The Advocacy of Disease

The New York Times Science Section (Dec 5, 2006) contains an article entitled Wanting Babies Like Themselves, Some Parents Choose Genetic Defects.

You may not believe this, but the article discusses parents with handicaps (dwarfed individuals and deaf ones) who wish their children to be born with the same disorders "to preserve culture and identity." To make matters even more astonishing, it describes these parents in a sympathetic light. Yet even more astounding is the fact that there are physicians who would consent to genetic engineering in order to provide these parents with deformed children.

I mean, come on, political correctness is getting to be a joke!! Do such parents truly believe that by 'maiming' their unborn they could possibly have the wishes of the child in mind? Do they really think a child would choose to be deaf, rather than hearing? I mean, come on, there are parental rights, but isn't this truly a form of abuse? Would they insist on a physician surgically imposing deafness on a hearing infant after it had been born? Why not? Isn't that more or less the same thing?

And the fact that physicians exist who would agree to genetic alteration to promote a disorder to satify the wishes of such deranged people, is the greatest of the tragedy of it all!