She's not broke

BULLSHIAT.  Why do parents of special needs children insist on saying this.  Yes, she is broke.  There's something wrong with her and you are a horrible person if you would turn down a chance to fix her.

OMG...... journalism is so dead.

#1: Is she mentally a 20-year old? Or does she have diminished capacity?
#2: Is she not aging at all? IE: has she experienced puberty? Has she gotten adult teeth?

Can anyone write an article that answers BASIC questions anymore? WTF?

Darth_Lukecash: Whatever this kid is missing, may hold the key to immortality.

We do all get, don't we, that this would be a really, really bad thing?

Hell, even making the majority of us reach 100 would seriously fark the human race.

My nine year old had the immortality discussion in school today. Ethics in the fourth grade - I like it.

gweilo8888: On that one front -- human....

And then he went on to give me a complete and rather amazing boner for humanity. Thanks gweilo8888.

Skyrmion: gweilo8888: It's only recently that technology has progressed at the rate it is now doing. We went from the first commercial telephone exchange to Motorola's Iridium in only about 120 years. And there were a huge number of people who were around for both the first manned flight, all of which happened in the span of just 65 years, 7 months, 5 days. We went from ENIAC to the Cray Titan in a similarly swift 66 years. At no point in history has technology progressed as quickly as it has in our lifetimes, and that technology is in itself allowing the rate of technological change to continue accelerating.

Well, we're necessarily talking in generalities here, but I have to disagree. I think technology is decelerating, not accelerating. "Peak technology" probably happened sometime in the first half of the 20th century (well before my own lifetime). Think about transportation: we went from horse-and-buggy to walking on the moon in the span of 1880 to 1970, but in the 42 years since then... not so much. Hardly an exponential curve. And we may never make as big a medical breakthrough as we did when antibiotics were discovered.

On that one front -- human space flight -- yes, I'd agree that we have stopped and in fact gone significantly backwards. But we've also gone from walking on the moon to analyzing and understanding rocks on mars, and we're on the verge of the first ever manmade object leaving our own solar system. And that's even despite funding for these projects not being what it was when the space race was at its peak. (Because really, we were doing the whole thing for a bit of chest-bashing propaganda, more than we were doing it for the science.)

And on other fronts, that technology continues to soar. Take a minute to think of the capabilities of all the gadgets in your house, and try to think of them in the light you would've when you were a teenager. (Assuming you're at least in your late 30s, anyway. Otherwise I'm not surprised you'd not think we're progressing all that fast, because you wouldn't have the experience to really give you a sense of that progress.) And that's just what we have on a consumer level. We would appear, perhaps, to have found the Higgs Boson. Within the next decade or so we're expected to have not just one, but quite possibly multiple skyscrapers that are more than a mile tall. Average members of the public treat international travel as almost completely routine. We can go from the first cases of a potential pandemic like SARS to the virus being identified, treatments developed, and the outbreak contained in just a matter of months. We've got full facial transplants happening. A doctor in New York can perform an operation on you when you're on the other side of the world. We can clone animals, and we can change their physical attributes by fiddling with their DNA. And we've connected most of the population of the developed world so that, almost without regard to where they are and what time of day it is, they can transfer pretty-much any data between each other quickly and reliably, with tools that are cheap and affordable.

And that's just a random blain splatter of what's out there. Are there areas where we lag? Sure. Largely, they're areas where nobody has yet figured out a commercial justification for development. But development goes on all around us, and the world changes at stunning speed, whether we realize it as its happening or not.

gweilo8888: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: That sounds like an extremely selfish attitude. Why would you be so selfish in your opinions as to deny others their chance at extended life?

(You're a walking contradiction, bucko.)

Yeah, no. Nice try though. It's not selfish to place the needs of the entire population over those of one specific individual. And the entire population is 100% definitely not served by immortality, when it already suffers extreme overcrowding and insufficient food without immortality.

Bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat bullshiat and bullshiat.

