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Does Reproductive Technology Concern You?

Daniel

Is anyone else concerned scientists are going to continue eugenics to more than babies who will be born with Down syndrome?

Bioethicists are debating whether any disabled person has the right to be born. Personally, I find it insulting scientists think disabled people's rights are something to argue about. It should be immediately "No" to the claim disabled people are not entitled to equal rights. Some of them are even saying our lives have no worth that we shouldn't be allowed to be in this world.

I've seen clinical websites saying reproductive technology is a "Great Hope" for preventing autistic people and people diagnosed ADHD coming into the world. There's already significant evidence medical science has become a field of discrimination and hatred and is no longer about health or healing. So many medical scientists have already become neo-*** designing genocide programmes against disabled people. 

These bioethicists and medical "professionals" claiming we have no place in this world, and that we do not deserve to be protected from discrimination has made me write a book to prove we are not the problem, but their attitude towards us and the economy is the problem.

Does anyone know how I can publicly debate the eugenicists? Genome reading, giving everyone a 'Genetic Identity' opens a whole new realm of cultural prejudice and discrimination.

Parents

  • I spent most of my career as a 'genetic engineer' working on tropical diseases, please do not 'other' scientists, or disparage them as a whole. I worked on diseases that kill 500,000 people (mostly children) a year in the poorest nations on Earth. I could have earned far more working in industry and on First World diseases, but chose to devote myself to helping the most vulnerable.

    There is actually a very great overlap between common autism-linked genetic alleles and alleles for high academic attainment. There is even a scientific paper called Autism as a disorder of high intelligence (BJ Crespi - Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2016). Weeding out traits for high intelligence would be like the whole of humanity shooting itself in the foot, or head. I think scare stories of eugenicists weeding out autism-linked genes is looking at an unlikely occurrence. Looking for large-scale genetic changes, often de novo (i.e. not hereditary), that are linked to certain uncommon forms of autism with very serious co-morbidities, is more likely, but still difficult and expensive to achieve. 

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  • I spent most of my career as a 'genetic engineer' working on tropical diseases, please do not 'other' scientists, or disparage them as a whole. I worked on diseases that kill 500,000 people (mostly children) a year in the poorest nations on Earth. I could have earned far more working in industry and on First World diseases, but chose to devote myself to helping the most vulnerable.

    There is actually a very great overlap between common autism-linked genetic alleles and alleles for high academic attainment. There is even a scientific paper called Autism as a disorder of high intelligence (BJ Crespi - Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2016). Weeding out traits for high intelligence would be like the whole of humanity shooting itself in the foot, or head. I think scare stories of eugenicists weeding out autism-linked genes is looking at an unlikely occurrence. Looking for large-scale genetic changes, often de novo (i.e. not hereditary), that are linked to certain uncommon forms of autism with very serious co-morbidities, is more likely, but still difficult and expensive to achieve. 

Children
  • in reply to Martin

    I agree Martin, and I think all but the most extreme eugenicists would realise this. Where did you get your DNA test done, I'd love to know this much about my families origins, I did a standard ancestry test and found out I'm 89% southern English which I think is quite high? I'd love to know how much Neanderthal I have. Do you wonder if we and Neanderthals have the same X and Y chromosomes? Is that possible? Do we have any idea of what sex chromosomes Neanderthals had?

    I think one of the reasons parents are offered an abortion if they're found to have a high likeihood of Downs or other chromosomal abnormalities, is that the parents may feel unable to cope with the needs of such a child and the heartbreak of either outliving them, or watcing their child slowly die. I think it would be a horrible position to be in as an expectant parent, whatever you do is going to be somehow wrong. Where did you get this information from? Despite centuries, maybe thousands of years of exposure of sick or disabled babies being born, we still have things like Downs, so maybe its not as simple as editing a few genes?

    Sorry to disapoint but there has always been this tendency for medical professionals to want to play god and they almost certainly would have got away with it and many still do, its like that old joke, 'Whats the difference between god and a consultant? God dosent' think he can practice medicine'.

  • in reply to Martin

    Hearing things like that from people who understand genetics is fascinating. I can understand how you might feel, given your experience and the sacrifice you have made. I am not knowledgeable about genetics, but I have recently got more interested in the human genome and reading about how admixing between our human ancestors, such as Denisovans and Neanderthals may have influenced our susceptibility to modern ailments such as influenza and the common cold.