In rec.arts.sf.science Wim Lewis <wiml@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> <sionevar@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >A part of my story hinges on a male character being unable to father
> >children, but not being aware of this fact until he actually tries to
> >do so. The big problem I need to overcome is how to account for this
> >in an advanced society where sophisticated medical technology is
> >widely available.
> >[....]
> >The cost of any medical treatment would not be a barrier, because the
> >character is extremely wealthy. Neither could I get away with making
> >the treatment restricted or unavailable, because the person lives in a
> >prosperous and highly advanced society.
> >
> >Does anybody have any creative ideas they would be willing to share?
> Difficult. If he's alive, he's got a basically functioning genome, which
> can be extracted, cleaned up, and mated with his desired partner's DNA.
> We can almost do that kind of thing today.
> Does he have some terrible genetic disease? Snip it out and replace
> it with genes from his partner, or from the Galactic Human Baseline
> Reference Genome. Genes damaged by radiation? Ditto. Genes for early
> development completely missing because he was fabricated as an adult by
> a protein printer? Ditto.
> I don't think a purely-technical barrier will be plausible; you need
some
> sort of social barrier as well.
I agree with Wim -- it's not hard to get useful DNA from any
functioning
human being.
But if you want a reason for him to be unable to father children in any
traditional manner, why not give him a psychological barrier? If he isn't
aroused by women then he isn't going to become a father, and no medical
test
in the world will detect that.
If he's determined to sire an heir by any means, then technology is not
going to help you. We can clone people *now*, so all he'd need to do is
send a skin scraping to a laboratory.
Another good social reason would be an enemy. Maybe all the labs are
controlled by his rival, so there's no way to clone him, fix his DNA,
and/or treat his condition?
.... ...
Remus Shepherd <remus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/remus_shepherd/
Comic: http://indepos.comicgenesis.com/
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