A few months ago I visited my grandmother, who made a very compelling case for the idea that most people she knew in their 80s and 90s were needlessly suffering from diseases and disorders that had a strong genetic component. (I'm thinking maybe those people whose diseases were more life-style based maybe didn't make it to age 80... or maybe the sample is small enough to be highly skewed.)

These were beautiful people who had lived full lives and who were otherwise happily, contentedly living out their twilight years - except for those pesky diseases/disorders that were bringing them so much pain, discomfort, and disruption to their lives.

In response to my questions, she expressed support for the idea that everyone with love for their future children should screen themselves for diseases that have a genetic component, and take steps to ensure that their kids are born without such genetic inclinations to disease.

How do you feel about 'un-desirable genes'?
What diseases are known to be caused or highly influenced by genes?
Do you consider any of those disease to be 'unacceptable'?
What technology/methods currently exist for influencing the genetics of our offspring?

For clarity, I would like to limit this conversation to decisions which are made before conception. No need to bring 'right to life' into this conversation.

Would you use any of those technologies, in the interest of protecting your child from that disorder/disease?
Which of those technologies is permitted by law in the US, and what is not permitted by law? How about in China?
Is there anywhere that the law restricts people from reproducing with disregard for genetic diseases?

Do you think it irresponsible of someone who knows there is a 25% chance their child will live a short, unpleasant life of pain to conceive a child (without genetic intervention) anyway? Does it matter if its a 75% chance?


With advancing knowledge (and the deliberate application of that knowledge), we have basically eliminated (from modern, developed nations, anyway) some nutritional diseases (like scurvy), and some pathogenic diseases (like polio).

Should we act to completely eliminate certain genetic diseases from our species? What issues does this raise?


This topic is inspired by a tangent in this topic:

(http://mingle2.com/topic/show/240216?page=7)

Since this entire topic appears to be based on some concept of “extending life expectancy”, I have to reply in terms of the same.

The ultimate goal then is “immortality” – in the sense of the physical body being immune to entropy. But that cannot – by definition – be achieved. The physical universe itself is not immortal.

So really, any answer I gave, would be dependent upon my particular mood, and the particular circumstances, extant at the time.

And yeah, I realize that’s not much of an answer, but that’s because of my particular mood and the extant circumstances at this time.

I don't know. Because, the next logical step at some point in history would be to get rid of undesirable children, if they're not perfect or blue eyed, or blond or the sex you want or whatever. My family has a history of epilepsy and is prone to getting leukemia. I don't think that gene therapy has advanced to such an extent that these problems could be corrected before birth. And would I? I don't know. I think at some point, manipulating nature will come back to haunt us.

In theory, what you say is generally right but the ethical issues inherently involved with "genetic screening" for the purposes of reproduction are far too heavy for most people to be comfortable with.

I mean suppose you go in for screening and you end up being told you have a predisposition to XYZ condition and that predisposition is as much as guaranteed to be passed off to your offspring... ok, now what? it's no guarantee that such a predisposition will manifest itself in disease but..

What happens when "the wrong people" get ahold of this information? Suppose it gets tabulated and compiled such that there now exist lists of people with genetic predispositions to certain ailments..

what now? now your name is on a list of the genetically undesireable. Do you want to be officially labeled genetically undesireable? what happens when the "genetically desireable" get together and decide to do something about the "undesirables"

The Nazi's engaged in eugenics and eugenics was even popular on this side of the pond in the early part of the last century amoung meidcal and scientific communinities.

I think it's a dangerous road to go down with no way to close the box..

jmo

Are you talking here about selecting for "pristine" sperm and egg before conception?

That's an interesting question, and I'm not sure how I would even answer it for myself.

On the one hand, going the natural route is truly to accept a crap shoot of a random egg being fertilized by a random sperm. Unless, of course a person believes that some divine consciousness is guiding the process, which I'm personally not convinced of.

But then on the other hand, if I choose which egg and sperm to come together, then I'm basically totally responsible for whatever that produces. It could produce unforseen results. I don't think we can guarantee anything.

On the third hand , if all we're talking about here is screening out known defects and then still going to a random combination of what's left, that seems pretty sensible and I might consider going with that scenario.

Forturnately for me, I decided not to be the creator of any life. So I haven't had to face these questions on a personal basis. In fact, I don't even give permission for my personal DNA to be used to create offspring. If that happens it will have been done against my wishes.

