BreakPoint with Charles Colson
Commentary #020307 - 03/07/2002
Missing the Point: Defect-Free Babies 


A few months ago, a woman gave birth to a baby girl.
What made this birth noteworthy was that the child in
question came with a "guarantee." If you think that
makes the baby sound like a car or a refrigerator,
you're right. You see, that's where our new
reproductive technologies are leading us.

The mother of the new baby carries the gene that
causes what is called "early onset Alzheimer's." Her
sister contracted the disease at age thirty-eight,
and her brother is showing symptoms of dementia at
thirty-five.

So the woman had her eggs harvested and fertilized
just as in in vitro fertilization. But then, using
"preimplantation genetic diagnosis," researchers 
"weeded out" the embryos that carried the Alzheimer's
gene and implanted one of those left in the mother's
womb.

Two professors at the University of California,
raised ethical questions. Of course they did, you
say, killing embryos is killing human life. That's a
raging ethical debate, but wait a minute -- the
professors didn't mention that. They saw another
ethical question -- in their words, "Much like her
sister, the woman in the report . . . most likely
will not be able to care for or even recognize her
child in a few years."

Is it ethical, they asked, to bring a child into this
world who will have to watch her mother suffer and
die? Wait a minute: Are we really ready to decide in
advance who will live and who will die, based on how
well the child measures up to a particular standard
of life?

And what is that standard? Nothing less than
perfection. As columnist Natasha Walter wrote in
London's INDEPENDENT, "People in the Western world
are beginning to believe that life should be
completely controllable . . . [and] that all babies
should be perfect . . . "

Now it's easy to sympathize with the parents' desire
to spare their child a terrible disease, but those
who believe that it will stop at Alzheimer's or
sickle cell anemia are kidding themselves.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis is already being
used for sex selection and, as bioethicist Jeffrey
Kahn notes, "Tomorrow it could easily be intelligence
or a good piano player . . . " Having children is on
its way to becoming what Ken Myers calls "the
ultimate shopping experience," a carefully chosen
lifestyle enhancement for parents.

This is a high-tech variation of the thoroughly
discredited eugenics movement of the early twentieth
century -- one that sought to allow only the best
people to be bred. Those determined to be
"undesirables" were sterilized thereby eliminating
their defects from the gene pool. By the way, this
idea was championed by Margaret Sanger founder of
Planned Parenthood.

Commenting on the birth of the Alzheimer-proof
infant, Wilberforce Forum Fellow Dr. C. Ben Mitchell
wrote, "If we would see a truly human future for
ourselves and for our children, we must value
individuals for who they are, not for what they can
do. The praiseworthy goal of treating human disease
and relieving human suffering must not be allowed to
become a tool for eliminating the persons who are
suffering. To do so would be to use the good gift of
genetic knowledge for evil ends . . . Only vigilance
on the part of all of us can prevent a bleak eugenic
future." Well said, Dr. Mitchell -- a bleak eugenic
future that has just moved one step closer.


Phillip Bishop
University of Alabama