Sure, and watch a child suffer from a debilitating disease that causes pain and suffering.

Yeah - Let's bring children into this world who will have problems from the start, and watch them live short lives filled with pain and suffering. Let's watch their parents suffer and go backrupt over the medical costs associated with caring for these children.

Isnt' that the (American) Christian way?

Yes, that is the "Christian" way. For instance, the Catholic Church had rather millions of children be born and starve to a slow death than a woman use birth control or have an abortion. God help her if she tries to protect her and her children from AIDS by using a condom.

Of course, these Right Wing zealots don't care about children. They are in love with fetuses. Once that child is born, it can die of a dreaded disease or starve to death because these "Christians" do not want to give them health insurance or welfare. Once again, sheer evil wears the cloak of Christianity. May God protect us from the righteous.

For the Catholic Priest they are usually in love with the male fetuses. Just saying....

Same with Baptist.

Reusable - and once they go bankrupt, the high cost gets passed on to all of us in the form of taxes for social services.

The "baby birds" with some of these illnesses will never be able to "fly the nest", and parents might have to provide hands-on care (e.g., bathing, feeding) until the day (the parents) they die, regardless of their own age-related issues and illnesses.

Then the "baby bird" gets passed on to the next generation for care. (In my own family, a sister had to take care of her retarded older sister, and now it looks like she'll eventually be taken care of by her nieces, and she has always been in diapers.) It is wrong the burden usually falls on us females, and our choices and opportunties for a good life limited.

My daughter has CF and I wouldn't trade her in for anything! She is doing well and will attend Fl State next year. She hasn't suffered yet and who is to say a healthy child won't suffer from an accident or what ever! Per some of your comments, you should abort every child because you never know what will happen with a child.

I'm sorry, I would rather live with a disease than not live at all. I have a cousin with CF who is healthy enough to be playing college soccor No doubt she is grateful she wasn't aborted so she wouldn't have to live with a "debilitating disease."

I daresay many Nazi's would agree with you all. After all, killing handicapped and diseased people was putting them out of their misery and keeping them from reproducing, thus causing disease to decline.

Consider me a religious nut job, but if my baby was diagnosed with a disease, I'd consider it God's job to decide when to end my child's life, not mine.

That's your choice cabrams.

Now let us make ours.

I have to commend the people who see all the suffering that cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, Huntington's and other diseases cause, and who take steps to make sure a child is not born having to suffer like that. It's compassionate.

But I have to say that it is a little naive. Are people with genetic disorders unhappy, while every one else is happy? No, life is more complex than that. To determine whether life is worth living, based on one genetic mutation, is quite a drastic judgment call. We all have afflictions, and we all have special qualities. Who is to say that certain diseases are so bad that they trump everything else that makes human life valuable? Perhaps one person with cystic fibrosis thinks it would be better to be dead; another has found plenty of meaning in life. Who is to know how that embryo's life will play out?

I think it is important to see people (even embryos) as more than disease. Even a "healthy" person will have diseases. Every one has mutations, and everyone passes them onto their children (though most are not expressed). We can't find them all, and because of that, billions of wonderful people are allowed to be born. And guess what? They live to suffer colitis, alcoholism, cancer, Alzheimer's, obesity, depression, ugliness, and many other unique afflictions that complement the positive aspects of their lives. It's about what you do with life, not what specific diseases you will suffer before you ultimately die.

cabrams,

If you are a relatively healthy adult, I can understand why you would want to live with a disease than not live at all. You have had a life, after all.

You might see it differently if you had watched your child die of Nieman-Pick disease (a relative of Tay-Sachs) before he reached his second birthday. You might see it differently if there had been no cure or treatment. You might see it differently if you watched him suffer and slowly go blind, deaf and become paralyzed and you could do nothing to stop it or to help him. You just might see it differently then.

Eugenics - The Progressive answer to everything. Hilter would be so proud of you.

Being Christian used to mean that one believed in the ways of Jesus Christ. That doesn't seem to apply with organized religous fanatics giving it a bad name. Those are the rules of men, no from Our Heavenly Father.

