*blinks*

[conuly]

Mostly, I agree with this article. Good stuff. But...

"I got married really young because I really wanted a family," Fisher said, "and I also knew I was going to die young."

Fisher married at 21, had a baby at 22 and was battling breast cancer by 31. She's been in remission for 12 years, but is fighting a new battle.


You have an inheritable problem that predisposes you to cancer. You arranged your life around this. There is no benefit from this, and the odds are that you'll die young. So you got married early to have kids?

Genetic testing revealed that her daughter, Kate, has the BRCA-1 gene, which is associated with colon and breast cancers.

I don't want to say anything I don't mean, so listen carefully. I don't think this woman or her daughter would've been better off, or the daughter (or woman) hadn't been born. I think people need a lot of education about various disabilities before saying "oh, this kid might have *blank*, I should get an abortion". But in this case, she knows the problems involved in this, they're not pretty... *shrugs* I would've adopted, that's all.

Comments

[rayinte.livejournal.com]

I know what you're saying... I mean, why would anyone who knows they're high risk for cancer want to have kids who will, in turn, be high risk? It doesn't seem fair to the child.

As for the genetic testing aspect of the article... Gattaca anyone? *likes that movie* Anyhow, I take a very very long view sometimes, and I can see how in some ways, genetic screening might be beneficial to the species. You know--culling the herd and whatnot. Sure, privacy is an issue, and no one should be turned down when they need help... and gah, that's where the difficulty lies.

Stephen Hawking. A hundred years ago, he would be dead. But there he is. From a cultural and scientific standpoint, Hawking has made a huge difference, and I'm sure he's done a lot for medicine, if only to show how much can be done to preserve a life.

Medicine. It's really the difference, I suppose. Maybe the daughter mentioned in the article--high risk or not--will be the benefit of further medical advances. It's getting better all the time, after all. Already, with Christopher Reeve--another man who wouldn't have survived a hundred years ago--and his work toward funding the study of the spinal cord and nervous system, great advances have been made.

Sure, passing on the genetic codes of those whose DNA is "imperfect" might be considered pissing in the gene pool, but it's also giving those youngsters a chance to prove themselves in the greater world, and maybe do something that will be remembered for generations. It's not sink or swim anymore; now--at least in the industrially advanced areas--we all get these nifty floaty vests.

... and maybe those "imperfections" are really just nature's way of groping for an improvement? They both start with the imp, after all. ;)