Extreme overcrowding? Really? You could pile all of humanity, standing, into an area the size of Rhode Island. There's lot's of room on Earth, it's just that much of it is not available due to power hungry asshole dictators and pretentious elitist douchebags (I suspect much like yourself) who want to preserve the "pristine wilderness" from the Unwashed Masses. Starvation? There's PLENTY of food. Except that the dictators of 3rd world nations steal it, sell it, or hold it back to use as political leverage. I'm homeless. DO YOU HAVE ANY FARKING CONCEPT OF HOW MUCH FOOD IS THROWN AWAY IN THIS COUNTRY DUE TO STUPIDLY INSANE HEALTH LAWS? I do. I see it every farking day. Tons and tons of food. A Mega-Walmart here in OC throws out one dumpster of food every farking day. They give another 1 to 2 dumpsters, every day, to 2nd Harvest. ONE STORE! 3 times a week, an outfit called Fresh Rescue hits 5 to 10 stores and picks up pallets and pallets of dated bread, cartons of eggs, meats (sausage, steaks, ribs, hot dogs), cakes, brownies, cookies, milk and yogurt, boxes of bananas, and hundreds of pounds of produce. It's all given out for free to the poor and homeless. Guess what? They have to throw out anywhere from 50 to 200 loaves of bread each of those 3 days because NO ONE WANTS IT; THERE'S TOO FARKING MUCH BREAD. One of the guys takes it all, plus any other items, to a local chicken ranch for feed (chickens will eat anything).

end rant.

BronyMedic: What's a better impetus for the development of space colonization technology?

Space colonization is a fairy tale.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827860.100-why-space-is-the-i m possible-frontier.html

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

It's a nice fairy tale, to be sure. But it's not going to happen any time soon, and even if it does happen, it's not going to happen in the form of millions of people leaving for the promised planet as they did for the promised land. It's going to happen in the form of a handful of very carefully-selected people leaving and starting a population anew somewhere else. We'll still have almost every single person who was born on earth still here, so "immortality" (even if it only doubles the upper bounds on age at death, and is only available to the richest ten percent of the population) is still going to worsen the already massive overcrowding we face.

So I repeat: anybody who dreams of immortality is a selfish farkstick. You're born, you die. Live the bit in between, and stop expecting it to last forever.

Genevieve Marie: That Encyclopedia Dramatica one should offend anyone with a soul.

i found the real wiki and posted a youtube video, which is just commentary, upthread.

i had never heard of Encyclopedia Dramatica before. it's like ogrish with words.

Come on, only one in the world?
There's at least 500 babies born every day in Asia somewhere with grotesque mockeries of bodies that the greatest philosophers are unable to justify.
That place is God's testing ground for pain and general pestilence.

"What if... what if they're just born without skin?
Huh, you know, I haven't seen a human with their brain located in their feet yet."

Imagine a stranger walking up to the mother and Brooke in a store somewhere and saying "Oh what a cute baby! If only they'd stay this way forever!"

You know it's happened at least once.

gweilo8888: Oh, OK. You're that sort of person. The idiot who believes he can see the future, and the future is perfect. The past has a habit of showing that world view to be utterly wrong.

Buh-bye now. You're on ignore.



You do know he was doing a spentmiles or Mike_LoWell on you, right?

Just Another OC Homeless Guy: Holymarymotherofgod, you ARE a moron. How old are you? Are you 12? By the time immortality arrives, the relatively "simple" body fixes will have been long mastered.

Oh, OK. You're that sort of person. The idiot who believes he can see the future, and the future is perfect. The past has a habit of showing that world view to be utterly wrong.

Buh-bye now. You're on ignore.

Just Another OC Homeless Guy: gweilo8888: Skyrmion: gweilo8888: So I repeat: anybody who dreams of immortality is a selfish farkstick. You're born, you die. Live the bit in between, and stop expecting it to last forever.

That's OK. I'd be willing to put up with being called a selfish farkstick if I could get immortality.

Ah, but would you be willing to put up with it forever?

Actually, anybody asking for immortality -- assuming they couldn't still end their own life, anyway -- hasn't thought it through even slightly. I'd imagine by your 500th full joint replacement, things would start to get rather tedious. And not being able to remember 99% of your own life. And dealing with the fact that technology had progressed so far that you simply couldn't understand how *anything* worked any more. (Ever seen a 60 or 70 year old struggling with a PC, which is little more than a typewriter on steroids, has been readily available for half their lives already, and developed alongside them where they had ample opportunity to learn as the tech progressed? Now imagine how well you're going to cope when dealing with the year 2500's technology.) And having watched thousands upon thousands of non-immortal friends and family come and go. Or alternatively, having had to deal with the overcrowding caused by all those other immortals if it became widely available.

