“You cannot tell me that I cannot have a child who’s going to look like me”
Sorry, but this is fucking crazy. This is selfishness to the max.
Babies with made-to-order defects?
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.
This is a hoax. And a sick one too. Take it off the site.
Other than mentally sick people who want limbs removed nobody in this world wants to create children with a disability.
It would be my pleasure to throw anyone down a flight of stairs who even mentioned ‘thinking’ about doing it.
FAKE NEWS
This is NOT a hoax. I saw a documentary a couple of years ago on TV about the same subject. A dwarf couple was seeking medical help to ensure that they would have a dwarf baby. Their big reason was “we have a custom built home designed for dwarfs. An average height person will be uncomfortable.
I would not put it past deaf people either after hearing of them protesting coclear implants because they “destroy their culture”. Not to mention the ridiculous protests against the president of that university in California because she was not “deaf enough”.
I think these kids shoud be allowed to sue their parents later in life. Personally, I would murder them both as soon as I could if it was me.
wow. that is pretty screwed up.
I saw this a few months back. Love to ask these kids later on how they feel about their parents making sure they were deaf or a dwarf.
“Thanks, Mom. Life woulda been just too easy without this.”
I’m inclined to think this is wrong on many different levels.
If there are people who would actually use genetic screening in this way to produce offspring more like themselves, they should go the full mile and choose embryos where the genetic groundwork is present for the early onset of insanity. That would be an even closer replica.
A cousin of mine had a child with cystic fibrosis which is a pretty awful, incurable (for now) respiratory disease that often leads to a very uncomfortable life ending with a hacking, phlegm-filled death before age 20 (though many are living longer). After having that child, instead of adopting one of the millions of needy children without families out there, she chose to have two more CF children, knowing full well that there was a high likelihood of that happening. They’re all dead now. I think it was pretty irresponsible on her part.
Further proof that Devo was right…we’ve not only stopped evolving, we’re DE-evolving! I mean, we don’t need to evolve to eliminate bad genes, we’ve developed medicines and other treatments to work around them. And now we’re actually promoting the ‘continued success’ of ‘bad’ genes? Bad, bad, bad…
I wonder if you can order the ‘tard pack, sorta like the MS xbox 360 core system.
#1 – This is a hoax. And a sick one too. Take it off the site.
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It would be my pleasure to throw anyone down a flight of stairs who even mentioned ‘thinking’ about doing it.
Gee… I thought you might be kind of a jerk for commanding the editors of this blog to “take it off the site” as if you had some sort of authority… But then when you noted that you’d be happy to throw someone down a flight of stairs, all doubt was removed.
Hoax? Maybe. I don’t care. These stories are sensationalist attention grabbers but are usually about total non-issues. But you are a jerk.
I appreciate the sentiment of the posting but could do without the vulgar language.
On a slightly similar topic, I recall 60 Minutes doing a show on a doner clinic (located in Pennsylvania if memory serves me correctly) whereby the men had to be considered genius level of some measurable form of intelligence as well as the women. The idea was to create Super Kids.
By the end of the show, it seemed like this clinic had some degree of success because many / most of the children who were the result of this clinic’s efforts turned out to be very bright or as intelligent as their parents.
Anyone know of this clinic?
#12 – Huh? What vulgar language?
#13 – I fully support breeding for intelligence.
I remember hearing about “munchkin” cats a few years ago. I usually don’t get riled about animal cruelty, but something about breeding a cat to have abnormally short legs seemed very wrong. If I had a kid with perfect vision I wouldn’t want him/her to have laser deformative surgery. Just because I have learned to live with what the genetic dice have given me doesn’t mean I want to start heaping problems on my child. To some degree, I can understand the feelings of the dwarf parents, but it still strikes me as the wrong direction for this technology to go in.
This is the kind of science all the more pessimistic science-fiction writers believes will destroy humanity. Well, I should not say the science will destroy humanity. We seem perfectly capable of doing that ourselves.
Joel,
The Basset Hound, Corgi and the Daschund (to name a few short legged dogs) were all bred from normal “long legged” dogs with a genetic error. They were developed for a specific hunting purpose. How is this different than Munchkin cats? Humans have been adapting animals for THEIR needs for centuries. Look at the DEXTER cow (a short legged cow) or the Shetland Pony, or the Shetland Sheepdog, or any of the mini farm animals (from Bantams to half-sized sheep). There is nothing defective about breeding animals for a specialized purpose. If the Munchkin cat bugs you…then don’t even think about looking at the Sphynx breed, or either of the Rex breeds, or Scottish Folds. In reality, all “cat breeds” are genetic errors…from color to head shape. Get a clue. I can’t imagine how this is “very wrong”. By domesticating animals we altered them for our own purposes. We wouldn’t be where we are today if we’d never domesticated them! (I’ll argue, maybe that would have been a GOOD thing, but it’s a different thread.)
If there weren’t such a huge cultural bias for humans with short legs/arms I wouldn’t see a problem with dwarf parents opting for a dwarf child. However, it does limit the child in a “tall world” in many, many ways. I don’t understand why these parents don’t instead opt for adopting a dwarf child, as these “disabled” children have a more difficult time finding a home, as do cleft palate, missing limbed, downs syndrome, and other physically and mentally challenged children.
I do see that these people have a lot to offer a child who is dwarfed. I’m sure the strategies to adapt and how they’ve customized their home does lend itself to making a dwarfed child’s life much easier and happier. However, just as “normal” parents must learn to adapt with a deaf, blind, dwarfed or otherwise disabled child….they should have no problems to adapt to a normal sized one. They’re just inexperienced parents, and as all parents who haven’t been there before, don’t realize that kids change the parents, and what they think their needs are. What these people are suffering with is the same-ol idealized mental picture that all prospective parents have about being a parent. In other words, they have no clue, yet.
Meetsy….. (thunderous applause) 😉
#2, you are referring to Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. And yes, it would appear that nobody can match the deaf when it comes to bigotry.
You might want to keep the illegal immigrants who pay taxes just in case.
My mom was an interpretor for school age children. Through her schooling she met and befriended many people in the deaf community. She would come home with stories of deaf couples that were praying for a deaf child. Then the kicker was a couple that was pissed, angry, and disappointed that they had a hearing child.
I was amazed that these people who had first hand knowledge of the difficulty in operating in a hearing world would wish something like that upon their child. They were not fit to be parents.
House had a good episode that dealt with this subject. A patient’s apparent dwarfism was caused by a (correctable) pituitary gland problem and the mother was resistant to fixing the problem and making the child “normal.”
I can easily see it happening in reality.
Start with filtering by intelligence. Eliminate stupid people. That would help the world immensely.
As for dwarfism – why consider that a disability? Little people are great for a variety of reasons and vocations that taller people suck at.
Start with filtering by intelligence. Eliminate stupid people. That would help the world immensely.
The South would be virtually devoid of people. I like it!
If both parents possess a genetic trait they wish to pass on then just have a lot of unprotected sex, make lots of babies and sooner or later you’ll have a kid or two with whatever genetic thing you wanted.