Uplifting News

they should poll people with down syndrome. not carers, not family, no people who work with them.

if they consider they idea obscene, them or should be considered obscene, of they consider it a must, then it's ok.

I think a fair line is removing debilitating genetic conditions, but not for cosmetic uses.

If the person grows old enough that they have dysphoria for some reason then cosmetic surgeries are pretty routine these days.

Yeah this is scary. Down syndrome is definitely in the gray area too where it can be viewed negatively but plenty of people have it and lead fulfilling lives. Wipe cystic fibrosis out of a fetus and all but the most staunch biological purists would agree it was a good thing. Make your fetus white, blonde, and blue eyed and it's obviously eugenics. I don't know how I feel about this.

Completely apart from the ethics, I think this technology is really cool though.

I remember this was literally the question posed to us by an ethics professor 20 years ago. Now it's a reality.

A person with Down's can live a happy fulfilling life, but most parents would never choose to have a child with Down's if it could be born 'normal' instead. So we're essentially removing them from the gene pool and human race.

It's eugenics for sure. I'm not sure if it's unethical though. It's pretty complex.

This isn't eugenics or close to it, it's fixing actual problems before someone is born, not choosing who has rights to breed. If they announced a therapy to guarantee a child will grow up immune to corporate propaganda or be able to use their brain in a rational, well-planned and thoughtful way, and have exceptional language skills, we should voluntarily hand the world over to them. Because what's happening right now is the opposite of that.

Right now capitalism is imposing eugenics on us. The system and the cost of life has created a very real system deciding who can have families. If tools emerged that could guarantee the kids we DO have aren't subject to the same weaknesses and limitations, we need to capitalize on every advantage we can.

You're definitely right how this without proper regulation could get out of hand with unethical individuals trying to edit genes. I'd say from my non-geneticist perspective the line would be "would editing this gene improve the individual's quality of life or improve their life expectancy". Operationalizing"quality of life" is obviously crucial here and can't be defined socially but medically such as "no debilitating pain".

I do wonder how things like this will impact existing communities of individuals with disabilities. I'd expect it would probably increase discrimination as it will increase the perception of people with disabilities as being "curable" which isn't always possible or even desirable.

I'm fine with it at this point.

Isn't eugenics more about choosing who can reproduce for the best outcome? Curing after the facts doesn't seem to fit that.