'Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal and US IT giant Palantir' (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Everyone has said things that, in hindsight, they regret. For Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal and US IT giant Palantir, it might have been his claim this year that the NHS makes people sick. Or that the British people’s love for it is a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome. In Thiel’s case, however, there is no evidence that he regrets what he said, or that there will be consequences for saying it. Because, in spite of his apparent disdain for the NHS, Palantir looks set to win a half-billion pound contract to process our health records.
That a private American company should gain such a foothold in the NHS would normally cause concern among privacy and health service advocates. And that it could be Palantir — part-funded in its early days by the CIA and with Western armies among its clients — is causing high anxiety. “Is Palantir really the kind of company we want at the very heart of the National Health Service?” asks Cori Crider, director of Foxglove, a campaign group dedicated to challenging the excesses of tech giants. “This is a company who, at the start of the pandemic, had no track record of working with healthcare staff. They’re not a healthcare company. They weren’t a health data company. They were essentially a tech company who supported spies, police, the military and border forces.”
Palantir, in partnership with Accenture, is in the running with Quantexa, a British company partnered with IBM, and Oracle Cerner to build the “Federated Data Platform” (FDP), described by the NHS as a system “which will enable NHS organisations to bring together operational data – currently stored in separate systems – to support staff to access the information they need in one safe and secure environment”. NHS England says there are currently no plans to include GP records in the FDP, but privacy campaigners fear that that could change with mission creep, and if it did, Palantir could gain access to them. The winner of the FDP contract was supposed to have been named in September, an announcement then delayed to the middle of this month, and now said to be imminent — but few in the NHS believe it will be anyone but Palantir.
The NHS — budget this year £182 billion — has the largest repository of health data in the world. It services around a million GP appointments a day, and over a quarter of a million hospital appointments. According to consultants Ernst and Young, the information gleaned from NHS activities could be worth £9.6 billion a year. With the advent of AI, mining this treasure trove of data could mean the discovery of better medicines and treatments, improved patient care and vast savings. But in the wrong hands, it could see the NHS being used as a cash-cow, and it could mean a loss of privacy, the end of patient trust, and the slow death of the NHS as we know it.
So, how did Palantir get in the running — and why are they being hotly tipped as a shoo-in for the FDP contract, worth £480m over seven years? The company, named after the crystal “seeing stones” in J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, was founded by Thiel, a Stanford law graduate, in 2003 with the intention in his words of adapting PayPal’s anti-fraud software in order to “reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties” (he had sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002). Before the 9/11 attack on New York, the US intelligence agencies had been blind-sided; Thiel was convinced his seeing stones would give them better vision in the future.
An early investor in Palantir was the CIA, through a venture capital arm named In-Q-Tel. The first of four iterations of Thiel’s data systems — Palantir Gotham — is used by the US National Security Agency, the FBI, the Western military, police, US immigration services and fraud investigators. It is capable of pulling together vast amounts of data and making connections that could solve problems insoluble to mere humans. It is currently being used by the Ukrainian army in its war with Russia.
There have been reports — neither confirmed nor denied by Palantir — that its software helped to locate Osama bin Laden. Former CIA director George Tenet once said he wished the agency had had Gotham before 9/11, the suggestion being that it might have pulled together disparate dots into one large picture of terror plot planning. Another iteration, called Metropolis, is a finance analytics platform widely used by hedge funds and banks. In March 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, executives from major tech companies, including Palantir, Google, Meta and Amazon, were asked by the UK government whether they could help with the planning and implementation of its responses to Covid-19. Palantir immediately stepped in, offering the use of another of its systems, Foundry… for just £1. Its offer was accepted by beleaguered health officials.
Palantir advisers were embedded in the NHS while Foundry was used in planning to effectively distribute medicines, ventilators and vaccines, monitor staff levels and intensive care bed availability — creating the kind of joined-up health response that would not have been previously possible with the UK’s fragmented network of trusts and care providers. Once a vaccine became available, it was involved in its rollout. By the end of the pandemic, Palantir’s £1 punt had paid off.
“A £1 contract seemed odd at the time, but it obviously gave them a foot in the door,” says Dr David Wrigley, digital lead on the BMA’s GP Committee, which has expressed concerns over the use of patients’ data on the FDP. “They will have learned about NHS systems and contracts, seen how the system operates and how best to bid for other contracts going forward.” Palantir’s next move to curry favour with the UK government was to offer its services again, for six months, to help with the logistics of housing Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion. But this time it charged nothing whatsoever. The company says it is proud of the role that it played at a time of great suffering for Ukrainian families. But this move did its relationship with the UK, and its long-term income, no harm at all.