Christ healed diseases and that is what research is trying to do. It's small step but it is better than doing nothing. Abortion is no fun for anyone but I can understand why parents wouldn't want years of suffering and heartbreak. Right now, it is the only way to stop some diseases. I pray that researchers will find cures someday soon!

Your self-righteous post exposes you as someone who has not had to carry, birth and raise a seriously ill or defective child. Abortion can prevent much suffering on the part of the baby who has to live with birth or chromosomal defects and the mother who expends her emotional energy carrying for such a child. Diseases such as cytic fibrosis cause a great deal of suffering for the infant and child.

I'm not religious or a nutjob, but eugenics isn't a good thing. When you bred out the impurities, you get chaos, genetically speaking. Ever seen a purebred dog? Dumb as a box of rocks. Also, you are diffusional if you don't think that someone will use this technology to make designer babies/people, or to eliminate things other than diseases.

Do you think a family that had a 2 year old child who died of a strange disease would wish that child had never existed? How about one that died at age 5? Or age 10? Or age 20?

I can't poll everyone, of course, but I would venture to say that even though it may have been a struggle, many would say they were still glad for every moment they had with that child.

Ending one evil by means of another evil is no solution at all. Why don't we just mass-slaughter every person who has those diseases? That would solve your problem even more quickly, would it not?

And the only cost is the life of the child...hmm alive or dead...great choice. Look I'm not against decreasing the likelihood of these diseases but, we need to find a way to save the child in the process. I mean, we could stop crime tomorrow by having police shoot on site anyone who commits a crime. The ends do not always justify the means; we really need to consider this when developing our brave new world.

Ron, big difference between what this article is about and purebred dogs or eugenics.

Ron. I have a "purebred" Shetland Sheepdog who is smarter than some humans I know. He is not "dumb as a box of rocks" as you stated.

Let's not forget the smartest dog...the poodle. :-D

I'm all for testing of various diseases. If I could have the choice not to pass along something like NF(neurofribromatosis)(sp), I'll do it.

sorry for the typos..dayquil stickes again.

They aren't talking about having abortions. They are talking aout NOT having babies (as in avoiding pregnancy - probably by getting their tubes tied when they find out about the bad genes) It's a very good idea to avoid needless suffering of babies.

There is also the issue of fertilizing eggs and testing the resulting embryos to determine which have the mutation and which do not, then implanting one that does not. I'd assume those embryos which do have the mutation are destroyed or frozen down until they are no longer viable. I personally don't have a problem with this as an embryo is just potential for human life.

Yes they are talking abortions. Read the caption under the picture.

I read the caption, there are other ways to screen embryos (like prior to implantation). I'm sure abortion is one option they are discussing, but they are not ONLY talking about abortions and I doubt that is the primary strategy here.

They are also talking about screening couples before a pregnancy occurs at all. If both test positive as carriers, then they can decide how to proceed. While it's possible that couples will go on to do IVF with screening, some may instead decide to take their chances (but with the foreknowledge to start treatment early if the child does have the disease), while others may decide to adopt a child instead. For pregnancies that are already in progress, it is still helpful to know as early as possible if the child has the disease so that treatment can start as soon as possible.

These tests provide information so that potential parents can make an informed decision that is right for their situation.

WH-16,

Of course a family that has brought a child into the world loves that child and treasures their time together. But, if you ask that family, having watched that child suffer and inexorably die, if they would want to bring ANOTHER child with the same fatal condition into the world, most people would say no.

Have you ever had to watch your child die?

And for all you selfish people who call those of us with actual consciences "nutjobs", there is always always a consequence for taking the easy way out.

Perhaps when you end up with Alzheimers and dementia in your old age your children will choose to take care of you rather than have you euthanized.

Oh wait. You'd actually have to choose life in order to have those children.

Der Fuhrer would be proud of you.

The Fuhrer, if I recall, believed in the mass prodution of babies. No birth control or abortion in Nazi Germany. No FREEDOM OF CHOICE. NO FREEDOM.

I resent a bunch of right wing nuts trying to take government out of our lives when it comes to helping people, yet they want to control the most personal and private aspect of women's lives.

Killing babies isn't a choice or a right!

ACt2,

I appreciate your reservations about abortion. But, would you at least agree that testing BEFORE pregnancy (for men and women in high-risk populations) would be a good idea to avoid fatal genetic disease? Like the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi suggests and does? I for one would not want to bring a child into this world only to watch him suffer and die. What is the point?