Holymarymotherofgod, you ARE a moron. How old are you? Are you 12? By the time immortality arrives, the relatively "simple" body fixes will have been long mastered. Cloned parts, cyber parts, perhaps entire cloned bodies, And anyone who needs 500 full joint replacements will not be buying the quality stuff. Memories? There are some things I'd rather forget. And, by that time, selective memory wipes will probably be available. As for memory retention, by the time they get to the immortality phase, there will be wetware biochips (the next step after silicone reaches Moore's Limit) where we can store all the extraneous memories we want to warehouse, but not ...

Eeeeeasy there Pop. We got a nice little tube of sleepy time juice for you.....

Skyrmion: And this is quite an aside, but I think the idea that "old people don't understand technology" is an illusion caused by a particular turn-of-the-millenium perspective, rather than something that's true of humanity in general.

For most Farkers reading this post, I suspect the line, "You know more about computers than your parents. You will know more about computers than your children." will be closer to the truth.

It's only recently that technology has progressed at the rate it is now doing. We went from the first commercial telephone exchange to Motorola's Iridium in only about 120 years. And there were a huge number of people who were around for both the first manned flight, all of which happened in the span of just 65 years, 7 months, 5 days. We went from ENIAC to the Cray Titan in a similarly swift 66 years. At no point in history has technology progressed as quickly as it has in our lifetimes, and that technology is in itself allowing the rate of technological change to continue accelerating.

I don't think it's so much a turn-of-the-millennium perspective, as the first time we've had a perspective of how people cope with this speed of change. My parents are now at the point where the rate of change is simply too fast for them, and they struggle to adapt even though they're in fine health and with all their mental faculties intact. Yet my father is an intelligent man who was very tech-literate in his day, and our family thanks to him was among the first in our circle to have things like a home computer (Commodore VIC 20, followed by an Apple II, Apple IIe, and then into PCs), a modem (well, an acoustic coupler, actually), a portable TV (Sinclair Microvision), you name it, we had it and almost invariably were first on the block to do so.

I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption that we younger folk will struggle just as much as our parents did when we reach their age, if not more so because technology may be progressing even faster then.

Just Another OC Homeless Guy: gweilo8888: BronyMedic: You must be a blast at parties.

Hah!

I just don't like selfish people, and immortality is close to the most selfish thing anybody could possibly ask for.

That sounds like an extremely selfish attitude. Why would you be so selfish in your opinions as to deny others their chance at extended life?

(You're a walking contradiction, bucko.)

He's all about the greater good!

RedVentrue: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: fusillade762: No one bit on the "curing gay" troll. I'm proud of you Farkers.

But it would be a chance to cure breederism. If everyone was gay, there would be world peace, no hunger, no disease and no poverty. Cum-by-ya.

Cause there would be no more people.

gweilo8888: BronyMedic: You must be a blast at parties.

Hah!

I just don't like selfish people, and immortality is close to the most selfish thing anybody could possibly ask for.

Driving a Hummer is way worse.

I'd love to be immortal. Eventually I would get tired of living, obviously, but the world is a very large place. I'm sure I could live several lifetimes at least without getting the least bit bored of it.

Skyrmion: gweilo8888: So I repeat: anybody who dreams of immortality is a selfish farkstick. You're born, you die. Live the bit in between, and stop expecting it to last forever.

That's OK. I'd be willing to put up with being called a selfish farkstick if I could get immortality.

Ah, but would you be willing to put up with it forever?

Actually, anybody asking for immortality -- assuming they couldn't still end their own life, anyway -- hasn't thought it through even slightly. I'd imagine by your 500th full joint replacement, things would start to get rather tedious. And not being able to remember 99% of your own life. And dealing with the fact that technology had progressed so far that you simply couldn't understand how *anything* worked any more. (Ever seen a 60 or 70 year old struggling with a PC, which is little more than a typewriter on steroids, has been readily available for half their lives already, and developed alongside them where they had ample opportunity to learn as the tech progressed? Now imagine how well you're going to cope when dealing with the year 2500's technology.) And having watched thousands upon thousands of non-immortal friends and family come and go. Or alternatively, having had to deal with the overcrowding caused by all those other immortals if it became widely available.

when i was in the 8th grade i remember a 6th grader who didn't grow much more than a 11 year old but he was cognitive and smart. at the age of 11 he just stopped growing, i believe he died from complications before he made 9th grade.

the world evolves everyday. we ain't seen nothing yet

gweilo8888: Space colonization is a fairy tale.

