Well, I wasn’t specifically referring to the tests themselves, although in some cases I wouldn’t be surprised. What I was thinking of more precisely, is the issue of primate babies. Ever heard of the Dying Rooms report? Investigative journalists from Britain got into Chinese orphanages back in the early nineties, and did a shocking report on British television.

Because of the one child rule in China (one child allowed per family in the city, two children per family in the countryside, unless the first child born is a boy, then they have to stop at one child), many of the more traditional families want to make sure that the child is a boy. It’s because in traditional Chinese culture, it’s the responsbility of the *boy* to take care of his parents in their old age. When a girl grows up and marries, her responsbility is to her husband’s parents, not her own parents. …. This is very old tradition in China. I’ll be blunt — Confuscious, the infamous philosopher, called girls “maggots in the rice” because they were a ‘drain’ on food as they grew, and then they went to another family to whom they had new allegiance. As you can guess, I am not a fan of Confuscious.

So anyway, ever since the ‘one child’ rule went into affect in China (as a form of population controle), there’s been a problem of families abandoning newborn girls so that they can ‘try again’ for a son. This is why 90-some percent of the adoptions you see from China, are of baby girls. These girls are initially found abandoned, and taken to orphanages. (Some are probably killed outright, rather than abandoned. Again, I’ll be blunt … female infanticide is an old problem in China, precisely because the girls were considered more of a drain on family resources.) Abandonment is more common though now, especially since the ‘one child’ rule went into affect. The girls, once found, are taken to orphanges, from where they are hopefully adopted.

The Dying Rooms report was done in the early nineties by British investigative journalists who went undercover in a few of the orphanages. At the time, some of the orphanages were said to have mortality rates of 70% and higher. Think about that … most of the abandoned children were healthy, but seven out of ten were dying??? International adoption was still very new … very few were being adopted out to America yet. As a result, the orphanges were dealing with the influx of baby girls in ‘less savory’ ways. That’s what the journalists were investigating, and the news was broken wide open on British television. I know at least two people in Britain who actually remember seeing the report on the news and being very upset.

The part of the story that always sticks with me the most is that the babies were ‘expected’ to learn to bottlefeed themselves within weeks. If they couldn’t, the orphanage staff would *not* hold the bottles for them. Therefore many of the babies simply wouldn’t be fed, and would become weak. Well then the weaker babies were slowly ’siphoned’ toward the back of the crib room (rooms filled with cribs). The child could not feed itself, so it would get weaker, and once it was weaker, it had even *less* chance of feeding itself. A circular loop. Weaker and starving babies were gradually siphoned to the back of the room, and eventually left the room to be put into the ‘dying rooms’, where they were allowed to simply die. Rooms were the children were taken to die. Hence the title of the report. There was also a lot of deadly abuse and other neglect in these places, as you can imagine. This is why some of them had mortality rates so extremely high. Think about … seven out of ten children dying.

It sounds like fiction, I know that. It sounds like some crazy story made up for the movies. But it’s true. Go to google and do a search on the phrase, “the dying rooms”. Better yet, here is some of the report from Channel Four in Britain.
http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/the_dying_room.html
Here is another summary from a course at Brooklyn College, CUNY (city university of new york). This is discussed in their Chinese culture course.
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/c-wnhol.html
It’s called the “Holocaust of Girls”, and it is not fiction.

I’m entirely not kidding. Once the report was aired, countries that were beginning to adopt from China (especially America), demanded a full investigation of the orphanages, and that’s when conditions finally began to improve. Conditions are a lot better now, and adoptive parents (while in China to receive their children) are often taken to the orphanage where their child is coming from. But remember, the orphanges are being watched now.

You also wrote:
“Human nature appalls me sometimes.”

Yeah, me too. Believe me. You have no idea. Our daughter was found in a cardboard box on the steps of a government building, the day after she was born. And that is actually one of the better ways that it’s done.

One of the social workers at the (American) adoption agency that we used, had adopted three girls from China. One had been found as a baby, on the steps of a hospital. Another had been found as a baby, in a field and nearly dead from exposure. The third had been found as a two year old girl, tied by a dog leash to a table in a public market. The girl could not recite the names of her birthgivers (I’m sorry, but if you tie your child to a table in a public market, then walk away forever, I will not call you a ‘parent’ … not even a ‘birthparent’), nor could she recite her address. But she was able to tell those who found her that her family had just had a baby boy … the prized son … therefore the girl was abandoned.

So yeah, believe me, it appalls me too sometimes. The discussion of baby primates being put into cages minutes after being born, just reminded me of the dying rooms … if that makes any sense.

I’ve talked way too much and I’m very sorry for the tangent, but I know I’ve mentioned Katie a lot when I talk about improving our family’s diet. I’m not sure if I ever told you she was from China though. Don’t misunderstand me, we’re doing everything we can to make sure she’s proud of her Chinese heritage. We want her to be very proud of who she is. Her god-father is Chinese/Philipino, and we do everything we can to keep an Asian influence in her life. Heck, she’s already taking kung-fu lessons at the ripe old age of five. But I will also say that I am not pleased by the circumstances she had to be born into. People really do suck, sometimes.