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Pastimes : Who's Guiltier?-- Andrea Yates or her Husband? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AugustWest who wrote (58)	2/28/2002 12:24:32 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74

You know, there was a time when mentally "challenged" folks with low IQs were routinely sterilized. I think that's against the law now. Without intervention, the average or above average IQ children of these people don't fare well in life. It's a shame science hasn't figured out a way yet to determine which people will be responsible adults and parents. Once we identify those that are inept, i say we neutralize their ability to reproduce. In fact that science is not that far away: Healthy baby born after eggs screened for Alzheimer's gene Early senility in mother's family -- process worries bioethicists Rick Weiss, Washington Post Wednesday, February 27, 2002 Applying sophisticated genetic tests to batches of human eggs, doctors in Chicago have helped a 30-year-old woman give birth to a baby that is free of her family's curse of early Alzheimer's disease. Doctors said it was the first time genetic screening had been used to cull a form of Alzheimer's from a family line. Some experts praised the feat yesterday as an act of compassion toward the next generation. Without the screening, the newborn would have had 50-50 odds of becoming hopelessly senile by the time it was 40 years old. Others criticized the advance as the latest step down the road toward designer babies. "The path we're on, pretty soon no baby is going to be good enough," said Barbara Katz Rothman, a sociologist at the City University of New York. "It's just increasing the sense of guilt and responsibility on women." Some also questioned the wisdom of helping establish a pregnancy in a woman whose mind would be so riddled by disease that she would be unable to recognize her own daughter by the end of the decade. The thought-provoking work is the latest of a string of advances in a field known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, in which eggs or embryos are tested for the presence of disease genes and only those embryos lacking such genes are transferred to a woman's womb. Such tests have stirred little controversy when used to detect genes that uniformly cause fatal ailments in childhood. But they have raised ethical hackles as doctors have begun using them to cull embryos carrying genes that only modestly elevate a newborn's risk of disease or that don't cause disease until late in life. Among the many concerns raised by critics is the possibility that parents may start selecting for traits that aren't strictly linked to health or disease but rather reflect personal preferences. Some have warned that conventional reproduction will someday be seen as irresponsibly risky, putting pressure on couples to use every test they can afford.