Since then, Palantir has been awarded several other NHS contracts worth £60 million, with none going out to tender. Last month, it was awarded £5.5million to continue running Homes for Ukraine over the next 12 months for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) — again with no tendering process. The probity of this deal was questioned by the National Audit Office (NAO) in a report published last week. It pointed out that: “In February 2023, the Government’s Chief Commercial Officer, wrote to Palantir noting his concern about the practice of offering services to public sector customers for a zero or nominal cost to gain a commercial foothold, contrary to the principles of public procurement which usually require open competition.” Asked about this criticism, Palantir said there was: “nothing unusual in a business offering a prospective customer the opportunity to trial before purchase. Indeed the Government’s own guidance states that ‘where a service is being outsourced for the first time, a pilot should be run’ and that ‘if you’re buying a product, consider asking for a demonstration or trial on a smaller scale’.”
But a more polemical vision of how Thiel sees British people’s relationship with the NHS was revealed in January when he made some unguarded comments during a Q&A session at the Oxford Union debating society. He said they were suffering from “Stockholm syndrome”, held ideologically captive by their healthcare system, and that the NHS needed “market mechanisms” to improve, adding that: “In theory, you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over… In practice, you have to somehow make it all backwards compatible in all these ridiculous British ways.” He said British people needed to stop thinking the NHS was “the most wonderful thing in the world” and accept that it is an “iatrogenic” institution. An iatrogenic illness is a malady caused by the treatment itself. “Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb, and the NHS makes people sick,” he said.
Palantir quickly distanced itself from his comments. Joanna Peller, the company’s UK health lead, said: “Peter Thiel made these comments as a private individual and our CEO [Alex Karp, at Palantir since 2004] has made it clear he firmly disagrees with them and that he wishes ‘we had a health care system in the US that served the poor and underserved as well as I perceive the British system does’.” Few people in the NHS would argue that its countrywide IT systems couldn’t be improved, but many billions of pounds have been wasted in previous unsuccessful attempts to merge them. At the moment, there are 42 administered by “Integrated Care Systems” comprising hospital trusts, local authorities and care providers.
The first attempt at digitising and uniting records held by GPs and hospital trusts was launched in 2002 and called the National Programme for IT. It began with a budget of £6.2 billion but was mired in technical difficulties and a lack of trust among health staff. It was scrapped in 2011 after racking up £12 billion in costs. One of the private contractors who pulled out of the scheme before it was junked was Accenture, Palantir’s current bidding partner. In 2021 the government launched the General Practice Data for Planning and Research system, designed to enable records to be used for more than simple personal care. Advances in technology meant that the data in them could be used for the same purposes envisaged for the FDP — better care, medicines and healthcare planning.
However, patients were advised that where their data was to be shared for anything beyond care — for research or planning — they had the right to withhold their data under an NHS “National Data Opt-Out”, and they did in their droves. “More than a million people opted out because there was a lack of trust in the system,” says Foxglove’s Crider. “And each time someone opts out, the data set gets smaller and so its usefulness for research is diminished.” Sam Smith, policy lead at medConfidential, which campaigns for patient privacy, says he believes even more people will want to opt-out if Palantir wins the FDP contract. But there is confusion over whether they will be able to. Smith explains:
“The NHS England website says people will not be able to opt out, but this is contradictory because we all have the right to opt out of sharing our personal data if it is to be used for anything other than patient care, for purposes such as research and planning — but that is exactly what FDP is supposed to be used for… Last month, Sir Chris Whitty [chief medical officer for England] urged people not to opt out precisely because their information could help with research and planning. So what is it to be? Can people opt out, or can’t they?”
In a letter to the Health and Social Care Committee in August, Lord Markham, under-secretary of state for health, said the government was considering reforming the National Data Opt-Out. I asked NHS England whether these reforms would make it easier or harder for patients to opt out, but it did not answer the question. On the subject of Palantir and the FDP, a spokesperson said:
“The NHS is conducting a fair and transparent procurement process for a supplier of the federated data platform, in line with public contracts regulations, and this process has not yet concluded… Better use of data brings huge benefits for patients — a federated data platform will ensure more joined-up care and better use of resources, connecting existing NHS data in one secure environment to help speed up diagnosis and reduce waiting times and hospital stays.”
