði vegna þeirra, er tæpitungulaus og góð og holl lesning.

Hér í Kanada er ennþá verulega skiptar skoðanir um fóstureyðingarlöggjöfina og má oft sjá mótmæli gegn henni hér og þar, flest eru þau þó friðsamleg og sem betur fer sjaldgæfar undantekningar að ofbeldi eða morðtilraunum sé beitt í baráttunni.

En ég hvet alla til að lesa ræðuna, sem ég "peistaði" hér fyrir neðan en hana má annars finna á vef National Post.

"I am honoured to be speaking today, and honored to call Henry Morgentaler my friend.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

I had never heard of slippery elm. A buddy and I went down to skid row, and without too much difficulty, purchased some slippery elm bark to use as a visual aid in our presentation. Slippery elm is not sterile, and frequently contains spores of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. It is called slippery elm because, when it gets wet, it feels slippery. This makes it easier to slide slender pieces through the cervix where they absorb water, expand, dilate the cervix, produce infection and induce abortion. The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case.

After I graduated from University of British Columbia medical school in 1962, I went to Chicago, where I served my internship and Ob/Gyn residency at Cook County Hospital. At that time, Cook County had about 3,000 beds, and served a mainly indigent population. If you were really sick, or really poor, or both, Cook County was where you went.

The first month of my internship was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.

About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.

I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina. She survived.

I will never forget the jaundiced woman in liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life we were unable to save.

Today, in Canada and the U.S., septic shock from illegal abortion is virtually never seen. Like smallpox, it is a "disappeared disease."

I had originally been drawn to obstetrics and gynecology because I loved delivering babies. Abortion was illegal when I trained, so I did not learn how to do abortions in my residency, although I had more than my share of experience looking after illegal abortion complications.

In 1972, a couple of years after the law on abortion was liberalized, I began the practise of obstetrics and gynecology, and joined a three-man group in Vancouver. My practice partners and I believed strongly that a woman should be able to decide for herself if and when to have a baby. We were frequently asked to look after women who needed termination of pregnancy. Although I had done virtually no terminations in my training, I soon learned how. I also learned just how much demand there was for abortion services.

Providing abortion services can be quite stressful. Usually, an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.

I remember one 18-year-old patient who desperately wanted an abortion, but felt she could not confide in her mother, who was a nurse in another Vancouver area hospital. She impressed on me how important it was that her termination remain a secret from her family. In those years, parental consent was required if the patient was less than 19 years old. I obtained the required second opinion from a colleague, and performed an abortion on her.

About two weeks, later I received a phone call from her mother. She asked me directly "Did you do an abortion on my daughter?" Visions of legal suit passed through my mind as I tried to think of how to answer her question. I decided to answer directly and truthfully. I answered with trepidation, "Yes, I did" and started to make mental preparations to call my lawyer. The mother replied: "Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around."

Like many of my colleagues, I had been the subject of antiabortion picketing, particularly in the 1980s. I did not like having my office and home picketed, or nails thrown into my driveway, but viewed these picketers as a nuisance, exercising their right of free speech. Being in Canada, I felt I did not have to worry about my physical security.

I had been a medical doctor for 32 years when I was shot at 7:10 a.m., Nov. 8, 1994. For over half my life, I had been providing obstetrical and gynecological care, including abortions. It is still hard for me to understand how someone could think I should be killed for helping women get safe abortions.

I had a very severe gun shot wound to my left thigh. My thigh bone was fractured, large blood vessels severed, and a large amount of my thigh muscles destroyed. I almost died several times from blood loss and multiple other complications. After about two years of physical and emotional rehabilitation, with a great deal of support from my family and the medical community, I was able to resume work on a part-time basis. I was no longer able to deliver babies or perform major gynecological surgery. I had to take security measures, but I continued to work as a gynecologist, including providing abortion services. My life had changed, but my views on choice remained unchanged, and I was continuing to enjoy practicing medicine. I told people that I was shot in the thigh, not in my sense of humour.

Six years after the shooting, on July 11, 2000, shortly after entering the clinic where I had my private office, a young man approached me. There was nothing unusual about his appearance until he suddenly got a vicious look on his face, stabbed me in the left flank area and then ran away.

This could have been a lethal injury, but fortunately no vital organs were seriously involved, and after six days of hospital observation I was able to return home. The physical implications were minor, but the security implications were major. After two murder attempts, all my security advisors concurred that I was at increased risk for another attack.

My family and I had to have some serious discussions about my future. The National Abortion Federation provided me with a very experienced personal security consultant. He moved into our home and lived with us for three days, talked with us, assessed my personality, visited the places that I worked in and gave me security advice. In those three days, he got to know me well. After he finished his evaluation, when I was dropping him off at the airport, his departing words to me were "Gary, you have to go back to work."

About two months after the stabbing, I returned to the practise of medicine, but with added security measures. Since the year 2000, I have restricted my practise exclusively to abortion provision.

These acts of terrorist violence have affected virtually every aspect of my and my family's life. Our lives have changed forever. I must live with security measures that I never dreamed about when I was learning how to deliver babies.

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, "Look at that. We saved two lives today."

