According to a March Washington Post Magazine feature, a deaf Bethesda, 
Md., female couple recently gave birth to a child whom they had conceived 
by artificial insemination and specially designed to be born deaf. (They 
had used sperm from a man with a long family history of deafness.) The 
couple said they merely want their son to be like the rest of the family, 
including their older daughter. The boy is deaf in one ear, but the other 
ear may still develop hearing. [Washington Post Magazine, 3-31-02]

28 responses total.

Those people should be prosecuted for child abuse, but they probably won't
be.

How is that child abuse, exactly?  This is no different from engineering a
child to be tall or free from certain allergies.  If they had deafened the
child following birth, *then* they'd be prosecutable.  

snoher story about deafness - there are two 'varieties' and they
are not geneticlly compatible. 
  
one couple expected - wanted! anticipated! deaf children - NOPE!
  
the parents' deafness was not caused by the same factor - therfore, the
two factors necesary for deafness could NOT^ occur for them - all 
hearing children. oh, well.
  

i hope he gets his hearing in that other ear and tells them to FUCK OFF.

some day he will be like ted nugent!

It should be noted that if the child's hearing does develop in the 
other ear, a deliberate attempt to keep the child from being able to 
use that ability (not exposing the child to people talking, watching 
television with the sound on, etc) would probably be child abuse or 
neglect.

And they're going to want all the extra-cost stuff that schools have to
provide for deaf kids for this kid, at public expense, right?

Bill 'em for every dime of the costs.  If they can't afford it, take away
their kids to cut their expenses.

  You know, it makes my skin crawl to see people go *looking* for excuses
  to take away other people's children.

  You don't approve of the decision these people made. 

  That's fine, I don't much like it, either.. 

  Now that it's made, however, expressing hope that they'll fail some way
  in raising the child and give the state an excuse to step in and take their
  kid away is just plain creepy..

My (limited) recollection seems to indicate that kids who get taken away by
the state invariably wind up having very troubled childhoods for whatever
reason.  Does anybody else know more?

What worries me is if it is considered child abuse to have a child that 
is genetically likely to be deaf that it will also be considered child 
abuse when other people with genetic illnesses have children. Is it 
child abuse for a person with history of cancer in their family to have 
children even though they *know* there is a good change that kid might 
get cancer?

Also consider that these deaf parents in this situation obviously do 
not see deafness to be the same kind of handicap as the rest of us. 

Re: #9 & #10
Taking their kids away would be an extremely-seldom-done side issue
for scenarios like this.  My goal is to say that intentionally having
expensive-special-needs kids on the public's dime is no more socially
acceptable than bank robbery.  I hope that they *can* afford it - the
goal is guarding the public purse, not running up costs & grief for
the court & child welfare systems.  If many kids were getting taken
away, i'd be looking for a more-(cost-)effective way to discourage
the behavior. 

(I'm ignoring the child-abuse angle at the moment, though it's most
definitely there, and will be far moreso as genetic engineering gets
better.  Should a corporation be immune to charges of child abuse if
it intentionally produces a horribly deformed human child as part of
a genetic experiment?)  

Everyone's got boatloads of genetic problems, the vast majority are
recessive and unsuspected.  When someone is producing kids who are
fairly likely to be on the public dime as "special needs", i say that
society has the right to eject, sterilize, or to cut off resources 
(including food & water) to the offending breeder.  Note that this
applies at least as much to the drug dealer suppling female addicts
in exchange for sex and Mr. & Mrs. Village Idiot as it does to the
more scientifically interesting genetic situations.  

In the twenties a lot of 'mental defectives' were sterilized with the above
reasoning.  After how many kids do you force them to be sterilized?  The Nazis
did a lot of this (epileptics, feeble-minded) to save the cost of having to
care for possibly genetically defective offspring, then extended this logic
to simply exterminate the breeders themselves.  The problem is where to draw
the line and it is currently considered safer not to draw it at all.

My sister-in-law's older sister is so genetically defective that she has been
in an institution all her life.  Her parents were not prevented from having
three more kids.

Do you prevent sickle-cell anemia sufferers from having kids without both
parents being screened first?

Re #11: So if someone finds out through genetic testing that their kid will
have a high likelihood of being born with some kind of genetic defect, you'd
be in favor of forcing that person to have an abortion?

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Re: #13
No.  I do favor goverment-financed free birth control & abortion services
for anyone who wants 'em, both because the world is suffering heavily from
overpopulation and because unwanted kids tend to cost the public *MUCH*
more than the pills, condoms, etc.

OTOH, a person who (a) reasonably knew that they were at high risk for 
having a special needs kid, (b) couldn't afford a special needs kid, (c)
took the risk & got pregnant, and (d) found that the fetus was positive
for the special needs disorder, could find him/herself facing a choice
between abortion and my massive sanctions for such behavior.  But they
could avoid the penalties if they found anti-abortion & charity groups
that could cover the kid's extra expenses.

Re: #12
If a person is clearly 'mentally defective' in the sense that he/she is
not plausably able to reliably function as minimally competent parent,
then i'd say that they should be sterilized ASAP, *before* they have any
kids.  Doesn't matter if the 'defect' can be passed on to kids, doesn't
matter if the 'defect' is retardation, addiction, fits of mindless rage,
gross neglect of a child, or whatever.  Children are *NOT* property, and
their right to the expectation of minimally competent parents trumps the
<cough> right <hack> of their parents to have children even where there
is no issue of "at public expense". 

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i don't know - i might be mad at my parents if i knew they purposely wanted
me to be without hearing. but then i'd start wondering if i'd still be me if
they'd chosen different sperm, and then i'd probably just be glad to be alive.

        Re 15

        Exactly WHO sets the standards for "mentally defective?" there's
way too many people with an opinion they're happy to impose on others.

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        Intelligence, as measured by Stanford-Binet, is only about fifteen
percent heritable, though.

        So it's quite possible Jamie's parents weren't dumbasses.

#19:  So when have you scheduled your vasectomy?

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there is a vas deferens between scheduling it and actually going through
with it.

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...A DYNASTY OF SOCIAL RETARDS

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whatever, dumbass.

It is scary how much some people (like Walter) sound like me when
I'm not around to promote that viewpoint.

I don't know how you could deal with problems of premature babies born
to sex-for-drugs "workers" (aka crack whores) without the expedient of
paying them to take themselves out of the gene pool ($200 is apparently
enough incentive), but a requirement to buy insurance might influence
other people and cut both the net cost and human suffering.

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