Palantir’s Peller emphasises that patients’ data is safe with the company. “Unlike many other technology companies, we’re not in the business of collecting, mining or selling data,” she says. “What we do is provide tools that help customers understand and organise the information that they hold, along with training and support in using those tools. We are legally defined as the ‘data processor’ while the customer is the ‘data controller’. Customers retain full ownership of their data. Palantir is granted no rights to such data and can only carry out that processing which it is instructed to do by the customer, while UK government customer data is only hosted in the UK.” She says Palantir is “now helping to reduce the care backlog and ensure patients receive vital treatment sooner in 36 NHS Trusts across England”. These are trusts invited (some say pressured) by NHS England to run trials of Foundry, and this is the reason Palantir is considered a shoo-in for the FDP contract — it is too embedded to get out.
However, in response to a written Parliamentary question in March, health minister Will Quince said nine of these had been “paused” while two had been suspended. A variety of reasons were later given, ranging from a lack of funds to administrative delays, and assurances were made in August that some of the paused pilots were up and running again. But at least two — Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital, and Milton Keynes University Hospital — have indicated that the system wasn’t right for them. I asked NHS England how many of the 36 pilots were currently operational, but received no answer. This only confuses the picture, as Palantir insists they all are.
Whichever company is announced as the provider of the FDP, its success will not only be judged on whether the NHS is finally blessed with the joined-up digital wizardry it so badly needs, but also on whether it manages to provide that and retain the trust of patients. “If a person goes to see their GP and holds back important or embarrassing information because they’re afraid it will be shared with a private company, then that is not only dangerous for the patient, but also very sad,” says the BMA’s Wrigley. “Because that could mean the end of the doctor-patient relationship as we know it.”
Steve Boggan is an investigative journalist and former Chief Reporter at The Independent. He is also the author of Follow the Money and Gold Fever.
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SubscribeWe need to put an actual wall around the USA. Let them keep their bat shittery.
BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL!
In reality you only need build a wall around a few Democrat-run cities. Problem solved.
Thank you. There is a very limited geographic area in the US that produces this nonsense. Unfortunately they’re determined to spread it regardless of means.
you can be certain that no small number of us living here are just as baffled by the batshittery. But a wall around some of our bluer cities, one like the Berlin Wall to keep the natives inside, is not a bad idea.
No I;m afraid we have them here too. You not only have to have your baby as late (46-50) as humanly possible you have to do really dangerous strenuous exercise right up to the last day and if people intervene because they fear for you & your future child you report them to the police. When you have had your child you buy as large a child-carrier as is on the market, just to wheel around and get in people’s way. Your child never rides in it-they are left free to annoy people in the museums , art galleries , theatres etc which these yuppies still expect to go to.I see Harry & Meghan are trying their best to get Archie to rebel against them later-Archie didn’t want a waffle maker from the Queen for christmas-H & M did. They are now buying hats ( makes a change from goats) in his name for his birthday.Did his great grand-mother send him the le creuset set of pans he always wanted for his second birthday?
If you believe the US is equivalent to the NYT then you don’t understand much about the US.
But there is a silver lining to the ideas one finds in the NYT. If people who believe that having children is reactionary don’t have them, there will be fewer confused children growing up in the US. And likely fewer confused adults in a generation. Don’t forget, we laugh when we hear terms like “birthing person” and “chest feeding”. There have always throughout history been people with weird ideas. Why would our time be any different? Expecting our time to be free of freaks is a bit arrogant, isn’t it?
The difference now is that the fashion goes viral in less than 24 hours.
And? You believe that people who want children will suddenly based on a NYT article go, nah, I’m not having kids? People who don’t want kids should not have them.
I believe that young people almost always follow the fashion – so why not?
If young people and their dogs think it is important to post a picture of themselves kneeling down, holding BLM posters so that all of their friends can see then it is completely possible that a young woman, surrounded by friends will follow the fashion of the moment.
Sure some will. Do you believe that all young people are doing this? What’s the evidence for that?
That is a silly question. This is a discussion and people say what they think. There doesn’t have to be a list of references for each comment.
Okay. Then think everyone is posting pictures of themselves kneeling if you’d like and not having kids because of a NYT article.
It only takes a handful of movers, fashionistas, celebs, movie stars to form a fashion. Then it really takes off.
