I agree, Melinda; it's already happening at a frightening rate. How many babies with Down Syndrome will be born (in the industrialised world) in 20 years time? I also agree with Julian; eugenics (or whatever he wants to call it) is driven more by market forces than the State now. A survey of US tertiary students showed more than half would take medication or treatment to enhance their physical or mental performance if they could. Fewer and fewer seem to have problems with this approach and getting the edge over others seems to know no bounds. The problem is, for good or bad, more and more in society are willing, or at the very least, accepting, of such so-called "advances". I personally believe we're pretty well made. Exactly what is it about our lot that invites enhancement? Is being well not enough anymore? I think you may be a voice in the wilderness? Or will the pendulum swing back? What can ethically be done if the vast majority clamour for soon-to-be possible "improvements"? And not only themselves but their children too?

There is a difference between wanting to "improve" normal healthy human beings and a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy that is profoundly disabled or deformed. Women should certainly not be forced or pressured to abort disabled children or be ridiculed for electing not to do so but women SHOULD be informed of serious deformities in their unborn foetues and the impact of these conditions on the quality of life of the child and also of the woman, her partner and any other children they may have. Women will then be able to make a truly informed choice.

Having a disabled child is challenging at the best of times, imagine how much more so if you KNEW while pregnant that your child would be born profoundly disabled and were not allowed the choice to abort. It's all very well for Tankard Reist to argue that "imperfect" babies should be valued and accepted but no one has the right to force a woman to carry on with a pregnancy she wished to terminate and then go through the heartache of raising an unwanted and profoundly deformed child.

Having just now read all of Tankard Reist's previous articles on OO, she seems to completely disclaim the possibility that women can ever legitimately and freely choose abortion. The undertone of her articles is always that abortion is a reluctant choice women are forced into by social/cultural/familial/whatever pressure, that women are abused and decieved by the "abortion industry" and that abortion will always end up a decision that the hapless woman will regret. Is propogating this inaccurate, patternalistic and offensive stereotype doing anything to help the poor vulnerable women she professes to want to protect from the clutches of the evil doctors?!

ON a slightly different tact - I wonder what would happen to the world if only the so-called 'perfect' people were born. From my experience, I have found that those who experience diversity when growing up - those who have something to overcome (from something as simple as being the 'ugly but interesting' friend all the way up) - are the same people who go on to excel at the world.

To take this further, many brilliant people who have changed the world - from Isaac Newton to Jackson Pollock to Napaleon Bonoparte - have suffered from mental illness, so would breeding it out give us an immediate impression of superiority, but a lasting effect of weakening our race. There is one school of thought that suggests that mental illness such as bipolar disorder has remained within our species to allow for the sometimes extreme creative thought that often comes with it. While there are of course some problems with this view, it leads to some interesting questions. If no one has to fight against adversity, what will drive them to excel? If you are already perfect, why try for more?

Have a nice day.

Suse

I have not read Professor Julian Savulescu’s SMH article but in his paper “Procreative beneficence: Why we should select the best children”
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Journal_Samples/BIOT0269-9702~15~5&6~251/251.pdf he seems to be arguing that we should carry out a form of social engineering through selecting our children, even if it “maintains or increases social inequality”.

This selection process can be done through prenatal testing and termination of pregnancy, and also through IVF (ie in vitro fertilisation) and PGD (ie preimplantation genetic diagnosis).

I understand that humans, (as a species), have not physically changed much for many thousands of years. There are some variations between the different races (eg skin colour, size, stature etc), but quite often these physical differences have slowly occurred as natural adaptations to the different physical environments these races have lived in.

There are also variations between the different races in their belief systems, attitudes, customs, knowledge bases, behaviours etc, but for the most part, these differences have slowly occurred also, because of discoveries about the world we live in, through education systems, and also through propaganda systems, (and I might add that repeated use of terms such as “woman’s choice” and “women and their children” are basically forms of propaganda http://www.propagandacritic.com/)

Technology can dramatically speed up these changes, and governments can use modern technology to create their ideal citizens, which would basically be obedient workers and consumers that pay large amounts of tax and don't cost the state much, and also good warriors http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202305.html

There are also non-government groups that can use modern technology to create their own ideal citizen, but all this becomes accelerated change, and for the most part it becomes a minimization of the human genetic pool.

If the human species is now so knowledgeable, we should have learnt by now not to limit natural genetic pools.

Is the decision to terminate a pregnancy where a child will be born severely deformed or disabled made easier by that fact? No.

Do parents (and mothers, who seem to cop all the blame for these things) base their decision on a "cost-benefit" analysis? Absolutely not.

Should women, who discover that their child is severely disabled and has no prospect of extended life or life-quality outside the confines of the womb be punished by others for making the most difficult of decisions? No.

Tankard-Reist's work has centred on the negative outcomes of women's abortion experiences, but fails to recognise the central tenet of this decision: it's not a decision made easily or a discussion had lightly.

If, as Tankard-Reist believes, abortion is wrong, there should be no grey areas such as she presents here. This slippery argument based on the most difficult of decisions, made by less than one per cent of all women seeking pregnancy terminations, is misleading and cruel.

Selecting progeny on the basis of appearance without regard for the myriad complex genetics which underpin health and function is a very dangerous path to take.

It has been shown in everything from corn to dog breeding that over time, selecting (predominately) for appearance leads to the disappearance of very important genes which are essential to good health.

A whole host of deliterious conditions then come to the fore as these hidden and not readily observable traits are bred out of the gene pool. Eventually we will leave behind beautiful corpses.