Seemingly unnecessary progress might inadvertently lead to important discoveries and useful knowledge.

Are you a member of the necessity committee?

Progress for the sake of progress is how science should be done, because you can't ever predict what practical uses will come out of research.

The fertility rate in Sweden is < 2.0. I see it as a worthwhile future investment. Someone's gotta pay our pensions. :).

>Someone's gotta pay our pensions. :).

I can almost guarantee you that this procedure cost more than the expected tax revenue of the resulting child.

If it was paid for with public money (I'm not sure how health care works in Sweden), this was probably not helpful in paying for pensions.

For the first one, yeah, no doubt.