Wait up! Some of us aren’t indoctrinated. Just put the wall up around California and a few other ‘woke’ states.
Ha ha, made me laugh that did thank you!
“Elsewhere, writer, lawyer and anti-natalist Jill Filipovic announced that she’d love to read more articles by women who regret having had children.”
Doesn’t this anecdote just show how divorced from reality some people are? To suggest that a mother should publicly admit, in writing, that she regrets having kids, without reflecting on how her children might feel about being dismissed in print as a burden or inconvenience!
Some folks have lost all sensibility to the ever-demanding fealty of being ‘woke’. Brace for the real-world consequences of pressing mothers into saying they regret having their kids. I mean, that will probably help their kids be well-rounded and productive citizens… Right?
Have we run out of first-world problems? The idea that women would attack another woman for having chosen to have a child is so far from normal that words fail.
A very precise and pertinent article that once again demonstrates the Democrat/progressive dystopia. Remember, these are the people who lit up the Empire State Building to celebrate ‘full term abortion’ (I am not anti-abortion but to celebrate the legality of full term abortion in this way is simply grotesque).
Anyway, they have now outsourced every area of their life, including reproduction. Meanwhile, small children are constantly being hit by stray bullets in NYC as shootings have increased by 93% since 2019, so their investment could easily be wiped out very quickly.
I wonder how much money there is in this family planning , as Biden seems to make it a big part of his policy? I know American health service is different from ours but I thought contraception was sorted out years ago-so that mostly , there shouldn’t be much call for these services.Yet it has almost become a badge of honour for some women to say they had abortions as though we were still in the 1950’s
Contraception was sorted out years ago, it’s cheap and freely available all over the US. But you have to actually get it and use it.
Contraception was sorted out years ago, it’s cheap and freely available all over the US.
Is that really true about lighting up the Empire State Building? If so, it is indeed truly grotesque. What would the same people have thought of lighting up the ESB to celebrate the death of George Floyd? Also grotesque, but unlike those full term abortions GF was at least given a chance in life before he was terminated (and did many bad things along the way, it might be added).
Yes, it is true about the Empire State building
GF should have been terminated many years ago and saved us all a shed load of trouble.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it like that.
Do you honestly believe that all Democrats are woke?
You are right to describe celebration of full-term abortion as grotesque.
The young woman next door is expecting her second. It is cheering up our little part of the estate. We have had three deaths in the last couple of years. A baby is a sign that life will go on.
Demography is destiny and the future belongs to those who turn up for it. So Mark Steyn says and of course he is right.
Who listens to these morons described in the USA. ? Nobody I know would give them the time of day.
All I know is that having a good few grandchildren has made my life immeasurably better . More of course to worry about but that is a condition of life we all have to accept.
My mother used to say ‘My children are my jewels’
Nothing I can add to that.
That’s a very descriptive way to look at it. The future really does belong to those who will be here for it, not necessarily for those who are here now. We are the present, everyone living today is the present. Any one of us can tomorrow not be here. But not everyone wants to be part of creating those who will be here in the future. And that’s okay.
Grandchildren are the best!
First rate Darwin Award! … We should be thankful that this particular bunch of mutations choose not to replicate.
if only they were content to keep those decisions among themselves. When a 25-year old is attacked for choosing to have a child – as this article mentions – that sounds like Darwinists who want to grow their cult.
They have no choice but to keep such decisions personal. How are they going to stop other people from having children? And again, let’s not call this an attack on anyone. If someone says you are a woman who had a child, is that an attack? Even if they say it with great vitriol. Now a physical attack would, of course, be different. But someone saying another woman should not have had a child? Not much of an attack, just an opinion really.
The ‘wokes’ primary viewpoint is all about perceived power dynamics. So if a ‘woke’ is chastizing a mother… errr.. I mean if a ‘birthing person’ is being challenged by a … uh… ‘non-birthing person?’, you can be sure that the interaction will be far more aggressive than a simple benign statement of rhetoric. Stay tuned for the next demonstration.
The further the left wing crazies become disconnected from the real population, the greater the losses the Dems will experience in local and Federal elections through 2022.
Local and State have been trending Right for a while. But as a notorious Commie once said, ” It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes”.
The last paragraph is particularly sickening because it is true.
Most Feminists seem to say something like Children are expensive and troublesome. They interfere with one’s ability to enjoy life to the fullest. There are lesser creatures in the population who can breed.