Courtney, are you trying to say that advances in medicine have not helped in third world countries?

Courtney, we can fix that by making sure they don't get in our country.

But, you watch, we'll take steps to make America great for our children and us by doing something like this but then the poor gene pool immigrants will pour into our country like ants and make our country like theirs...a third world @!$%# hole.

.

Wonderful story!

What a beautiful story. Isn't it great that you had a CHOICE. Seems you made the right one for your situation.

Your opinion would matter if you were "Denise" and not "Dennis". Women are the ones that have to deliver and take care of the child. Your comment "my only biological child" reveals your single-minded desire to reproduce, regardless of what negative impact it would have on your wife's options and happiness. It should have been her choice alone.

Her choice alone? You're assuming that the father has no responsibility here. Unless he left her and the child (which he did not), he absolutely has a choice in the matter.

His wife already made the decision to be pregnant. Her body will go through the same thing whether the child has Down's syndrome or not. As far as child care after birth, what makes you think she will do all the work? My husband helps with the kids. Because of that, he absolutely had a say in how many kids we had. I would have wanted more, but he didn't feel he could be as good a parent to more than two, so we had two.

Your argument is laden with dreadful assumptions about men.

Because the dreadful assumptions sadly are true the majority of the time - just ask the millions of single female parents struggling to raise children alone and hold down a job, without financial or other help from what turned out to be nothing more than a sperm donor.

You're just one of the lucky ones.

No offense intended, but would you prefer if your parents had just killed you in the womb? Because that is basically what you are saying is the better choice for your child.

Would you or your family say that your life has no value? This may sound like I'm being smart-mouthed, but I'm asking a serious question. Because saying we should kill every baby that has certain diseases means we have decided that child will NEVER have value.

This article makes it sound like it is a great help to society, but as someone else mentioned it is doing nothing to cure the disease. Because the carriers are still out there. Their only solution is to eliminate those who have it. Which is a very dangerous road to start down.

If Seph had not been born, she would not be known and the only pain suffered would have been her mother's sadness at the prospect of having to abort.

WH-

My mother did not know that she was a carrier until I diagnosed at 6 months. I have older siblings that are in perfect health, so they did not think anything would be wrong with me. I am the youngest , because my mother chose not to have any more children after me because she was a carrier. I know that my parents love and value me, and I know my mother is wracked with guilt that I ended up with this disease. If she would have known, she might have made the decision to abort, but she didn’t know so that decision process never happened.

I know that I am a carrier, I know the emotional torment that I have endured, I know the physical complications, the financial burden, the potential complications, AND I know that if I can prevent it from happening to my child I will.

Some disease cannot be cured and thus the logical solution is prevention. I wish there was a cure for my disease, but there is not, thus I continue to live with every day until it kills me.

So your husband is not a carrier?

Seph,

You're making a very wise choice that could potentially allow not only your children with a better quality of life, but their children and their children's children and so on.

WH,

Obviously someone with a genetic disease is not worthless, infact they should have the same worth as anyone else in the world. You're missing the point of these tests and this is that, given the option, it would be better to bring a child into the world who is more likely to have a better quality of life. It really isn't a difficult concept.

I'd also like to add that this does help cure the disease. By reducing the number of carriers, less people will have it in the future. Selecting an embryo that does not have the mutation of interest makes it impossible for them to pass it down, and in this way potentially all genetic diseases could be eradicated.

Genetic diseases can never be eradicated. Every one is a carrier of some recessive disorder, as the result of thousands of mutations that occur during the development process. Most likely, they will never find a mate with a mutation on the same gene, so the disorder will never be expressed in any offspring. A few disorders happen to have a lot of carriers, and the best we can hope to do is reduce the number of carriers. But we can never eliminate all carriers of any disease, so there is always the rare chance of a baby being born with an autosomal-recessive genetic disease. (This likelihood increases the more closely the parents are related to each other.)

Spontaneous genetic diseases probably could never be eradicated, but mutations that lead to disease passed through the germline most certainly could.

