My wife and I are expecting our fourth child in March. Friends will often ask, “How much longer till you can find out if it is a boy or a girl?” They know I’m hoping for my first daughter, while my wife would like a fourth boy. They know we’ll be thrilled either way. No one has yet asked me, “How much longer till you find out if he’ll have heart disease or pancreatic cancer or Alzheimer’s disease?” These days will be soon upon us as genetic technology is giving us the ability to turn every child into a Mister Potato-Head toy, assemble the parts to get the desired outcome.
The September 3 New York Times glances at the ethical implications of the new technology of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a process where through in vitro fertilization (IVF) parents are able “to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do.” Embryos that do show a predisposition to such disorders may be “discarded,” and the couple tries again.
The Times reports triumphantly:
Soon, experts say, prospective parents may be able to choose between an embryo that could become a child with a lower risk of colon cancer who is likely to be fat, or one who is likely to be thin but has a slightly elevated risk of Alzheimer’s, or a boy likely to be short with low cholesterol but a significant risk of Parkinson’s, or a girl likely to be tall with a moderate risk of diabetes.
To illustrate the ethics and practicalities of this genetic embryo screening, the article traces the decision-making process of one couple, the Kingsburys, who are seeking to screen out the possibility of a family gene for colon cancer, discarding babies until they hit upon one who is free of it. The article states:
“You kind of feel like you shouldn’t be doing it,” Ms. Kingsbury said. “But then why would we go through all of this and not take those extra precautions?”
For the Kingsburys, the choice is still clear. Like any parents, they plan to tell Chloe the story of her birth. And if all goes well, they say, she will soon have a sibling who shares a similar tale.
And what will they tell her? We loved you because you’ll always be cancer-free? You survived the frozen chamber or the waste basket because your genes were superior? You’re a gift from heaven, at least the one we kept after we returned the others?
Christians aren’t the only ones who have qualms with this. Disabled persons, of whatever religious background, recognize what this means for them, as do homosexual persons who now fear the discovery of a “gay gene” that could mark babies for “discard.” Feminists recognize that, as the Times notes, screening for breast cancer in some families will mean simply eliminating the female embryos.
We should be sad about all of this, not sad as culture warriors who are losing a battle. We should be sad knowing that the techno-utopian Reich that overshadows us now may soon leave us with a world in which only Christians have Down’s syndrome babies in their strollers, only Christians have bald little girls fighting through chemotherapy, only Christians have little boys in “husky” size pants as they struggle with childhood obesity.
How will we then talk to our neighbors about the miracle of the new birth, when the old one was something they engineered themselves? And how will we talk to our neighbors of the unconditional love of a father for his children, no matter what, when only Christians know what that means?