The reality is that if I change my mind I will just exploit one of these lesser creatures. These rich entitled Feminists show that they do not care a ….. about the wrong type of women, The poor, “deplorable” type of woman, who ‘s bodies can be bought by Feminists to clean their homes and surrogate their kids.
If we flip the conversation around, its always been a societal norm to basically be treated as a bit of a weirdo for saying you didn’t fancy having children or even saying that you didn’t want kids “just yet”.
People are only complaining now the shoe is on the other foot. Its not “socialist” or “progressive” to not want kids but neither is it right wing to fancy having a kid early on in your life.
Yes, the standard criticism meted out to those (like me) who decided in the last decades of the 20th century not to have children for whatever reasons was that they were ‘selfish’.
People can be very intrusive, you don’t normally want to go through your gynae history with people. However if you say something like I’d have loved to have children but unfortunately (invented medical ailment) , which makes them look cruel for asking. If you change your mind later , the child was a miracle.
Or just say no, I don’t have children. Who in the world would go through their medical history after being asked if they have children? Why would you foist that on anyone? People don’t look cruel when YOU foist YOUR medical information on them when they have asked a really simple, normal question. Instead you look like you don’t understand what is inappropriate to share. We have all had people talk about their medical conditions in inappropriate ways in public. (My elderly parents do this continuously) Do you really want to be that person? This is precisely what I mean when I refer to having a chip on one’s shoulder.
These are just conversational type questions. No one is asking for your medical history. Have we forgotten how to have a conversation? These are normal human questions.
This is very similar to how grandparents in mixed race marriages have no qualms about discussing whether the baby will be black or white.
Today, they will still ask the same things but will feel a little more embarrassed about it. But why should that be?
To me it’s not at all similar. Asking someone if they have children is a normal, human type question. Along the lines of what do you do for a living? Have you lived in Tampa long? Are your kids enjoying summer camp? Do you have any siblings? No one is asking for deep, dark secret information. No one is trying to ferret out your medical information. And foisting it on them makes you look daft.
I think you agreed with me. Asking whether a baby will be black or white is a normal, human type question, not a racist slur.
Actually I said nothing at all about that. Mostly because it’s irrelevant.
Maybe but there are people who chose not to have children who walk around with very big chips on their shoulders over it.
Chips on their shoulder? Not sure I understand this. Can you elaborate please?
BTW there are many examples of women who chose not to have children because they wanted to focus on what they preferrred to do – such as write (George Eliot, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf….). If it’s a choice made out of a positive preference for another life it doesn’t tend to produce ‘chips on shoulders’!
Of course it’s a choice. But any choice is one you don’t have to militantly walk around with a chip in your shoulder over.
when I say a chip on the shoulder I refer to the type of explanation you provide for why some women choose not to have children as if 1) somehow this is a revelation and 2) you were in any way challenged about anyone’s decision not to have children.
but even you are judgmental on the subject. When you say this….”If it’s a choice made out of a positive preference for another life” that’s judgmental.
Who gets to say what a positive preference is? Are there negative preference reasons in your view? Preference is preference.
Sorry I should have said positive for the person who makes it – so a choice not made out of fear or pressurre from others.
It’s still preference. All preference is positive for the person doing the preferring.
You are correct in saying that having kids is a preference. I’m also drawing from the content of your posts that you would also agree that it really isn’t anyone else’s business. To which I would also agree.
I think the unsettling thing about all this is that the new orthodoxy of ‘woke’ ideology tends to maintain course, instead of applying the brakes. It is far more common to simply overturn every facet of human nature, in favor of embracing negative dietetics.
In my experience, the only people who are remotely interested in someone’s decision not to have children is themselves.
Those that do seem to want to talk about it and write about it endlessly.
I have never ever heard or read anyone accuse someone else of being “selfish” for not wanting children, while I think I have seen about 50,000 articles by middle-class “career women” in the media writing about themselves and how their decision not to have children is the most important thing in the universe.
Funnily enough, that level of solipsism is exactly what having children cures.
Yes I was taken aback when I was accused of being selfish for not having children. Perhaps selfish is what you meant by solipsism.
This simply doesn’t ring true and I’ll tell you why. Millions of women don’t have children. It is not unique in any way to not have children. It does not make anyone an outlier, nor is it the most interesting thing about women who don’t have children.