New ones would arise with each generation. This is true for inherited traits (especially recessive), as well as spontaneous mutations. You could theoretically eliminate all known genetic disorders with vigilant testing and subsequent sterilization or selective abortions. But mutations will continue to occur, and recessive genes coding for genetic diseases may become quite common in a population before the right combination of mates produces offspring expressing that disease. By the time the condition is diagnosed and identified on the human genome, there will be many carriers and probably quite a few afflicted as well. And there has to be a relatively high number of sufferers before it becomes cost-effective to test everyone in a population for that particular disorder.

Small, isolated populations are more susceptible to genetic diseases, simply because more carriers are concentrated into one interbreeding pool. Actual incest over multiple generations would be a worst-case scenario for accelerating the development of new genetic diseases. The history of hemophilia is a perfect example of this.

I think Seph's post addresses your concerns from an informed perspective.

That is not the message and it most certainly should not be interpreted in that way. The only message is that you have a choice over whether your child inherits a genetic disease. As a potential ALS carrier, I will most definitely be getting these tests before I have children to make sure they don't get this devastating disease.

Pbarb- are you at all concerned that money for research into curing ALS will be reduced if the population suffering from this disease becomes more scarce through selective births? I am not saying I would wish ALS on anyone. I just think there is a lot to consider if we decide to eradicate disease by using eugenics.

I previously wrote: Only 15% of people at risk for Huntingtons Disease get tested according to Kimberly Quaid? I can tell you why...It's because people like Kimberly, whom I have spoken with while trying to get tested, ABSOLUTELY discourage testing. She and others that work within HDSA (huntingtons Disease Society of America) act like atrocious, miserly gate keepers to HD testing. They do the world and Huntingtons families a serious disservice. They should be ashamed for their control tactics. But instead with each passing discouragement, they become more and more pompous in their stance.

I understand what you are speaking about, as I am in the middle of an HD life myself. If testing where more supportive and encouraged, we could move beyond this and start testing our embryos, like the gentleman in the article. Physicians need to STOP putting their own ideas on a patients testing. Then we could move on to truly viable options like testing embryos.

Your in my prayers.

Knowing what you know now, would you have a second child? Also, do you take governmental aid for this child? Your choice, but I don't want to pay for your choice.

And I don't want to pay for your insulin when you go on Medicare, van man. (You are more likely to develop diabetes than HikingStick was to have a child with Sotos Syndrome.) Hopefully HikingStick's older son, who is reportedly quite bright, will develop a cure for diabetes.

Quit pretending like we can control everyone's impact on society.

I believe the dna testing for the genetic diseases mentioned in the article is quite accurate. All that needs to be done is to identify whether one carries the gene or not. There are many heritble diseases or mutations out there; some can be easily and accurately predicted and others, as several have pointed out, cannot.

That is the bottom line.

Very interesting consideration.

What kinds of freedoms will we lose when others are suddenly paying for our care? What kinds of freedoms should we lose? Is healthcare really more important than freedom?

If socialized medicine forces a parent to have an abortion, that is a profound loss of freedom. If it forces us to pay for a smoker's lung cancer treatment, that is a profound responsibility on tax payers. There can never truly be freedom without responsibility. If medicine is funded by one giant pool, individual choices cease to have meaning. Maybe they won't even exist anymore.

On which planet do you spend most of your time?

What the hell are you guys talking about?

Ridiculous.

Glad that your kid turned out good (so far)...however, given the chance, wouldn't you choose to have a child without this burden to carry? There's nothing noble about going out of your way to play a genetic lottery. I went to med school with a kid who had CF - finished school despite multiple hospitalizations, chronic IV Antibiotics, etc. - eventually died while in residency while waiting for a heart-lung transplant, ie. never practiced medicine. I gotta say, the governmental money that supported his education would have been better served bringing in someone without a known life-shortening disease.

van man,

Maybe the scholarship board saw him as a studious man who was less likely to go partying and die in a drunk driving accident than his fellow applicants. Lots of people don't finish medical school, due to accidental deaths - whether they are at fault or not - or just plain failure. Although there was an increased risk of death due to his CF, the kid you described had a vested interest in genetic research. I don't know if that's what his actual plans were, but a lot of researchers who make the most headway in treatments are those who suffer from the conditions themselves. Maybe the scholarship board saw his potential to make a difference before he died, and hedged their bets that he would make it that far. I don't think it was a bad investment, just one that didn't pan out.

