This is what the culture of death has turned me into, a flat earth anti-science reactionary shouting at the world stop!
I was perusing one of my favorite websites MIT’s Technology Review. Today I ran across an article that said that researchers are making substantial progress in the very early detection of some diseases. In a sane world that would elicit joy, but not so in this case. These scientists are close to developing a genetic screening test that could detect genetic diseases in the unborn very early in a pregnancy.
Ever since the discovery that a pregnant woman’s blood contains traces of her baby’s DNA, researchers have been looking for ways to screen that DNA for genetic abnormalities. A new test developed by Stephen Quake and his colleagues at Stanford University takes us one step closer to a noninvasive blood test to diagnose disorders like Down syndrome in a fetus.
The new test uses powerful DNA sequencing techniques to amplify short fragments of a baby’s DNA from its mother’s blood, and to map the chromosomes. The method reveals the extra copies of chromosomes–aneuploidy–characteristic of certain genetic disorders, including Down syndrome, in which there are three copies of chromosome 21 rather than two.
“Now we’re getting closer to the time when there will be not a screening test but a definitive noninvasive test,” says Joe Leigh Simpson of Florida International University. Simpson wasn’t involved in Quake’s work.
My reaction upon reading this was profound sadness. This “advance” will likely be used to insure that the few babies with Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders who now live will never see the light of day in the not so distant future. Today, some 93% of babies with Down Syndrome are aborted. Advances such as these will only increase the likelihood that this number will get even closer to 100%.
The tragedy of each and every one of those deaths is compounded by effects on society of liquidation of the imperfect. It no longer takes the imagination of a science fiction writer to imagine a world where stricter and stricter definitions of perfection result in the indifferent filtration of the flawed by the millions.
No, horror stories like this are no longer the relegated to the domain of the imagination but are staples of our increasingly revoltingly reality.
The culture of death has brought me to this place where I read of scientific advance and pray “Please God, make it stop!”
October 9, 2008 at 6:57 am
OK, I’m not a PETA member, nor am I even a vegetarian, so I am definitely not saying animals are equal to humans. But I must say that the scientific community for far too long has experimented on animals during in vivo test trials to the extent that they are merely subject organisms with no thought to them actually being living creatures which should not be treated cruelly. I’m saying this because it’s an easy slope to go from disasociating oneself from subjecting an animal to what you or I would get arrested for were we to do it outside of a lab, to disasociating oneself from working on what simply appear as “cells” under a microscope, when in reality they are the begining stages of human life.
The irony here is that 99% of all tests run on animal subjects in vivo are useless to humans (i.e. if you wanted to cure rats of cancer, then job well done…but most likely that’s as far as you are going to get). And stem cells collected from other parts of the human anatomy (i.e. the nose) react THE SAME WAY that embrionic stem cells do for in vitro environments. The doctors and spokesmen/women who wave their arms and say, “embrionic stem cells are still the best way to collect the best results!” really mean “it’s easier for us to get our hands on embrionic stem cells since they don’t require an adult giving consent and having us pay as much to extract them.” And the bottom line is always the bottom line.
October 9, 2008 at 11:27 am
The science is based on ‘traces of the babies DNA.’ That means that any so-called early detection will be based on probability. Will the baby-killing machine want to continue with its bloody work based on probabilities? Perhaps a few of the ‘fetuses’ will find their way through and prove the new theories wrong.
October 9, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Did anyone else notie some of the online posts of this had the nerve* to use a picture of a child with Down’s Syndrome?
*Nerve, absolute depravity or, we could hope, a subversive plea by someone hoping to put a human face on this travisty.
October 9, 2008 at 2:36 pm
What a brave new world we live in, where instead of trying to cure or treat diseases, we simply euthanize the patient.
Has all science been reduced to mere eugenics?
October 9, 2008 at 4:17 pm
The problem isn’t the screening tests, the problem is the culture. I think my wife and I would like to know if we were going to have a baby with some genetic abnormality – not because we would entertain the idea of aborting him or her but to prepare ourselves for when he or she is born.
I would not be surprised to see GOP “pro-lifers” change their tune from “rape, incest, life of the mother” to “rape, incest, life of the mother, genetic abnormalities, etc.”
October 10, 2008 at 1:42 pm
If the GOP changed their tune, I wouldn’t be surprised either.
The problem isn’t that science is evil. It’s that people are evil; indeed, after reading the comments on euthanasia and abortion articles posted on mainstream news sites, I’m convinced that most people are evil.
The most frightening thing is that we’re now the minority. The majority actually wants death. And, for better or worse, they’re getting exactly what they want.