In the US, it’s close to 50% of women age 15-44 who have never had children. (It’s actually 47.6%). To believe that anyone is shocked or offended that a woman doesn’t have children beggars belief.
In the UK the figures for childless women (at the end of their childbearing years) are approximately 18% at present. That’s been fairly constant through the 20th and early 21st centuries except for just after the second world war in 1945/6 when it dipped down to 10%, which I think is interesting, ie, a possible biological response to social and environmental conditions.
(figures from the ONS)
“just after the second world war in 1945/6 when it dipped down to 10%, which I think is interesting, ie, a possible biological response to social and environmental conditions.”
Many young men who could have and would have had children were killed in WWII. Take the men out of the equation and it’s hard to produce children.
There would likely be a corresponding number of women who never married after WWII for the same reason. Not enough available potential marriage partners. Although a woman marrying at the end of childbearing years back then likely would not have had children anyway.
A woman in the UK today is more likely to be childless at 40 than anywhere else, except Spain and Austria.
Good point.
“neither is it right wing to fancy having a kid early on in your life.”
why?
Why is one’s choice to have or not to have children either right- or left wing? Isn’t it just a preference?
Have at it, I say. Their self-imposed eugenics will breed them out of existence while the deplorables reproduce like rabbits. In a generation things will be sane again.
In Western countries, I wonder what the average number of children per fairly successful and/or intelligent man is v. the average number for the equivalent woman.
My own (only moderately statistical) evidence from my British peer group is that for fairly intelligent / successful males the birth rate is holding up not too badly. The males are probably managing about 2 or a little more on average as the childless ones are balanced by those with 3 or even 4.
So – just like the sex revolution – it looks like the clever ladies are losing out again, while thinking they are winning.
That’s very interesting, it would be great to see some data on that. I believe you may be into something in that men don’t appear to be reducing their number of offspring while women are. They’re just having them with different women,
Not that long ago, there was a series of stories in the US wherein professional women were lamenting the shortage of financially suitable men. Never mind that considering a man on the basis of financial status upends much of feminist doctrine, there is a broader picture.
Even women steeped in the concept of females being able to do almost anything have an instinctive desire to pair with someone, whether kids are part of the deal or not. At some point, you’d think people might notice that 1) having ‘gender wars’ and 2) treating those as zero-sum games is not beneficial to society.
You make some good points but here’s another perspective. Many men today either do not want to get married or simply function as a child to their wives. I know lots of guys in their 30s and 40s who still sit around playing video games all evening while their wives do everything for the kids. That’s not a partner, it’s another child.
In addition, many men are very happy simply living with a woman with no commitment. They have no child bearing time clock. So you need not only a suitably stable marriage partner, you need a willing one.
Both points speak to the foreseeable consequences of the zero-sum approach. While girls were elevated and encouraged to pursue new opportunities, boys were diminished and the results are self-evident. Christina Hoff Sommers was talking about this 20-30 years ago, but was largely ignored.
There are numerous pushes to raise female participation in certain career fields, but almost none directed at men. And when motherhood is being attacked, it’s not surprising men’s interest in family wanes right along with women’s.
I don’t believe these ‘wars’ have benefitted either sex, and the result does not appear accidental. The left has been quite successful at undermining traditions, including those that are elemental to the continuation of a healthy society.
Well the left is only successful at undermining traditional families with people who are okay with that happening. And maybe that’s not a bad thing on balance. Men who don’t want children and families should not have them. Same with women. Children belong with parents who really actively want them. Self-opting out of the gene pool is often a good thing. Not because they are bad people but because they want to. And they should do what they want to do. If all the people promoting gender wars don’t reproduce, they will go the way of the Shakers. Is that a bad thing?
If this was confined to self-selection, that would be great. But these societal toxins have a way of infecting the whole. It has been heartening to see various states say “enough” by banning CRT from their curricula or boys from girls’ athletics.
I have no issue with those who do not desire families not having them. It sounds like common sense that shouldn’t require discussion. Yet, here we are.
It is confined to self-selection. You have to opt in to odd ideas. One of my daughter’s has a friend who believes that anyone having children is environmentally criminal. She is entitled to her belief and to not have children. But that doesn’t change my daughter having a child.
We won’t all suddenly become Shakers, let’s not catastrophize this. The population is in no danger of dying off although some people will be the end of their particular family history. But it’s always been this way. It doesn’t matter why someone doesn’t want children. If they don’t, they don’t.