Get out your crystal ball and recommend the next candidate for med school funding!

I would think that each one of us would choose to have a child without that burden to carry. But I don't think there are any "perfect" children who do not have burdens. Some parents my have children who have behavioral burdens. does that mean that child should have been aborted? We all have burdens. It seems to me that you are more concerned with government money being used in treating these children - not that they are capable individuals who could make a great contribution to our society. Who knows how many capable people who could have contributed to our society have already been aborted.

Yes, well some burdens are different from others. "We all have burdens", yes, but we don't all have fatal genetic diseases that kill us in hideous ways before we even know what it means to be human and alive. Who would be in favor of bringing a child into the world with THAT kind of burden?

I don't think people are suggesting that we avoid testing, or that carriers play Russian Roulette every time they have a child. I think they are just afraid of labeling certain people as "damaged goods" because they carry a gene for some well-known disease. It suggests that nothing else about the person matters - that their other genes, their personality, their desire for children are all irrelevant because their ONE GENE renders them unworthy of parenthood.

Let's keep it in perspective. Even if a couple shares the gene for, say, Tay-Sachs disease, there is only a 25% chance that their child will suffer at all. And yes, that child will suffer and die before the age of 5. But you know what? In some third world countries, a child has a higher chance of suffering from malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, AIDS and other serious diseases and dying before age 5. Yet we do not have mass campaigns labeling these impoverished parents, barely capable of surviving themselves, as unfit to have children. We send over mass amounts of aid to help their children. With genetic disorders, we blame the parents for daring to have the children in the first place, and complain about the cost of the medical care they receive.

I think people are also afraid of the "you weren't suppose to be born" mentality toward people with genetic diseases. Like their very existence was a mistake. And it's not. Those people, as well as their parents, deserve the same respect we give everyone. Obesity, schizophrenia, and autism are no walk in the park either! Genetic testing should be a tool to help people, not an excuse to judge them for having to face the challenge in the first place.

Oh my, JLM. Do you really think the difficulties faced by children in third world countries are the equivalent of a fatal genetic disease? I don't. As you say, the issues in third world countries can be addressed by massive aid. Fatal genetic diseases cannot. I just don't share your fatalistic attitude on this. I believe in the prevention of needless and pointless suffering. It has nothing to do with "you weren't supposed to be born". Those who are here we do what we can and accept and love them. That doesn't mean that we don't try to prevent future incurable suffering.

Depends on which genetic disease you are talking about. I would say that cystic fibrosis in the U.S. is a better life than being an AIDS orphan in Africa, suffering years of malnutrition before dying of malaria. I know a family with 3 kids who have cystic fibrosis (I don't know if they had more children after the first diagnosis or not). They seem fairly happy and well-adjusted. So many children in the world are born with no chance at all.

I'm not saying we shouldn't screen for genetic diseases, just that we should keep it in perspective. And I don't understand why a person would wait until after they were pregnant to screen for diseases, then abort. If you are concerned, get screened before you become pregnant. And I'm not saying that abortion, or even euthanasia, is necessarily evil in response to some of these diseases. I absolutely think it's cruel to let a child live with, say, Lesch-Nyhan disease or Tay-Sachs. But given the option, I'd rather they weren't conceived at all, versus terminated at some later time.

Some parents feel that even that kind of life has some happiness and would not interfere, and that is respectable too, as long as the child is getting the best care possible.

Your ignorance is showing! I resent your abrasive comment. My daughter has CF and I don't believe in abortion and I wouldn't trade her in for anything! She will finish college in a couple of years and be a productivecitizen. Any child born healthy has a risk of an accident that could be devastating. No guarantees in this world. She will be more productive than alot of healthy lazy people I know!

"Also what happens to these kids when the parents die and there is no one left to take care of them?"

The same thing that happens to all of us when we get too old and decrepid to function independently. A nursing home. Should we stop having children, for fear that they will become elderly and depend on tax payer support someday? Because most of them will. We can't all have a quick, cheap death like a car accident.

What is a radical Christian? Never met one!