You must be a blast at parties.

gweilo8888: GreenSun: What if she has the DNA for immortality? If we could just reconfigure the DNA after studying what she has and tune it to our "best age", wouldn't that be great? Forever 20, 25, or even 30 years old with a beautiful body and a sharp mind!

Because the world's not overcrowded enough. Now we need 250-year olds with the bodies of 25-year olds, competing for food, shelter and all the other resources we need with the real 25-year olds. And the 50-year old 25-year olds. And the 75-year old 25-year olds. And the 100-year... you get my point.

Anybody who lusts after immortality is not only an idiot, but is also one of the most selfish farksticks on the planet.

What's a better impetus for the development of space colonization technology?

GreenSun: What if she has the DNA for immortality? If we could just reconfigure the DNA after studying what she has and tune it to our "best age", wouldn't that be great? Forever 20, 25, or even 30 years old with a beautiful body and a sharp mind!

Because the world's not overcrowded enough. Now we need 250-year olds with the bodies of 25-year olds, competing for food, shelter and all the other resources we need with the real 25-year olds. And the 50-year old 25-year olds. And the 75-year old 25-year olds. And the 100-year... you get my point.

Anybody who lusts after immortality is not only an idiot, but is also one of the most selfish farksticks on the planet.

ArkAngel: "If somebody knocked on the door right now and said, 'It's a guaranteed pill. Give this to Brooke and she'll be fixed,' well first I would say to him, 'She's not broken.' And B, I would say, 'Thank you, but no thank you," Howard said in a video filmed for the "Katie" show.

The mother is a terrible person.

Agreed. She can't care for herself. That's broken.

Also, being tube fed is broken.

Genevieve Marie: Yea, here's a factual account of it. That Encyclopedia Dramatica one should offend anyone with a soul.

Most people on FARK sold their soul for a dounut years ago.

I also linked to the wikipedia article in my post, by the way.

GreenSun: What if she has the DNA for immortality? If we could just reconfigure the DNA after studying what she has and tune it to our "best age", wouldn't that be great? Forever 20, 25, or even 30 years old with a beautiful body and a sharp mind!

That's what I'm hoping.

Perhaps, while they're at it, they could even tweek her DNA and put her back on a normal development path.

What_Would_Jimi_Do: it's like ogrish with words.

i am talking like 1995 ogrish, the last time i looked at that shiat either

Not impressed...

What_Would_Jimi_Do: "Ashley suffers from at least 100 types of retarded" . ???

is where i stopped

EVERYBODY PANIC: Oldiron_79: AdolfOliverPanties: Too old.

/amidoingitrite?

You're going to special hell.

Oh come on. She's TWENTY fer crissakes. She's a woman, with needs. Needs I tell ya. And nobody but a real Farker should be allowed near the lady. Get the lady a TF subscription if we get details.

/did not RTFA. *shudders*

The way most statutory rape and pedophilia laws are written, that would actually be an interesting case.

EngineerAU: It wouldn't be the first time a parent denied treatment for a child's disability just so they'd remain emotionally attached.

Reminds me of the case of Ashley X in 1997, where the parents of a developmentally disabled paid a doctor cash under the table to amputate her developing breasts, and remove her uterus and fallopian tubes so she'd never reach sexual maturity and never have any growth spurts during puberty. Even the hospital later admitted the surgery was illegal at the time, and should not have been done or allowed without a court order. The parents did so so that Ashley would remain a child-sized girl for her entire life, their "pillow angel"

Encyclopedia Dramatica has a far less tactful telling of the story. (NSFW)

Submitter headline:"There are no other cases like Brooke's in the world"

Aaand within 30 seconds, I find on her Wikipedia page:
"He has identified two more people with similar developmental issues: Gabrielle Williams of Montana (born 2004) and Nicky Freeman of Australia (born 1970), a forty-year-old man who looks like a boy."

maram500: Bonanza Jellybean: [localtvwghp.files.wordpress.com image 630x354]

Who is that redhead holding her? She's a stone fox.

I'm more interested in who the black chick is, and why Meredith Viera looks like she's about to cop a feel on mom...

