http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11545519

I'm not sure what I think about this. erm... yeah I do.. I'm all for it

I can see more pros than cons (no stereotype puns intended) tbh, though would we be on an ethical slippery slope?

They pay someone £200 to have a sterilisation. Fair enough, the impact on the NHS will be less than if a drug addict has a child, especially if they have complex needs. But what happens when the addict is clean. Who foots the bill for if and when these (reformed) addicts want to have children and want a reversal of their sterilisation?

This is basically mutilating someone because of their life style choices. A £200 bribe may, on the face of it, sound good to the person concerned, but I don’t think this is the answer. The drug addiction problem won’t go away. The cost to pick up the mess left won’t go away either.

Agreed.

This is just sweeping the real problem under the carpet. The ringleader was quite clearly only concerned with the children - but what about the addict? Yes this measure stops the chemical addiction from being passed on to a child but it does absolutely nothing to help the addict - the addict is also a human being. It seems all-too redolent of the trend that children are cute and cute things are worth saving whereas addicts aren't and don't deserve attention.

This isn't an answer - it's just a very convenient means for the comfortable classes to carry on ignoring an age-old cycle of dehumanisation that condemns thousands to ill-health, fear, loneliness, poverty and an early death.

And they'll have £200 to spend on more drugs

I hate to invoke Godwin, but this does invite comparison with the Nazi party of Germany’s approach to undesirable members of society. As well as mass genocide, they also encouraged the mentally and physically disabled to be sterilised.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention

The concern with the sterilisation of drug addicts is that it demonstrates a similar strain of thinking. Is the aim to stop children being born with a drug habit, or is the aim to remove a certain kind of person from the gene pool - one which is clearly predisposed to drug addiction, and by an extension likely to engage in criminal and other anti-social (and clearly un-American) behaviour? I am guessing (and this means that I could be wrong) that Barbara Harris is a right wing Christian with serious Republican leanings. I guess it’s only here because there isn’t a requirement to learn a new language.

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Reading some of the comments in the article, it seems that this solution to the problem is not being too well received. To me, it seems a very sinister move down a path which we should not be considering following.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10143746

As long as they fully understand that they can't ever have children, even when they're clean, I don't see a problem.
It should be made clear to them that the NHS won't fund a reversal.
£200 is nothing compared to the cost to the state of looking after an unwanted child, or a child who's parents are too stoned to care for them. There are too many children stuck in care homes already, and that kind of upbringing does them no favours. Many don't find a happy foster family until it's too late.

So they will not be committing crime for one day.

Cant we... erm.... send them to... Australia?

Yes but they are already returning to the scenes of the crimes. Why do you think we have so many Aussie barmen?

The idea of this disturbs me. Thin end of the wedge.

With all due respect, can we stop with this whole 'mutilation' claptrap and comparison with you know who? 'Cos it's total rubbish. Nobody is being pinned to a table and cut up. Nobody is being forced to do anything. Anyone who takes the money is volunteering for the procedure of their own free will. The first person in the UK to agree was interviewed on the radio this morning. He said he'd come to the conclusion he wouldn't make a responsible parent and therefore a vasectomy was a good idea - the quote was "how can I look after a kid when I can barely look after myself?" and the 200 quid was just the thing that made him get off his arse and actually get it done.

We still have the principle in the UK that you are allowed to make decisions for yourself until you're actually shown to be incompetent. That includes the right to choose this deal. If we say every addict doesn't have the right to choose for themselves then you're on an even worse road than the charity is offering, because at the end of that road is every addict in the UK being locked up in a sanitarium 'for their own safety'.

You either treat addicts as people who make their own choices - in which case what this charity is doing is legal and while you may not like it that's neither here nor there - or we treat addicts as people legally incapable of making their own choices, which is to effectively section every single one of them, which is what the Nazis actually did. As it stands, a lot of people seem to be arguing that addicts have the right to make choices, as long as they only make the ones that cause themselves harm.

The choice the charity offers is a pretty harsh one and one that is definitely controversial. But it's not eugenics and it's not Nazism. Nobody is being banned from having children. Nobody is being sterilized against their will. Anybody who thinks what the charity is doing and Nazism is anything approaching a valid comparison clearly has no clue exactly how utterly diabolical that regime actually was.

The thing that strikes me is.. You know Douglas Adams said the only person actually fit to rule the universe is someone who doesn't actually want to? It strikes me if you're an addict and you're compus mentis enough to decide to go for the deal being offered then you're probably at least part way to being able to deal with the issues anyway.

I don't approve what the charity is doing, because I think it's embedded with neocon 'won't somebody please think of the children' doggerel. But some of the arguments against the charity are hogwash and hysterical hogwash at that.

Jon

The competance of a person to make such a decision while at the stage of their life where they are "using" is questionable - in my opinion.

I don't have any Children
Nor do I want any

If I pretent to be an addict can I get £200?