New Prenatal Screening Test: Unprecedented Potential to Terminate Biologically Diverse Fetuses!
Geneticists have discovered a way to identify Biologically diverse Human foetuses safely and easily in the first few weeks of pregnancy.
"It is the ease of the test and its almost inevitable acceptance that raise clinical, social, and ethical questions, suggests Dr. Greely. Although fewer than 2% of pregnant women in the United States currently have amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling, the new test yields more information, adds virtually no risk, and eliminates the distinctly sobering aspect of procedures that employ a large needle or a transvaginal probe.Read More: HERE
Another source of ethical concern is the fact that NIPD testing can be performed earlier in pregnancy. "That may lead people to feel more comfortable about ending a pregnancy for whatever reason they may have," commented Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, professor of bioethics, Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, in a telephone interview with Medscape Medical News ...
Fears of eugenics, already raised by current technologies and in vitro fertilization, also may be magnified many times. When a test becomes so free of stress, the potential for "trivial" uses is likely to increase: A test designed to detect moderately severe genetic abnormalities could move to sex determination (already common for in vitro fertilization), appearance, and physical or intellectual ability ...
"The possibility that, in countries with good healthcare systems, a majority of pregnant women might get prenatal genetic testing means the possibility that a majority of children who might have been born with serious genetic diseases will instead not be born," said Dr. Greely via email to Medscape Medical News. "That will affect those already born with those diseases, as well as those who continue to be born with them."
The situation is even more complex because NIPD is able to identify hundreds of genetic glitches, rather than the few most often assessed by current tests. "Now we test mainly for Down's syndrome and a few other rarer aneuploidies, or we test for the one genetic disease that has run in the particular family," Dr. Greely observed.
"[With NIPD] we'll be testing for 100 diseases or traits. How do you do the informed consent for that? How do you provide information about those diseases? Who will do the counseling and how? And how can we help pregnant women take in and process all this information?" asked Dr. Greely. "I think that will be, in the clinical context, quite challenging."
Medicine's determination to erase all traces of human bio-diversity that are considered unacceptable by western cultural standards is already well and truly signalled by its own recent history.
The test is quick, cheap and as invasive as a simple blood test.
NIPD threatens both Intersex and biological or classical Transsexuals, where long-repeat gene sequences have already been identified as having a precursor role in the condition. Neither group will be difficult to erase. To all intents and purposes both are already rendered invisible, either by surgical and medical fiat, or by semantic gymnastics, psychological gender theory and/or socio-cultural denial.
In August, 2010, TFF made the following observation..., "Unfortunately the rise and rise of neo-eugenics suggests that the convoluted fight to prevent non-consensual cosmetic genital surgery may be slowly resolving into a Pyrrhic victory, with the surgeries only being discarded because biotechnologists and health professionals are discovering new ways to rid humanity of intersex bodies." See, Neo Eugenics: The threat to Human Biological Diversity. [HERE]
It seems that if these two groups could find a kindly wicked witch, one willing to turn them into rare frogs, they would stand a better chance of survival than they do as human beings! [HERE]
Western liberal cultures are perfectly willing to accept diverse behaviours in individuals who do not show evidence of biological variation, whilst aiming determinedly toward a future in which human beings who are biologically, rather than behaviourally diverse, no longer exist.
In the past transgender people have been quick to claim to various facets of the Intersex and Transsexual experience when it suited them. It will be interesting to see whether they are as quick to claim a chunk of this action! It hardly seems likely. Even their most ardent supporters, WPATH have freely admitted there is no biological component to the TG experience.
But what we can expect is wholesale eradication of human biological diversity in the wake of this research. It is, in fact, difficult see that it has any purpose other than the quick and easy identification and removal of any fetus that doesn't meet the approval of the neo eugenicists.
2 comments:
Perhaps we are forgetting that the vast majority of the world's population do not have access to this level of technology.
IMHO it is the prerogative of a mother to decide if she will bear a child or not.
We are talking about a potential problem with inappropriate use of these test results.....just a potential.
Surely the answer lies in changing the mindset of parents towards "different" children?
While it is wrong to want only "perfect" (whatever that is!) children as a status symbol, raising a severely disabled child is a tough job, and often a lifetime's job. It is a not unreasonable expectation for a parent to have some time to themselves in their old age....is it?
I do get the point about potential parents rejecting a fetus because it might be IS or TS, gay or whatever. These are not disabilities.
The change needs to be philosophical and/or spiritual more than legal, but it would not be difficult to prevent the worst excesses that this technology makes possible, just as is done with other "fetal selection" techniques.
I guess it all depends on whether you believe we only live once, or not..... but that's a matter of religion, and we all know about how that aspect of humanity gets abused from time to time.
I can see the anti-abortion people having a field day with this one....
Thank you for your comments Kathryn.
Abortion law lays out the conditions under which an abortion may be legally carried out, in new Zealand.
One way or another, most western 'liberal' democracies proscribe abortion on the basis of sex, or for purposes of sex selection.
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/sex-selection/newzealand.php
It may properly be the decision of a woman to choose whether or not to engage in sexual intercourse, I'm not sure that it is wholly correct to argue, having done so as a willing party that, as you put it, ...it is the prerogative of a mother to decide if she will bear [the]child or not.
We know that birth rates for Down syndrom have plummeted in recent years because data is kept on that anueploidy. It is not kept for either Klinefelter or Turner syndromes, though abortion is routinely encouraged for both.
(see, Neo Eugenics: The threat to Human Biological Diversity, TFF, Aug. 2010)
This is not due to either of XXY or X0 being automatically severely handicapped, but merely because they are aneuploides.
This new test is not high tech. Its a simple blood test and computerised assay. It will very quickly become readily available and, in my view, raises fundamental issues, especially around the nature of human life and who is, or is not, fit to live!
I agree that education has an important function. I differ from you in that I also a clear role for legislation in deciding those issues.
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