Why using abortion to "treat" genetic disease is totally backward

Wednesday, September 19. 2012

Why using abortion to "treat" genetic disease is totally backward

There is a pervasive misconception that prenatal genetic testing along with abortion "cures" or "treats" genetic disease. Since a child is not born with a genetic disease, somehow the disease is "cured." But killing babies in the womb with a genetic disease doesn't treat anything. It just gets rid of the people with the disease. The disease itself still remains uncured.

This abortion-centered approach to "treating" genetic disease is completely wrong-headed. If this was the approach taken with cancer, we would round up everyone with cancer, euthanize them, and then say we "treated" or "cured" cancer. Meanwhile the mystery of how to actually beat cancer would remain hidden.

And yet eugenic abortion seems to be the "treatment" course of choice these days. But this approach is not going to work because there will always be people born with genetic disease. You may "eradicate" the defective gene in one population by killing all the fetuses that carry it, but it may pop up somewhere else with an as yet undetected mutation, leaving those born with the disease still without a real treatment.

This story about Tay-Sachs disease is one example. Tay-Sachs is a genetic disease thought to only occur in those of Jewish decent. That was until three babies of Irish decent were born with it in the Philly Area. From CBS News:

Tay-Sachs disease is widely known as a genetic disorder among Jews, but a new study is exploring the risk in another group: The Irish.

Genetic testing is routine for potential parents of Jewish descent to identify the risk for the rare but fatal disorder that often kills children before their 5th birthday.

But after three recent cases of Tay-Sachs turned up in the Irish population in the Philadelphia area, it got Einstein Medical Center’s director of clinical genetics Dr. Adele Schneider wondering.

“It raised the question to me, ‘What is the carrier rate for Tay-Sachs in the Irish population?’ because we always test Jewish people for it, and never test the Irish.”

Einstein is launching a program to screen 1,000 people of with at least three of four Irish grandparents, to try to quantify the risk for Tay-Sachs.

So we can focus on making sure no one with genetic disease is ever born, a completely impossible task, or we can focus on actually curing the disease. Which one seems like the better approach?

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Genetics at 12:58 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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I remember in the TV series of Planet of the Apes, the only approach the apes can take with some epidemic (I wanna say the plague, but it might've been malaria), is to burn down villages that get it, to prevent its spread.

Abortion for the carriers of genetic disease is basically the same approach.

#1 Tom in AZ on 2012-09-22 00:17 (Reply)

Impossible task? Just test. Not impossible. If EVERYONE was tested it would solve or at least help the issue to decrease significantly. They should obviously work on improving conditions for individuals born with the disease as well, however it depends on how you view the unborn "baby" as to if you see it as wrong. Personally I dont see it as a "baby" until it has the ability to think on its own. I do believe late term abortions should be banned however embryotic and early fetal ones save a life filled with torture for the parent and unborn. Obviously extremely religious people will see it differently however as they view life as starting from conception. What if the true religious "right" is to alleviate torture as much as possible such as Dr. Kevorkian did or as abortions do rather than to extend torture? It is only interpreted the way it is because an old "book" is interpreted the way it is. Religion has caused more wars, pain and suffering throughout history than any other measure. Thanks for any responses.

#2 Brian on 2012-09-23 04:30 (Reply)

Brian,

Unfortunately, you have fallen for the prevailing misconception of our age. Death is not medicine. Death is death. Again killing the patient does nothing to cure the disease.

You said Dr. Kevorkian and abortion "alleviate suffering."

Your friend Kevorkian killed people who weren't terminally ill. Some were not even sick. Is that medicine? Read about HOW and WHY he killed. Who is more torturous, caring for the sick until natural death or Kevorkian's killing machines and his obsession with death and dying.

Sex selective abortion has killed 160 million Asian women (the equivalent to the entire female population of the US) causing a demographic nightmare of epic proportions. As a direct result of skewed sex rations, sex trafficking, rape and violence against women is on the rise and will continue to grow worse as more men cannot find brides. Is abortion alleviating suffering for Asian women?

Have you ever asked someone with a genetic disorder like cystic fibrosis or Down Syndrome if their life is torture? Have you asked them if they were better off dead? Have you asked their parents?

What is better for them, telling them we are working on a cure, or telling them we are working to make sure no one else like them will ever be born?

I know people with CF, Down Syndrome, and a host of other genetic conditions and their families. I can guarantee that what is tortuous to them is knowing that many in society think they are better off dead.

It is not a religious belief that the life of a new, genetically distinct, human organism begins at fertilization. That is a scientific fact. Just because you don't BELIEVE that life has value until he or she can "think" does not change the science.

As for religion being the cause of the most suffering in history, let me enlighten you with just a sampling:

Death Toll:
WWI: 16 million to 40 million
WWII: 60 million
Stalin: 20 million (including those who starved to death)
Mao: 20 to 40 million (including those who starved to death)
Pol Pot: 2 million
Sex selection in Asian alone: 160 million women "missing" (imagine the entire female population of the US just gone.)

I would say it was not religion that has "caused more wars, pain and suffering throughout history than any other measure", but a rejection of true religious belief in favor of secular ones like nationalism, communism and abortion.

#2.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2012-09-23 07:41 (Reply)

Don't forget Neo-Confucianism, the first secular totalitarian ideology.

Buddhist kings in Korea abolished slavery and gave women several legal rights. The Neo-Confucian Joseon kingdom, which brutally persecuted shamans and Buddhist monks, reduced women to the status of children and brought back slavery—when the Joseon kingdom was toppled by Japanese Imperialism (itself a secularist Neo-Confucian ideology that propped up the Imperial cult for political reasons), fully 40% of Korea's population was slaves.

Incidentally, Brian, in case you wondered, and since you obviously do not know, the most violent religion in all of human history, Islam, has killed fewer than 20 million people in about 14 centuries (mostly Hindus murdered by the Mughal regime). Christianity has probably killed less than half that, in 2000 years, and virtually all deaths allegedly in the name of "Christianity", e.g. in the Reformation Wars or the Crusades (unlike atheists and Muslims, Christians simply don't kill that many people in peacetime—under 100,000 in 2000 years), will generally be found to have been equally attributable to something else. E.g., the belligerents in the Reformation wars were fighting far more over loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire (or the right to secede from it) than they were over Protestantism. Any intelligent historian will tell you the Crusades were, from an objective standpoint, a defensive war by a civilization that happened to be Christian against an invasion by brutal horse-nomads who happened to be Muslim.

#3 Tom in AZ on 2012-09-23 22:51 (Reply)

The point of testing for Tay-Sachs is not to marry another carrier. Orthodox Jews list their test results in database and make sure they do not date another carrier. They set it up in a way that no one knows who is a carrier for what disease. They just know they are genetically incompatible. Dor Yeshorim is the name of the organization. I agree it is wrong to test after conception and abort. but what is wrong with testing before conception and avoiding the child with Tay-Sachs?

#4 Susan on 2012-09-29 00:08 (Reply)

I never said genetic testing was wrong, only the approach of using abortion to "treat" genetic diseases. Death is not medicine.

#4.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2012-09-29 10:43 (Reply)

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