In a way you could say that I have answered the question "To be or not to be" for my childern, and my answer is that they won't be.

Another way to look at it is that God creates life though humans procreating. And I'm basically saying to God, "No. You are not going to create life through me, at least not with my permission."

Why I am so opposed to life?

I'm not really. I'm just opposed to bringing even more people into an already over-populated hostile planet that is full of people who are arguing about what the hell God wants all the while that they polute the planet and disrespect the sacredness of humanity by disrespecting each other.

So I refuse to be part of continuing this process of creation.




If the world were a nice place and I was planning on creating new life I would consider technologics that would weed out obvious defects. I think that would be the least I could do for my childern.



I have no clues what the laws are, but any laws that would forbid people from weeding out known defective sperm and eggs before they were to concieve a child seems to be to be an utterly foolish law. All that law would be saying is that everyone must necessarily play craps when they procreate.




Yes, I think that people who know that they carry genes that are known to cause certain debilitating diseases or conditions are being totally irresponsible (to their childern) by having offspring when it's clear that they could create a biologically defective human.



I think we should put laws into place that certainly allow parents to weed out genes or select which sperm and eggs come together.

I'm not so sure that we should demand that it be illegal for people to go the natural route of pot luck. After all, this has been nature's way for all of human existence. Telling people that now, by law, they must go against nature's way is clearly a highly controversial thing.

I think we should act to educate people about these things, and people who carry defective genes should be made aware that they do carry them. But telling people how they can or cannot procreate is really a tough call.

I mean, what about the other way around?

For all I know I could have perfect genes.

I'm not saying that I do, but just for the sake of argument lets say that I have my DNA tested and it comes back and says, "WOW! You have great genes! There's no sign of any disease in your genes, you have genes for high intelligence, clarity of thinking, compassion, artistic creativity, a high desire to be a great parent, mentor and teachings. Your genes show no sign of agressive behavior or any negative trait! WE WANT YOUR GENES!"

I'm mean this is highly hypothetical of course. But hear me out.

Suppose this happens and I say, "No. I have decided that I don't want to be party to creating life or brining new humans into this world"

But they come back and say, "But those genes don't truly belong to you! They are the result of millions of years of human evolution and they belong to humanity as a whole, and we as humanity, want to incorperate your genes into new offspring!

Should they now have the legal right to demand the I fork over my genes for the sake of humanity?

After all I am the last in my family line, and I've decided to be the very end of the tip of our family tree. I'm cutting this limb off by refusing to procreate.

Would they have the right to say, "No! The limb you are cutting off belongs to the tree of humanity and we want our genes back!"

Where does it stop?

I mean, if we're going to get philosophical about it why not consider every possible scenario? Healthy DNA that never procreates dies off. Is there any responsiblity for the procreation of people who have really great DNA?

Should it be against the law to refuse to procreate when you have great DNA?

Nazi propaganda for their compulsory "euthanasia" program: "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too."








"We do not stand alone": Nazi poster from 1936 with flags of other countries with, or considering introducing, compulsory sterilization legislation.

from the Wiki article on Eugenics

I was not thinking of extending life expectancy; I was thinking of reducing the pain and suffering during life. Though I'm sure if we eliminated certain genetic diseases, we would increase the average life expectancy. But even people with the best genes and the best lifestyle seem to leave us after about a century.

I believe that one day you will be able to enter a clinic and have you and your spouse's dna tested for these hereditary diseases. Leaving you to choose if you want to propagate or not or if you want to utilize an egg or sperm bank instead.

The problems with this is that we know when dna gets to close to the same thing it mutates and causes birth defects so it will not stop the problems.

The diversity of dna is needed for us to continue to be stronger in the gene pool.

Suzinva wrote:


Thats one of my questions which I hope someone here can answer.

Maybe these problems aren't 'corrected', but maybe the appropriate sperm & egg can be 'selected', with in vitro fertilization methods - allowing you to have children with lowest chance possible of developing those conditions.



If we do it carelessly, I agree. But if we do it carefully - well, everything we've done is a manipulation of nature. Farming itself is such.


Raider wrote:

A good, and scary, point.

Abra wrote:


I don't know enough about the technology, so I don't what the options are. But I mispoke in the OP - I said 'before conception' but what I really meant was 'lets not even consider the idea of using abortion as a selection method'.

If there is some harmless way to cure a genetic pre-disposition after conception, I guess thats on the table for discussion. Does anyone know if there is?



