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Comment by riskQtempAcc | Hacker News Reader

(Use of the pronoun “you” as the impersonal)

You’re not curing cystic fibrosis, or any other genetic disease, are you? You’re just stopping disabled people from being born because you’ve decided their lives have no intrinsic value.

This can be said to a wide swath of people. Down syndrome people, bipolar people, blue people, people with physical deformities.

Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless? How about their parents?

I can think of few hells more dull than a world of smart ass public radio listeners providing unrequested comments lathered in snark and cynicism.

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That's like saying "You’re just stopping people from breaking their legs because you’ve decided lives of people with broken legs have no intrinsic value."

I would consider cystic fibrosis to be cured when there are no longer any carriers on the planet who could procreate and make another person who will suffer from that terrible affliction.

> Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless? How about their parents?

My hope with this technology is that we can give prospective parents the kind of tools that allow them to make reproductive choices that best reflect their desires and hopes and dreams for their children. The question of course is what are they going to do with these tools? Will they eagerly use them or throw them away in disgust?

And then what do we do as a society in response to that?

Is it legal to feed your new born child alcohol? Is it legal for pregnant women to drink alcohol? Is it legal for two cystic fibrosis gene carriers to knowingly produce a child who will suffer from cystic fibrosis? Is it legal for someone to modify their embryo so that it turn into a child that will be a cystic fibrosis carrier? Is it legal for someone to modify their embryo so that it turn into a child that will suffer from cystic fibrosis?

Which of these things should be legal and which shouldn't? How do we enforce them?

> Why do you get to choose

Presumably this "you" is the parent. They get to decide when (or if) they have kids and they can now decide what kind of kids they have. Just like folks can (and should) already screen for certain heritable disabilities.

> Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless?

They'll either be depressed or they won't feel this way. By definition, the ones that are well-functioning parts of society won't feel this way. I don't see why it should matter.

> I can think of few hells more dull than a world of smart ass public radio listeners providing unrequested comments lathered in snark and cynicism.

For someone who finds that dull, there is a lot of snark and cynicism in this comment. It's really not necessary, we're all here to engage with each others' view points.

“ Presumably this "you" is the parent. ”

No. I explicitly stated that I was using “you” as the impersonal pronoun, which English otherwise lacks (although “one” is often used instead)

> "Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless?"

I have a couple of disabilities and genetic diseases. They utterly, inarguably, and completely suck.

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