Genetic Screening

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Recently in Biology we have been looking at Genetic Screening and I have taken particular interest in it, and although I have always had a 'pro-science' view on most things, I am beginning to feel strongly against this. we usually look at the case of screening for a child with Down Syndrome but my teacher admitted it could be done for autism too, including asperger syndrome.

So many great people have had this 'disease' - as society continues to call it. It would be a horrible shame to get rid of such brilliant people and the people who I believe the most potential.

I am just posting this to find the opinions of other Aspies / NTs who are open minded enough to look on this site.



P.S. On a side note this seems to provoke the same indecision in me as I felt while playing Deus Ex and looking at Human Augmentation. What do other people think in this 'Science vs Ethics' debate.

I believe that every child is a gift from God and I believe in the protection and sanctity of every life from conception until natural death.

Well, for one thing, autism is polygenic and multifactorial (lots of different genes can cause it, and lots of different combinations of genes can cause it)... so you couldn't test for it like you could test for Down syndrome. Even with Down syndrome the test isn't that accurate; with autism, you'd probably have positive results consisting of three or four NT babies for every autistic baby, and you couldn't tell which was which. And with DS, if you have the extra chromosome you'll always end up with DS; with autism, if you have the genes you'll probably only end up with autism about 70-90% of the time--and there's no telling whether you'll be profoundly autistic or be a little-professor Aspie or an artist savant or anything else on the spectrum. Look at identical twins: Yes, both twins are almost always autistic; but the type and severity of autism varies between the twins. There's your environmental influence. You can't predict by a prenatal test what kind of autism a child will have, because it simply isn't determined at that point. It's all in how you develop.

Eugenic abortion is... ugh. It gives me the creeps. I don't care if you're pro-choice or pro-life; the decision that a life isn't worth living when you have a disability, when it would be worth living if you didn't, is just eugenics plain and simple, based on prejudice and bad science.

If you are going to have a child, you should accept the child as they are--brown hair or blonde, athlete, intellectual, poet, or social butterfly, girl or boy, black or white, disabled or not. Once you start saying that some children are more acceptable than others, you are making judgments about the value of human life.

If you say, "Well, I can raise a child, but I'm not ready for a disabled child," then think twice about having that child. Any child could get knocked on the head in a car accident, or break their neck falling downstairs, or just have a disability that isn't obvious until after they're born. Disability is very common. If you aren't prepared to love and raise a disabled child ("prepared" in the sense of "willing to do what it takes" rather than "already an expert", of course)--if you're not prepared to raise a disabled child, you're not prepared to raise any child at all.

This is sort of based on that old "What if you aborted Beethovan" chessnut, isn't it?

Well, truth is, you're killing hundreds of potential Beethovans, Hitlers, Obamas and Marxs when you masturbate guys.

So stop thinking like that, period, anytime you're not making babies is time you're killing sperm, thus killing all these supposed potential droplets of joy and happiness. Just stop that line of thought, it goes nowhere sensible.

Saying "you aborted a life that had so much potential and could have been so happy" comes back to that, you're doing that every second you're not f**king.

Autism is an interesting one because I see a practical application for screening other than termination.

Autism does not become apparent until maybe 18 months at the earliest and the professionals like to faff about much longer than that before they make a diagnosis. This is at odds with the studies that show that early intervention, and the earlier the better, improves outcomes for children with an ASD.
If a child was born and you knew they were Autistic you could put in steps right away to be able to help them, and maximise the childs potential. It would also save a lot of worry, stress and maybe money.

As for termination I'm with CR on that.

This is brilliant. We are actually getting all the facts and answers out. We need to use this forum to sort out all the worlds problems. Unless NTs are the problem, I still get the feeling a majority of people here aren't the biggest NT fan.

But seriously thank all of you for your insight.

Eugenics is totally unscientific. Genetic diversity, not "good genes", is what makes a species stronger. You want to have all kinds of people in a population.

It's not selecting one person or another to reproduce with that's the problem. Of course we all do that, the moment we decide to have children. The problem is not when you choose who to reproduce with; it's when you choose which life is worth living.

Whether you believe a fetus is human is not particularly relevant to whether you believe people should have only "genetically strong" children. It really only determines whether you want to select by preventing birth or preventing conception. Either way, you're trying to impose your idea of which lives are worth living--or which lives are worth enough for society to support and include--or which children are worth loving. And that is not just unethical, but unscientific.

I would be happy to be born all over again with AS still attached, although it does cause me loads and loads of unnecessary trouble. Im not sure if I'll be able to keep my talents, drive, passion and iq if someone ripped AS out of my system.