I would like to know myself especially since Meredith ain't in the farkin picture.

megalynn44: ArkAngel: "If somebody knocked on the door right now and said, 'It's a guaranteed pill. Give this to Brooke and she'll be fixed,' well first I would say to him, 'She's not broken.' And B, I would say, 'Thank you, but no thank you," Howard said in a video filmed for the "Katie" show.

The mother is a terrible person.

Came to say this

It wouldn't be the first time a parent denied treatment for a child's disability just so they'd remain emotionally attached. A few years back there was a case of a deaf child who could have regained its hearing through a surgery but the mother, who was also deaf, didn't want her kid to be able to hear because the child would no longer be part of the deaf community that the mother felt was superior to the rest of society.

Theaetetus: we can get you out of this with a pill

no pill is going to cure that now, if something may have been done 19+ years ago maybe. and 19+ years ago there weren't any drugs to cure this. whatever the reason it's so rare, anyone think they have a cure.

the parent(s) have accepted what was dealt them and dealed with it and moved forward.

What if she has the DNA for immortality? If we could just reconfigure the DNA after studying what she has and tune it to our "best age", wouldn't that be great? Forever 20, 25, or even 30 years old with a beautiful body and a sharp mind!

I grew up in an area where there are a lot of special care facilities for celebrity family members and VIP dependents. All of this is supposed to be secret, but some of these establishments have been around since the 1920s and stories do leak out about the patients.

But this poor kid has them all beat.

In some ways it's kind of the opposite of progeria.

Bathia_Mapes: Funbags: [localtvwghp.files.wordpress.com image 630x354]

Here I was, eager to extol the "Lolita" angle, but am I to understand the 20 year old in question is the one being carried on the far left?

Yeah, I'll be the last to judge you for whatever your particular kink is, but if anyone with a normal sized dong inserts it into something that tiny, it damn well better be a fleshlight.

Yes. She weighs 16 pounds and has an estimated mental age of nine months to one yearl

Christ... I should've rtfa.

lasercannon: That's one sexy looking 20 year old.

//What? She's legal.
////I wonder if she likes candy and vans.

Not legal. Mentally she's even younger than she looks. Unable to consent.

Mangoose: How long until this devolves into a Chris Hansen vs. Pedobear cage match?

Oh, yeah, like a Fountain of Uncouth.

OgreMagi: She's not broke

BULLSHIAT.  Why do parents of special needs children insist on saying this.  Yes, she is broke.  There's something wrong with her and you are a horrible person if you would turn down a chance to fix her.

I remember during my Mormon days some guy was talking about patriarchal blessings (basically a fortune cookie on steroids, but without the cookie) and how he talked with some other dude who had to come up with one for a profoundly "special needs" kid. What he pulled out of his ass was something to do with the kid having been, prior to meatspace life, one of the angels who escorted Lucifer out of Heaven. The idea was Skypappy had the kid's back by using a loophole to keep the kid childlike and innocent until he assumed room temperature so Satan couldn't screw with him and this kid would be absolutely without sin, guaranteed a spot in the velvet rope section, 72 virgins, and a Lamborghini Countach that never runs out of gas.

All I could think of was "How many assholes had to bounce Lucifer Skywalker down to hell? Cuz there are a whole lot of retards* out there, have been in the past, and there will be many more."

* including me, but I got my bugs patched with filthy science; against the Abrahamic god's will, of course.

googled and found this Link

This is worse than the 20,30 year olds who look like kids. I outgrew my little sister but nothing compared to that. Jebbus

/At least buying baby food all the time is cheaper in the long run but like others said, I'm shocked Donald Trump hasn't given the family millions to test her DNA or genes.

What_Would_Jimi_Do: did i miss a video? does the 20 year old talk like a 20 year old?

not necessarily like a 20 year old, but is she cognitive?

I'd be interested to know if her bones are fused together like an adults or if they are like a 4 year old's. If the bone structure is like an adult's in child proportions I'd think that it'd be a new type of dwarfism/growth hormone thing with developmental delays (halt is a better word I guess) in the brain.

There is one girl on a commercial for home health care services here that has something similar. She looks about 9 months old, is the size of an infant, but on the commercial she's on the computer, purposely manipulating the mouse and reading something. She has a breathng tube and glasses. They don't say an age or the name of her condition, just how happy they are that Home Health Care allows her to live at home full time.