[nahkoots]

“This seems like a path toward having no people with Down syndrome, having no people with certain disabilities, even though there are people that have those disabilities that live fulfilling lives,” he said. “You’re talking about culling a tree of human evolution, right?”

I've heard this argument before and I find it insulting, as though it's somehow a moral wrongdoing to prefer children without birth defects. If I could spare my future children from MS, schizophrenia, Downs, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, etc., I'd do it in a heartbeat. Framed differently, who would deliberately inflict a healthy newborn with any of those congenital disorders? That they might live a fulfilling life in spite of their disorder wouldn't make it any less cruel.

[spwa4]

You should keep in mind that Down syndrome is "not really" a congenital disease. Yes, it's a DNA problem, but it's a problem that happens during conception in the logic of recombining DNA, not in the DNA itself. Down is "Trisomie 21". Which makes it very weird: it a congenital disease, but not hereditary (perfectly healthy parents can have a Down syndrome kid, especially if the mother is older, Down syndrome parents have normal offspring)

So there are congenital diseases ... and there is Down syndrome. They follow an entirely different logic.

Btw: down syndrome parents have HUGE issues, but in fact these issues arise because the kids are healthy. Expectation is such kids will exceed their parents' intelligence at age 6-8 and be 2 standard deviations above their parents intelligence by age 10-12. You can imagine how that goes.

[clipsy]

> If I could spare my future children from MS, schizophrenia, Downs, Huntington's, Alzheimer's, etc., I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'm sure any reasonable person would agree; the more poignant question is whether you are sparing your future children or destroying some future children in favor of others. The former is something I hope any reasonable person would agree with; the latter is tantamount to eugenics.

[jmercouris]

Destroying future children in favor of other future children? Any decision we make does this. Every child is an XOR.

[hrkfmud50k]

totally agree. but it will give the rich another competitive advantage that will separate them from the poor.