This article should be read carefully. This is the very reason why I will not donate to March of Dimes.....yes, everyone wants to have healthy children and testing prior to conception if you have reason to feel you are passing on a terrible disease ,BUT what is happening with an almost casual atmosphere is abortion when prenatal testing indicates a deformity. How many false positives are there? Are parents being frightened and given exaggerated claims of life for these children that encourages them to choose adoption. I can tell you the answer is yes. I have had many parents recount such tactics to me.
And as Lerner points out does this devalue those born persons who are struggling with this disease. How big a step is it to "screen out " for gender and other preferences.
Eliminating disease is a noble goal but also "should give us pause," Lerner, the Columbia historian, wrote recently in the New England Journal of Medicine."If a society is so willing to screen aggressively to find these genes and then to potentially to have to abort the fetuses, what does that say about the value of the lives of those people living with the diseases?" he asked.
Diseases like familial dysautonomia and Tay-Sachs, which kill before school age, are easier cases. If one of those vanishes, "thank God," said Rabbi Ekstein of the Jewish testing group. "It gives me a very good feeling that we are a part of such life-saving efforts."Vanishes how by killing them prior to birth???
AP IMPACT: Testing curbs some genetic diseases
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
Feb. 21, 2010
Some
of mankind's most devastating inherited diseases appear to be
declining, and a few have nearly disappeared, because more people are
using genetic testing to decide whether to have children.
Births of babies with cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs and other less familiar disorders seem to have dropped since testing came into wider use, The Associated Press found from interviews with numerous geneticists and other experts and a review of the limited research available.
Many of these diseases are little known and few statistics are kept. But their effects — ranging from blood disorders to muscle decline — can be disabling and often fatal during childhood.
Now, more women are being tested as part of routine prenatal care, and many end pregnancies when diseases are found. One study in California found that prenatal screening reduced by half the number of babies born with the severest form of cystic fibrosis because many parents chose abortion.
Births of babies with cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs and other less familiar disorders seem to have dropped since testing came into wider use, The Associated Press found from interviews with numerous geneticists and other experts and a review of the limited research available.
Many of these diseases are little known and few statistics are kept. But their effects — ranging from blood disorders to muscle decline — can be disabling and often fatal during childhood.
Now, more women are being tested as part of routine prenatal care, and many end pregnancies when diseases are found. One study in California found that prenatal screening reduced by half the number of babies born with the severest form of cystic fibrosis because many parents chose abortion.
