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Comment by ftxbro | Hacker News Reader

In the near or medium future they will screen/crispr the germline so no one will ever have it. Yes it's eugenics but it will happen.

Edit: the ones downvoting me is it because you don't think it will happen, or because you don't think it's eugenics, or you think it's rude to talk about it?

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This has already happened with Down syndrome in Denmark.

https://cphpost.dk/2020-08-21/news/record-low-numbers-of-chi...

In the US, when we had a kid, we had genetic screens done for over a hundred genetic diseases. The baby’s DNA was also tested for Down’s.

Same here, for our second child, since her mother had moved into a higher-risk age category by then. This was in San Francisco in 2005.

Can do a blood test on the mother for Down's. Enough baby DNA leaks out into her bloodstream and you can see if the chromosome ratios are the slightest bit off or not.

i wonder does the mother get any phenotype if she has a lot of dna in her bloodstream that has too many chromosomes

It’s a shame as down people are the best of us.

I know what you're getting at, and it's a very difficult issue, but if you are advocating against screening out Down Syndrome then I disagree.

A question worth asking yourself is: If I had the power to give myself, or someone I love and want the best for, Down Syndrome, would I do so? Especially consider the case where the person is young enough not to remember life before the change.

I wouldn’t any more than I wouldn’t take away down from someone who was down. I’m not advocating about anything though, I am just stating the world is better with down people in it than without them. They are truly beautiful humans.

I was nearly strangled to death by someone with Down's. That one didn't seem all too beautiful to me.

You get the filtered ones.

A close friend of mine worked in a "home" for people who had to fit all three of "adult," "violently disturbed," and "diminished mental capacity." They were not beautiful humans. While all types were present, the Down's crowd was just as nasty as the rest.

These folks get tucked away and the populace gets the high-functioning "nice" ones. Turns out that they're just as lousy as the rest of us.

Would you intentionally give a fetus Down’s?

No, but I also wouldn’t have ended our pregnancy had my daughter tested positive. I would have prepared for a different life, and I would have been happy if scared to be the father of a down kid. I’m not here to criticize anyone’s choices in their life - it’s their life. But I think we vastly under value down people. They have more love in their heart than an entire city of people without down. My friends brother was down and we spent a lot of time together, and I’ve since made a point of getting to know the down people I come across in life. They are truly the blessed amongst us.

I believe there are different degrees of it and being a parent to a severe case is a much more stressful life long commitment than being a friend to a mild case.

Yes you’re 100% correct. My friends brother was a severe case. It was not easy to raise him and he requires life long care. When the parent die I assume he will have to live in a home. He was non verbal and not self sufficient in most anything. Yet, he was always happy and kind, gentle, and loving. Even when things frustrated him he handled it better than I do now. But I will always remember his parents would discuss openly how blessed they felt that he had been born, and he seemed happy to be alive when I knew him. In some ways I think his parents also liked that when their other kids grew up and moved away Jeff was still there with them. As a father I selfishly can identify with that watching my daughter grow and knowing a day is coming when she will make her own way. Anyway, it is definitely complex - it was nice to read in the linked article some number of people are intentionally raising down children.

Eugenics is definitely a loaded term. It denotes good genes and of course everyone wants that. On the other hand it connotes a bunch of ugliness like culling persons with undesirable traits.

Everyone practices eugenics in the denotational sense after all. Nobody thinks “hey, I want to have children with this person that I think will give them bad genes”

Incidentally one of the major selling points of abortion is culling persons with genetic defects, which is absolutely eugenic.

Concur. I think this is likely to be controversial, and become an increasingly popular news topic and political wedge. (Maybe in the next few decades?) It seems that we can eliminate some genetic diseases through a combination of screening and embryo selection.

Screening is already very common. Offspring with unwanted genes can be screened off if mom is willing to abort (and if not, you don't typically bother with the screening)

I learned that from a medical lesson, it's just standard of care today

If you're doing IVF, many (all?) of these can be screened pre-implantation.

Carrier screening is pretty much standard today. This way the risk of two carriers having an affected child can be avoided.

How is this eugenics? Does not make any sense.

What you're describing is clearly eugenics, just a benign form.

Benign eugenics? I can't follow...

It's common for people to choose to try to not have a child with a serious genetic disorder.

tfw a connotation is more powerful than a definition

Carrier screening covers a really small fraction of pathogenic variants. It'll catch really catastrophic stuff but there's an enormous number of mixed-penetrance/AD variants that people pass on because they aren't lethal.

(plus, let's be real, most prospective parents don't carrier screen. only ones about to undergo IVF where PGT-M is sometimes an option.)

It's definitely eugenics and societies that hope to be just and grounded on the dignity and sanctity of human life will make it illegal.

Truly unbelievable and sad how quickly a dechristianized society adopted this practices with no issues.

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