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Down's Symptoms May Be Treatable In the Womb
missb writes "US researchers have found that prenatal treatment for Down syndrome works in mice. This raises the possibility that a pregnant woman who knows her unborn child has Down syndrome might be able to forestall some of the symptoms before giving birth. When fetal mouse pups that had a syndrome similar to Down's were treated with nerve-protecting chemicals, some of the developmental delays that are part of the condition — such as motor and sensory abilities — were removed."
Isn't an abortion a lot cheaper? I mean, with these genetic misfits being somehow a part of society, we could be doing some damage to our gene pool.
Erm, in case your remark isn't facetious: individuals with Down's Syndrome are typically sterile.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
A friend told me about a young man with Downs syndrome who is adept at arithmetic. He lives alone and works as an accountant. Not bad at all for someone with his condition. If only us "normal" people all had the winning attitude and supportive family this man has...
Can? Sure.
Need to? Hell no, not in a world overpopulated by a factor of 2-5.
I don't have to ask anyone to judge their value in that context. At its coldest, its not hard to judge absolute value -- what is the benefit a birth will bring to society versus its cost.
If you want to talk relative vs absolute, there's a pretty significant percentage of people who end up in the red on that count.
If society has a certain amount of resources available to support the raising of the next generation, and the birth of the child in question will use the resources that otherwise could've been used for ten children without fundamental genetic defects, that's a pretty absolute value judgment as well.
The GP is absolutely right -- we as a society (particularly in the US) fail miserably at making rational judgment calls because of a misguided and unjustified assignment of irrational amounts of value to a bunch of cells.
A friend told me about a young man with Downs syndrome who is adept at arithmetic. He lives alone and works as an accountant. Not bad at all for someone with his condition.
Ever heard of Chris Burke? Quite a lot of people would be jealous of accomplishments like that.