Interesting.



I think its awful that companies are patenting the genes they sequence. In this sense, I don't think genes can belong to a person or company. Your flesh is yours, and I agree with you regarding forced procreation (or even forced procurement of sperm/eggs).

But what if all they need is a skin cell? And what if they obtained that skin cell without your permission at birth?

I can see hospitals of the future getting the genome for every child born in the hospital; I can also see us creating 'artificial' sperm/eggs based on a genome stored in a computer.


Slowhand, does this mean you are against all of these ideas? Or are you just reminding us of what the Nazis did?

I don't know about that, but it seems the the most intelligent way would be to deal with the whole issue even before the sperm and egg are even united.

Why wait until after the problem becomes manifest? Nipping it in the bud would be a far better approach I think.

I'm currently taking a course on DNA and the Human Genome. It's quit fascinating stuff. This is a cutting-edge course by a man who is right there in the middle of the whole genome project. According to him our capabilities have expanded over the past couple decades far faster than anyone had ever imagined they could. We are actually doing things today that a mere 10 years ago were thought to be next to impossible, or at the very best would not be possible for many years to come.

In fact, he suggests that if we continue to progress at the current rate we can potentially have the entire human genome read and understood in as little as two more decades, and certainly we'll be there by the end of this century.

Where will we be?

We will be at a point where actual human eggs and sperm won't even be required!

That's right.

Scientists (or more accurately, computers) will be able to read your DNA and the DNA of who you would like to mate with. Then the computer can actually build an egg that contians the correct combination of your DNA. The baby can then be produced in a test tube and the parents would have never even had to meet or exhange any actual genetic material.

I'm sure this sounds horribly cold to many people, but from a pure genetics stand point, the child produced from that method would be no different from a child that would be produced by the normal method of conception. (Of course, arguments about the difference between raising a babe in a test tube versus raising a baby in the mother's womb would still be valid arguments, but those are not arguments about DNA or genes).

In short, what the man is saying is that our 'genes' are not the DNA. The DNA is merely the "book" that carries the information. The genes are the actual information.

So in theory the DNA of the parents could be read, and any 'genes' that are defective or problematic could be repaired or replaced with health information (i.e. healthy genes).

Then this "perfect" fertilized egg could then be placed into the mother's womb for development into a fetus and ultiamtely a baby.

The overall characteristic would still be those of this particular mother and father of course. The child would indeed be theirs even though we will have finally gotten away from that horrible need to have sex.

Sexual intercourse will become a thing of the past.

Petri dish babies will be the wave of the future.

"Hey baby....hows bout you and me go and exchange some genetic material?"



People thought similar things about food, when we first synthesized vitamins. I think the 'old fashion way' will be with us for a long, long while.

Yes, I imagine that by the end of the this millennium people will be able to just go on the web and obtain a 'designer child'.

It will probably be mail-ordered and delivered by "Pelican Express".

A newlywed couple will decide how many children they want to have, what gender and what traits. They order them all at once when they are ready to become parents. Then they raise all of their children together at the same time, and then when all those kids become adults they move on to have their second honeymoon and start the second half of their life.

The human saga all planned out prefectly.

That's why I quit.

I'm the end of my gene line and I consciously chose not to procreate. With any luck that means that I won't reincarnate anymore.

I won't be coming back!

I quit. I gracefully bow out of the rat race.

Personally, I hope the technology never advances this far, for this reason:

The inevitable result will be that people carrying these genetic traits will be treated as second-class citizens. (Regardless of any laws intended to forbid such treatment - as can be observed in current society.)

Following that, there will be some political lobby that uses highly emotional arguments ("We have to protect the poor _____ from mean ol' _____.") to justify laws forbidding people with hereditary diseases from reproducing. The built-in minority discrimination that is inherent in the democratic form of government, will guarantee it.

Now whatever one may think of my ability to predict the future, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that things will happen in exactly that way.

The ONLY thing that can change that outcome is some earth-shatteringly profound change in the aggregate ethics level of mankind as a whole. And since there has been no change at all in 10,000 years of so-called civilization, I don’t see any such profound change occurring anytime soon.

[end rant]

My mom has multiple sclerosis. She didn't know it in her 30s as it didn't really manifest till her 50s. If she had known, she wouldn't have had us. I know that even if I never manifest, I will pass it on to my child/ren. Therefore I will not have children because I think that is a cruel thing. I do believe in genetic testing for before getting pregnant as well as the fetus. I know if by remote chance I did get pregnant, then I would certainly have a genetic test run.

