Posted on 06/18/2006 6:30:46 PM PDT by neverdem
British fertility specialists have developed a powerful new way to test embryos for inherited diseases, offering hundreds of couples their first realistic chance of having healthy children. The procedure has been hailed as a big advance, boosting the number of diseases clinics can test for from about 200 to nearly 6,000. It will allow doctors to test for the first time a vast array of inherited diseases for which the specific genetic mutation is not known, such as Duchenne's muscular dystrophy (DMD) and some forms of cystic fibrosis. Using the technique, doctors can examine every embryo created for a couple through IVF, and determine whether each is healthy and unaffected, a carrier of the disease, or destined to develop the full-blown medical condition.
Such detailed knowledge of the genetic make-up of embryos will lead to a radical shift in the way couples at risk of passing on certain diseases are treated.
Some inherited conditions, known as x-linked diseases, are only passed on to boys, but because the mutations that cause the diseases are unknown, clinics can only screen them out by discarding every male embryo created, even if only half are affected. The new test will allow doctors to see which male embryos are free of the disease-causing mutation, so fewer embryos will be wasted. In some cases, the test will allow doctors the controversial option of asking couples to choose the sex of the embryos that are transplanted.
"This is a big, big change in what we are going to be able to do. It changes everything," said Professor Peter Braude of King's College London, who was involved in the research. Specialists at Guy's hospital in London have already used the technique to "cherry pick" healthy embryos for seven women at risk of passing on inherited diseases. Five of...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Death is the ultimate cost containment /sarc
Now that is damn interesting, about the only insightful thing I've read in days on the wasteland called "internet".
Plaudits, too, for your use of language; I much respect the trampling of taste and boundaries when truth is at stake.
Lincoln? What?
I'm sorry to intervene here, (not really), but to use your own logic, people using their own "values" would make all kinds of dubious decisions. That's why we have places called "prisons".
Your thoughts and observations are reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and precursor of Nazism. I know you hate the comparison, but cie la vie, it cannot be helped. Your comments protesting the comparison to Nazism in your earlier posts are quite telling.
He suffered from a herditary ailment that produced his odd looks, his strange gate, and his chronic depression. Probably through the Hanks family.
We have a massive amount of misdirected evolutionary action, as you mention - 'devolution.
This theme was touched on in the 'bell curve' that put together 2 startling points:
1. the fact that IQ is manly hereditary, and correlates with job performance
2. the fact that fertility among women is *anti*-correlated with IQ, now that feminism and careers have given the smart women a different path of success.
The Bell Curve theme is:
10 generations of this and we will have engineered a race of dunderheads.
Yet we are facing two more interesting wrinkles, both bad:
1. The demographic *collapse* as overall fertility plummets coming to Europe and Japan in the next 40 years, and the US perhaps soon after.
2. This 'brave new world' of eugenic manipulation that will use the wrong means, abortion, to cull out the unwanted.
Is there any way out of this tailspin? Is there a life-ethical way to *positively* have good kids, without blatantly killing off a child just because he may be predisposed to some condition?
The only answer to all of the above: Get Smart Women(*) to have more children. It might be encapsulated by something like - save civilization, end feminism, or words to that effect, but it really means the need for a higher-fertility 'mommy track' for the smart women of the world.
(*)Since it is Dad's day - men too.
I am curious about removing one of eight cells from a three-day-old embryo. How do they know that it doesn't cause harm? Although this would seem to promote more docs playing God and abortions, my gut tells me that 6000 inherited diseases will be getting intense scrutiny.
Even though knowledge may be obtained unethically from preimplantation genetic haplotyping, how do you ignore it when it may be used to do good, whether it's genetic counseling or treating the sick? BTW, I'm not advocating abortions.
"It's completely specious to compare elective screening of embryos to "the Nazis""
-----
But not by much. It's the same operative mechanism for Eugenics - kill the undesirables. The moral question is at what stage of life are you wiling to 'cull the herd'.
nazis were willing to kill retards and 'undesirable' ethnic groups like jews and gypsies, no matter what the age.
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, saw abortion as a eugenic tool. And you can even think of it as more acceptable compared with nazi methods as long as you ignore the fact that life begins at conception and human life is sacred.
The only way to be pro-eugenic and pro-life at the same time is to completey turn away from any practice that ends up killing human life:
1. Kill NO HUMAN at any stage of life for eugenic reasons.
2. Change the incentives for those who conceive and those who dont conceive.
Human life and human freedom require us do that much, and no more and no less.
An Inconvenient Truth - Gore as climate exaggerator
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Hey, great minds think alike. See ya around. 8)
"I am curious about removing one of eight cells from a three-day-old embryo. How do they know that it doesn't cause harm?" First, those taking a cell from the three day old embryo are to be placed in one of two categories: 1) embryos are not yet humans; 2) embryos 'may be' early aged humans, but killing them even by accident at age three days is okay. If one realizes those are the only two possibilities for the harvesters, even if they have 'good intentions', they are not in the same realm of 'do no harm' or pro-life that you are.
I had a baby sister who was born with Pfeiffer's Syndrome. She passed away at 18 months.
I am sorry about having to see your sister die. But your parents had to go through the worst tragedy of all losing a child. If we could have found this out prior to birth maybe something could have been done to prevent the disease and she could have lived to 80. I don't know if we are that advanced yet, but this is the direction we are going towards hopefully. By no means do I think the direction is having more abortions as I would defintely be against that.
Outstanding FReeper comments bump!
"'Gattaca' 1997"
I had the same thought. Great movie. Plus it's got Uma Thurman in it. ;-)
"There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit."
So true. That concept seems to have been lost in our world.
How do you figure that? He didn't start going deaf until he was about thirty years old.
"your using him as an example is fellatious."
It is indeed fallacious, but what it has to do with oral sex is confusing me.
See # 37. Deliberate play of words.
The implications are not just that this gives more reason to treat human beings like commodities, but if this becomes "effective", IVF will be touted as the "humane" method of procreation, since the embryo can be screened for disease. On top of that, the number of discarded or frozen, unborn embryos (human beings) will jump considerably.
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