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'Cancer-free' baby born in London, but how "cancer-free"? [Eugenics Alert!]
American Papist ^ | January 9, 2008 | Thomas Peters

Posted on 01/09/2009 9:54:00 AM PST by NYer

Keep track of stories like these, and how they describe with other names what is actually eugenics:

The first child in Britain known to have been screened as an embryo to ensure she did not carry a cancer gene was born Friday, a spokesman for University College London told CNN.

Her embryo was screened in a lab days after conception to check for the BRCA-1 gene, linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

People with the gene are known to have a 50-80 percent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer in their lifetimes.

British newspapers have dubbed the girl the "cancer-free" baby.

"The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations." (CNN)

But here's the reality check: no disease has been cured here. Instead, if the test revealed that the baby girl carried the gene, she would have been destroyeed (and the parents would have presumably tried to conceive again, then re-tested, and on it goes).

Thus, to say "the parents ... have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter" is misleading. What the parents were actually spared was "the chance that a daughter with the potential to develop a disease would be allowed to survive until birth."

Two added wrinkles: the testing process can only take place if the baby is conceived in vitro ... and this is the first time a baby has been screened for a likely disease-causing gene as opposed to a guaranteed one.

One sobering line:
"When [the disease] hits your family over and over again, many couples are saying: 'Enough of this. Let's prune this out of our family tree forever.'"
"Prune this out of our family tree forever?"!

Prune disease out all you want, but for heaven's sake, we're talking about pruning people out here!


TOPICS: Moral Issues; Religion & Culture; Religion & Science
KEYWORDS: cancer; eugenics; ivf; moralabsolutes; pgd
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To: cripplecreek
As Bob Bakker points out, "if an asteroid was all it took to kill a T-rex, turtles should have been goners."

 

Type specimen (YPM 3000) of Archelon ischyros in the Yale Peabody Museum, Yale University

Archelon is a genus of extinct sea turtle, the largest that has ever been documented. The first specimen of Archelon (YPM 3000) was collected from the Pierre Shale of South Dakota by Dr. G.R. Wieland in 1895 and described by him the following year (Wieland, 1896). The largest Archelon fossil, found in the Pierre Shale of South Dakota in the 1970s, measures more than 4 meters (13.5 feet) long, and about 4.87 meters (16 feet) wide from flipper to flipper. It was a marine turtle, distantly related to present day Leatherback Sea Turtles.  Its fossils date to 70 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, when a shallow sea covered most of central North America. Most of the known remains have been found in South Dakota and Wyoming. Though anatomically similar to the earlier species Protostega gigas, it was much larger.
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archelon

 

 

21 posted on 01/09/2009 10:47:43 AM PST by MyTwoCopperCoins
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To: Bushwacker777

How arrogant to believe we can look at embryos, even with our wonderful science tools, and believe we can pick “the best” one.


22 posted on 01/09/2009 10:51:13 AM PST by DManA
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To: NYer
When [the disease] hits your family over and over again, many couples are saying: 'Enough of this. Let's prune this out of our family tree forever.

When we value human life as lower than any concept or ideology, then we are already barbarians. Some might say that the death penalty does this, but to have the ultimate cost as consequences for taking a life elevates the value of human life rather than devaluing it.

23 posted on 01/09/2009 10:59:13 AM PST by dan1123 (Liberals sell it as "speech which is hateful" but it's really "speech I hate".)
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To: Gerish
I’m confused. The article says this baby will be “cancer free,” but only from breast and ovarian cancer.

Shhhhhh .... you were not supposed to notice that. Scientists see themselves as demi-gods and probably assume they will have a vaccine in place by the time the child is older. In their view, it's a "start" that should generate great enthusiasm. Why aren't you wildly enthusiastic (/sarc) at this tremendous medical breakthrough?

Last night I happened to catch a commercial for a new arthritis drug. The list of possible side effects included cancer.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said it well ..

As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word "good" should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.
Born Toward Dying

What we really need, as a society, are professionals who will help us prepare for our guaranteed mortality. Thank God we have our priests.

24 posted on 01/09/2009 11:47:35 AM PST by NYer ("Run from places of sin as from a plague." - St. John Climacus)
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To: NYer; Coleus; Peach; airborne; Asphalt; Dr. Scarpetta; I'm ALL Right!; StAnDeliver; ovrtaxt; ...
Pre-Implantation Diagnosis

This is an interesting essay, IMHO.

Scientists Devise New Stem Cell Methods to Ease Concerns link to NY Times

At the eight-cell stage, reached by a fertilized mouse egg after its third division and just before the blastocyst is formed, they removed one cell. They then coaxed that cell, known as a blastomere, into growing in glassware and forming cells that have all the same essential properties as embryonic stem cells derived from the inner cell mass, Dr. Lanza's team reported.

The seven-cell embryo was implanted in the mouse uterus and grew successfully to term. That part of the procedure is known to work with humans too, because it is the basis of a well-established test known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. In the test, one cell is removed from each of a set of embryos and tested for any of 150 genetic defects, giving the parents the choice of implanting an embryo that is disease free.

How can you prove that doesn't cause harm?
25 posted on 01/09/2009 1:34:17 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem

Sorry, Genes having nothing to do with disease. There is no such thing as a breast cancer gene. Cancer is formed by low oxygen in the body, the wrong PH, toxins, not a gene.


26 posted on 01/09/2009 1:37:27 PM PST by Scythian
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To: Scythian
Sorry, Genes having nothing to do with disease. There is no such thing as a breast cancer gene.

Tell that to those who have Familial adenomatous polyposis, (FAP), or women who have tested positive for mutations in brca1 or brca2. A geneticist will probably tell those who have tested positive for mutations in brca1 or brca2 that they are at increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Cancer is formed by low oxygen in the body, the wrong PH, toxins, not a gene.

Don't get your medical information from infomercials whether on TV or the internet.

27 posted on 01/09/2009 9:55:02 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem

Sorry, I say again. Genes having nothing to do w/ith disease. There is no such thing as a breast cancer gene.


28 posted on 01/11/2009 11:40:45 AM PST by Scythian
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To: Scythian

THere are two breast cancer genes. BRCA 1 and 2. I just had the test so I know. THey account for quite a risk for both breast and ovarian cancer. When present, women can be advised to have mastectomies as well as oophorectomies.

If there is breast or ovarian cancer in the family in first degree relatives,,one should have the test.


29 posted on 01/11/2009 11:49:45 AM PST by cajungirl (no)
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To: Scythian

THere are two breast cancer genes. BRCA 1 and 2. I just had the test so I know. THey account for quite a risk for both breast and ovarian cancer. When present, women can be advised to have mastectomies as well as oophorectomies.

If there is breast or ovarian cancer in the family in first degree relatives,,one should have the test.


30 posted on 01/11/2009 11:49:45 AM PST by cajungirl (no)
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To: cajungirl

It’s a mere statistical analysis coincidence, I’m sorry. Did you know there is an alcholism gene too?


31 posted on 01/12/2009 7:33:57 AM PST by Scythian
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To: Scythian

BRCA one and two are mutations associated with no mere statistical coincidence with cancer. The risk is astronomically high for women with these genes which run in families. I think you are being facetious about this. And there is no identified alcoholism gene,,it runs in families making one assume there may be a genetic component and actually there is evidence that there is a genetic component quite strong in men I believe.

But to deny the existence of something that is scientifically proven, tested for and obvious is something that makes me wonder why you hold such a position. You don’t believe in genetic causes for diseases or something?


32 posted on 01/12/2009 9:04:12 AM PST by cajungirl (no)
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