This is disturbing...
"A UK couple has received approval from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to have their IVF embryos screened for early onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD). "
(...full article)
(Also see this article)
For some reason, I thought the world couldn't get any more screwed up... The sci-fi world you see in movies like Gattica is probably prophetic of what is to come.
2 comments:
One could argue that numerous pregnancies are naturally aborted everyday, so why is this any different? It's nature preventing horrible distortions from occurring. Of course, the major flaw here is that it isn't "nature" doing the natural selection, but man.
I still think this is a difficult position for a person to be in, though. The professor of my human genetics class (for non-science majors) once said that genetics is precisely the reason he and his wife decided against having children: the risk was too great. I consider some of the things in my family (and in Andy's) and wonder at the purpose of bringing a child into this world that has a better than 75% chance at having a mental disorder such as bipolar or chronic depression, or a physical disorder such as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. No one wants to watch their children suffer in the same manner than oneself has. The single greatest fear of the parent is not that they'll be stuck raising an ill child, but that they'll have been the cause of misery in their child's life.
True, once a human being is born, he eventually has a choice regarding their attitudes towards their troubles. And true, God can turn any evil--and I believe that such things as diseases and disorders are evils, the consequence of man's sin upon the biological nature of the world--to good things. But there are times when such a saying seems overly trite, even cruel; it's said by people who don't deal with tragedy on a daily basis to people who do, and it is hardly a comfort especially when the tragedy is preventable.
So this is a hard one for me. It's also difficult to ponder the question upon which embryo debates turn: at what point does potential for life become life? I have no answer for this, and I don't think that scientists or religious leaders have addressed the question's numerous viewpoints very well at all.
Thanks for the comment... I think you are correct. There are some tough moral/ethical/philosophical issues behind the idea of screening for disease in your child. I was mostly reacting to the idea that a person would end their child's life based on only the potential that the child would have dificulties in life. There are really too many intertwined issues here to say much at all without many qualifiers...but, I think one of the problems represented here (apart from the abortion issue) is a situation where parents would sacrifice 30 - 40 years with their child to prevent the chance of suffering at the end of the child's life. I've been thinking alot about this lately...maybe I'll post some thoughts later.
As far as the abortion issue goes, I just read an excellent article by a guy named John Finnis. If you want to track it down, it is an article/chapter called "Abortion and Health Care Ethics". It's in Bioethics: An Anthology (Ed- Helga Kuhse) and Principles of Health Care Ethics (ed. Raanan Gillon)...I hope my references are librarian approved.
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