Is Your Fetus A Republican?
SuzannePjam
Posts: 411
Soon, DNA testing will tell if your baby is gay. Or smart. Or the next George Bush. Ready?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 23, 2007
Oh right, like you don't want to play God.
Maybe it's time to blow it all out of the water. Maybe it's time to say, You know what? All this chatter and yammering and cute brow-furrowed quasi-religious faux-ethical squirming about DNA and gene pools and all the horribly fraught issues surrounding the notion that you soon will be able to select the various traits you want in your baby, maybe it's all just so much childish screaming into the Void. Which is to say, utter, adorable, self-reflexive bull--.
Here's the big hot-button gumdrops: Science is now on the verge of being able to test for gayness in a fetus. It's true. It's the most recent genetic development and it comes hot on the heels of the fact that doctors are essentially this close to being able to let you choose anything you want about your kid, from gender to eye color to height to intelligence to parallel parking acumen to really superlative taste in stemware and designer watches.
This is the message: Get over yourself and your hollow moral indignation concerning baby customization, and do it quickly, because science is about to slap the entire universe of genetics and babydom upside the head, and it won't be pretty. Or rather, maybe it will be. Maybe it will be beautiful and interesting and messy and fun and dangerous and stupid and random and sad and absolutely insane. You know, just like life.
Here are but a few of the imminent questions: What would you do if you knew your unborn child was, without doubt, destined to be gay? Or what if you knew your unborn had all the DNA markings of, say, a drug addict? How about if you knew he was genetically predisposed toward becoming, oh, a severe Republican, one with, say, a vicious hate-filled talk-radio show somewhere in the Deep South that ranted about war and gays and uppity wimmin and the need for more prisons and guns in the schools?
Would you celebrate? Would you scream? Would you abort? Would you call Fox News and demand your own reality show? Or would you immediately seek medical treatment to turn that hapless helpless bundle of goo and tissue and possibility into a nice straitlaced bland-as-milk moderate Democrat with a thing for gardening and the missionary position and tepid travel magazines?
You'd better find your answer quick, because hard-core Christian right-wing Neanderthals are already oozing out of the woodwork to officially endorse medical treatment to reverse gayness in fetuses -- if it is, in fact, proven to be biological, a possibility which is itself already hurling the entire right-wing gay-hate machine into a bewildered frenzy, given how they have always insisted that gayness is a choice, one that can be "cured" through, you know, prayer and drugs and electroshock therapy.
Like so many things in life, it's all the fault of the sheep. Did you know? Seems upward of 10 percent of healthy rams are quite naturally gay. Twenty percent are naturally bisexual. Seems there is some staggering new evidence that points up similarities between ram brains and humans. Seems these similarities and their ramifications -- primarily, that homosexuality is very likely biological -- are potentially catastrophic, life-altering, explosive, no matter which side of the baby-customizing argument you normally take.
In other words, as far as genetics and DNA and sexual orientation go, like it or not, we are, within the next decade or so, about to come face to face with every prejudice and every law and every injustice and every conservative homophobia and every liberal bias and I'm here to say, It's about time.
It is, quite obviously, insanely complicated. Violently, deliciously so, far too complicated for me to discuss all its nuances in one tiny opinion column. But the amusing thing is we kid ourselves into thinking that we don't want it this way, that we want nothing to do with natural selection, with "playing God," when in fact we've already proven a million times over that we want to control and customize every aspect of our lives, from our pets to our plants to our foodstuffs to the color of your iPod to the font in which you are now reading this very column.
We think it's perfectly acceptable, say, to spend ten grand at a clinic to have three dozen frozen test-tube embryos forcibly implanted in the womb all in the hopes that the strongest will survive -- but the notion of choosing the gender and hair color of your kid is radically off limits? Please.
Oh yes, it will be a mess. It will be a delightful tempest of ideas and opinions and cultural shiftings and religious quiverings and political implosions.
In short, from the most hateful right-wing homophobe on up to the most open-minded liberal, everyone's beliefs about homosexuality, nature, biology, sex, gender, parenting, even the idea of the life force itself, will be at least somewhat upheaved, taken to task, rinsed and slapped and made to stand the test of human progress. Is that not a good thing? Is that not how it should be? Are we not just about long overdue?
