A Modest Proposal for the Tsunami Babies

I’m in the middle of rounds in the medical intensive care unit this morning and presenting a patient and looking in at his unconscious form through the window, and can see the television in his room. CNN is running a story about the Tsunami Babies. They’re giving facts and figures about how many children were orphans and the headline was “Children For Sale” or “Children On Sale.”

So I have been thinking about getting a puppy lately, but I am kind of a sucker for a sale price. I’m always able to rationalize the savings of buying something if it is half price even if I never would have purchased in the first place. It seemed to me that if I got a child that was a little older, it would be less work than a puppy.


I imagined the interview:

Adoption specialist: What age group are you thinking about?

Me: I don’t care. As long as they’re old enough to vacuum and do dishes.


But as the story continued, I realize they are not putting the Tsunami Babies on sale. This is what I picked up from the scroll and headings:

1) The child sex industry is Thailand’s second largest industry, topped only by its adult sex industry. Often literally.

2) 100,000 children each year in Indonesia are trafficked as child sex workers making them the number three export, topped only by precious stones and rubber based products. Often literally.

3) South Asia is considered a ‘pedophile paradise.’ A point they should likely play up to rebuild their ruined tourism industry.


But, apparently, the communist governments of these countries are not happy about these little symbols of free market capitalism and are not allowing people to leave with anyone under sixteen years of age.

Now, general economic questions aside, it seems to me that most of these children are going to be dying fairly shortly anyway. Why not send them into the sex trade industry? Better fucked and alive then ‘fucked’ and starving with typhoid.

Also, can you imagine what life would be like for teenagers who don’t have to worry about getting laid? With enough teenagers freed of this obsession, we would likely have enough spare brain power to solve most of the world’s problems.

But probably not, because with sex taken care of, they probably will spend that brain power trying to figure out how to score a six-pack and marijuana. Or in their case, how to escape from their thatch cages.


Anyway, with pedophiles putting the kibosh on The After Christmas Tsunami Baby Sale, its back to thinking about a puppy for me. And the patient that I am presenting is doing much better, thank you.