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.

Little is known about the causes of autism, but if we assume it is caused by one gene, then presumably the screening would not be of any help in deciding how badly affected the individual baby would be: if it would be a wholly negative part of their life, or if it would be a negative-balanced-by-its-concomitant-positives.

cote are you aware of diasgnostic asd criteria?

as is asd without the language delay

so you can be quite severely disabled by it

now I am not in any way likening this to Riven's dd or anything like that, or indeed saying that all people with as are severely disabled but I live this daily and it does get my goat

I ahve 4 ds's: 2 NT

1 with AS / HFA

1 with ASD (will need lifelobng care, hardly talks etc)

It is ds1 with the 'lesser' dx that challenges us daily

it is him that stalks the house at midnight, has possible anorexia, is aggressive and harms me often

it is he who gets higher rate DLA (assessed on actual care need not DX)

I think I am qualified more than many to say bollocks to the label, look at the actual child

Milly - That comment you disagree with doesn't mention evolution at all, so I still don't understand why you felt the need to say "evolution is the change in all genes, not the majority ones"

"i believe nature would notice (disappearance of breast cancer gene), in the form of potential evolutionary pathways."

HOW?

I keep asking this question, and don't see an answer from anyone.

We see unintended consequences in nature when a general trait disappears, not a minority one. Besides, breast cancer is a disease that kills not a talent that came about by natural selection.

Again, we eradicated smallpox. Where is the effect from nature? You "believe nature would notice". Has it?

"we cannot be certain that those genes are not advantageous"

Breast cancer gene kills prematurely, which is not Darwin's definition of an evolutionary advantage. Nor anyone else's, afaik.

I'm quite familiar with AS, having taken the tests quite a few times myself.

So ypu should know then that behavioural issues are not part of the criteria for the distinction between as and asd.

What exactly are you talking about?

CoteDAzur, taking a test and living with a disability are not the same thing.

For your information, my Asperger syndrome is not just me having difficulty in deciphering social situations & facial expressions. It has had a profound effect on every part of my life from the earliest of ages, much like being both blind and deaf to people. The immeasurable fear, the sensory overload, the need for repetition and routine, the treatment society deals out to us....only 1 in 7 of us has a full time job. Most live in poverty. Many end up with mental illness from the sheer unremitting strain on us. Many end up using drugs or alcohol as the only way to survive day to day because of the pressures that society puts on us in making us work and live in environments that hurt like hell.

I've experienced bullying, depression, anxiety, fraud, sexual abuse, and have been unable to access things that others take absolutely for granted - church services, training courses, etc.

Can I please suggest that you do some research and actually listen to us before likening all of that to a bruise? I have had a bruise. For example the ones dealt out to me by bullies. It's nothing like a bruise at all.

As for the children who sit and bang their heads, I'd say 90% of it is being put in an environment that 'hurts' like hell. The difference? I can tell people about it and move away from it, sometimes. They can't, bless them. It doesn't mean they all need eliminating.

What we need is effective therapies and treatments and support.

CoteDAzur, the only diagnostic criteria that changes between Autism and Asperger syndrome is the age at which we first speak. In DSM V they expect that there will be no such thing as autism v Asperger syndrome, but it'll be re-classified as low-functioning, mid-functioning and high-functioning.

PS I'm an autism adviser with extensive experience of working with people at all ends of the autistic spectrum.

The diagmnostic criteria in practice for autistic spectrum disorders states that aspergers is autism with no language difficulties

just that

so whereas in reality many people with AS are people whose language development signifies a lesser asd- ie AS- there is a significant number of individuals quite markedly disabled by AS. DS1 gets higher rate care as at 9 he needs 24/7 care. That's nt a minor disorder about social norms. It affects every aspect of his life. As a result he has signs of anorexia, severe sleep disorders and if you search my previous threads as Peachy you will find many where I get upset about his severe vioplence and aggression.

Not so ds3. ASd and severelyd elayed he may be but he is not a challenge on a day to day basis in the same way; he is not aggressive (passive autism) and is not a risk to other children when with them

That is what I am on about.

My experience is quite different. If behavioral differences are indeed not taken into account in the UK, that explains the "disability" approach to AS that I hear about.

amber - Funny you mention drugs. I know one very successful corporate lawyer who has AS. Quite a marked case, impossible to miss if you meet him. Several years ago he took some "ecstacy" and says it transformed his life - showed him it was possible to communicate with other people, and even how. He said he was a different person on the drug (talkative, open, chit-chatty) and could repeat the experience without the drug, now that he "knows how".

I'm not saying that is what everyone should do, but just telling the story because I find it interesting.

Cote, you are asking for answers to a number of very big questions.

