A “slippery slope” to “a world of eugenics,” as bioethics authorities once worried, or a healthy life for a teenage girl? Once at the center of a science controversy, Molly Nash, 15, represents the human answer to the debate over a genetic screening technique, ” pre-implantation genetic diagnosis,” (PGD) that made headlines a decade ago. (USA TODAY)

Some of the learning difficulties of Down’s syndrome have been reversed by a blood pressure drug in a breakthrough that offers hope to millions. Given in childhood, the drug could improve marks in school. In adulthood, it could prevent or slow the decline towards dementia that often accompanies the genetic condition. (Mail Online)

The number of babies with Down syndrome carried to term in the United States has declined to single digit percentages, officials say. Approximately 92 percent of American women with prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome babies chose abortion, Children’s Hospital Boston pediatric geneticist Dr. Brian Skotko said. (UPI)

Genetic screening of embryos, sperm and eggs has been tied to the worst aspects of eugenics, but a new case study in one of the nation’s leading medical journals shows some benefits may come from genetic analysis of donors. (ABC News)

Genetic testing of embryos combines genetic testing with in vitro fertilization and is widely available in clinical settings. However, words like “eugenics” and the “perfect child” help to polarize the debate and are influencing policies, such as limiting access to the procedure and to research. (CMAJ)

WHAT DO Richard Nixon and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have in common? Not much linked the former president, who died in 1994, and the associate justice now in her 17th year on the Supreme Court. But each was in the news recently with a cringe-inducing comment about abortion. Those comments - one spoken privately long ago, one uttered publicly this month - are a reminder of the ease with which educated elites can decide that some people’s lives have no value. (The Boston Globe)

Swedish health authorities have ruled that under the current law, a woman is allowed to have an abortion, solely for the purpose of ending a pregnancy when the gender of the fetus is not what a woman wants. (ChattahBox)

Both the number of families checking embryos for genetic defects and the number of conditions being tested for are growing rapidly around the world. Last year, the leading U.S. genetic diagnosis clinic—the world’s largest—performed more than 1,800 tests aimed at weeding out embryos that carried worrisome family conditions, from sickle cell anemia to cystic fibrosis. (Chicago Tribune)

When physicians at University College in London last month announced the birth of what they described as the world’s first “breast-cancer gene-free baby,” a designer infant pre-screened for the BRCA1 cancer gene, critics focused public debate on the question of whether or not such screening should be permitted. (Opposing Views)

Remember when we were told that IVF, coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would only be used to prevent serious genetic health maladies from being passed to the next generation? (Opposing Views)

A Vatican official warned on Tuesday that advances in genetic testing were creating a slow but “relentless” spread of a eugenics mentality — the effort to improve the quality of the human race by controlling heredity. (Houston Chronicle)

Journal of Applied Philosophy (Volume 26, Issue 1, February 2009) is now available by subscription only.

Articles Include:

• “Killing, Letting Die, and the Morality of Abortion” by Anton Tupa, 1-26.
• “Is the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide Compatible with Good End-of-Life Care?” by Michael B. Gill, 27-45.
• “Magnanimity, Athletic Excellence, and Performance-Enhancing Drugs” by Michael W. Austin, 46-53.
• “Tonkens on the Irrationality of the Suicidally Mentally Ill ” by Michael Cholbi, 102-106.

Dick Sosey is an American professor who teaches at the University of Alberta, Canada, and is an expert on issue of discrimination against people with disabilities. In response to a story published in the Denver Post about the murder of a boy with autism by his father, which Sobsey perceived to be unduly sympathetic to the killer, he has posted two blog posts that are well worth reading in full. In Part One, he writes:

Murder is wrong and there is no good excuse for it. Murdering any child is a despicable act.Murdering one’s own child is as bad as murdering someone else’s.Murdering a child with autism is just as bad as murdering any other child.

Most people who murder other people are experiencing stress and significant challenges in their lives of one kind or another. Being stressed is not an excuse for murder.

I am particularly incensed at people who commit murder and then tell us how much they love the victim that they murder. Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable is no better than endorsing any other kind of murder.

Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable adds to the probability that other parents will kill their children, because sick minds struggling with the impulse to kill can be assisted to go over the edge by social endorsements, which help them to rationalize murder…Let’s save our respect and empathy for the parents who go on facing challenges day after day, and recognize the child murderers who fail to face these challenges for who they are. Parents who kill children with autism are no better or worse than parents who kill any other child.

