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)

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)

At its June 17 annual meeting, the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest physician group in the United States, adopted policy recommendations opposing direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. The recommendations state that a health care professional should be involved in the genetic-testing process, and encourages individuals interested in obtaining genetic testing to contact a health care professional. (Medical News Today )

What if you could simply swallow a pill and become a buff, shredded, aerobic dynamo all without having to spend one sweaty second in the gym? Wouldn’t an instant fitness drug be great? Maybe not. We were both mighty intrigued to learn that scientists had developed not one, but two “Mighty Mouse Drugs” that endow mice with all the benefits of having worked out furiously, without the effort of actual exercise. (MSNBC)

Big money is out there for the brightest minds to shove utilitarianism and the goal of human enhancement down our throats. Australian Professor Julian Savulescu (now in the UK)–who I have seen debate and believe me he is one scary cat–has just picked up an 800 thousand pound grant to begin a eugenics, er neuroethics, center at Oxford. From Bioedge’s report:

Professor Savulescu said: “Neuroscience studies the brain and mind, and thereby some of the most profound aspects of human existence. In the last decade, advances in imaging and manipulating the brain have raised ethical challenges, particularly about the moral limits of the use of such technology, leading to the new discipline of neuroethics.

Professor Savulescu has become notorious for arguing that we should genetically enhance the human species by improving IQ, behaviour, mood, character and morality. “Biological manipulation to increase opportunity is ethical,” he once said. “If we have an obligation to treat and prevent disease, we have an obligation to try to manipulate these characteristics to give an individual the best opportunity of the best life.” He has even argued that parents have a moral responsibility to select the best children they could have. It will be interesting to see what sort of ideas about brain manipulation will emerge from the well-funded new centre

So, they make up a new field whole cloth dedicated to destroying universal human equality and the intrinsic worth of merely being human and the money comes pouring in. And with the money and the prestigious academic affiliation comes awesome power to influence young and bright minds who are society’s leaders of tomorrow. And, being very bright, they see which way the financial winds are blowing and what they need to believe–or say they believe-in order to climb the ladder of success.

What chance do you think there would be for someone as bright as Savulescu, and with the same credentials, to receive such major funding and Oxford offices if he held opposite views? Good luck with that and don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But that’s the high academy/foundation nexus today. And these folk are determined to tear down what they consider the ancien regime. And unless “the folk” stand up to it, the forces that be will bulldoze the very concept of universal human rights directly into a landfill–claiming as they go that they are the “enlightened” ones, the “brights.”

This is exactly how it was with the first eugenics movement. The people who paid were not the connected but the powerless. And those who urged their sterilization and even killing were at the top of the social/academic/political/legal and even liberal religious heaps.

Bitter? A bit, I admit. Scared? A lot.

New Zealand parents involved in IVF programs could soon be allowed to choose the sex of their child if the government follows the advice of its Bioethics Council. (The Age)

Has the era of high tech embryo profiling arrived? I have been following the recent study published in the journal Human Reproduction. Researchers have combined the technology that allows them to screen embryos at the blastocyst stage with the DNA fingerprinting and microarray analysis technology in order to identify the viable blastocysts transferred into the mother. The search for the best embryo has always been part of the IVF equation with all the quality controls put in place in the lab.

So how is the research being conducted?

The researchers tested the DNA of early in vitro fertilization embryos before implanting them into the womb, and then compared the results with the DNA of the healthy babies that were born, and found a cluster of genes that could be used to establish which embryos are likely to make it to full term.”

And why is this research touted as progress?

The idea is that by using objective, measurable criteria rather than the current more subjective observations such as looking at the morphology of the blastocysts, the ability to predict which embryos are viable will improve to such an extent that IVF clinicians will be able to confidently implant single embryos without reducing pregnancy rates.”

Current methods of embryo testing and embryo grading occur daily in IVF clinics and are just part of the routine. I’ve always criticized embryo grading for being subjective, harmful and dangerous to the early embryo as well as just not a good indicator of the future health of the baby. We’re in dangerous waters here.

The timeline keeps getting moved back further and further in human development in our insatiable quest for the perfect people. We’ve become a people with zero tolerance with anything less than perfect.

In their closing statement, the United Methodist Church has adopted by a vote of 836 for and 28 against, for their book of resolutions, their statement titled Repentance for Support of Eugenics. The resolution passed at their General Conference on April 30,2008. this makes the United Methodist Church the first denominational church in the U.S. to openly repent of their support of or involvement in the early eugenic movement in the U.S.

