Word: natale
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Earlier this year, in vitro fertilization was used to screen for a faulty BRCA1 gene that increases one’s susceptibility for breast cancer, while researchers at Cambridge University claim that a pre-natal screening for autism will soon be possible. Although both steps seem to represent an innocuous effort to prevent devastating medical conditions, the extended use of pre-natal screening raises many serious ethical questions...
...Meanwhile, pre-natal screening against cancer susceptibility presents deviation from the standard practice, as screening has previously only been used against diseases with a 90-100 percent chance of causing a disease that affect the child from birth. BRCA1, however, only raises the risk of the disease from 50-85 percent, while breast cancer itself does not affect the child from birth and has the potential to be cured...
...Both these examples of extended pre-natal screening raise a critical question: At what point does the mitigation of flaws develop into a cultivation of inhuman immunity...
...case. As advances allow us to screen for smaller and smaller susceptibilities, firm boundaries must be drawn to keep science in check. Policymakers must consider the range of genes that cause the same level of susceptibility as BRCA1 and evaluate the implications of permitting such extensive use of pre-natal screening. Ultimately, a level of susceptibility for which it is permissible to screen must be determined, and this level should remain fixed. Such limits may be arbitrary and may eventually deny screening for BRCA1, but, at some point, policymakers must draw a line in the sand...
...Furthermore, extensive use of pre-natal screening presents a worrying situation in which those with wealth are able to purchase an objectively higher level of descendants than others. Selection of the most attractive traits presents a significant genetic advantage to the wealthy—more so than simply being able to afford a higher standard of medical treatment—and threatens to irrevocably exaggerate the divide between rich and poor...