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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 187 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 25 of 187:
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Mar 28 16:26 UTC 2002 |
Screening and pre-natal treatment or abortion help.
Interesting Canadian news item last night, which described a genetic
defect of some prevalence among Cree native Americans, which causes
death usually in the first year of life. This can be detected _in utero_,
and screening is now used to to offer families some options. It is
a recessive defect, so pre-marriage screening can avoid its expression.
They suggested the defect could be purged from the community this way,
but did not go into enough genetic detail to explain how. (One
statement was made that the defect was introduced into the Cree population
by a European trader, way back....I wondered how they could know that.)
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jazz
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response 26 of 187:
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Mar 28 16:31 UTC 2002 |
That'd be a blessing for the Cree people ... wait ... that's EUGENICS!
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slynne
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response 27 of 187:
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Mar 28 16:51 UTC 2002 |
Should a woman with a child that has a genetic defect be forced to have
an abortion if she cant afford to pay for that child's care after it is
born?
Should screening for defects be mandatory?
Should there be mandatory screening of every person and only those
whose screens are perfect be allowed to breed?
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jazz
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response 28 of 187:
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Mar 28 16:55 UTC 2002 |
I'm of the opinion that giving people more information is seldom a bad
thing; in this case, clearly giving parents the choice as to whether or not
they'd like to raise a child with little likelihood of surviving is a good
thing.
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rcurl
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response 29 of 187:
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Mar 28 16:58 UTC 2002 |
They mentioned that Tay-Sachs disease among people of Ashkenazi Jewish
descent has been largely eliminated through genetic screening. I looked
this up in the Merck Manual and it reports that that Tay-Sachs occurs
among "Ashkenazi Jewish and French Canadian parents". Hmmmm, could that
trader have been an Ashkenazi Jew? The specific Quebec Cree genetic defect
was not identified.
The Merck Manual also identifies the following additional genetic defect
diseases for which screening is used: sickle cell anemia, the
thalassemias, systic fibrosis, adrenal hyperplasia, muscular dystrophy,
hemophilia A, Huntington's disease, and polycystic kidney disease. There
are probably more that have not yet been identified.
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rcurl
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response 30 of 187:
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Mar 28 17:00 UTC 2002 |
Re #27 % #28: that came up in the program too. They interviewed a woman
that considered it (a) god's will, and to be endured. She did not want to
know if her fetus was defective.
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keesan
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response 31 of 187:
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Mar 28 19:40 UTC 2002 |
My father died of polycystic kidney disease, with the first symptoms at age
49.
You would not want to remove the genes for sickle cell anemia and thalassemia
from the population because if you have one copy you are protected against
malaria. Cystic fibrosis in one copy may protect against tuberculosis (?).
But if you have two copies you are out of luck - which is where prenatal
screening would be useful.
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rcurl
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response 32 of 187:
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Mar 28 20:40 UTC 2002 |
There will probably be less discriminatory protections against
malaria in the not too distance future, like a vaccine.
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keesan
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response 33 of 187:
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Mar 28 20:55 UTC 2002 |
You are an optimist. What if malaria mutates so a vaccine stops working?
Malaria is not dependent on humans like smallpox seems to be.
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rcurl
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response 34 of 187:
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Mar 28 22:11 UTC 2002 |
It is actually a drug, called G25, not a vaccine. It is now yielding
total cures of malaria in rodents and primates. The drug blocks
the synthesis by the merozoites of their own necessary lipid coats,
but does not affect the host erythrocyte, which has no similar
process.
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jazz
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response 35 of 187:
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Mar 28 22:19 UTC 2002 |
You can avoid double copies of the genes for sickle cell anemia without
eliminating them entirely, at least until we can eliminate the disease
entirely.
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keesan
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response 36 of 187:
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Mar 28 23:33 UTC 2002 |
I don't think we CAN eliminate malaria since it does not need humans as hosts.
It is happy living in birds and probably mammals other than humans. Most
diseases manage to mutate so as to defeat the drugs designed to cure them.
For instance tuberculosis is now resistant to many drugs. There are at least
five species of malaria which can infect humans, and two can also infect other
primates and one birds. We would have to eradicate monkeys and birds to be
rid of malaria.
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jp2
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response 37 of 187:
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Mar 28 23:36 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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russ
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response 38 of 187:
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Mar 29 03:38 UTC 2002 |
Re #25: I doubt that such defect could have been introduced by
a single European trader and attain such a prevalence in the
population that it's a major difficulty. Just think how many
people would have to be descended from that guy without loss
of that gene. It doesn't fit. At 4 children per generation
and 15 generations since 1700, it would only have spread to
32,768 people so far (figuring 50% of offspring get the gene).
If any of those kids failed to reproduce it would be a lot less.
That is, unless the other genes the European guy brought gave his
descendants a strong advantage over the native Cree. That would
be tantamount to admitting that the natives were genetically
inferior, though...
Re #30: But should such people be eligible for public assistance?
The question is whether the public should provide support; people can
otherwise do what they think is right to the limit of their abilities.
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rcurl
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response 39 of 187:
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Mar 29 03:48 UTC 2002 |
Re Cree: a native was shown with a geneological chart that covered
a small table, which she has been using to trace back the defect.
There are, by the way, probably fewer than 32,768 Cree involved. It
is a small and probably partly inbred community. These aspects were
not discussed in the program.
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jazz
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response 40 of 187:
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Mar 29 13:25 UTC 2002 |
Russ: Founder Syndrome, pro'lly.
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russ
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response 41 of 187:
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Mar 29 14:14 UTC 2002 |
I was just struck by an analogy. Public interest trumps religion
insofar as the children of Christian Scientists are concerned;
the parents may not neglect conventional medical treatment if a
child's life is in danger, regardless of what their religion holds.
This makes a possible precedent for intervening in the reproduction
of people whose offspring would have fatal genetic diseases.
Their view of God's will is irrelevant; it's a child-neglect issue.
I'd go for that. I don't want to pay so that someone else's kid
can suffer; if my money is involved I want them *not* to suffer.
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jazz
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response 42 of 187:
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Mar 29 14:32 UTC 2002 |
There's a difference here in that you're talking about a case of
action taken to save a life, versus action taken to prevent a potentially
unpleasant life; I don't see many people using the former as a precedent for
the latter.
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keesan
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response 43 of 187:
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Mar 29 15:03 UTC 2002 |
Europeans are resistant to measles and other diseases which wiped out most
of the earlier Americans. It could be that the trader's descendants had the
advantage of surviving childhood diseases imported from Europe.
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rcurl
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response 44 of 187:
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Mar 29 18:21 UTC 2002 |
It is more complicated than that. Europeans had a lot of immune people
because they had but survived diseases such as measles and smallpox.
However this immunity is not inheritable. The American natives did not
have an immune subpopulation, so were devastated by the new European
diseases. I am not sure if different populations have genetically
improved resistance to different diseases. What would be an example
disease for which different populations have different inherent
resistance not derived from exposure?
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jp2
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response 45 of 187:
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Mar 29 18:31 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 46 of 187:
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Mar 29 18:52 UTC 2002 |
That's my question. What would be an example of such a disease?
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jp2
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response 47 of 187:
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Mar 29 19:02 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 48 of 187:
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Mar 29 20:12 UTC 2002 |
Malaria. Chickenpox. Measles - rarely deadly in Europeans, frequently so
in the original inhabitants of North America.
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senna
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response 49 of 187:
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Mar 29 21:22 UTC 2002 |
So you're not pro-choice, russ?
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