Sobsey continues his analysis in Part 2, which I will permit you all to read on your own. He concludes:

Lastly, I want to comment on why I believe the ideas in this article are dangerous. To understand child murder, it is less helpful to focus on what motivates some parents to kill their children but rather on what stops most parents from killing their children. This is not being glib. The reality is that raising any child is a lot of work, stressful at sometimes, and heartbreaking at others. At times even the sweetest child is an intrusion on our lives. However, most parents do not kill their children for some combination of four reasons: (1) Love and attachment, (2) Guilt, (3) Shame, and (4) Fear of Punishment. In most cases, this is the order of importance. Parents who claim to love their children but hate their autism are at best conflicted. Autism is a pervasive disorder, saying you love the child but hate his or her autism is a bit like saying I love you but hate everything about you or saying I love the child I wish you could be, not the child you are.

Sobsey probably knows more about this particular issue–the murder of children with disabilities and society’s reaction to it–than anybody I know. His wisdom is very worth pondering.

Are you the kind of parent who will spare no expense to give your child every possible competitive advantage? Well, step right up! A company in Colorado offers a $149 genetic test to see if your little Jacob or Emily carries a gene associated with a specific type of athletic excellence. As one soccer mom enthusiastic about the test told The New York Times , “I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration.” (Dallas Morning News)

A mother has been spared jail after admitting poisoning and smothering her 20-year-old mentally disabled daughter, a case that throws the spotlight on the plight of the mentally ill in China. (Reuters)

New DNA tests to screen fetuses for a wider array of genetic abnormalities early in pregnancy are raising some hopes as well as concerns that the “flood of murky, misleading results” could lead to more abortions and “needlessly alarm” many people, the Washington Post reports. According to the Post, the tests — called comparative genomic hybridization — use gene chips, or “microarrays,” to search for deletions or additions of genetic material that can lead to less common, but often more severe, syndromes that are commonly missed by standard genetic analysis. (Medical News Today)

State Rep. John LaBruzzo reminded some New Orleanians of white supremacist and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke last week when he told New Orleans CityBusiness of his plans to consider introducing new legislation that would pay poor women $1,000 to voluntariily have their tubes tied in order to avoid getting pregnant in the future. (Louisiana Weekly)

According to a UK study, the concerted drive to prenatally detect Down syndrome or other anomalies through genetic testing aimed at eugenic abortion is also causing the deaths of babies who have no disabling condition through miscarriage. From the story:

Two healthy babies are miscarried for every three Down’s Syndrome babies that are detected and prevented from being born, research has suggested…

DSEI chief executive Frank Buckley and Professor Sue Buckley, who conducted their research using a database at London’s Bart’s Hospital, also point out that 95 per cent of women deemed to be high risk by the blood test will not be carrying a baby with the disorder, yet most go on to have the tests.

“The screening for Down’s syndrome has consequences for every pregnant woman,” they said. “You cannot look at it as just a search-and-destroy mission focused on babies with Down’s alone.”

Although they admit that their ratio is only an estimate, they are backed by a number of independent experts who fear inexperienced practitioners may also be to blame. Professor Kypros Nicolaides, head of the Harris Birthright Centre at King’s College Hospital in south London, said the loss of healthy babies was “completely unacceptable”

“Search and destroy,” yup that’s a good description of an ugly process, with the unaffected babies apparently the collateral damage.

Here’s an idea: How about not trying to destroy these babies in the first place and then the others will be safe, too.

A “genocide on the black community,” is what a group of African-American pastors is saying about The Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (MemphisRap)

Every parent wants the perfect child and eight years ago Stephanie Brown was “designed” to give her the best in life.

As one of the first designer babies to be born in Sydney, Stephanie is a picture of health.

To guarantee she would not inherit the rare hereditary disorder that will kill her brother Benjamin, her parents made a decision in to try a new procedure - genetic screening.

Yesterday, as she celebrated her eighth birthday with her brother, parents Sandra and Phillip Brown, had “no regrets” at the decision they made.

“For me, if I wanted another child, there was no other choice,” Mrs Brown said.

“To bring another disabled child into the world and go through that much suffering, not just financially but emotionally, physically . . . I couldn’t do it.” (Sydney Daily Telegraph)