Or maybe not. Maybe it won't be so ridiculously dramatic at all.
One of my more lovely liberal friends, herself a mother of two luminous young girls, summed it up beautifully when I posed to her the idea that she could maybe choose the predilections of her kids, or asked if she would have worked to prevent them from becoming that nasty, ranting neocon. "Absolutely not," she said, without hesitation. "Whatever my girl would want to be, I'd be thrilled. As long as she's a thinker, someone engaged in the world. It doesn't really matter. So long as she's free to choose."
Or perhaps it's my gay friend, who said, had he the choice to somehow medically "eliminate" his gayness in early childhood, he just might have, given the suffering and pain it caused him throughout his younger life.
Then again, he also realized he would've missed out on what came next: The years and years of tremendous love and adoring connection he's shared with his life partner. He also might have turned out less gentle, less open-minded, less prone to easy laughter, less of a wondrous, gifted healing spirit than he is now.
In other words, he might have become, you know, ordinary. And who the hell wants that?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, March 23, 2007
Oh right, like you don't want to play God.
Maybe it's time to blow it all out of the water. Maybe it's time to say, You know what? All this chatter and yammering and cute brow-furrowed quasi-religious faux-ethical squirming about DNA and gene pools and all the horribly fraught issues surrounding the notion that you soon will be able to select the various traits you want in your baby, maybe it's all just so much childish screaming into the Void. Which is to say, utter, adorable, self-reflexive bull--.
Here's the big hot-button gumdrops: Science is now on the verge of being able to test for gayness in a fetus. It's true. It's the most recent genetic development and it comes hot on the heels of the fact that doctors are essentially this close to being able to let you choose anything you want about your kid, from gender to eye color to height to intelligence to parallel parking acumen to really superlative taste in stemware and designer watches.
This is the message: Get over yourself and your hollow moral indignation concerning baby customization, and do it quickly, because science is about to slap the entire universe of genetics and babydom upside the head, and it won't be pretty. Or rather, maybe it will be. Maybe it will be beautiful and interesting and messy and fun and dangerous and stupid and random and sad and absolutely insane. You know, just like life.
Here are but a few of the imminent questions: What would you do if you knew your unborn child was, without doubt, destined to be gay? Or what if you knew your unborn had all the DNA markings of, say, a drug addict? How about if you knew he was genetically predisposed toward becoming, oh, a severe Republican, one with, say, a vicious hate-filled talk-radio show somewhere in the Deep South that ranted about war and gays and uppity wimmin and the need for more prisons and guns in the schools?
Would you celebrate? Would you scream? Would you abort? Would you call Fox News and demand your own reality show? Or would you immediately seek medical treatment to turn that hapless helpless bundle of goo and tissue and possibility into a nice straitlaced bland-as-milk moderate Democrat with a thing for gardening and the missionary position and tepid travel magazines?
You'd better find your answer quick, because hard-core Christian right-wing Neanderthals are already oozing out of the woodwork to officially endorse medical treatment to reverse gayness in fetuses -- if it is, in fact, proven to be biological, a possibility which is itself already hurling the entire right-wing gay-hate machine into a bewildered frenzy, given how they have always insisted that gayness is a choice, one that can be "cured" through, you know, prayer and drugs and electroshock therapy.
Like so many things in life, it's all the fault of the sheep. Did you know? Seems upward of 10 percent of healthy rams are quite naturally gay. Twenty percent are naturally bisexual. Seems there is some staggering new evidence that points up similarities between ram brains and humans. Seems these similarities and their ramifications -- primarily, that homosexuality is very likely biological -- are potentially catastrophic, life-altering, explosive, no matter which side of the baby-customizing argument you normally take.
In other words, as far as genetics and DNA and sexual orientation go, like it or not, we are, within the next decade or so, about to come face to face with every prejudice and every law and every injustice and every conservative homophobia and every liberal bias and I'm here to say, It's about time.
