future knowledge

did anyone watch the butterfly effect?
or that simpsons episode with the time-travelling toaster?

if you could change things, to what extent would you want to be able to predict the future?

so we were told about friends of my pastor who were the proud parents of a new-born baby, who happened to have down syndrome. they were, and rightly so, overjoyed.

the question remains, would they, i, you, change the past if you could?
i would guess the answer for many would be, no, to think that child, whom you grow to know and love, would not have existed were there a different egg/sperm combo, is a thought not worth entertaining.

but this is a different question, is it not, to whether any pre-pregnancy screening should be thought through.

this was all re-prompted (i started this post some 10 months ago!) by this talk a couple of weeks ago at my old church, entiltled Infertility, IVF and God, which raised a bucketload of interesting questions, mainly by just reiterating the can of complexities IVF opens up, the possibility of 5 parents not being as unreal as we may've thought (as this article clearly shows)

the excellent movie Code 46 just adds another layer of complexity to this whole issue (asking the question, what if you're genetically related but have absolutely zero familial connection due to genetic engineering - should you still be prohibited from the possibility of relationship?)


i really don't have a lot to say about this, but to remind myself of the complexities of living in this third-millenial world we've arrived upon, like aliens with a road map assembled from distant radio-telescopic images.
as kermit once said, it ain't easy being green