I love my work. I get enormous personal and professional satisfaction out of helping people, and that includes providing safe, comfortable, abortions. The people that I work with are extraordinary, and we all feel that we are doing important work, making a real difference in peoples' lives.

I can take an anxious woman, who is in the biggest trouble she has ever experiences in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life.

After an abortion operation, patients frequently say "Thank You Doctor." But abortion is the only operation I know of where they also sometimes say "Thank you for what you do."

I want to tell you one last story that I think epitomizes the satisfaction I get from my privileged work. Some years ago I spoke to a class of University of British Columbia medical students. As I left the classroom, a student followed me out. She said: "Dr. Romalis, you won't remember me, but you did an abortion on me in 1992. I am a secondyear medical student now, and if it weren't for you I wouldn't be here now.""

Eiga allir rétt á þvi að eignast börn?

Þessi frétt vakti mig til umhugsunar og ég er ekki alveg viss um hver afstaða mín til þessara mála er.  Það er hægt að finna mjög góð rök bæði með og á móti, en það er ákaflega þarft að þessi mál séu rædd.  Það er auðvitað ljóst að vísindunum fer sífellt fram og ekki ólíklegt að möguleikar til að "búa til" börn verði ólíkt fleiri en við höfum í dag.

En hvað mælir með að einhleypar konur fari í tæknifrjóvgun?

Vissulega er það jákvætt að þær sem langi að eignast barn, sé gert það kleyft og ef til vill mætti segja að það komi engum við sú ákvörðun, þetta sé einfaldlega val þeirrar konu sem barnið muni eignast. 

Ennfremur má benda á að eins og frjósemi hefur þróast, þá þufa Íslendingar, rétt eins og svo margar aðrar þjóðir, á fleiri börnum að halda.  Það er líka ljóst að börn sem yrðu til með þessum hætti væru velkomin í heiminn.

En það er líka hægt að finna rök á móti "framleiðslu" á börnum sem þessari.

Spurningin er líka hvernig lög ættu að gilda um tæknifrjóvgun og hvaða aðkomu ríkið eigi að hafa að þessu?

Er sjálfsagt að allar einhleypar konur eigi rétt á tæknifrjóvgun?  Á ríkið að koma að kostnaðinum?

Á t.d. einhleyp 19. ára stúlka að eiga rétt á því að fara í tæknifrjóvun? Eða 25. ára? Á heilbrigðiskerfið að borga kostnaðinn?  Eigum við að "framleiða" einstæða foreldra?  Er ekki stærstur hluti "fátækra" barna á Íslandi, börn einstæðra foreldra?

Og hvað með karlana?  Eiga einhleypir karlmenn líka að eiga rétt á því að "eignast" börn?  Ætti ríkið að borga kostnað við "leigumóður" ef einhleypir karlmenn geta fundið hana?  Eða ætti ríkið að reyna að bjóða upp á "leigumæður"?

Stærstu spurningarnar eru líklega hvort að það teljist til sjálfsagðra réttinda að eignast börn og síðan, ef svo er hver á aðkoma ríkisins að vera í þeim málum?

Ég er ekki búin að mynda mér skoðun í þessu máli, þetta er ekki einfalt mál.

Ég ætla að velta þessu fyrir mér eitthvað lengur. 

 

Tugir einhleypra kvenna vilja tæknifrjóvgun

Elskist, búið saman og bjargið umhverfinu?

Ég verð að viðurkenna að ég hef alltaf lúmskt gaman af því þegar mál eru skoðuð frá óvenjulegum sjónarhornum.

Þannig er einmitt með grein sem ég rakst á þegar ég var að flækjast á vef Globe and Mail.  Þar er fjallað um þau áhrif sem skilnaðir hafa á umhverfið.  Þar er verið að tala um loftslagsmál, aukna vatns og rafmagnsnotkun, meira rými og svo má lengi áfram telja.

Í stuttu máli má segja að vísindamennirnir komist að þeirri niðurstöðu að skilnaðir séu umhverfisvá.

Gamla góða slagorðinu yrði þá líklega breytt í "Make Love, Not Pollution". 

Skyldi þetta vera rætt á Bali?  En hér þurfa auðvitað þær stöllur Jóhanna og Þórunn að taka höndum saman.

En í greininni má m.a. lesa eftirfaranda:

"Now there is one more reason for couples to try to stay together: Researchers have added divorce to the long list of things that are bad for the environment.

U.S. researchers, in a study believed to be the first to link marriage breakdown with its environmental impact, have concluded divorce definitely isn't green.

They say it leads to "resource-inefficient lifestyles" that dramatically increase the consumption of water and electricity, and demands for housing.

Although it isn't surprising that the study found separated couples and their children consume more than they would had their families remained intact, the amount of damage they cause to the environment hasn't been quantified in such detail before."

"The study found that in the United States, divorced households spent between 46 and 56 per cent more on electricity and water for each person than in married households.

Looking at that country in 2005, it said divorced households could have saved more than 38 million rooms, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and about 2.4 trillion litres of water if their resource use matched that of married couples.

The amounts of water, housing and electricity indicated by the U.S. figures are the equivalent of a very large city. The water alone is equal to the amount used by about 13 million people, at typical North American usage rates, and the extra spending on the two utilities cost $10.5-billion (U.S.)."