Here’s how they wrapped up their 9 page resolution:

Repentance for Support of Eugenics
The United Methodist General Conference formally apologizes for Methodist leaders and Methodist bodies who in the past supported eugenics as sound science and sound theology. We lament the ways eugenics was used to justify the sterilization of persons deemed less worthy. We lament that Methodist support of eugenics policies was used to keep persons of different races from marrying and forming legally recognized families. We are especially grieved that the politics of eugenics led to the extermination of millions of people by the Nazi government and continues today as “ethnic cleansing” around the world.”

Ryan T. Anderson has an interesting entry over at the First Things blog about an ethics conference he attended at Princeton. It makes for sobering reading. He begins with a quote from Princeton philosophy professor Elizabeth Harmon. From his column:

Look, when we think about ending an early human life, this is something that is really bad for the embryo or early fetus that dies, it’s losing out tremendously–I agree with that as I already said…I think it’s really dangerous to slide from noticing that something is bad for something, to thinking that that gives us a moral reason [not to do the bad thing]. And just to prove that that doesn’t follow, think about plants. So lots of things are bad for trees, and plants, and flowers, and often that gives us no reasons whatsoever, certainly no moral reasons. In my view, fetuses that die before they’re ever conscious really are a lot like plants: They’re living things, but there’s nothing about them that would make us think that they count morally in the way that people do.”

Harmon has clearly not yet read the Swiss ethics report establishing plant “dignity,” but no doubt she will get on board as the plant rights train picks up steam. Beyond that little jibe, note how accepting her anti-human exceptionalism values literally opens the door to using unborn humans as if they were mere natural resources, such as for experimentation, fetal farming, and the like. And that is precisely where many of the biggest brained among us wish to go.

Ryan reports that Peter Singer took his utilitarian thinking even farther, to perhaps permitting not just the killing of supposedly human “non persons” such as infants, but also adult human persons:

The intrinsic value of Jane’s life may be an important reason, or may not be, depending on the circumstances.” For example, Jane’s life does not produce a net increase of value in the world if “Jane’s death is a necessary condition for Helen, who will live a life of even greater value than Jane.” This could justify aborting a genetically defective child to conceive a healthy replacement (Singer’s own example)–but also justify killing some adults. The relevance of Singer’s fourth consideration also varies, since, he argues, some chimpanzees are “certainly more self-aware than some humans, and more self-aware than fetuses or, for that matter, newborn babies.”

I have always said, that if moral distinctions can be made between so-called human non persons and persons, why not also within the person category? And that is precisely where Singer seems to have gone in his presentation.

Ryan thinks the discussion was important both to expose the Singer-type advocacy to public scrutiny and to help the church get its act together. He opines that bringing “disagreements” out into the open is a very good thing because it alerts people to the consequences of ideas. That is idealistic and nice, but perhaps this work is making me cynical: I am not sure that most people care.

Beyond that, I am frankly, appalled. These ideas should be rejected out of hand. And indeed, it is a mark of how far the intellectual elites have taken us down the moral abyss already that the propriety of infanticide, fetal experimentation, and killing one adult to benefit another must now be seriously debated.

Or to put it another way: The problem is that this discussion explicitly treats such ideas as if they were legitimate and no different say, from a debate about whether a 20% or 30% capital gains tax would be best. Indeed, Singer was brought to Princeton–our most prestigious university–not in spite of these views, but because of them. Princeton’s faculty thus acted shamefully in approving the appointment that they wouldn’t someone else with the same academic credentials (Singer doesn’t even have a Ph.D) who wasn’t so “cutting edge” in his thinking, thereby granting Princeton’s imprimatur of respectability to infanticide (which it would never do if Singer were promoting the same agenda only based on racism.)

Disagreement is good. Getting our big brained betters to reveal their true agendas is, alas, now a necessity. But be very clear: The most of the influential institutions of society–perhaps other than the churches which are rapidly losing influence and in some cases cannot be distinguished in their views from those promoted by the big brained–are now controlled by those who utterly reject human exceptionalism. Worse, this isn’t just a mind game to them: They want their ideas implemented, a goal they are pursuing come hell or high water. Learned debates will not cause them to pause for a split second.

It will be up to the average folk to thwart the new eugenics that, like Sauron in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is re-manifesting and threatens to bring much darkness into the world.