Genetic tests that can detect a raised risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer are being offered for the first time to people without family histories of the diseases, The Times has learnt.
The programme, run by University College London (UCL), paves the way for a new approach to preventive medicine involving widespread screening. It will also prompt greater demand for screening of embryos by parents who carry a defective gene and want to avoid passing it to their children.
The medical community, let alone the general public, is in no way prepared for knowing how to deal with all this genetic information.
Doctor: “Mrs. Smith, you have a 13% chance of developing breast cancer before 40.”
Mrs. Smith: “Well, what should I do?”
Doctor: “I have no idea.”
And abortions will increase.
The scientific method of fortune telling.
This looks like a new way to rationalise abortion. If your child, who is only at three months since conception is found to be carrying a high possibility of Downs or some other genetic condition, what would you do? Probably most will choose abortion. Is that the right thing to do? I don’t think so.
Why? What are you denying the child or for that matter others that will be a part of the childs life? Life itself. I feel like I have a certain amount of right, if you will, to say that. My wife died ten years ago from breast cancer. We had been married for 27 years at her death. If I could have changed anything, what would I change? What if her parents had this testing available, would she have ever been born? Would we have had 27 wonderful years together? What about children and grandchildren? Maybe this is scientific progress but is it making a positive contribution to society?
I wish that my wife had not developed breast cancer but she did. Do I regret the fact that she was born, lived, laughed, loved, IN NO WAY. I wouldn’t trade the years that we had together for anything. Scientific progress is not always human progress. Sometimes it can be humans at their worst.
There have been too many abortions as it is, and it looks like it will continue. President-Elect Obama has made no secret of the fact that he fully supports Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country and probably in the world. We all need to express our conscience on this and really look inside ourselves. I thank God many times that my wife was born, did live, did laugh, did love. She knew that her days were very few but she showed as much strength as a Christian witness as any I have ever seen. She was not afraid of death. She knew her hope lay in our Risen Lord and that she would be joining him in Heaven. Her strength inspired me and many others. That is part of the reason why I am a seminarian today. I hope I can show others the hope in Christ that she had.
Given my family history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, obesity, and several other defects, I’m glad I had the chance to live 64 years before the scientific fortune tellers had a chance to talk to my parents. God help us.
My concern about genetic testing for all, is the insurance companies will say they won’t insure you for X,Y or Z if you have a certain percentage chance of getting that disease. Then the government could use the DNA results to limit access to certain jobs (if your genetic background shows a tendancy to alcoholism or mental disease or obesity or …..). Just because we have a tendancy doesn’t mean we have to act on it.
-Katie in Georgia
A boost to eugenics!
Both of my parents had autoimmune diseases and genetics probably had a part in my developing Lupus (SLE). Would prior knowledge have led doctors to put pressure on my parents to abort me? Sigh…
I’m certainly not a medical professional but it seems to me that a heightened risk or propensity doesn’t mean you’ll get a certain disease — it’s the triggers that remain a mystery. We don’t know what triggers the autoimmune diseases or the cancer cells that everyone has in their bodies to grow abnormally and take over.
A bit of perspective and context would be helpful here. First of all, the article, from London, states clearly that the interest in screening for the breast cancer gene was relevant particularly to the Ashkenaz Jewish community. Since they would be one of the more inbred human communities on earth – due to religious rules and expectations – the matter of genetically transmitted disease/conditions is understandably of enormous interest for them. (Tay-Sachs is another Ashkenaz disease which is genetically transmitted and has brought enormous heartbreak for untold generations as longed-for male children begin to die very early in life and consume the family’s resources until they are gone. I watched this in a WWII refugee family up the street when I was a child.) In a population saddled with such diseases and finding its place in a society that has socialized medical care, it’s no wonder the question arises whether that population will in effect be a burden on the system. Thus the Ashkenaz community will either strive to rid itself of these genetic predispositions, or to find resources to bring to the system that will offset the cost of treating them. However, even from that starting point I agree it is still right for Christians to ask if applying new genetic technologies will promote abortion.
The journalistic excitement over genetic screening as described here is to a great extent about finding new ways to deploy technology, which already exists and is seen for its potential of making more money for someone in new applications. Although it’s probably true that the fears expressed in other comments regarding insurance etc. could come to pass, it’s also true that the development of new treatments for conditions such as diabetes can be improved – as opposed to the technologies being used to attempt to rid the population of those with a proclivity to develop diabetes. But this article really doesn’t give a clue about the direction of development.
It seems to me what all this technology-based medical progress misses is the organic conditions still well within people’s control of their own medical condition. The proclivity to develop diabetes, for instance, is not a definite fate, and its progress can be thwarted by carefully controlled diet. (This must be the case or else why would the governor of NYS be attempting to take some sugar out of the daily diet for obese inner-city (largely minority) kids by taxing soft drinks, to try to stop their becoming a drain on NY State’s increasingly socialized health care system?! Perhaps this could also work in inner-city DC….) The same is true for a host of other afflictions, in the general population as well as narrowly-bred ones like European Jews. And I would suggest that rather than fear the ways that technology could used to attack weak members of a society that is increasingly stingy with health-care, we should be applying our minds to understand how God made us to thrive, which will induce important changes in diet and exercise that make a substantial difference to most people’s quality of life.
If ordinary, non-diseased people thrive then resources are freed up to treat those with serious life-threatening problems. That preventable conditions already dog the US healthcare system is clear from the statistic that gall-bladder removal surgery is, I believe, the most commonly performed surgery in the nation. It is almost universally preventable with sensible diet.