It is, quite obviously, insanely complicated. Violently, deliciously so, far too complicated for me to discuss all its nuances in one tiny opinion column. But the amusing thing is we kid ourselves into thinking that we don't want it this way, that we want nothing to do with natural selection, with "playing God," when in fact we've already proven a million times over that we want to control and customize every aspect of our lives, from our pets to our plants to our foodstuffs to the color of your iPod to the font in which you are now reading this very column.
We think it's perfectly acceptable, say, to spend ten grand at a clinic to have three dozen frozen test-tube embryos forcibly implanted in the womb all in the hopes that the strongest will survive -- but the notion of choosing the gender and hair color of your kid is radically off limits? Please.
Oh yes, it will be a mess. It will be a delightful tempest of ideas and opinions and cultural shiftings and religious quiverings and political implosions.
In short, from the most hateful right-wing homophobe on up to the most open-minded liberal, everyone's beliefs about homosexuality, nature, biology, sex, gender, parenting, even the idea of the life force itself, will be at least somewhat upheaved, taken to task, rinsed and slapped and made to stand the test of human progress. Is that not a good thing? Is that not how it should be? Are we not just about long overdue?
Or maybe not. Maybe it won't be so ridiculously dramatic at all.
One of my more lovely liberal friends, herself a mother of two luminous young girls, summed it up beautifully when I posed to her the idea that she could maybe choose the predilections of her kids, or asked if she would have worked to prevent them from becoming that nasty, ranting neocon. "Absolutely not," she said, without hesitation. "Whatever my girl would want to be, I'd be thrilled. As long as she's a thinker, someone engaged in the world. It doesn't really matter. So long as she's free to choose."
Or perhaps it's my gay friend, who said, had he the choice to somehow medically "eliminate" his gayness in early childhood, he just might have, given the suffering and pain it caused him throughout his younger life.
Then again, he also realized he would've missed out on what came next: The years and years of tremendous love and adoring connection he's shared with his life partner. He also might have turned out less gentle, less open-minded, less prone to easy laughter, less of a wondrous, gifted healing spirit than he is now.
In other words, he might have become, you know, ordinary. And who the hell wants that?
"Where there is sacrifice there is someone collecting the sacrificial offerings."-- Ayn Rand
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
However, when it comes to Rett's Syndrome, MS, Diabetes, Cancer, etc... I would rather have genetically altered their DNA to begin with, than abort because I know they will suffer.
The problem with preset DNA and having a bunch of clones is that there is no genetic variation to fight infectious disease. Some farmers are already using cows that are cloned from a single DNA. If their whole herd has the same DNA and an infectious disease infects one, the whole herd dies.
So, maybe having "designer" babies will leave the door open for genetic variation, so long as there is a variety of nucleic acid to choose from. Or maybe this whole idea just won't work. But I have some hereditary conditions I don't exactly want to pass on to my children.
lol. As far as I know it's based on Bailey & Pillard. With a 50% concordance of sexual preference between monozygous twins.
If a person is born gay, and offered gene therapy to make them straight, and they refuse treatment, is it then a choice to be gay?
No, because the outcome of the decision is determined by biological influence. This is where people agree with determinism to be PC about gays.
Edit: I should rephrase, it is a choice, but it's not a free-choice, because the outcome of the choice is determined by forces beyond the control of consciousness. It may seem contradictory, but it's not, homosexuality is a choice determined by biological influences.
Was this your attempt to say something dumber
That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with genes. Twins tend to share numerous traits. Since they have the exact same DNA, you'd think that concordance rate would be a lot higher than 50 percent.
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants Ive begged for protection?
I'm freezing
Are you afraid, afraid to die
Don't be afraid, afraid to try
That's what I'm thinking. But I don't doubt that it is genetic.
Interesting point, Ahnimus. I imagine that many genes are at play when ti comes to almost anything. They just realized this with eye color.
This is a slippery slope, indeed. I'll be interested in reading more about this as it unfolds.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
where is the evidence for this statement?
though id not at all be surprised if the right's stance on abortion suddenly weakened when they realized they could abort faggot fetuses before having to cope with a gay child.
i know id abort if i found out my kid would grow up to be a republican neocon.