Many of us liberals are also Christian (shocking, I know), so we are well aware that Christians are not lock-step. However, it is nice to be reminded occasionally that the right-wing is also not nearly as monolithic as the actions of the national GOP would imply.

I think every life, however young (even embryonic) or diseased, should be treated equally and with respect. That does not mean we have to go through the charade of leaving people on life support for 20 years, or spending millions of dollars extending the life of a sick child destined to die. It just means we should treat them well, and if abortion or even euthanasia is what is best for them - and I don't mean what is convenient for others - then that ought to be considered too.

She probably doesn't have a problem with screening as long as a baby isn't killed in the process!

Palin did get screened, and knew before Trig's birth that he would have Down's Syndrome. They can be wonderful children. There are certain challenges that they and their caregivers face, but they also have a tendency toward a sweet disposition, and that is a blessing. I know a man with Down's Syndrome whose parents helped him to become very independent and self-sufficient (a rarity), and he also has such a sweet personality. He is not very "bright," but his parents played to his strengths, and he has done well.

Saying that Down's Syndrome is a condition not worth living with is quite narrow-minded.

CF can't be accurately screened due to the mutations.

That is true, only if you are talking about autosomal recessive, but for autosomal dominant disorders, even if one parent has the defect, the child will get the disease.

That would make me think that anybody with a autosomal dominant trait would not want to give birth to a child. Why do we as a society see sterilization as such a bad thing?

Autosomal dominant traits are rarer than recessive traits. (They code for a trait that is abnormal, whereas recessive traits fail to code for something.) The chance of an affected person passing the trait unto offspring, however, is higher than for recessive traits.

The need to screen for autosomal dominant traits is questionable. You cannot be a carrier without expressing the gene. So if there is any chance you will pass that gene onto your offspring, then you yourself would be symptomatic as well. (All you need is a diagnosis, not a genetic screening.)

Some autosomal dominant disorders are not expressed until later in life (like Huntington's), so there is technically an advantage to screening. But it raises another ethical dilemma: if the disease is unknown until late in life, then there is a lot of quality life to be lived. It seems drastic, on a moral level, to deny a wanted fetus the right to life simply because they may suffer a disease when they are older. Every one suffers as they get older, to various degrees. I would not say that it means their life was not worth living.

Sunnybunny, you do realize that most of the genome consists of autosomal dominant traits, right? They are what make your body function. Sterilizing people with autosomal dominant traits would mean the end of the human race. I assume you mean autosomal-dominant genetic diseases. But I have to ask: what exactly constitutes a disease?

Dark hair is autosomal-dominant. Dark skin is also dominant. It might be considered a negative trait in boreal climates, with limited winter sunlight, because melanin (which gives the skin pigment) interferes with Vitamin D absorption. Or we could look at it from a more "southern" point of view. Maybe we should screen for the recessive trait of light skin in equatorial climates, because less melanin means higher susceptibility to skin cancer. See how there are advantages and disadvantages of being dark or light, depending on your climate? At what point is it "disease"? Sickle-cell is considered a genetic disease worth screening for, and yet it confers partial resistance to malaria. It's beneficial, in the right circumstances. And we have labeled it a disease.

It's okay to eliminate sickle-cell anemia in malaria-free United States, but it's not okay to eliminate fair skin in skin-cancer-rich United States? It's a double standard to screen for some genetic conditions and not others. Who says it's not worth living with an increased stroke risk, but it is worth living with a susceptibility to skin cancer??

Again,may I point out the HUGE difference between Down Syndrome and Tay-Sachs? One is produces children who can and do living fulfilling, productive lives. The other is invariably and hideously fatal at a very young age.

Doesn't anybody see the difference?

Yes, but we are not only examining Down's Syndrome and Tay Sachs. We are considering every abnormality that can be detected before birth, and asking, "Where do we draw the line?"

Actually....hair and skin color are not dominant. Dominant/recessive only applies to single gene traits. When we are referring to whether a gene is dominant or recessive, we are referring to the interaction of alleles of that one particular gene (each person has two copies of each gene, one from each parent, which we refer to as "alleles").

