Octuplets born in Bellflower

This is the best story so far that I've seen about the birth, yesterday, of eight babies to an unidentified mother in a Los Angeles suburb.

When you have that many babies, it should really be labelled as a litter. And there are few things that I would want to label as a 'perversion of science' but along with extreme plastic surgery, this is one of them. There's a reason why some species have large multiple births and humans don't: baby spiders and sea turtles are a lot easier for predators to eat than toddlers, and the human brain requires a lot of protection and attention to develop properly over our protracted childhoods. Having this many babies will almost certainly lower each individual child's health and standard of living for the rest of their lives.

Both of my parents came from large families (7 siblings on Mom's side, 9 or 10 - I forget - on Dad's) but at least those kids weren't getting orthodontics and going through puberty and applying to college all at the exact same time. Since this many births is almost certainly the result of fertility drugs, I can't help but think of it as a selfish decision on the part of the parents.

UPDATE 1/30/09:
It gets worse - this idiot already has six children. Fuck.