Posted on 06/04/2007 7:35:10 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
In the 1998 film Gattaca, the hero says that he will never know what possessed his mother to put her faith in God instead of a geneticist.
That’s because, in this science-fiction film, he lives in a world where prospective parents can screen their would-be children for “defects” before they are implanted in the womb. In this world, “defects” aren’t limited to life-threatening conditions; they also include things like near-sightedness.
In the world of Gattaca, people who weren’t screened before birth form a permanent underclass called “in-valids.”
Since the film’s release, the biotech industry and their paid shills have insisted that Gattaca is fiction and that nothing like that could happen in real life. Well, something like it just did.
In May, Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority authorized a London clinic to screen for a condition called “squint.”
Squint causes the affected eye to look inwards or outwards instead of straight ahead. Squint can be treated various ways: eyeglasses, temporary patches, eye drops and, in the most severe cases, surgery.
The Authority’s ruling was in response to a businessman who has this condition and his wife, who “[wanted] to ensure they do not have a severely cross-eyed child.”
The clinic will employ a technique known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, PGD had been limited to cases involving “life-shortening conditions such as cystic fibrosis and fatal blood disorders.” Then the uses of PGD began to expand. Doctors have used it to screen for genetic evidence of possible adult diseases like cancer and early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Now, they’re using it for cosmetic imperfections. As David King of Human Genetics Alert said: “We moved from preventing children who will die young to those who might become ill in middle age. And now we discard those who will live as long as the rest of us but are cosmetically imperfect.”
The man who will perform the test agrees. Gedis Grudzinskas predicts that the use of embryo screening for “severe cosmetic defects” will increase because of the ruling. By “severe” he means anything that might cause a family “severe distress,” like the wrong hair color, which could lead to “bullying” and “even suicide.”
Anybody who is surprised by this story simply hasn’t been paying attention. As I’ve previously told BreakPoint listeners, genetic testing has turned people with Down syndrome into an endangered species. Actually, they might survive if they weren’t human: If they were wolves or ferrets, someone might actually care that they were being eliminated.
If we’re willing to do this to children who can be seen on a sonogram, why would you think that we wouldn’t target people who can’t be? Especially when you factor in the cost of treating the conditions being tested for.
As David King said, “philosophers love to deride the idea of a slippery slope.” But then we look around us and we are ten feet further down the hill than the last time we looked. The only question is now: Are we ready to put real limits on the uses of genetic testing?
Look around us today, and the world looks a lot like it did in that movie Gattaca. Frightening at the time—and frightening today.
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BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
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Trouble is, at least in the movie “Gattaca” they had the technology to engineer babies with all the right assets (or what they wanted at least) and no inherited diseases. In today’s world the only option is aborting and flushing the embryos that show characteristics you don’t want. Then presumably trying again.
Gattaca was a lot more sophisticated.
PING
They may have had the “technology” but the lead character was “subpar” and discriminated against because of his genetics.
It’s going to take a Constitutional amendment to protect life and prohibit genetic discrimination.
Cells are carefully taken from the Zygotes to screen for genetic disease. Bad zygotes are either discarded are saved for stem-cell harvesting. Four Zygotes are implanted in the hope that at least one will succesfully implant in the uterus.
The only new technology would be screening the zygotes. Everything ele has been or is routinely done to humans or other mammals.
“Daddy” deposits his sample into a vial after some stimulus”
Do they have a nurse providing the stimulus? Sorry, couldn’t help it ;)
More slippery slope ping
All it is is murder by another name. It’s just as bad as abortion.
Creating life to discard the useless or defective is cheapening human life to the level of a commodity.
Experimenting on the *zygotes* is human experimentation and as bad as what Nazi Germany was guilty of.
Sanitizing it by using petri dishes, and making it all sound clinical by using terms like *selection*, *screening*, and *harvesting* doesn’t change what’s really going on; the murder of human beings simply for the sake of convenience.
I don’t support it. I was pointing out where we are.
I wasn’t really sure you did, so thanks for clearing that up.
Sadly, we are there.
Ping!
.
This can get weird in a hurry. That is, when people are asked about what characteristics they want in their children, their first response is almost invariably that they want them to be intelligent, athletic, attractive, and possibly artistic.
However, few surveys dig much deeper. I heard of one that did (no source), and found a bizarre interest in people: with more consideration, they often want their children to have more canine and feline characteristics.
That is, they want their children to be more like cats and dogs. Not just in appearance, but in personality as well.
Their thinking is that “everybody likes pets”, so if their children are like dogs and cats, then they will be very popular.
thanks, bfl
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Just as an aside, the 'Futuristic' electric car in the film is a 1963 Studebaker Avanti (with an electric-motor sound track).
There's a picture of one (green) down on my profile-page ................ FRegards
This makes me laugh. My son is intelligent, athletic, attractive, artistic and we've called him "puppy" more times than I can count. (He's bouncy, happy, friendly and VERY destructive!) lol!
By all accounts, my "feline" daughter is *much* easier to live with. (But then, I always was a cat person...)
Close to 100% of us will be imperfect, or handicapped, or severely ill at some stage in our lives.
$&!7 happens.
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