We take better care of breeding our livestock then we do of humans.

I think this is very admirable of you. I think it would be nice if you could have the choice of having children anyway, with the MS genes screened out.



Are you saying that you think responsible parents should voluntarily do a test, even if they don't have such diseases in their family?

I've never looked into this - is it common these days? Is it an extra expense?

I don't know about that Sky.

There are several things that you seem to be missing here.

First off, the technology is already here. It's only a matter of time before it becomes so commonplace that it's considered the norm.

Secondly, people who carry these genes and have children are already quite apparent in our society. I have a neighbor couple who have had a child with a genetic defect, (I think it's downs syndrome?), I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's one of those things that could have been screened out like Massagetrade is talking about.

Anyway the whole neighborhood is aware of the kid. He's in his 20's by now and he is very retarded acting and even abnormal looking. Yet everyone in the neiborhood treats him with love and respect and they don't look down on the parents at all. If anything they probably feel compassion for the whole situation.

So it's not like this technology would 'reveal' anything that isn't already being reveal by natural selection. I mean, if a couple gives birth to a genetically deformed or diseased child, that's going to be pretty hard to hide.

Wouldn't it be better to at least have the technology in place to prevent these things?

I think what Massagetrade is suggesting is that these same parents could have had their DNA screened and potentially 'repaired' BEFORE giving birth, and then they would have had a healthy son instead of a son with a genetic disease.

So it would have been better for everyone, the child, the parents, and the whole neigborhood.

Everybody wins when people are healthy. Let's face it, no matter how much compassion or love we have for a genetically diseased person, it would still have been better if no one is diseased.

We might be tempted to say that this particular 'individual' would have never had a chance at life then.

But so what?

All the children who could have been born healthy but never were born never had a chance for life either.

My kids never had a chance for life because I never had them.

I don't know why I laugh about that, but what I can say, it's true.

By my decision not to have children it could be said that some kids never got a chance for life today because of my choices.

Me bad.

Regarding the "second-class citizen" argument, you're completely right. I got off on a rant about the political asepcts and didn't stop to think enough about the "personal" aspects. So yes, it is true that such genetic abnormalities would not necssarily relegate one to second-class citizenship any anyone's eyes.

Just chalk it up to my own paranoia.

Hey! You think genetic modification could cure me of this paranoia?

'Better' in what way?



Where would it stop?

It sure is a good thing that there are those so-called unfortunate ones who are not what society would call normal, or in this case 'healthy', for how else would we have been able to overcome the closedmindedness which demands a moral perfection called 'better'?

I personally know a few downs kids, and they are very, very happy.

Is that not 'better' than one who believes otherwise?

Unbelievable!

You ask too many questions.

"For clarity, I would like to limit this conversation to decisions which are made before conception."

So... you want us to talk about a concept in conceptual ways, before the concept came into existence?

"How do you feel about 'un-desirable genes'?"
Say NO to low-hip jeans.

"What diseases are known to be caused or highly influenced by genes? "
Way too many to mention.

"Do you consider any of those disease to be 'unacceptable'? "
Yes.

"What technology/methods currently exist for influencing the genetics of our offspring?"

Partial list:

Alcohol
Drugs
Psychedelic drugs
George Bush speeches
Wagner
Gene splicing
The correctional isolation system (jails and prisons)
Being short for men, unattractive for women, fat for all
Grumpiness to the max
Inability to properly place hygienic products in the places on the human body for which they were designed
Castration
Involuntary Immunization (in some cases)
Being smart

Being not so smart
Inability to find G-spot
Carrying a semi-automatic hand gun to bed
Digestive problems
Incontinence
Intercontinence
Intracontinence
The five continents

Low-grade radioactive radiation over the reproductory organs
Being kicked in the wrong place by Pele or Kocsis
Torture
Ovarian cancer
Syphillis
Phyllis Schlafly
Choosing your parents wisely
Killing your parents before conception if you suspect they are somehow genetically inferior
Pouring hot lead over your reproduction organs
Giving a pep-talk to your grandparents two days before your parent is to be born, and tell them that drinking hydrochloric acid during pregnancy makes the new baby shiny and comfortable.

It's too late now Sky. You should have talked to your parents about that before you were born.