I take it back. this is the dumbest thing I ever heard.
bullshit. you know you'd abort a hippy like me
no actually you beat him to it
heyyo....Friday....zzing!
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9hy_nlY2a8
.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
But I could just see some parents wanting that "perfect" designer baby who have their blue eyes and million dollar smiles.
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
if it means every girl born in america from now on will look like natalie portman, im not going to complain
Children who may not be born perfectly have generally a better attitude towards the world. These people who have much less than the average, normal joe, have attitudes that could brighten up a room with a simple smile. They aren't usually down with negativity that they aren't "perfect" like the rest of us, they have found the beauty of life in a very simple way. They literally have much to teach the rest of us. Without them in our world, I see a dismal and boringly perfect place, that's full of negativity.
I find it sickening that science would lead us to programing our future children like this.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
http://www.wishlistfoundation.org
Oh my, they dropped the leash.
Morgan Freeman/Clint Eastwood 08' for President!
"Make our day"
im not trying to take any shots at your daughter... but can you explain to me the distinction between the following two scenarios:
1) girl gets pregnant and feels she is not prepared to raise a child, so she aborts it.
2) girl gets pregnant and feels she is not prepared to raise a child with down syndrome, so she aborts it.
in both cases, she is not ready for the responsibility of parenthood and is making a decision solely about her health, right?
What I think will be interesting is if they do identify a gay gene is how the pro-choice factions will react to people who opt to have abortions based on this. After all in America 90% of pregnancies identified with Downs Syndrome fatus end in abortion and not a peep is said about this.
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
How are either of those based on the mother's health?
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants Ive begged for protection?
I'm freezing
Are you afraid, afraid to die
Don't be afraid, afraid to try
when a women's mental health comes into play it is.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Frigid statue standing icy blue and numb
Where are the frost giants Ive begged for protection?
I'm freezing
Are you afraid, afraid to die
Don't be afraid, afraid to try
some women, who are already prone to bouts of depression and anxiety, amongst other things, experience greater degrees of incapacity to cope when faced with such a situation. they experience changes within their bodies, and by that i mean mentally that when mixed with the hormonal changes brought on by pregnancy can be debilitating and sometimes fatal.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
I disagree. The notion is vague but in one case it honestly sounds like eugenism. To refuse life to someone because you cannot live with someone different doesn't sound the same as refusing life to a "normal" baby. Eugenism is an extremely dangerous notion with very thin limits and the possibility to lead to inhumane extremism.
The difference may not be clear (nor my explanation) but it exists and it is dangerous.
unfortunately for a lot of women the mental part seems to take precedence over the health part
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
i dont see it. it's not like they're aborting the baby becos of its eye or hair color. it's becos they dont feel they're capable of responding to the challenge of raising a child who has special needs. that to me doesn't seem too different from feeling incapable of responding to the challenge of raising a child who has normal needs. in either case, you dont think you're able to give the child the upbringing it deserves, which is the standard abortion argument.
Choosing to abort your baby because you simply don't want it, is completely different to aborting your baby because ultrasounds show that he/she has Down syndrome. The law states that if the baby shows to have Down syndrome, you can very easily abort, no questions asked, and in most cases, the doctors even push for it. It is widely accepted here and around the world. I feel this is wrong. It is not a good enough reason to abort, based solely on the diagnosis itself. This practice encourages a eugenic society, and until doctors are forced to give the positive aspects (instead of weighing heavily on the negative, which most do) of having a child with the disability, we will continue to prove that society already operates on having that "perfect" child. Those with Down syndrome should not be treated horribly differently than any normal un-born baby, child or adult, except that they do require more care.
Treatment for Down syndrome has come a long way since the days of institutionalizing those w/ the disability. My daughter, for instance has had numerous services given to her for free, and now is under a Medicaid program where she gets additional medical coverage. She is thriving and will be mainstreamed into a normal kindergarten with her peers at the age of 5. (She's 3 now).
I hear of women everywhere who want a baby so badly, but will abort the minute DS comes in the picture. They don't research it, they don't know anyone with it. They only hear what they want to hear, and that's usually that they don't have to keep it if they don't want it. It's about selection.
You're absolutely right.