HPSC1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Intellectual Disability, Light Skin, Dark Skin
9 Jun 2018
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Lecture 16: to test or not to test?
Prenatal genetic testing
- Inheritance can be modified
- At various points through 20th C, there has been a movement to manipulate inheritance
of traits through next generation
- As our understanding of genetics increases and technology advances, we will be in a
position to manipulate the genetic composition of next generation fairly closely
- 2 sorts of manipulation in mind: attempting to remove certain traits from human gene
pool and to try to arrange things in order to gain superior traits
Under what circumstances should we test? Should we prevent the birth of babies with disabilities?
o Parens & Asch
Conditions that are often appealed to in debates:
- Tay Sachs (initially normal, rapid CNS degeneration, death by 4)
- Lesch Nyhan (can live into adolescents, mental retardation, goutlike pain, self-mutilation-
chew thumb off etc.)
- Fragile X (severe mental retardation, autism like symptoms)
- Hutigto’s death i iddle age
- Hurler syndrome (cognitive deterioration, dead by 10)
- Sanflippo syndrome (death in adolescence, highly aggressive and destructive)
Babies born with these diseases appear normal at birth → parents given no choice
but to watch babies die
Should we be able to prevent this?
Eugenics
- The eugenics movement sought to improve society by sterilizing, limiting migration of, or
killing people who were considered mentally or racially inferior
- Three generations of imbeciles are enough- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Are non-coercive eugenics OK?
Should we let parents maximise or minimize?
- Downs syndrome
- Deafness
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
At various points through 20th c, there has been a movement to manipulate inheritance of traits through next generation. As our understanding of genetics increases and technology advances, we will be in a position to manipulate the genetic composition of next generation fairly closely. 2 sorts of manipulation in mind: attempting to remove certain traits from human gene pool and to try to arrange things in order to gain superior traits. Should we prevent the birth of babies with disabilities: parens & asch. Conditions that are often appealed to in debates: Tay sachs (initially normal, rapid cns degeneration, death by 4) Lesch nyhan (can live into adolescents, mental retardation, goutlike pain, self-mutilation- chew thumb off etc. ) Fragile x (severe mental retardation, autism like symptoms) Hurler syndrome (cognitive deterioration, dead by 10) Sanflippo syndrome (death in adolescence, highly aggressive and destructive) Babies born with these diseases appear normal at birth parents given no choice but to watch babies die.