Hair and skin pigmentation are not caused by a single gene, but by many different genes. Some of these genes have major effects, some minor, and some of these genes may interact with one another. The same applies to genetic diseases as well. Yes, many may be caused by a single gene and be either dominant or recessive. But others have more complex causes involving multiple genes, or possible genes and environmental interactions.

If I have any issues with genetic testing, it relates to this concept. We now have the ability to test for genes which may play a part in disorders involving multiple genes or environmental effects (a good example of this are some of the cancer-associated genes). These genes may have a large effect, and significantly raise the person's risk of developing cancer or a disease, however, but they cannot predict with 100% certainty whether the person will go on to develop cancer or that disease due to the involvement of other factors, such as lifestyle or environmental exposure.

My major concern with genetic testing involves whether the patient will be provided with adequate education and counseling to distinguish between knowing one has a risk for something vs. knowing one will actually develop something. Regardless of what one is testing for, it is very important that education and counseling be provided to explain and interpret the results.

That is my point exactly. There are differences and you can't generalize, either from Tay-Sachs or from Down Syndrome, or anything else along the spectrum. Just because somebody's child does well with CF doesn't mean that I have to bring a Tay-Sachs child into the world or else I am devaluing them. And just because my child dies of T-S doesn't mean that people with other diseases have to prevent those births. But we should all have the choice.

Ok I meant diseases and horrible ones not minor ones. Obviously I don't have the technical knowledge a lot on this board have. I would think you would know what I meant.

Depends on which disease you are talking about. I mean, if you are talking about Tay-Sachs, a genetic disorder where the child WILL suffer a painful short life and WILL die by the age of five, I challenge you to come up with a scenario, where the child's birth will have a positive impact.

Sickle Cell Syndrome is no walk in the park, either.

but how does either one make a child any less valuable?That was my point! Van Man responded to my comment about my son by saying he went to medical school with someone who had CF and he died while in residency before he could practice medicine and said the money spent on him going to school would have been better spent on someone who was healthy, meaning the guy with CF was less valuable than a person without any health problems. I hate that any child is born with a disease- I hate that my son has CF but my son's life is no less valuable than a child without disease.

CFMOM -- it sounds like you would have your child over again knowingly. And that is right for you. Can you not see that it would not be right for everyone? And can you not also see that you are focusing a huge debate on your own individual experience? When there is a rather large range of outcomes from genetic diseases, including yours with CF and others with extremes of suffering ending in death?

Nothing about this discussion devalues your son or negates your right to have him; but you don't have the right to decide what choice others make. Do you?

I am not making a decision for anyone else- I do not believe in abortion but I am not necessarily arguing against that right now. In my initial comment yes I was but right now and with my last few comments I am debating the statement VAN MAN made

"I gotta say, the governmental money that supported his education would have been better served bringing in someone without a known life-shortening disease."

To me that is saying the guy with CF was not worth getting an education just because he might die at a young age. I am on a yahoo group that has a man in his 70's and a lady in her 60's living with CF.

I understand there is a wide range of suffering- I know in our case- we have been extremely blessed that my son has not had many problems. I am not by any means making light of anyone's suffering. I just hate to see life devalued because they have a disease. Where does it stop then?

Oh, I see your point regarding your son's education being wasted. I agree with you on that. Once they are here with us, we need to do all we can to treat all humans fairly and well.

Your comment makes no sense. Down's Syndrome is caused by a failure of meiosis (the splitting of an ovary cell to form an egg) resulting in an extra chromosome present in the egg, not from a genetic mutation (which results in a low-to-no function protein). There is no way to test a mother for this condition before she is pregnant. All women have a chance to produce eggs that have extra chromosomes. The older a woman is, the more likely that a pregnancy resulting from one of these eggs will be carried to term (younger women are less likely to produce such eggs and/or are more likely to spontaneously abort any resulting fetuses).

This article is talking about conditions caused by genetic mutations. The parents can be tested for these before a pregnancy, since they also carry the mutation.

Oh, be careful about saying that kind of stuff. You never know when your perfectly healthy child may get hit by a car and mentally damaged. That sort of thing happens. You so called non judgmental liberals are some of the most judgmental @$$***** i've had the misfortune to have to listen to.

It won't be an "OUR" decision until science can make it feasible for men to carry deliver a baby.

No.