Little baby Sara is born with all 10 fingers and toes. She cries, eats, poops and does everything a perfect little baby girl should. Her parents take her home, blissfully ignorant of the absence of one critical enzyme in their little bundle of joy.
When Sara reaches about six months, her parents start to notice a change. Sara isn’t as playful as she used to be. Her muscles seem weak and her motor skills actually seem to be declining rather than improving. She is easily startled and cannot seem to focus on mama or dada anymore.
Sara was born with Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease that must be recessive in both parents. Consequently, little Sara cannot produce an enzyme that prevents fatty compounds from building up in the nervous system. The only thing that is certain is that Sara will die. Probably before age five.
It is tragic stories like this one, which prompted the Israeli government to institute a practice of voluntary eugenics.
Eugenics is defined as “the study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.” Many automatically associate the practice with Auschwitz and Nazi ideals of racial purity. However, for the Israeli people, voluntary eugenics has succeeded in dramatically reducing instances of Tay-Sachs and other genetic diseases that cause a great deal of pain and suffering for patients and families alike.
By encouraging Israeli couples who are having children to submit to genetic testing, parents and doctors have been able to make better-informed decisions regarding pregnancy. Testing allows potential parents to determine whether they carry the Tay-Sachs gene, and whether they could potentially pass it on to their child. Even when both parents test positive for the gene, it is still their choice to have a child or not. Should they choose to have a child, their doctor is better prepared to conduct prenatal testing to determine if the mutation is dominant in the fetus, and the couple can decide whether or not to continue the pregnancy. Most often, Tay-Sachs pregnancies are terminated.
Other countries, like Italy, are using voluntary eugenics to combat genetic diseases prevalent in its own citizenry. Some Mediterranean populations are more susceptible to a disease called thalassemia. Although it is not usually fatal, the expense of treatment is a significant burden on both families and health systems. Thus, there is widespread encouragement in places like Sardinia to submit to genetic testing. As a result, the rate of thalassemia in Sadrinia has gone from 1 in 250 births to roughly 1 in 4000 births. Still, other Mediterranean islands have taken a more drastic approach.
The island nation of Cyprus was possibly the most seriously affected by thalassemia. With about 18 to 20 new cases reported each year, the government decided to implement a prevention program. Since 1980, premarital screening for thalassema has been mandatory, and prenatal blood sampling has been standard since 1984. From 1991 to 2001, there were only five reported cases. The Cyprus thalassemia prevention program has been a tremendous success, and undoubtedly has saved the people of Cyprus a great deal of emotional and financial hardship.
I know the very concept of eugenics is scary. However, we need to learn to separate concepts from their darkest hours in order to properly examine them in the light. There is a very important distinction to be made between voluntary and involuntary eugenics. I am not advocating the coercion of any group. Genetic and prenatal tests are simple, safe,and effective. I am only advocating the practice of fully informing potential parents of the risks involved in having a child. Information alone causes no harm, but is always imperative in our striving to make the best decisions for ourselves as well as our children.
Click here to read John Best feels eugenics is a form of ethnic cleansing
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Paige 2 years, 3 months ago
Good to see you guys are thinking about the children.
OUSooners 2 years, 3 months ago
Pain is an essential part of human life. Life has pain, but because it has pain we are able to experience joy. To work to remove pain from our lives entirely is to compromise our humanity. We need to be able to deal with pain, not sidestep it. People who would abort children because they might die in youth aren't fit to be parents, for all children, even healthy children, might suffer this fate. There are plenty of amazing stories of children who could have, even should have, been aborted that weren't and greatly impacted the world while they were on Earth.
We need to assess why we are having children in the first place if it's not worth it if they aren't going to live to be 100.
pgok 2 years, 3 months ago
Eugenics is a sign of laziness. Not on the part of the parents, although they aren't entirely innocent. It is a societal sloth. For a society it is easier to abort a child with TSD, or any other terminal illness, than it is to find a cure. It seems probable, that with a lower occurrence of an illness in a population less will be done to find a cure, making this a monetarily cheap alternative for society. The moral price, though, is far greater. This doesn't confront the problem in a rational manner; this hides the problem by destroying the victim of the disease. Why should we think that this will stop with eugenics? If we were to allow the destruction of every person with a medical condition that would cause emotional hardship and financial hardship, we would again save a lot of money, and our feelings wouldn't be as hurt. Euthanasia has been proposed for just this reason. But what happens when a sane reasonable person can't communicate their wishes? What happens when the plug is pulled and they wanted it to stay? I might be wrong but that is generally considered to be murder. It is tough to watch someone suffer, but that is why it is called suffering. It doesn't just go away because we want it to. Life isn't worth living because there is always less suffering than joy. Throughout history that has never been the case. Life is worth living for the joy we get, no matter how much. To anyone who would accuse me, or people who agree with me, of forcing suffering on an innocent person, I would like to point out that you would take away any and all of the joy in life from that same person.