I don't think your sentiment was intended as insensitive, but the pain of not being able to bare one's own children is a deep and crushing pain. This pain is why people spend thousands of dollars to try to have their own? It's simplistic to write off the urge to procreate as a silly selfish thing (if it were we'd all not be here.) Adoption is NOT an easy process and can be much more expensive that in vitro fertilization. International adoptions can be even more heartbreakingly complex and expensive. Sure, if you're white you could adopt an equally deserving and precious minority kid who is less expensive (supply and demand works with human beings, too,) but then you have to consider the ramifications of how one's family will accept this child. Some families have the stomach to ignore racist Uncle Joe's comments about the "chocolate" baby, but some don't. I'm very thankful you were able to grow your own children, but it doesn't come easy to many, many people. My wife and I were facing that very issue, but were blessed to be able to have our own children with the help of some drugs. I'm not sure what we'd have done if we hadn't gotten pregnant. We're now growing our second child to be born soon and had to again use (drug) help to get pregnant. We were faced with the quesiton of (1) spend thousands on IVF (2) spends thousands on adopting a sibling for our child (3) spend else on a minority baby and face the prejudice of our families (4) put that money in our childs college fund (5) donate it to some needing 3rd world child care organization. Not an easy choice and I'm grateful we didn't have to answer that question now that we're pregnant. I agree that I don't like it either, but we started down that slippery slope when we started helping mother nature. The challenge is as a society deciding when enough is enough. I'm comfortable with stopping at weeding out the diseases, but not comfortable with the sex or "appearance" of kids. We're now in the age where there is no more "usual" way. Technology again provides too many choices for it to be simplistic any more.

To read some good critique of the whole Carpal Tunnel problem, Google "Norton Hadler" or "Dr Norton Hadler". I had the luck of sitting by him on a flight one time and learned a good deal about his research. He's the devil's advocate against repetitive stress injuries.

My flight with him by chance coincided with me just having watched (this was several years ago) a 20/20 John Stossel report about a controversial new doctor who treated back problems with a lecture. John Stossel had suffered from upper back/neck pain for years. The doctors lecture was that basically, back pain was the new fad stress injury (much like ulcers used to be). The body reacts to "un-dealt with stress" by causing pain as a reminder. The way to treat it was to basically tell yourself, "I'm stressed, I'll be OK." John Stossel was very skeptical and tried it and had the first releif for his pain in years.

Dr. Hadler (it turns out) was also consulted about the 20/20 article. He says his view wasn't as extreme as the "lecturing" Dr.. At the time, Dr. Hadler was often called in to debunk workers comp claims about Carpal Tunnel in that Carpal Tunnel is a very specific and limited problem (often mis-diagnosed). He says most people experience pain because they're unhappy.

Not sure I quite agree with all of that, but it's food for thought.