Designer Babies for People with Disabilities - Engineered Broken?

This is nuts.

www.washingtontimes.com...

The power to create "perfect" designer babies looms over the world of prenatal testing.

But what if doctors started doing the opposite?

Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities -- say, deafness or dwarfism -- it just means making babies like them. And a recent survey of U.S. clinics that offer embryo screening suggests it's already happening. Three percent, or four clinics surveyed, said they have provided the costly, complicated procedure to help families create children with a disability.

Have people gone freakin' insane? Why would a blind person want to cripple their own child to prove a point? Why would a dwarf pay to ensure that their offspring were the same?

I can understand a parent wanting to give their child the best, but what is this all about? Taking away a child's eyesight, or cursing them with any number of other maladies, just to feel good about yourself and reinforce some academic argument about equality?

If your kid is born blind naturally, you don't love them any less, but why would a parent want to deny their child sight? Can you imagine, growing up to find that your parents had engineered you to be short, sickly and blind, when you could have had a fighting chance to be healthy (thanks to the random factor hardwired into conception).

Is this right; should it even be legal?

I'm jumping the gun a bit...

Is this even happening yet? That should be the first order of business, discovering if this is taking place or not. Based on that one survey, discussed in the article, this is taking place. But is that proof?

Not by a long shot.

So, does anyone have any additional information on this subject? I'm just in awe of this concept...

That's just twisted. Doesn't that constitute "doing harm"? Aren't these doctors violating their oath? This is almost as sick and twisted as naming your child Mussolini Hitler.

Yikes

Imagine that super babie's made right to order, makes you wonder if maybe the army might start making Enhanced human's or even Enhanced athlete's for sport's...

The U.S.S.R used to pick up kid's who were naturally athletic and train them for their entire live's...

I guess it's almost the same, cept without the science, but the ethic's kinda is...

I'm still not sure how I feel about designer babies who guaranteed to grow up perfect, but this is a whole different can of worms.

I mean, engineered to be broken...

It just blows my mind that any parent would want to intentionally cripple their child.

I mean, are retarded parents going to be deciding they want retarded babies? Is society content to allow its members the freedom to sabotage future generations intentionally (I mean, we don't allow it when it's unintentional, how can we allow this?)

If I was a blind parent, I can't imagine wanting to choose that for my child. There's something to be said for being blind, but who the Hell are you to make that decision? If the kid gets to be twenty, and wants to be blind, we can always have their eyes surgically removed.



Seriously, what's going on here? Is it just a fake story, do you suppose? I can believe it's real, because people are more and more insane by the day, it seems, but I'd still like some more verification.

For the Dwarfism part, I can say it's real(saw it on TLC). They already do genetic screenings and Dwarf parents and they have the option to screen out the gene that causes their condition or not to if thats their choice.

I'm still not sure how I feel about designer babies who guaranteed to grow up perfect,

Perfection is an illusion created by modern day fantasies of what a "perfect" baby is.

It's sick that any parent would want for there child to grow up with a disability. People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children. Why would anyone want there children to have to grow up being blind or deaf or mentally disabled. Perfecting humans I can understand but intentionally harming your own child is just sick.

[edit on 28-12-2006 by User0073]

This is really twisted! What kind of psycho-freak would you have to be to deny your child the best life they can have! I'm all for accepting and loving a child with special needs, but to purposly make them that way, that's wrong!

I am a person with special needs, and I believe that for better or worse people with disabilities have an important place in our world. However, it is wrong to give someone a disability for your own likings.

Hell, if you really want to have a child with a disability in your family, you can get one. It's calledADOPTION! There are so many of these children out there already who desperatly Need good homes and Loving Families! If you have the love to care for a child with Special Needs, prove it by taking on of the hundreds of these wonderful children sitting alone in Group Homes in to your family, and show them the Love and Affection they need and deserve.

Tim

That Tim is an excellent point to bring up.

Why are people creating more children with defects, when the adoption agencies already have trouble finding suitable homes for the orphans who allready have defects. It's sick.

If I had to engineer my child, I would give it everything, the mind of an aerospace engineer, the stable nerves of a good sniper, the bone structure of a weight lifter, with the immune system of a horse. I wouldnt leave anything out... and these people are purposely making their childrens future a living HELL!? for goodness sakes, these people had to live with their defects, and now they want their children to suffer from them aswell?!?!?!

Screw them, as soon as they decide to place such a burden on a child, they should be marked as unfit to be a parent and their rights to have children should be removed immediately.

[edit on 29-12-2006 by johnsky]

This has already happened. I recall a lesbian deaf couple that needed a sperm donor to have a child, the researched candidates for people who definitly carried genes that would result in a deaf child. Their argument is that there is a 'deaf culture', and that deaf people relate to one another more strongly than they do to people with hearing.

THere is even a lot of resistance amoung deaf people to cochlear implants, which can restore hearing for some deaf people. THey don't consider being deaf to be a handicap at all, and consider attempts to 'correct' their deafness to be sick.

It's one thing to not want to be forced by society to do something you don't want to do, it's another thing altogether to force you unborn child to be something in which he/she has absolutely NO SAY IN! Sorry, but those people in the "Deaf Culture" are being incredibly selfish. They are basically doing the exact same thing they don't want US to force them to do! Sound Hypocritical? Sure is!

[edit on 29-12-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 29-12-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by Nygdan
THere is even a lot of resistance amoung deaf people to cochlear implants, which can restore hearing for some deaf people. THey don't consider being deaf to be a handicap at all

Very true! I had an ASL (Sign Language) Professor in college who was born deaf. They consider deafness a sub-culture, with it's own language and customes. For them, the Idea of being pushed into the speaking/ hearing world is about accepting a foriegn culture, like if people in the US were suddenly force to speak Spanish and follow Mexican customes.

However, I still say their is a big difference between shareing culture and engineering people with disabilities. A person who can hear can learn ASL and Deaf Culture. In fact we have people fluent in both ASL/Deaf Culture and standard English/ American Culture, They are used as interprenters and translators.

It's better for a hearing child with deaf parents to know both worlds and be able to help us bridge the language gap then to genetically engineer a child to be deaf just for personal reasons.

Bottom Line is This: If we (as a society) ever hope to cast off ingorance for enlightenment, we need to work as individuals and as groups to know and understand each other. Only understanding and acceptance can ever conquer Ignorance and Fear!

Tim