Posted on 04/02/2007 4:13:47 PM PDT by wagglebee
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, April 2, 2007 (POP.org/LifeSiteNews.com) - For a number of years now, a great deal of discussion has taken place among scientists and in the popular media about the genetic engineering of children. Will it soon be possible, for prices widely affordable at least to the upper-middle class, to guarantee that children have a high IQ, or excellent athletic ability, or be over 6 feet tall, or have blond hair and blue eyes? Is it right to commodify children in this way, and have parents choosing options as they do with cars? And wouldn’t it be boring to live in a world someday where almost everyone is extremely intelligent and beautiful? Variety, or even the politically correct term “diversity,” is the spice of life.
But not everyone wants what seemed to be the three genetic engineering options: refrain and let nature take her course, attempt to repair genetic diseases but otherwise let well enough alone, or select positive qualities in children. There are parents who are deliberately ensuring that their children are born with disabilities, from deafness to dwarfism. A fourth option—inflicting permanent disabling conditions on children—is now being used.
For some years now, some deaf parents have refused to allow their deaf children to receive cochlear implants that would enable them to hear. The devices must often be implanted when children are very young in order to work, so such parents condemn their children to a lifetime of deafness when they could have been able to hear.
Some dwarf couples are even using in-vitro fertilization to create embryos in the lab, then killing the normal ones and implanting the ones with the dwarfness gene to ensure having a dwarf child .
The standard Marxist-Frankfurt School arguments are used to justify such acts by Deaf Life magazine and other radical organizations representing some disabled people. They argue that deaf folks, dwarfs, and others aren’t disabled at all, just different. Deaf Life types complain of an “oralist” culture that discriminates against deaf people who use sign language. “Oralism” oppresses the deaf, you see, just as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other isms ad nauseam oppress others.
In a Jan. 21, 2007 story, the Associated Press reported that, of American clinics it surveyed that perform embryo screening, 3% admit to screening in favor of disabilities. This story contains perhaps the most revealing statement on the question. It was uttered by a dwarf woman angered that anyone would dare suggest that deliberating inflicting permanent suffering on children is bad:
“Cara Reynolds of Collingswood, N.J., who considered embryo screening but now plans to adopt a dwarf baby, is outraged by the criticism. ‘You cannot tell me that I cannot have a child who's going to look like me,’ Reynolds said. ‘It's just unbelievably presumptuous and they're playing God.’”
Funny to think that it’s playing God to say it’s wrong to use high-tech techniques to choose certain qualities in children rather than letting nature take her course. Isn’t intervening to choose a major genetic quality in your child much more like playing God?
First abortion, then fetal and embryonic tissue experimentation, and on the anti-child bandwagon goes. Some kill children because they have disabilities, others choose to inflict suffering that only God could possibly have a right to allow. What hate there is in the world.
I will let others comment upon the dark spiritual impulses that must be behind a parent’s decision to do such a thing. But I will ask this: How relativistic can a society become and still be worthy of preserving?
Things must change soon. With such degeneration, and such low birthrates in this anti-child age, things must change or we shall perish. I am banking on the former.
The leftist eugenicists are working to destroy society.
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No. It'd be a nice change of pace.
Disgusting..
When will we start calling it ‘decanting’?
I would have to agree.
THEY HAVEN’T GOT THE ‘STONES’ TO ABORT ‘EM OUTRIGHT, SO THEY ENSURE THAT THEY’RE BORN MAIMED AND STAY THAT WAY?
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS??!!
Pope Benedict XVI speaks out against "designer babies"
Couples Cull Embryos to Halt Heritage of Cancer
Many U.S. Couples Seek Embryo Screening (designing the dream child Alert!)
Ethicists debate issues about beginning of life
'Embryo Bank' Stirs Ethics Fears (Clients Pick Among Fertilized Eggs) Idea of 'designer' babies with defective genes stirs ethics questions
And of course this “designer disabled child” will receive federal assistance (i.e., you tax dollars at work!)
If I have the option of gene sifting my children, I will. If I have the option of giving my children strong, beautiful bodies, superior immunity to disease, and brilliant minds; it would be almost immoral to not do it.
I hate to say this, but I’d venture there’s lots of cash and special treatment at stake. Wasn’t there a case recently of a Mom having her kids fake some disability in order to get them benefits and into a personalized education?
Only a stupid person would think that a world full of intelligent people would be boring.
How absolutely sick and revolting!
It reminds me of Paris in the 1700’s, when the beggars wanted their children also to be beggars. But even better beggars than they were. So they deliberately maimed their infants, breaking their arms and legs or putting out an eye with a hot poker, because the disabled beggars raked in ever so much more money than the “normal” ones.
Humanity was depraved back then. Now with DNA tests, in vitro fertilization, and “reduction” of embryos, modern technology helps mankind (and womankind) to be more and more depraved.
Spoken like a good eugenicist.
If everyone was intellegent, it wouldn’t be intelligent anymore—just average.
Just the tip of the ice-burg.
For example, what if it turns out that parents can can choose if their children have a propensity to be gay, or have religious experiences?
Will heterosexuals want to select for straight children, or homosexuals for gays and lesbians?
Will Muslims or Christians want to select against children likely to grow up to be agnostics or atheists, and vice versa?
The thing is though, it isn't likely to happen. If people are allowed to choose the traits of their offspring, they won't choose the traits that other people value. Like the dwarf that wants a dwarf child, stupid, ugly and ignorant people will choose to have stupid, ugly and ignorant children.
If you go to ghettos in Europe or America, you will see this happening. Those kids who tend to excel academically are persecuted by their peers. Families disparage higher education.
The principle seems to be that people want to be more like the way they already are. Tough guys want to be tougher, smart people want to be smarter and pretty girls want to be more beautiful.
Can it eleminate the “rude” gene?
Ping!
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