[Anckzxik]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8619533.stm

background:

Embryos containing DNA from a man and two women have been created by scientists at Newcastle University.
They say their research, published in the journal Nature, has the potential to help mothers with rare genetic disorders have healthy children. Note that this technique is not yet permitted to be used.

This however is not the reason for making this thread. My question is relating to the following:

Sharon Bernardi, aged 44, from Sunderland, inherited mitochondrial disease from her mother. The condition has claimed the lives of six of her children, all of them dying within a few days of birth.
Her only surviving child, Edward, who is 20, suffers from a serious mitochondrial disease and needs constant care. Six? Selfish? Discuss.....

[IronpumpedLady]

I don't think 'selfish' is an accurate word for this. The urge to procreate for some is so strong that there is no other option. I feel sorry for them, and in some ways it is selfish from an objective perspective but all they wanted was a healthy child, which most people take for granted.

[carinsurancess]

No it is selfish...
Let me ask you something (to the people with children)... Do you look at your child and see DNA? Or do you look at your child and remember the funny memories, when they were so small and fit in your arms, when your child said its first word, and so on...
That woman is selfish... Of all the people who should adopt.. She should have adopted from the get go. *******... There are many children out there that need parents, home, and love...... Instead this selfish ******* has to neglect them and their inferior dna... they bring in 6 other children into this world that all die.

[justashonglefan]

I don't think 'selfish' is an accurate word for this. The urge to procreate for some is so strong that there is no other option. I feel sorry for them, and in some ways it is selfish from an objective perspective but all they wanted was a healthy child, which most people take for granted.

either that or she loves the boaby !

[IronpumpedLady]

either that or she loves the boaby !

Don't we all sailor! x

[justashonglefan]

No it is selfish...
Let me ask you something (to the people with children)... Do you look at your child and see DNA? Or do you look at your child and remember the funny memories, when they were so small and fit in your arms, when your child said its first word, and so on...
That woman is selfish... Of all the people who should adopt.. She should have adopted from the get go. *******... There are many children out there that need parents, home, and love...... Instead this selfish ******* has to neglect them and their inferior dna... they bring in 6 other children into this world that all die.

its all about bloodlines blood !

how can you carry on your family line when the child you have is adopted ?

call me an ass but I would never adopt for that reason even though I appreciate the poor little sausages need families and looking after, but I want my own family not someone else's unwanteds

[carinsurancess]

its all about bloodlines blood !

how can you carry on your family line when the child you have is adopted ?

call me an ass but I would never adopt for that reason even though I appreciate the poor little sausages need families and looking after, but I want my own family not someone else's unwanteds

Putting a child for adoption doesn't always mean they were unwanted... Could be the child of a young couple that made a mistake and did not want an abortion... They can't provide/support the child at their young age.
To me it's not about bloodlines at all.
I also recommend adopting a child that has similar traits to you and your partner. Widows peak, earlobe, what ever... Kids are smart they will figure it out. Plus if they differ too much from you then the constant harassment from their peers would be too painful.
I also believe you don't have to tell the child they were adopted. I view it differently. It's not the blood... It's the bond/memories you have made overtime.

[justashonglefan]

Don't we all sailor! x

yes ducky

[carinsurancess]

Also I think people with genetic disorders should not be allowed to have children... Adopted only until we perfect the procedure to select healthy DNA to have healthy children. Why further pollute our gene pool? Because our life expectancy is increasing we are starting to notice certain diseases that are more prevalent with people that have a certain strand of dna/passed on mutation and they show up in the later years. If we continue to keep healing people with these genetic diseases and allowing them to pass it on... Won't we be hurting our selves?
This sounds extreme... I don't REALLY mean we should stop people from having children that have genetic disorders... Just saying wouldnt it make sense to?
As a benefit... We would reduce the number of orphans... And slow down our population growth... In return it would also reduce the consumption... and so on.. Across the board it would help... Less and less people we bring into this world... The better. We are not insects... We are large... We are inefficient eaters (insects eat foods with much higher energy), we produce a lot of waste, and so on... we can't keep increasing in population like a swarm of locusts.

