Re: Cheating Destiny (book excerpt)
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Posted by klausen on 18:48:29 2006/07/10
In Reply to:
Re: Cheating Destiny (book excerpt) posted by Marie
Obviously the decision whether to have children or not is a quantitative one, depending on how bad the potentially inheritable disease is, how great the risk is, how high the genetic loading of the person is who is contemplating parenthood, how likely it is that the disease will very quickly be cured, etc. The risk of any child developing type 1 diabetes in Western culture is about one in 300, while the risk of a type 1 father producing a diabetic child is about 1 in 15, or 20 times higher than normal.
The whole world condemned Michael Jackson for shaking his child a few years ago over the balcony of a Berlin Hotel. Let's suppose -- what seems reasonable -- that this increased the risk of the child having an accident which would make it as disabled for life as a type 1 diabetic is. Should the world withdraw its objection on the grounds that every child will die of something some day? Or on the basis of the fact that every child brought into this dangerous and difficult world is subjected by the person producing it to some risks? The issue with diabetics having children is that they know of the abnormally heightened risk in advance of their future child's suffering and decide to take it for the child -- without being able to consult him or her -- regardless.
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