Messing with science?

[blas87]

Hopefully this is the right section to post this in...

I was watching Montel Williams yesterday morning, and the topic was about babies and children. One woman had 5 babies (quintuplets??) and another woman had already had 4 boys and wanted a girl, so she and her husband had done a procedure where all the Y chromosomes are removed and then the embroyo is injected into the woman, supposedly making the chances of having a girl better.

Do you guys agree with this? Of course it's expensive and a little questionable.

I have no problem with people using Invitro or sperm/egg donors. So many people are plagued with fertility problems and just want to have a baby any way they can.

Myself....I don't want any children, but if I were to, I'd want a girl. If I had the money and pigs flew and I found a great guy, I'd go for the procedure to make sure I had a girl.

What do you guys think of this scientific stuff?

[thrifty]

I think it is an interesting idea. To be honest I also want a girl as well, and the thought of this procedure sounds tempting. Although it is slightly tempting, I know my fiancee would never go for anything like this (he is a big believer in God's will, even though part my thought process is that it is God's will for this science to be made).

So because I know my fiancee's feeling against this are a lot stronger than my feeling for it, I wouldn't do it.

[crazylegs]

Well, 'sexing' your sperm is actually quite easy, stuck it in a centrifuge spin it for a bit and all the 'x' type will be at the bottom as is slightly heavier, then pick whicever part you want (not 100% though).

However this does raise some interesting ethical points,do we then start screening, say for eye colour, hair colour, certain diseases. Where would it end? What would happen to the families that could not afford this screening, what about some conditions that are more predominant in certain races (sickle cell anemia anyone?).

[AFPheonix]

I'm sure a lot of this stuff isn't covered under health insurance so I'd imagine it's pretty expensive, too.

What makes me sad is that there's so many little girls needing foster and adoptive homes. I don't know about anyone else, but my genes aren't all that special. If I turned out to be not fertile, I don't think I'd go through any heroic measures to have one of my own.

[blas87]

I woudn't go as far to get a certain eye color or anything like that, but, as mean as this souds, I would do everything possible to make sure my child was as normal and healthy as possible. Although I have heard that there can be tests taken while a woman is pregnant to determine if the child is at risk for mental disabilities...

[AFPheonix]

They can do that with an amniocentesis. In fact, out of us 6 kids, I was the only one my parents knew the gender of ahead of time since mom was old enough when she was pregnant with me that they were worried about mental disabilities and tested for them.

Jury's still out

[Seshat]

Honestly, I'd be happier with humanity as a species if we were as strict with ourselves as good breeders are with their animals.

I'd want it to be voluntary, though, which unfortunately means that many people wouldn't be doing it. I think it's too easy for such a program, if managed from a central organisation, to be taken over by someone with an agenda other than 'healthy' in mind.

But I'd love to see us screen for genetic illness, both by genetic testing and by matching sires and dams. But the latter isn't going to happen without major social upheaval, so I'd settle for the former.

I think it's no more ethical to knowingly breed a child with a high risk of genetic illness than it is to knowingly breed a dog with a high risk of severe hip dysplasia or patellar luxation.

On the other hand, I think it has to stop at 'healthy'. Sex isn't an illness. Nor are high cheekbones or low, a narrow or a wide jaw, a snub nose or a long beak of a nose.

I was about to say 'nor are eye colour or skin colour', but then I thought about me - I'm a pale northern european skin colour, and was raised in the subtropics. My eyes always hurt from too much bright sunlight, I sunburned even with sunscreen: for the location I was in, being pale was unhealthy. I've heard that the opposite also happens: really dark skinned people in the arctic or antarctic environments can have a vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight below the melanin layer. (I've heard it, I don't know how true it is.)

However, since both the palest and the darkest human melanin levels have places on Earth where they're the colour-of-best-fit, I think eye/skin/hair colour shouldn't be deemed a deformity. But people who raise pale kids in the tropics or dark kids in the arctic zones are daft! (Personal opinion only. )

[AFPheonix]

Pretty much. There's a thread going on in the GBS forum at Something Awful about this lady:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/hea...small.mom.wlwt

If I recall correctly, the disease she has is the result of the expression of a dominant allele, so she's got a 50% chance of passing it on, and indeed has with her first child.
She also probably will have a shortened life due to her health, and will be depriving her girls of her presence later, not to mention the fact that she can barely diaper them, much less keep up with them when they age and get more active.
Personally, I think the parents were rather selfish to have borne them, even though they're cute kids and whatnot. They could have easily fostered, adopted, done the Big Brother/ Sister program, etc, but they had to have their own biological kids.

[Amethyst Hunter]

Personally, I think the parents were rather selfish to have borne them, even though they're cute kids and whatnot. They could have easily fostered, adopted, done the Big Brother/ Sister program, etc, but they had to have their own biological kids.

I think I've heard of that thread. I will never understand how somebody who knows darn well they stand a really good chance of passing on some biological nasties to a child could do that. (I'm talking serious shit here, not something minor like a touch of asthma or mild retardation) The world is cruel enough as it is, why make it any harder than it has to be for the poor kids?

[AFPheonix]

That's just it. Someone who's got a family history of cancer or heart disease can take steps in their lifestyle to help alleviate the risk. Someone who has a genetic chance to pass on blindness or deafness might have some pause, but their children won't necessarily be hurt if they receive the mutation, and their quality of life won't be horribly impacted, but this woman just sentenced her oldest child to a lifetime of pain, extremely brittle bones, a lifetime in a wheelchair, and a shortened lifespan. I just couldn't do that to someone I loved, I fail to see how she could.

[Sportsmom]

There's a preety good book out by Jodi Picoult called My Sister's Keeper.

Its about a girl who was "chosen" by her parents through genetic screening to be a match for her sister, who has a form of cancer. She decides at one point that she has had enough and goes to court to be medically emancipated. Pretty interesting stuff.

[Seshat]

That's one reason I'm for stem cell research, at least with umbilical stem cells or other 'waste' cells, and for stem cells harvested from adults such as the few nasal stem cells we have.

(I'm divided about embryonic. If we could be certain it'd only be 'waste' embryos that are generated anyway for IVF and never to be implanted, I think I'd be for it.)

If each person who needs a genetic match can be their own genetic match, we'll never (or almost never) need to face a situation like the one in the book. Noone will 'be created' to be a genetic match for their sibling - instead, we'll be able to harvest stem cells from the person themselves and grow whatever transplant item is required.

We may even, eventually, be able to modify the harvested stem cells to not have a genetic defect. Maybe.

[Hellbound Alleee]

I wouldn't use the word "science" in the same sentence as "The Montel Williams Show."

[BlaqueKatt]

simple-you want a specific gender- you adopt a pre-made child(not a baby), heck you can even pick eye-color/personality!

[DesignFox]

I'm not sure how I feel about people picking the gender of their child...

What if more people choose to have one sex than the other?

And, what if this leads to all sorts of additional genetic "tampering?"

The idea makes me uncomfortable. I can see why some people would want to do it, but...I dunno...