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."

Comments

Re:Suck em out

[sydbarrett74]

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.

Re:It's a deformed child, not a moral trophy

[c_sd_m]

The people I know with disabilities, particularly mental ones, are generally happier than the rest of us.
Have you ever spent time with someone with Down's Syndrome, severe Autism, ...?

Also

[Chuck Chunder]

Shooting people in the head means they won't get cancer!

I'm not sure what your experience is but I've met and known quite a few people with Downs Syndrome who seemed happy. Certainly as happy as the rest of us at any rate.

It seems rather ridiculous to assume their lives aren't worth living. What next, deciding a childs life isn't going to be worth it because they aren't as sexy as Hugh Jackman or hung like Ron Jeremy?

Re:It's a deformed child, not a moral trophy

[Chuck Chunder]

maybe that is because they don't fully understand what they are missing, or just can't compehend it ?

did you everthink of that.

They? What about you? I'm sure there's plenty you don't comprehend and are missing but don't know about.

Re:Apparently, the Eugenics Movement lives

[Shados]

What you've never met isn't people who regretted their childs. That is actually extremely common. What you have never met, is people who, in this polically correct society (and in other society that has similar levels of peer pressure), will admit to it, even to their closest confidents.

Considering your stance on the matter, which you seem to hold pretty dear from the wording you use (and you are fully entitled to it, I'm not saying you're wrong or anything), I doubt anyone would EVER dare tell you that they regretted their child, down's syndrom or not.

To give a different point of view, at the risk of getting flamed to hell and beyond, I really, really despise kids (don't worrie, I'll never have to make my significant other go through an abortion... snip snip and all, thats all taken care of). Like, really, REALLY hate kids. Everyone around me knows my stance on this. Because of this, I had a LOT of mothers and families tell me in secret how they wish they never had their kids. In certain cases, that they didn't even love them, but that they still did what they could so it wouldn't show. None of those were disabled child's families, either. And to make things clear, I don't live in a ghetto, and the people I'm talking about came from all kinds of families, from poor to rich, etc.

Only in Wonderland does all families consider their kids blessings, ESPECIALLY kids with issues. They may not admit it, they may WANT to love them. That doesn't mean they do.

Re:It's a deformed child, not a moral trophy

[arb phd slp]

There is a continuous spectrum of cognitive capacity from near-vegetative to super-genius. Are we supposed to decide people's right to live based on arbitrary cut-offs on tests that we already know aren't perfectly valid? Absolutely not.

I really wish that my advisor would get her study submitted and published so that I could link to it here. (I'm sure she says the same thing about my own as well).

She's been doing early intervention with DS kids much earlier than ever before and providing high-tech means for them to communicate. After 5 years the kids are entering school on-par with their peers.

It is starting to look like mental retardation is a secondary symptom of DS, not a primary one. DS results in SPEECH disability, which messes up language development, which in turn screws up cognitive development. We've been providing an alternative, non-speech, means to communication development and it has led to surprisingly positive results in cognition development. (This falls into the category of "manuscript in progress" and hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet, but I expect it to pass that hurdle in the next year or so).
Here is a description of the study methods.
http://www.aac-rerc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=135&Itemid=152
It's in Breeze. Sorry about that.

So, if it becomes known that Down syndrome only causes mental retardation when we fail to provide the right care and education, do you still think that abortion/eugenics is an appropriate treatment???