Again, you are agreeing with Mr Lekas, not disagreeing. He didn’t say that the world would cease to exist.
Ideas about what questions can be asked in personal surroundings have become societal, not individual.
To change the subject – fat shaming. If a medical person wants to discuss health, she needs information about your body and she needs to advise you about the best way to stay healthy. So you go to a doctor because you are having to pee regularly and she asks, ‘Have you had children?’
If you are tested and found to be diabetic, your feet are swelling, you are going to die soon from a heart attack, you have very high blood pressure… the doctor could prescribe a handful of pills every day OR the doctor could say (in a nice way), “You are fat. You have to lose weight now.”
These have changed from being medical questions to societal questions and that has to be unhealthy for everybody.
I’m not saying the population is dying off; I’m saying there are people far more susceptible to stupid ideas than you are. There are also those who delude themselves by claiming “I don’t care about politics.” Well, politics care about you, and I’ve had this issue with one son. Maybe when his kids are impacted, that will change.
We’re in a time when people say “chest feeding” and are taken seriously. The difference lies in your example: your daughter made a choice and goes about her life; her friend makes a choice and attacks those who disagree. Which of the two is more likely to influence others? I think society has far more sheep than it used to and far fewer independent thinkers.
I agree there are lots of susceptible people. Always have been. That’s a large part of my point, none of this is new, it’s all part of the human condition.
I think it’s fine for some to take the notion of “chest-feeding” seriously and fine for others to laugh their heads off at them. As you noted, there are people far more susceptible to dumb ideas than others and throughout time some people fell for all kinds of ridiculous notions. People used to take talk of witches seriously. At least chest feeding believers aren’t burning anyone at the stake. Human progress.
you made an interesting comment with this…..”her friend makes a choice and attacks those who disagree. Which of the two is more likely to influence others?”
Let me answer this way. Anyone who can be verbally attacked out of having a child they actually want to have probably is self-selecting a choice that better fits with their vulnerabilities. What kind of a parent would such a mentally vulnerable person make? You have to be pretty strong to be a parent, it’s a monumentally tough task. You have to be able to protect your child from verbal abuse and if you cannot protect yourself, how would you protect a child?
Sounds like this is the follow on of working moms stigmatizing moms who stayed at home to take care of their children…
Greenies and lefties were already demonising birth, “the nuclear family”, and “traditional housewives” forty years ago.
It’s truly a first world problem which, thankfully, is its own cure.
The good news is that biology will prevail. Natural motherhood will survive and flourish, or we’ll die out. The ‘East Coast anti-natalists’ and their ilk will either be irrelevant or a symptom of our demise, no more than a footnote in history (if anyone’s around to write it).
I expected the same due to the “Roe effect” but the results are not evident.
Hollywood carries a lot of responsibility for our recent history – bad history, that is.
Hollywood made smoking cool and millions of people have since died from lung cancer.
Hollywood virtually championed the idea that people should not be monogamous in their choice of partner and Aids followed.
Hollywood actresses love to compete to see who can have a baby as late in life as possible (with the backup of medical teams and nannies, of course) and this has become a fashion.
Hollywood has shown that a woman can bring up a baby alone (with the backup of medical teams and nannies) and this has now become the fashion.
Hollywood = woke.
Most women recognize that they can be career women and still have a family. A few believe it’s one or the other, but I’d hazard a guess that that is a minority.
Fringe beliefs will lead some women to act a specific way on the matter of this issue but that’s likely a societal good. Children belong in families who actively want them. I think most women, with or without children would agree.
I would go as far as saying that most humans have the evolutionary wherewithal to nurture and raise a child. Poverty is usually the big justification for being anti-natalist. However, there is an overabundance of women successfully raising children and finding subsequent success for themselves, despite being in poverty… or even being a single parent.
I agree that the only folks badgering others for having or not having children are found in the fringe spaces of society.
Ha ha. Mary Harrington at her best. Absolutely scathing.
Thank you Ms Harrington. This was informative and insightful.
These people hate us, period.
I really think that most of this jaw-dropping ‘news’ is the print version of clickbait. That’s how far they’ve fallen.
I hope so at least.
If I’d have been born with ovaries (that’s me trying to sound diverse and inclusive) I’d have had them surgically removed as soon as I was old enough. Children, gross! (And yes I know I was but it was a very long time ago thank you very much for not bothering to remind me)