a new super race?

[rosieglo]

Re the article in the guardian about the baby that was successfully screened for the breast cancer gene and the controversy about 'designer babies' - what's the fuss? I'm thinking that breeding out illness and disabilty is a great thing. Improving intelligence also; hopefully the smarter the future generations are the more likely they will find ways to halt our destruction of the planet and stop fighting. What's wrong with wanting fitter, stronger, cleverer and healthier children? And I think it is so wrong for a deaf or blind parent to actively seek out a way to pass their disability on, I cannot begin to understand how they could want to deprive their child of the ability to hear music or see the world around them.
hmmn - for me it's a pretty straight forward matter.

Site stuff : please mn hq can we have an anti disabled topis so I can sodding hide all the crap

new to posting on any discussion board.. so far Cory is the only person who has made a point I can really connect with - I can totally see what you mean, and I have had this discussion with friends (parents also of disabled children). I guess this is turning into a pro life or not arguement. For me the main issue was about GENETIC disorders, and more crucially disease.

Cory - I am sorry your daughter has to suffer, does it make any sense if I say to you that my point is that if in the future we could screen for illnesses or disabilties she could still have been born but without the pain.

I suppose my view seems terribly unsentimental to say the least, vicious and repulsive at worst, but I think those who see it this way are looking at themselves or children and taking it that I am saying you / they should never have been born - WRONG, but it is with this in mind that you are responding to my view.

I don't think that a person is any less of an individual for an illness or disability, I would just wish that they didn't have that illness, or had been spared having the disability.

I don't think I am going to make anyone understand me as this is too inflammatory a topic and I have already been hung drawn and quartered, so all I can say now is I am truly sorry if I have offended people, that was not the intention and I am neither naive, Hitler nor a troll.

I'm not sure anyone is 'spared' from trauma in life whether that is disability or other struggles.

You can 'wish' to live without illness but it usually comes to everyone. Same for pain, we create more pain through our own human relationships than anything else (loving people eevn when we die, becoming attached to people who don't love us)

Death also comes to us all - we are not spared that either.

rosieglo, I think I do understand what you are getting at.

How unfortunate that for you, being new here you chose to post on such an emotive topic.

There are many many topics here that are really very difficult to discuss calmly as people has very strong feelings on them.

I guess you will discover these for yourself in time.

The thing is that you can look at a situation ideally and say "yes it would be wonderful if no one had to 'suffer' with a disease when it could be screened out"

However it is often out of those very difficult situations in life, when people have to suffer and overcome, pain disability and prejudice, that true brilliance and beauty is born.

"disabilties that affect how they progress in the world"

Rosieglo FECK OFF & DIE !!!!

missionimpossible, that's a horrible thing to say, shame on you

No, Shame on Rosieglo !!!!

This is soooooo out of order, obvious troll. No-one in their right mind would say things on OP or maybe Rosieglo is off their head in which case there should be some kind of pre-natal screening for them !!!!

you talk about screening, but no mention of human error.
most of thr young people i know are disabled due to human error( a lot have proved this in court)
you say you are knew to chat boards, yet you post an offensive op and then act oh woe it's me because you get people angry.
"Improving intelligence also"
is in your post.

missionimpossible makes a very valid point

Mindful of getting into an emotive debate here, if these is a debate to be had at all, surely it must assume that terminating the pregancy is an option - if, of course, you believe that terminations are just wrong, then there is no debate to be had on this.

Assuming that there is a debate is it not possible to argue that there are certain diseases which we would not want to have regardless of any potential benefits? Cancer, I'd have thought, would fall into this category, but what about congenital heart disease for example?

We don't argue for example, that we should get rid of the smallpox vaccine because if you come through it and survive you're a better person for it.

Are there, therefore, certain things that we should be able to screen embryos for?

but how would we know that screening out one genetic 'quirk' won;t actually trigger a worse one in its place????

what IF, the child that has just been born without the breastcancer gene doesn;t in fact also have a 'brain cancer gene', and that gene would never have actually come to the fore if the breast cancer gene had been left in place.

see........kittywise is right......for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!.

what if the reaction is worse.....god forbid...........do we then kill of THOSE people.

at this rate there will be no-one left to eradicate.

riven.....cancer wasn;t that rare 100yrs ago......people still died of it but it just wasn;t recognised as such....they instead died of blood disease (lukemia(sp?), or a growth (tumour) etc. plus, many of those who would have died of cancer anyway died in early infancy from other infections......people didn;t live long enough to develop cancer IYGWIM.

your other comment is very thought provoking tho........what if the breast cancer gene is indeed connected to the empathy gene, or the moral gene, or the (for frivolous sake), the pretty gene.........they could have actually inherently changed their darling child into a future serial killer......mwhahaha (and that is meant as a sarcastic joke comment BTW)

rosieglo on Mon 19-Jan-09 12:26:45
"new to posting on any discussion board.. so far Cory is the only person who has made a point I can really connect with - I can totally see what you mean, and I have had this discussion with friends (parents also of disabled children). I guess this is turning into a pro life or not arguement. For me the main issue was about GENETIC disorders, and more crucially disease.

