I don’t want people who are passionate about kids. I want people who will soberly face the responsibilities of parenthood.
My requirements:
Over 21.
At least a high school diploma.
Married.
At least one of the couple employed full-time.
No felons.
I was sure there would be an actual option about using it to have sex with pretty much whoever you wanted, and not just a couple of posts leaning that way.
Ideally, number 2 is what would be done, as anything else would be eugenics on my part. But there is the practicality of making sure everyone gets it. I will need to be able to get money to be able provide it worldwide. Maybe even research into making the pill distributable via aerosol or something.
Plus there is the fact that I must’ve put a lot of work into creating this cure, and I do deserve compensation for that work. The fact that it was work that no one else could do means it is even more valuable. (I just reject the notion that things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.)
So I think I would have to sell it to get proper funding, probably in a scheme similar to dracoi’s. I’d also probably have to invest that money, and create some sort of company that people can buy shares in. It sucks, as I would rather not do that, but I can’t figure out any other way to reach literally everyone.
I’m also not entirely sure that a lot of people would rather not be cured, and would rather have the cure applied only in vitro. People would just love to have complete control over reproduction. And I see no reason they shouldn’t be allowed to do so, turning lemons into lemonade.
The temptation to play God would be overwhelming, but I hope I’d be able to resist it. Anyone who wants it can have it. Maybe they have to be at least 21.
I would definitely make a huge profit from it though. And a few demands here and there.
Can I tell the antivaxxers it causes autism first?
Please do. 
I’d make it one. The world is at least 50% overpopulated.
Interestingly, while not sterile, due to selective abortion/ female infanticide, many males in India and China will never be able to reproduce, due to a severe shortage of females.
Really interesting question.
My guess is, any of the options except #1 would change societies dramatically in ways that cannot be predicted. I am not talking about just western societies as many of the posters are, but all societies. Women are chattel in a great number of areas – what would happen to those societies if their fertility was not controlled by the man they were allotted to, or was entirely absent? This control is embedded into the very foundation of the majority of societies on this planet.
In areas with very high child mortality, in places where there is no social safety net other than one’s children? Huge questions. It would be gigantic, cataclysmic.
In modern western societies there are significant populations of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with children and like it that way. This does not exist in the same form and scale elsewhere. Children are what gives meaning and pattern to most people’s lives. Take away that meaning and you might find that society crumbles away or distorts into bizarre forms.
Not a responsibility suited for a single person.
What would be better - a committee or a government making this decision?
The question about no fertility in places like Africa is a very interesting one - would women start to see some progress in women’s rights when they aren’t burdened with babies? Or would their societies crumble because there are no kids to help the family survive? Would families find it easier to survive because there are no dependent kids to support now?
“Common sense” says that the government budget and a household budget is pretty much the same thing.
(Whether you agree or disagree, I think the point comes across regardless. :))
I voted “Nobody gets it” but I actually meant to do a double-select thingy with “tests…” - nobody gets it until we are at pre-industrial CO2 outputs, nobody’s hunting whales/rhinos/tigers/etc,we all recycle etc., worldwide education levels are at a high-enough level, especially for women, and only an acceptably-small-to-me percentage of the world is in any danger of starvation/war/gendercide. Because if I’m going to have this kind of worldwide power, I’m getting some mileage out of it first. I think one world government would be asking for too much, but the above list will do.
Then any mentally competent adult woman (say, 21+) who wants it, gets it, and gets to nominate a specific man within her age range (say, +/- two years) to give it to as well, after some testing to check that she means it, isn’t being paid, and isn’t being coerced in any way. A woman doesn’t have to nominate a man, nor do they have to stay a couple forever after. I think this will put reproductive control in women’s hands in a beneficial way, and go some way to breaking the patriarchy. But I’m sure the TMs can poke holes in my plan (note, saying “you can’t have perfect testing” isn’t that hole)
I chose “Pass a test of my choosing, get the cure”, but what I really mean is “Pass a test of your country”. I.e. China has a single child rule, so anyone who already has their single child wouldn’t get one.
If your country wants it available to all, then that’s how it get’s distributed.
Just thought of an issue with my process. We already have genocide happening (Rwanda, Iraq, etc), those in power would just use this to make genocide easier. I’ll have to think some more.
Anyone who wants it can get it. There may be some abhorrent people in this world, but everyone has the basic right to reproduce.
Yes, I would give it to Hitler if he were alive. There are no moral or ethical conditions on my distribution.
Discredited, or just recognized as horrific and unconscionable?
Depends on the person, doesn’t it? And there’s a fuckload of stupid people, and a fuckload of assholes, in the world. With government, the stupidity and/or assholery has to be a majority condition to be enacted.
This was actually what I thought of to save the Earth- a one time virus that would make all men sterile.
I would destroy the cure and never let on I had it.
This woudl give us all a much needed break.
It has to be all, otherwise you get into racist issues.
Funny definition of “break” you have there, considering the scenario…
I disagree with that sentiment - it disappeared about a billion people ago.
A break for our planet, from the scourge that is humanity.
He said “give us all a much needed break.”
Maybe I’m alone in thinking “break” has connotations of being a temporary thing, I dunno.
It is temporary. We get a one generation break. By this I assume from the OP that kids not yet sexually mature or not yet born will not become more sterile, when they do hit their period of sexual maturity they will be fine. If I am misunderstanding the OP, then I’d realize the cure (anon) and to all after a decade or two.
Also, we have tens of millions of eggs and sperm in storage. Not to mention millions of women who would be eager to have fertilized eggs . The earth gets a reprive, but the human race goes on. Just that the population clock gets reset.
This is exactly what the world needs. A break in babies for ten years or so.
While I would desperately love to limit the breeding capabilities of some of the population (the aforementioned crack addicts, chronically purposely poor, etc.), I don’t know what kind of child will be born to which parents. To play God like that, how do you know you wouldn’t be preventing a Mozart, an Einstein, or hell maybe just a Tiger Woods (not that golf is a mere “just” to everyone :D)?
Not my call. I would reluctantly choose the cure for everyone. I chose #2, because some people might want free reliable birth control.