Deciding not to abort a child with the potential for a particular genetic trait is NOT the same as inflicting a painful life on them. That is an awfully self-aggrandizing perspective, and pretty bigoted, too. Given the non-accuracy of prenatal testing when it comes to predicting the future of each particular baby, it's like concluding that all black babies should be aborted because they are so likely to end up in prison.
If I have a severely depressed child, and I could have had it otherwise. am I not at least partially the cause of said depression? Anyway, I think people would prefer to genetically engineer autistc genes rather than use abortion
I tend to use the presence of this kind of thinking in a post as an indicator of severely compromised reasoning powers - also know as "a selfish, arrogant jerk who thinks he should be in charge of the world, since it clearly isn't working the way he thinks it should."
The world does not work the way anyone wishes it did. If I asked anyone here who wishes things were different in the world would you say they are selfish arrogant jerks for wanting that?
Look. I know that letting natural selection take its course will always result in many subnominal combinations. It will also result in many supranominal combinations. The supranominal will succeed in reproducing more often and the subnominal will fail to reproduce more often. The plan is that the human race improves and life improves for everyone on the planet.
Evolution has no plan.
My suspicion is that this whole process is a lot more complex than it appears on the surface, and may be incredibly vulnerable to tampering from those who prefer to skip the whole adventure of having both negative and positive changes. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot use a genetic marker test - a tool with an edge as sharp as a caveman's first sharp rock - to reliably tweak the genetic future of humanity.
Perhaps, perhaps not. If genetic science advances enough we may be able to create new gene sequences that do not have negative effects or if they do they are outweighed by their benefits.
Autism is not a disability. It is a genetic difference that often carries disabilities with it, and also often carries benefits with it. If this set of genes is allowed to play itself out naturally, it will carry MORE benefits and LESS disabilities with it. as the generations gos on.
So if we could get more of the benefits with fewer of the disabilities in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take would that be an ethical thing to do?
If it is artificially selected out, then it will occur more and more often to poor and uneducated families with less and less resources. Even if they chanced to create a beneficial combination, the child would be so disempowered as to still not be reproductively viable. And it would live out its life in the worst circumstances, and without the social support structure that would have been in place to empower large numbers of autistics - since eugenic abortion would asure that society wouldn't have to develop or support such programs.
Perhaps. It depends on whether or not governemts will decide to subsidze it or not. Given enough momentum international competition may cause more and more countries to do so.
So, artificial selection actually creates more misery for the autistics who manage to live. It also deletes a potentially beneficial - or even necessary - change to the human genome. The test is so blunt as to guarantee that the vast majority of fetus' aborted would have led viable, perhaps exceptional lives. When we rely on prenatal screening as a matter of routine, the assumption grows that, beyond a woman's personal right to decide whether or not to reproduce, she has a right to choose between babies using whatever rational she likes - though some would at least insist that her criteria is socially popular.
That is only if the test does not change. This is unlikely to happen. People might choose for autistic traits if its extremely probable that the benefits outway the costs.
Also, why shouldn't women have the ability to choose the kind of child she bears? It could logically follow that if you allow abortion you must give women right to choose to bear the offspring she wishes.
Given all of this, how can eugenic abortion be ethical? What benefit does it bring to the child, the community, or the world? It only has one benefit, and to only one group - the parents of the autistics who need the most help. And the only benefit it brings those parents is the short term benefit of not having to raise a child who needs help from society that society refuses to give. This is an understandable, but nonetheless selfish perspective on which to hang an ethical endorsement.
Eugenic abortion is not the ideal. The ideal is to genetically engineer away disbalities and enginner in enhancements. Given that you argue that autism has benefits people may engineer it in, or at least a modified version thereof, in which the benefits outweigh the disablities. Doesnot having healthier, happier, more intelligent children with few if any disabilities benefit the children, society, and the parents?
The real answer to the emotional weight of that one benefit is that it is unethical for society to ignore its duty to its own offspring - now and future - and to refuse to contribute the extra resources necessary to allow these children to live the lives the deserve.
I find that making my children healthier, happier, and more intelligent while taking away whatever disabilities they may have had a very ethical thing to do. Also, as I have said before, my ideal government would give much support to everyone whether NT or autistic.
GnosisRoads - I have already given real-life examples of the complete personality change that accompanies whole-brain trauma, and that is what one would have to inflict upon an autistic brain in order to turn it into one that the current society deems acceptable.
And you would seem to have already decided that human beings have relative values. Many of us are emphatically against that notion, and regard all human life as having equal value.
[quote=Tigger_the_Wing ] I wonder what exactly is taught in Ethics classes in schools these days? Are there no absolutes any more?
Tigger, without knowing what exact syndromes they had. how much they changed, and whatnot I can not judge how different they became and how it compares to an neural cure for autism. You said one guy became a lot friendlier and nice. I have known people who converted to Christianity and because of that they became friendly, less angry people. Did they become different people? On an unrelated note, I am an agnostic.
I believe all people are of equal moral worth. Mental and physical traits however are a different matter.
I wonder what exactly is taught in Ethics classes in schools these days? Are there no absolutes any more?
They taught me not to jump to conclusions before all information was available to me, for one.
Yes he doesn't get my jokes. Yes we have communication issues. Yes he is "different" from me and his siblings. But that is what makes him ... him. I don't want that changed.