Cory - I am sorry your daughter has to suffer, does it make any sense if I say to you that my point is that if in the future we could screen for illnesses or disabilties she could still have been born but without the pain."

I am afraid it doesn't unless you explain to me how screening would cure her. How would she be born without suffering if no cure has been invented? Her condition is genetic.

My point is that screening is not a cure for any known genetic condition.

'if in the future we could screen for illnesses or disabilties she could still have been born but without the pain.'

but how? If you were screening embryos for painful conditions surely the only thing you could do with that knowledge would be to destroy the embryo?

So consequently she wouldn't have been born at all. I don't really get it.

Sorry Cory x posted there.

I guess perhaps OP is saying that if screening were a standard thing, parents who could pass on those genes wouldn't be around either...that's comforting isn't it!?

Obviously, if you could screen and then give some medicine. But if there is no medicine, then in-the-womb-screening still leaves you with two alternatives: have the baby or abort.

My other objection is that there is no knowing how badly any one child will be affected by their genes. My ds has the same condition (so presumably would show up if a screening procedure had been invented)- but he has not developed the bad symptoms and is not suffering at all; in fact, I believe he is playing football atm.

Some children with autistic genes (if there is such a thing, which is not established) will become severely autistic, others will just seem brighter than their peers and possibly a little quirky. So what do we do? Get rid of them all?

As for breast cancer, my friend is dying from it at the moment. But she has had over 40 years of active life- serving the community and making friends and giving her children memories for life. Is that life not worth living because she will die a little earlier than other people? How do any of us know we won't?

petrovia on Mon 19-Jan-09 13:13:38
"Sorry Cory x posted there.

I guess perhaps OP is saying that if screening were a standard thing, parents who could pass on those genes wouldn't be around either...that's comforting isn't it!?"

Yeah, so that would be at least my grandmother aborted anyway. Meaning three generations of active useful people lost to the world so far, because now and again one of them will be in pain.

Rosieglo

No, I would not choose to have a 'perfect child' if given the choice to ensure such a thing.

I actually consider extraversion to be as much of a burden on society as other people consider chronic depression, Asperger's or deafness to be. Extroverts place demands on society that people who don't have extroversion have to endure. I don't want to have a baby with extroversion, but I don't expect us to wipe out the extrovert gene pool just to suit my prejudices.

We need variation to increase our adaptability.

Or could it be that the OP simply does not know what screening means? That she thinks it does imply some kind of treatment?

"if you could ensure that your child would be free of disease and disability would you take the steps to ensure that?"

Rosiglo - I think I can talk from an experience perspective. We knew our dd1 would be born in heart failure - we knew she would require surgery to live - 2 open heart surgeries as it would turn out to be. We also knew she would have down syndrome. Now in 2009 - the only way to ensure she is free of disease and disability is for her to not be alive.

yes - she has down syndrome. her heart is repaired and working like a 'normal' heart. BUT just because she has down syndrome does not make her any less worthy of being here. SHe is not 'down syndrome' It does not sum up the extent of her personality or potential. It is just one small part of a very big whole that is dd1.

You make statements like - I think breeding out disability and illness is a good thing and seem confused when people disagree. What is wrong with fitter, healthier, smarter children - well what happens when they succumb to disease that may leave them with a disability? What happens when they acquire a brain injury? or lose their leg from complications due to chicken pox? Where does that fit into your theory?

And fwiw - just because you have experience of working with children with sn - does not give you a leg up in an argument like this? Unless you live it - you don't truly understand it and people like that make me very cross as they assume to talk from a position of experience and people listen when in fact they can often be even more closed minded and ignorant than the general population.

That's exactly what I mean psychomum. If you mess with nature at any level there WILL be reprecussions and often in ways that were competeley unforeseeable.
saint2shoes what valid point does MI make exactly?

"Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction...of nature."

Newton's laws concern physics, not biology. Especially not evolutionary biology.

People (and indeed all living beings) have evolved through millenia, some beyond recognition. Yet "nature" does not seem to have struck any species with an "equal and opposite reaction" (like what? ) because they have evolved.

Besides, if genetically transmitted cancer were to disappear from the gene pool tomorrow, nature wouldn't even notice it because most people don't have this gene anyway.

By missionimpossible on Mon 19-Jan-09 12:36:38
"disabilties that affect how they progress in the world"

Rosieglo FECK OFF & DIE !!!!

it is her opinion and a valid point in mine, the op is a stirrer, who has come on here to cause offence.