[justashonglefan]

Also I think people with genetic disorders should not be allowed to have children... Adopted only until we perfect the procedure to select healthy DNA to have healthy children. Why further pollute our gene pool? Because our life expectancy is increasing we are starting to notice certain diseases that are more prevalent with people that have a certain strand of dna/passed on mutation and they show up in the later years. If we continue to keep healing people with these genetic diseases and allowing them to pass it on... Won't we be hurting our selves?
This sounds extreme... I don't REALLY mean we should stop people from having children that have genetic disorders... Just saying wouldnt it make sense to?

if I had a genetic disorder (I have a mental disorder though lol ) I wouldn't even think about having kids purely because I wouldn't want my own kids to suffer

but your comment has come across as was very eugenically dirven [help]

[zawhmqswly]

Cannae beat a bit of boaby!

[HexcewlyRette]

... Just saying wouldnt it make sense to?

It makes absolutely perfect sense to me, but it still shouldn't be done. Once it's accepted in society that certain people are not allowed to have children things can turn ugly in a few short steps.

If anything, let anyone breed, but conduct tests to work out the health of the foetus.... if there's problems, terminate.... I have no problem with abortion, but after/very close to birth it's a different story and for that reason I think this woman is completely selfish.

[encumeterz]

Once it's accepted in society that certain people are not allowed to have children things can turn ugly in a few short steps.

I agree. If society accepted that we say who and who can't have babies it would be the Nazi regime all over again.

[tickerinet]

I agree. If society accepted that we say who and who can't have babies it would be the Nazi regime all over again.

They already do it in China, which has the one child policy.

But they have a legitimate reason for adopting such measures. It may be considered morally, or ethically wrong, but it's still necessary.

[carinsurancess]

I fail to see how it is morally or ethically wrong to help out the human race... Everyone thinks about them selves... No one thinks about others or the future.
Imagine a world where everyone did their part... Pick up trash after one another, helped someone in need, adopt children, reduced waste, reduced energy use, reduced consumption, stabilize population growth, and so on... A better place.
I guess what I am saying is... Not to make it illegal but change everyones views about it so that it is frowned upon...

[HonjUopu]

Also I think people with genetic disorders should not be allowed to have children... Adopted only until we perfect the procedure to select healthy DNA to have healthy children. Why further pollute our gene pool? Because our life expectancy is increasing we are starting to notice certain diseases that are more prevalent with people that have a certain strand of dna/passed on mutation and they show up in the later years. If we continue to keep healing people with these genetic diseases and allowing them to pass it on... Won't we be hurting our selves?
This sounds extreme... I don't REALLY mean we should stop people from having children that have genetic disorders... Just saying wouldnt it make sense to?
As a benefit... We would reduce the number of orphans... And slow down our population growth... In return it would also reduce the consumption... and so on.. Across the board it would help... Less and less people we bring into this world... The better. We are not insects... We are large... We are inefficient eaters (insects eat foods with much higher energy), we produce a lot of waste, and so on... we can't keep increasing in population like a swarm of locusts.

Wow. What a load of biased, unadulterated, fascist crap... completely devoid of knowledge of biology or psychology and chuck full of downright evil.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Peterli]

if I had a genetic disorder (I have a mental disorder though lol ) I wouldn't even think about having kids purely because I wouldn't want my own kids to suffer

but your comment has come across as was very eugenically dirven [help]

If you were a woman, chances are rather high that you would at some time think about having kids.
The biological clock would be ticking at your door.

[carinsurancess]

Wow. What a load of biased, unadulterated, fascist crap... completely devoid of knowledge of biology or psychology and chuck full of downright evil.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

How? We are preventing natural selection from doing it's job by preventing people with life threatening diseases caused by their genes to survive and create off spring... I'm not trying to say we should have laws that prevent people like that from having offspring... I'm saying people like that should take into consideration that maybe they shouldn't pass on children with the disability or pass them on as carriers. Be considerate... You want to not only bring in a child that may have the disorder and suffer.... but also spread the defect into the gene pool. Why not adopt a child instead.


Imagine in the future when we have better medical technology to help people with weak hearts, livers, kidneys and so on much better than today... You have a child born that is prone to liver disease/heart failure... He has to have a bunch of corrective surgeries as he grows... Gets a new heart and liver... WTF kind of way is that to live? And then he might pass on the genes to a chld who is a carrier... who then has a child down the road with another carrier and their offspring has similar issues.
Am I taking crazy pills here? I'm not saying kill people with defects... I'm saying why don't we CONSIDER the option of adoption...

