Free To Be... Disabled?

"...by intentionally bringing a child into the world who has a disability, it significantly violates the child’s right to an open future."

"The capacity to empathize with others is undeniably a revered characteristic in our society." (q)

"But if we want to continue to have exceptional, creative geniuses, those pathological traits are an absolute necessity."

Ask and ye shall receive.

For a few weeks now, I've been chewing on the issue raised by this post: Is it morally correct to select for a genetic trait that most people consider to be a disability? The post uses the example of non-syndromic, autosomal recessive deafness, but also touches on the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In both cases, advocacy movements have formed to promote (among other things) the right to intentionally reproduce atypical/disabled offspring. In the case of non-syndromic, autosomal recessive deafness, preimplantation genetic diagnosis makes this possible (though not yet with ASD).

In some more-recent, unrelated web surfing, I came across the idea that people with Asperger's syndrome actually had higher levels of (affective) empathy than neurotypical (NT) controls. (Additional web surfing brought me to numerous instances of aspies affirming this claim.) That brought me right back to this section from Buchman's post... "This is because of the “dual nature” of ASD, that is, while these individuals may have difficulties negotiating the social world and possess other traits that might be regarded as disabling, some individuals with ASD tend to be intellectually gifted and others even possess savant-like qualities. Indeed, Ludwig Wittgenstein, arguably one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, was believed to have had Asperger syndrome. Since Wittgenstein’s (and others) intellectual giftedness is inseparable from other traits causing disability, then obliging to not bring such individuals into the world would be a loss to society as a whole. This latter dilemma is what Gillett refers to as the unwitting sacrifice problem: the ethical challenges that arise when selecting for disabilities that can cause suffering in the individual, but can also be advantageous to both individuals and society. Gillett notices that, in selecting for disability, these individuals are born as unwitting sacrifices to society’s or parent’s desire for certain genetic traits that are deemed valuable. Ought we permit somebody to be an unwitting sacrifice?" (My emphasis.) Does increased empathic sensitivity (and its presumable decrease in the desire to cause suffering in others) add to the balance to 'justify' selecting for individuals with Asperger syndrome, and how is that weighed against the suffering of the individuals involved?

[SIDE NOTE: Creativity seems to be another area where the advantage/disadvantage line might get a little blurry.]

Historically, people have been mostly free to mate with whomever they choose, with all the incumbent hopes of capturing a portion of something from that person in the resultant offspring. The genius, the athletic prowess, the personality, or the simple outward aesthetic. In this respect, the child was subject to the whims of the parents. Any damage or disadvantage to the child as a result of that particular genetic pairing may have been deemed unfortunate, but the child could not hold the parents to account for his/her misfortunes. Obviously, genetic testing technology changes that critical portion of the relationship between parent and child. Before 'genetic awareness', a parent could not be held responsible for the genetic 'condition' of the child. A child could not blame the parents for wilfully inflicting a genetic disadvantage upon him/her, or for failing to give him/her any specific genetic advantage. After 'genetic awareness', a parent has a new set of choices to (possibly) regret later, and a child has a new criterion by which to judge his/her parents. I can't help but wonder how the parent-child relationship will change as the parent's ability to design the child increases.

But what finally prompted me to write this post was the following thought...

We currently know quite a bit about what is needed to successfully nurture a child, yet we do next to nothing to regulate the environment, stimulation, etc. that a parent must provide for their child. Why should we presume any greater responsibility in regulating how parents choose to 'nature' their child? If parents are free to make poor choices with regards to the nurturing of their children, are they equally free to make poor choices in the 'naturing' of their children? (And at what point do 'differing values' become 'poor choices'?) How have adult children responded to the knowledge that their parents (knowingly) did not give them every nurtural advantage, and what might this tell us about how children will react to being given a natural (genetic) disadvantage?

[This is not intended to be a definitive opinion on the topic of genetic selection, but rather a small contribution to a larger, longer discussion.]