In terms of your questions about evolution, I think you need to go and read an introduction to evolution (and I am not saying that to be offensive; you are clearly rational and intelligent). Eradicating breast cancer genes would be a change in the allele frequency within a population, which is a form of biological evolution. Not all evolution is caused by natural selection; that is only one of a variety of ways that evolution occurs.

Premature death is a social and moral issue, not a darwinian one. Anyone who is able to reproduce and survive until their child is 7 has been successful in biological terms, so breast cancer past the age of about 25 does not has an evolutionary disadvantage anyway.

Heritable breast cancer is not caused by a single gene; it is caused by many different genes within each type of breast cancer, and is diverse across ethnic groups and is subject to very high levels of mutation. To eradicate all of those alleles would be a huge (probably impossible task) and we do not know what the results would be (positive or negative) in the eradication of such a large number of alleles.

When mutation and variation (of the minority alleles) are removed from populations it does have huge consequences in nature and is a very well studied phenomenon in biology. It is called the Hardy-Weinberg principle and means that the population in question has stopped evolving, which reduces the chances of survival of the whole population.

We have not eradicated the smallpox virus; we have eradicated smallpox in human populations but have kept the virus in labs around the world, as approved by the WHO.

I said this previously but it was ignored so i'll repeat.

I find it quite odd that everyone is so keen to get rid of severely autistic people but keep the high functioning ones.

Why is that? Because they're more likely to pay taxes (actually that's not necessarily true many with AS struggle to hold down a job, any job)?

I suspect it's because people cannot understand that there's value in a life with severe autism and learning difficulties. Which is a shame and rather demonstrates how far we have to go as a society.

Who is everyone? I don't believe that.

I am not keen to get rid of severely autistic people. Severely disabled people have played a key role in human society for at least the last 10,000 years. I think that people with AS are just more able to vocally defend themselves than people with severe autism.

Well most people on this thread, how many times do you see 'we can't introduce a test for autism because we'd end up getting rid of the high functioning ones as well as the severely affected'.

Er I don't want a test for autism anyway. Don't particularly want to get rid of people who happen to be severely autistic (yes search for the environmental triggers that are relevant in some cases, but no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater).

I realise I may have come across as saying this, Jute. It was badly expressed, I didn't actually mean that.

I must be weird as I don't see the need to get rid of disabled paople, I would just like to rid society of the bigots that make life so hard for anyone who is not perfect"

i think there needs to be a distinction made.

Whilst we can love our relatives with disabilities, and i am sure most of us have at least one, if we could would we like to keep the person and not the disability?

Therefore instead of 'screening' and ABORTING for something like breast cancer, we need to work towards a cure for the living, rather than abortion - where would it end?

blue eyes?

red hair?

Milly - I've read a bit about evolution, would you believe

I don't see your answer about what would happen if hereditary breast cancer were to disappear from the gene pool. You say you "believe nature would notice". HOW? What do you think would happen?

One important characteristic of genetically transmitted cancer is its early onset. It is not uncommon for these women to have full blown cancer before they have children.

At the end of your post you seem to be saying it's OK as long as we keep the breast cancer gene in the lab, like with smallpox virus. We could, I suppose, if you insist

You could screen and abort, then love the child without the cancer gene just as much as you would have loved the hypothetical child with the cancer gene.

What exactly is the dilemma?

If you didn't have an uncle who has cancer, you would have one who doesn't have cancer. You would love this uncle as much as the one you have now. You don't know any other uncle, so there would be no dilemma a la "I love my uncle even though he has cancer, he is such a lovely person and contributes to society etc"

For those who think that nature doesn't have a way of making us pay for iradicating illnesses I have just one word.

AIDS.

Now I'm going off to read the rest of the thread.

cote, we won;t know the way nature 'pays us back' for a while yet regarding eradicating certain genes.

re- the smallpox comment......we haven;t eradicated that gene as it there wasn;t one in us to eradicate. we just vaccinated everyone against it.

and you know what........all those vaccines have had an effect on people (ie, nature) as many will testify!

never finsihed this commment.....

"we won;t know the way nature 'pays us back' for a while yet regarding eradicating certain genes"......as we have only just had the technology to do this.

we won;t know what it will do for at least a generation, and only then if we all decide to carry thru with trying it.....which the majority won;t as they like the normal way of reproducing too much, and also don;t agree with it anyway.

For what it's worth, I'm certainly not of the opinion that only the high functioning autistic/disabled people are worth keeping. I believe that we are all equally valuable, equally to be respected for who we are, no matter what our level of ability.

If we cannot all treasure each other as human beings, we have lost our humanity.

Very good article by an acquaintance of mine, Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, on Community Care site, here:

www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/01/14/110412/professor-simon-baron-cohen-autism-is-not-cancer. html