Imagine if that woman adopted 6 children instead... She would have given 6 children a normal life.. A parent to love... and she would have prevented 6 new lives from coming onto this earth only to die.
Is that so hard to understand?

I did not mean to BAN people... I meant to consider the option to adopt.
I think it all came out horribly wrong...

Bottom line I meant to say... Maybe we should all be less selfish and adopt.. Especially if you know that having an offspring could result in severe birth defects, genetic defects, and make life difficult for that child....
That is what I meant to say and instead it came out very cold and wrong.

[HonjUopu]

How? We are preventing natural selection from doing it's job by preventing people with life threatening diseases caused by their genes to survive and create off spring...

That's bull. By the same logic we shouldn't give you antibiotics when you get sick because we're preventing natural selection.

I'm not trying to say we should have laws that prevent people like that from having offspring... I'm saying people like that should take into consideration that maybe they shouldn't pass on children with the disability or pass them on as carriers. Be considerate... You want to not only bring in a child that may have the disorder and suffer.... but also spread the defect into the gene pool.

And perhaps you should take into consideration that using a high-school level understanding of genetics to justify discrimination (even if it's just in your mind) is stupid. Even more so, because you're flat out wrong.

For example, the situation with inherited disorders is not nearly that simple. We've been homo sapiens for over 1000 generations. You think a mutation that has no use would've continued to exist, despite 35 thousand years of natural selection.

Here's an example:

Consider sickle-cell anemia. By all accounts a pretty nasty disease. But the curious thing is that a single copy of this mutation (a single substitution in the beta-chain of hemoglobin) renders the carrier extremely resistant to malaria. As a consequence, the prevalence of hemophilia among African blacks is about 4%, while among American and Carribean blacks it's 0.25%. The inevitable conclusion is that this mutation was actively selected for. The corollary is that in 300 years, (say - 10 generations or less), the incidence dropped 16-fold when the selection pressure was removed. That's nearly 1/2log2 per generation... and for something more debilitating the number would be even higher.

So tell me - who's going to decide who is "inferior" by the virtue of having a mutation that's "inappropriate"? You?.. with your sophomoric view of the world, and ignorance of genetics? Who determines the value of people and their children to society?.. or to our gene pool?

There's a number of mutations that cause ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Should anyone carrying that not reproduce? After all, no one who is a victim to this disease has ever contributed massively to science and our understanding of the universe and ushered in a new era in physics, right?

There was a fairly controversial, but rather well-supported study of Ashkenazim Jews that concluded that it is likely that due to the pressures applied to them by society (restrictions on land ownership and ban from guilds, etc...) they were forced to find other ways to fit in, and that's what created the biphasic hump in their IQ that may have led to them being over-represented among the scientists and doctors of the West. Yet this was done through acceleration of certain types of mutations in certain genes that have to do with brain development... the side effect being that Ashkenazim population shows more than average of specific kinds of congenital mental illness, retardation and various other inherited disorders... when harmful rather than helpful mutations result.

Why not adopt a child instead.

Because an animal's primary instinct is to reproduce itself. If you can't understand or accept that, there is no hope for you.

Imagine in the future when we have better medical technology to help people with weak hearts, livers, kidneys and so on much better than today... You have a child born that is prone to liver disease/heart failure... He has to have a bunch of corrective surgeries as he grows... Gets a new heart and liver... WTF kind of way is that to live? And then he might pass on the genes to a chld who is a carrier... who then has a child down the road with another carrier and their offspring has similar issues.

Imagine in the future when we have better medical technology to help people who get pneumonia. You have a child born that is prone to bacterial infections. He has constant bouts of disease as he grows, but gets cured. Gets IV antibiotics once every 3 months. WTF kind of way is that to live. And then he might pass on the genes to a child who's a carrier... and that carrier's offspring has similar issues.

^See what I did there? If you want to understand biology at that level, do us a favor and cease ANY medical treatment whatsoever, for yourself or your offspring.

The fact is that in comparison to what COULD be known about genetics, we know ALMOST NOTHING... and yet we know a thousand times more than this time last century. And you want to judge others? On what grounds?

Am I taking crazy pills here?

Crazy? Perhaps. Selfish - almost certainly. Ignorant and unwilling to think - without a doubt.

[PIORARMADDERI]

http://www.spike.com/video/first-10-minutes-of/2811209

http://www.spike.com/video/first-10-minutes-of/2811905