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Wanting Babies Like Themselves, Some Parents Choose Genetic Defects
New York Times ^ | 5 December 2006 | DARSHAK M. SANGHAVI, M.D.

Posted on 12/06/2006 3:21:23 AM PST by shrinkermd

...Yet Susannah A. Baruch and colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University recently surveyed 190 American P.G.D. clinics, and found that 3 percent reported having intentionally used P.G.D. “to select an embryo for the presence of a disability.”

In other words, some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: action; affirmative; deafnessdwarfism; itsallaboutme; iwantababylikeme
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Affirmative Action for deafness and dwarfism is the new way.
1 posted on 12/06/2006 3:21:24 AM PST by shrinkermd
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To: shrinkermd

WAIT A MINUTE...
Why are these people getting all those subsidies and tax exemptions if they are going to deliberately reproduce their disability!!!??


2 posted on 12/06/2006 3:24:00 AM PST by Samurai_Jack (ride out and confront the evil!)
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To: shrinkermd
Ridiculous, selfish and idiotic. Case closed.
3 posted on 12/06/2006 3:27:27 AM PST by Dallas59 (Muslims Are Only Guests In Western Countries)
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To: shrinkermd
“A hearing baby would be a blessing,” Ms. Duchesneau was quoted as saying. “A deaf baby would be a special blessing.”
4 posted on 12/06/2006 3:29:53 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: Samurai_Jack

Its ok so long as YOU [and me] pay for their indulgence.[sarc/]

This child abuse plain and simple. The parents are sick, selfcentered and selfish. Deliberately choosing to inflict harm on the helpless and creating a dependent soul is an outrage. Any physician who assists and abets this is as sick as the parents.


5 posted on 12/06/2006 3:30:10 AM PST by Adder (Can we bring back stoning again? Please?)
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To: shrinkermd

we, as a species, are doomed. We have been toying with natural selection for decades and have been weakening the gene pool by keeping alive and alowing to prosper, individuals who would normally die. Now that we have the ability to tweak the pool to fix it, but instead, we are compounding our genetic errors...( at least that is true in the first world. It is the third worlders who will take that walk in the sun as they bury us, humankinds mistakes).


6 posted on 12/06/2006 3:31:36 AM PST by Vaquero ("An armed society is a polite society" Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: Vaquero

Yes. But evolution on the whole isn't necessarily for progressive complexity. The only rule of the game is if it will survive and spread. Or not.


7 posted on 12/06/2006 3:41:33 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: Adder
This child abuse plain and simple.

What would you call abortion?

The parents are sick, selfcentered and selfish.

Nice way of describing the pro-life movement, I'm sure. /sarc

Deliberately choosing to inflict harm on the helpless and creating a dependent soul is an outrage. Any physician who assists and abets this is as sick as the parents.

Meanwhile, you have the courage to call "the parents..." "sick, selfcentered [sic] and selfish". Just don't hurt your arm patting yourself on the back the rest of today. Geez.

8 posted on 12/06/2006 3:44:37 AM PST by BigSkyFreeper (There is no alternative to the GOP except varying degrees of insanity)
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To: shrinkermd

There's an old bromide suggesting no one ever went broke overestimating the stupidity present in the human race.


9 posted on 12/06/2006 3:47:14 AM PST by stevem
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To: shrinkermd

My parents chose to have me despite their genetic defect (which I also share) of having ten toes. Hey, it's not so bad. No one notices if you go to the trouble of wearing shoes in public.


10 posted on 12/06/2006 3:47:21 AM PST by PJ-Comix (Join the DUmmie FUnnies PING List for the FUNNIEST Blog on the Web)
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To: PJ-Comix

Imagine having twelve toes and being charged extra for a pedicure. LOL


11 posted on 12/06/2006 3:57:16 AM PST by BigSkyFreeper (There is no alternative to the GOP except varying degrees of insanity)
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To: shrinkermd

I'd wager that anyone surprised by this has not spent much time on a disability discussion forum.


12 posted on 12/06/2006 3:58:39 AM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: shrinkermd

What ever happened to having sex and loving whatever you received. Now we go to the baby store and order what we want?


13 posted on 12/06/2006 4:08:06 AM PST by sgtbono2002 (The fourth estate is a fifth column.)
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To: Vaquero

You are so right. Someday everyone will have some degree of diabetes. Before 1929 when insulin was was developed, juvenile diabetics did not generally make it to repoductive age. But....how could we do otherwise than provide insulin?


14 posted on 12/06/2006 4:08:29 AM PST by Dudoight
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To: Dudoight

but we can engineer our bodies to fix this.....eventually. cloning and gene splicing, etc...but will we. There are so many moral issues to doing this. I figure it will happen in our far future, but for now it is taboo. (dont get me wrong, I dont propose we do these things.....What is right? I don't know)


15 posted on 12/06/2006 4:13:48 AM PST by Vaquero ("An armed society is a polite society" Robert A. Heinlein)
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To: BigSkyFreeper; Adder; Dallas59; CarrotAndStick
I find it a rotten practice to create a nearly deaf (intentionally) child and then withhold hearing aids, like these famous deaf lesbian have done.

But IMHO, many disAbled people have not fully overcome the psychological issues involved with their disAbility, and as a defense mechanisms, they twist "I'm still okay, despute the disAbility" into "I'm okay because of the disAbility"...that is, using pride and defiance to overcome the pain.

I'm not a psychological professinal, but it seems so obvious to me and to many others who do have psychological/sociological training.

With the "right to privacy" and abortion rights and all, another issue arises...I'm curious if it is okay to lop off the legs of a fetus, or puncture its eardrum prior to birth. As the article points out, we are also having lots of ethical questions pop up around the level at which treatment is ok...if "below the arithmetic mean" is the only criterion for allowing human growth hormone use, why not allow it to anyone? Does that mean we can "supercharge" a fetus who is otherwise "normal"? Eventually, give it cybernetics? Etc.

16 posted on 12/06/2006 4:16:05 AM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: BigSkyFreeper

What does abortion have to do with it?

Not sure I follow your "logic" with this small flame...

Apparently you are feeling its ok for parents to choose to deliberately have debilitaed children? You saying this is a good thing and everyone should allow them their choice?


17 posted on 12/06/2006 4:28:29 AM PST by Adder (Can we bring back stoning again? Please?)
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To: Adder
What does abortion have to do with it?

Your comments. You're defending life by borrowing the same rhetoric used by the pro-abort crowd, that bringing to term a disabled child is "sick".

PGD is nothing more than invetero fertilization.

You saying this is a good thing and everyone should allow them their choice?

I'm saying if parents want to raise a disabled child, that's none of your business. To some, a disabled child is a burden, to other's it's a blessing.

18 posted on 12/06/2006 4:40:35 AM PST by BigSkyFreeper (There is no alternative to the GOP except varying degrees of insanity)
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To: All

Of course, there's always this... http://www.nextgencode.com/


19 posted on 12/06/2006 4:41:09 AM PST by Gondring (I'll give up my right to die when hell freezes over my dead body!)
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To: BigSkyFreeper

But the parents, for the most part, demand special services for that child, accomodations for that child, and so it becomes my business real fast because I have to pay for those services.

To deliberately set out to design a disabled child is morally reprehensible and ethicly wrong.

Sorry you don't seem to see that.


20 posted on 12/06/2006 4:48:29 AM PST by Adder (Can we bring back stoning again? Please?)
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