Contraception Costs

Rush's obscene comments are based either on a profound ignorance of how most woman-based contraception works, or on a profound cynicism about the American public's ignorance of how it works. Or (since we're talking about Rush, here) both.

I'm a computer scientist, so let me put it in computer science terms.

Cost of the most popular male-based contraceptives (i.e. condoms): O(n), where n is the number of sexual encounters. (Withdrawal not included.)

Cost of most female-based contraceptives (e.g. pill, IUD): O(1), with a large constant.

For non-computer scientists: to oversimplify somewhat, a function f(n) is O(n) if it is roughly proportional to n. In other words, as you increase n, you also increase f(n). A function f(n) is O(1) if it really doesn't matter how big n gets, it's always the same value. A good example of an O(n) function might be cost-of-gas-per-week as a function of number of miles driven. As the number of miles goes up, so does the amount I'm paying for gas (assuming prices don't drop). An example of an O(1) function: price-per-gallon as a function of the number of miles driven. It really doesn't matter how many miles I'm driving -- the cost per gallon remains the same.

Which brings me back to Rush. He thought he was being so clever with accusing Ms. Fluke of having so much sex that she couldn't afford to pay for it. Whereas for most forms of birth control that are fully in a woman's control (and I think that last bit is significant), it really doesn't matter whether you're getting it once an hour or (as primly as Rush or Rick could desire) conceding it once a year...the cost is the same. And it's jolly expensive, even for once a year.

Which is in stark contrast to the most popular male method: pay per use, and a fraction of the cost of the dinner/movie that precedes its use.

Why is that?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we're having this national conversation about who pays for birth control. Who wants to pay more to let women have control?

Should we regulate babies?

There's some very thought-provoking discussion on assisted reproductive technologies in today's New York Times Room for Debate section.

The fertility industry in the United States is largely unregulated. This lets consumers and business people dictate what is acceptable, what is normal and what is allowable -- including the extreme cases like the one sperm donor who had 150 children. Are such situations a problem? Many other nations, like Britain, regulate the fertility industry more closely. Should the U.S. emulate them?

Personally, I think our society might benefit from a little regulation in this area...at very least things like truth-in-advertising about the successes and problems of these technologies, requirements on practitioners' training, quality control on procedures, that sort of thing. However, I am horrified to read that to the extent that there are current FDA guidelines, they suggest that gay men should not be sperm donors unless they have been celibate for 5 years, ostensibly to prevent AIDS issues. Don't straight men get AIDS, too???

Bill Gates is getting serious about crap

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is apparently sponsoring research to reinvent the toilet!

I think it's fabulous.

A couple of years back, BBC reported that public sanitation was considered by doctors the best medical advance in over a century. It's really sad that it's not available for a large portion of the world. Toilet technology improvements could really make inroads into that. In particular, the ability to process sewage locally, with minimal access to water infrastructure could make huge improvements in quality of life.

Apart from health considerations, the other big benefit they are looking into is use of raw sewage for energy generation (possibly using the energy for processing the waste, to recover water and minerals). Why should it only be cattle whose waste products produce power?

Brain power

Annapurna informed me the other day that the human brain runs on about 15W. I couldn't believe that so I looked around a bit. Seems like 15's a little bit of an underestimate, but only a little. Most sources I could find (and I will be the first to admit that I have not done a thorough investigation...I really couldn't find any super-trustworthy sources, like say NIH/NIMH/NLM) say that the brain operates on 20-40W of power. That's kind of like the lightbulb in your fridge or oven.

Now I understand why the human species is, on the whole, rather dim-witted.

Curioser and curioser...

Now here's a colorful character: evolutionary/genetic biologist and general purpose radical JBS Haldane.

While trying to attribute a different quote that turned out to be his, I ran across the following, which I thought was quite in line with my previous posting:

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Turns out he's got quite a few other zingers. The one I was looking for was the one quoted often by Sapolsky (who, though not quite so zinger-prone, himself, nevertheless provides some incredibly entertaining science writing): I'd lay down my life to save two brothers or eight cousins.

I'll have to pick up a real biography.