Comments on: Mental Health CME: A Brief History of Bastards

By: Gina

Gina — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:24:37 +0000

This is why I like http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com. Stunning posts.

By: susan

susan — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:45:51 +0000

Doug, thank you for pointing this story out to me. I too have a horror story about my birth mother- and my adoption- and the time between my adoption, which was the best thing that ever happened to me- and my birth and time in the NYC foster web.

I’ve written about it , just not published. I am not ready to talk about it yet, it’s way too painful. Kudos to you for having the strength of your deamons to write this story.

By: I just discovered I don't have a mother | Before You Take That Pill

I just discovered I don't have a mother | Before You Take That Pill — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:28:24 +0000

[...] are one of those weird topics like bastards that noone wants to talk [...]

By: Gina Pera

Gina Pera — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:04:19 +0000

Anyhoo, Doug…. in New Orleans circa 1890, I think you’d be called a quadroon or perhaps an octaroon or even a quintroon. By now, though, you’re probably just a hexadecaroon.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:46:01 +0000

Yes, she does have a sense of humor, although perhaps she doesn’t joke around as much as I do. One of the jokes is that she doesn’t have the same last name as me, and she named our daughter with a hyphenated last name, and she is also a doctor, so I think it is pretty funny to call her Mrs. Bremner. And I am not planning on changing the language. Readers can always cancel their corporate subscriptions to the “Drug News and Health Safety Blog”. LOL!

By: Therapy Patient

Therapy Patient — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:33:48 +0000

I am glad to see Mrs. Bremner has a sense of humor!(I am assuming!). It would be a pity if your humor were lost on somebody who is dour. I LIKE the “anyhoo”, “cuz”, “LOL, “btw”‘s you interject. There’s nothing about LOL and btw that are any worse than the older etc. and i.e. Keep up the good work.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:02:48 +0000

Yes, Mrs. Bremner. LOL! (oops! sorry)

By: Viola

Viola — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:01:26 +0000

yes please stop saying anyhoo and also cuz and LOL and so forth.

By: Doug Bremner

Doug Bremner — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:31:02 +0000

Gosh, alot to respond to. Dan: You make a good point that my jest about Mental Health CME has an undercurrent about how most CME is financed by pharma and that it represent infomercials for prescription medications. I plan to publish more Alt CME to educate my fellow physicians and hopefully shame them from stopping this practise. Here I’ll give a plug for a non pharma funded CME site since whenever he criticizes the pharma funded swill he gets attacked by trolls for self promotion.
http://www.thecarlatreport.com/
Cousin: Your father wasn’t technically a bastard although his mother died young and his father abandoned him so it was sort of the same thing. And yes this is therapy, outing all is the best antidote for shame, I don’t believe in keeping family secrets, so Marilyn I think your MIL is wrong, especially when there is a health risk.
Dave: I didn’t know you were reading this. LOL! Anyhoo is what Grandma B. used to say. She used to write these long letters about how many apples they had that year, how the cows were doing, carbon copies with 35 copies sent to all the kids and grandkids.
Other comments: I was told that half aunt was upset that granddad wasn’t such as great guy as she thought. I don’t know, I am a history buff and I just like to find out what really happened.
And yes legitimacy is from male dominated cultures. And honestly women’s libbers may rant and yell but folks what is different now is that women can and do have their own kids and get their own jobs and unlike 50 years ago they really don’t need men anymore. And with DNA testing it is easy to find out who the dad is. $79 and you can do it all online.
4% African: It is a myth that we are all 4% African (I researched this topic of course). Maybe 1% of “whites” in the US are. It means that somewhere
in the past I had a pure black ancestor (probably slave), don’t know which side of the family, as brother Steve said, if we were living in Louisiana in 1890 we would be technically “coloureds”
Brother Steve, btw, is the FB hero of the left wing liberals. DNA testing: I used http://www.dnaprintgenomics.com, you can find out your distribution and
also do the x chromosome test and find out where your original “mom” or “eve” came from. Can be very useful.

By: carolyn

carolyn — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:03:26 +0000

the concept of “legitimacy” only exists where property is passed through the male line. all children born of a woman are legitimately hers, while they might be the issue of various fathers. in societies where women are disenfranchished, it becomes necessary for men, who are naturally interested in making sure that their inheritance passes only to their genetic offspring and is not shared by the children of rival males, to certify somehow that the children born of their wives belong exclussively to them.
any and all children born of a specific woman are legitimately hers. we can be sure of that. however, until a child is old enough to bear a resemblance to his father, dads have had to rely on chastity belts, draconian standards of fidelity and the mother’s word that her children are also legitimately his