2 April 2009

Autism and Designer Babies

All of us have dreams of growing up, having a family and receiving children. But sometimes, life has its way of short-circuiting our dreams by throwing us unexpected challenges. What if one day a child of ours is diagnoised with autism? The autism most of us are acquainted with is probably the milder strain. In this short story, the author speaks of her experiences.
For years I had been telling my son's story, insisting that autism is beautiful, mysterious, perhaps even evolutionarily necessary. Denying that it can also be a wild, ravaging madness, a disease of the mind and soul.

I spent Tuesday at a friend's house, as planned, in front of the TV, watching the Obamas walk and wave. Once, when someone asked why I was so quiet, I mentioned that one of my children was in the hospital, quite ill. She touched me and said something kind. I knew she was thinking of something like leukemia and I wanted to tell her I would hack off my right arm in return for something as simple as cancer. The flickering beauty of a sad, pure, too-early death sounds lovely. Instead I nodded, silent and dumb.
Sigh, what a sad tale.

And the most chilling thing? It can happen to any one of us.

This leads me to another strand of thought: Will designer babies become part of the accepted norm in the near future? As society progresses towards becoming more meritocratic and elitist in nature, will our morals, ethics and values shift to become more accepting of designer babies? Enmesh these considerations with the observation that people across the world are slowly becoming conditioned to avoiding suffering and you may get what I mean.

I do think it is a very probable scenario in the near future. What is morally correct today may not be so tomorrow. Are morals always evergreen? It seems wrong to purposefully specify traits for children, but, at the same time, isn't it morally wrong to not utilize such technology if it could save lives or improve standards of living?

What do you think? Will you ever consider designing your baby, not for cosmetic purposes, but to screen it for potential life-afflicting diseases?

0 comments: