Straya!

[macdoc]

What don't you understand about "past break even" and the world knows about it. You need to get out more. This all happened in the last two weeks and you aren't the whole world. Why didn't YOU know about it.

[Svartalf]

I no longer listen as much to the radio, and the youtube science channels I follow never mentioned it, at least not yet.

and all I caught recently was a nuclear specialist telling our senate that fusion power was still a century away.

[JimC]

From what I've read, fusion scientists are gradually gaining more knowledge of the rather chaotic and turbulent nature of fusion within Tokamak style reactors, and that this knowledge will hopefully guide clever engineering solutions.

[Strontium Dog]

"Hope", the revolutionary new fuel source that will keep the lights on.

[Brian Peacock]

keep the faith.

[macdoc]

Laser fusion does not require the insane containment structures tokamak does.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ilot_Plant

[pErvinalia]

Any day now...

[macdoc]

Lot closer than it was.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-23/ ... /104010814

Katherine Dawson was always comfortable with her origin story.

Like one in every 18 babies born in Australia today, she was the result of IVF.

"I thought it was pretty cool that I was made in a Petri dish," the 34-year-old says.

"I was frozen for possibly seven years … That sounds like sci-fi."

When Katherine was 11, her mother told her she was conceived using donated sperm. Initially, she didn't have any interest in finding out who the donor was.

"I assumed he'd be a nice, generous, healthy bloke because that's what they advertise," Katherine says of IVF clinics.

"You don't think there's any lies."

Things began to change after Katherine's mother died from cancer in 2009 and she started researching whether she had any half-siblings from the same donor.

What she found was a shock.

Katherine has since discovered she's at the centre of a scandal involving two of Australia's biggest fertility companies.

DNA testing has revealed poor vetting practices allowed her biological father to keep donating sperm over several years with alarming consequences.

She's now telling her full story to Four Corners as part of an investigation into the lack of accountability and transparency in the multi-million-dollar IVF industry.

'We looked similar'

Katherine was born in Victoria and today lives in Adelaide where she leads a busy life. She's a singing teacher, musician and seamstress.

In 2015, she attended a conference for donor-conceived families and met a young woman who looked very similar to her, but their donor codes – the unique number given to a sperm donor by an IVF clinic – didn't match.

"I wrote it off completely because there's no way that clinics code siblings differently. There's no way," Katherine says.

A year later, she uploaded her DNA to an ancestry website and began to find matches.

The first match was the woman Katherine had met at the conference – they were half-sisters.

The next – another half-sister – came a year later.

"She had absolutely no idea she was donor-conceived."

The three women have three different donor codes, but DNA shows they all have the same biological father.

The three donor codes are from Melbourne IVF, which is owned by fertility giant Virtus Health, and the ASX-listed Monash IVF.

'Up to 700 siblings'

Sperm donors can no longer be anonymous in Australia.

Katherine found her donor through Victoria's voluntary matching register and they met last year.

He is tall with light brown hair and green eyes, she says.

Four Corners is not naming the donor and is unable to contact him for comment.

Katherine discovered poor vetting practices had allowed him to donate for at least six years – between 1983 and 1989 – as he used multiple different names, generating different donor codes.

"He said all of the fake names that he used and that he went to six clinics and four hospitals," she says.

A Darwinian win for the donor, but also a worry for all the offspring...

A complete wanker!

[pErvinalia]

[tattuchu]

"Like one in every 18 babies born in Australia today, she was the result of IVF."
One in eighteen babies? Why? Why are so many people doing it this way, as opposed to the old-fashioned way? What's wrong with fucking

[JimC]

Perhaps quite a few of them are from women who have left their child bearing till later in life (which is becoming more common), and have difficulties with natural conception.

[Sean Hayden]

[pErvinalia]

IMG_20240927_100050_419.jpg (53.13 KiB) Viewed 2173 times

[pErvinalia]

This wouldn't happen in Merka, but today someone was arrested for flying a Hezbollah flag. I'm unsure where I sit on this one. Freedom of speech VS "hate" speech. It's also not clear regarding the law. Will be for a judge to determine.