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DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID).
Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle.
Ballards stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities.
A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist.
In America a deaf couple deliberately created a baby with hearing difficulties by choosing a sperm donor with generations of deafness in his family.
This would be impossible under the bill in its present form in the UK. Disability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives parents the right to create designer babies free from genetic conditions while banning couples from deliberately creating a baby with a disability.
The prospect of selecting deaf embryos is likely to be seized on by campaigners against genetic screening who will argue that this is an inevitable outcome of allowing designer babies.
Doctors are opposed to creating deaf babies. Professor Gedis Grudzinskas, medical director of the Bridge Centre, a clinic in London that screens embyros, said: This would be an abuse of medical technology. Deafness is not the normal state, it is a disability. To deliberately create a deaf embryo would be contrary to the ethos of our society.
Ballard, who previously ran into controversy as director-general of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) where she pushed through extensive job cuts, said in an interview with The Sunday Times: Most parents would choose to have a hearing embryo, but for those few parents who do not, we think they should be allowed to exercise that choice and we would support them in that decision.
There are a number of deaf forums where there are discussions about this. There are a small minority of activists who say that there is a cultural identity in being born deaf and that we should not destroy that cultural identity by preventing children from being born deaf.
Ballard added: We would like to retain, as far as possible, parental choice, but it has to be in conjunction with a clinician so that people know exactly what they are choosing.
Next month a coalition of disability organisations will launch a campaign to amend the bill to make it possible for parents to choose the embryos that carry a genetic abnormality.
Francis Murphy, chairman of the BDA, said: If choice of embryos for implantation is to be given to citizens in general, and if hearing and other people are allowed to choose embryos that will be like them, sharing the same characteristics, language and culture, then we believe that deaf people should have the same right.
Murphy added that the BDA believes it is very unlikely that it would become common for deaf parents to deliberately create deaf children.
To create a designer baby using preimplantation genetic diagnosis, couples need to go through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) even if they could conceive naturally. The embryos created are then genetically screened and normally only the healthy ones are implanted in the mothers womb.
This weekend the RNID played down Ballards comments by pointing out that the charity does not advocate deliberately creating deaf babies.
A spokesman said: While the RNID believes in the individuals right to choose, we would not actively encourage the selection of deaf embryos over hearing ones for implantation when both are available.
First off, let me give the disclaimer that I think any parent wishing their children to have a genetic or physical disability of any sort (much less working to GET one through selective embryo screening) can be called nothing else but an absolute LOON.
Second, to Jackie Ballard, if I lose my right leg in a car accident, does that give me the go-ahead to cut my own child's right leg off to have him 'fit in better with the family lifestyle'?
Third, WHY would you want your child to be DEAF?!
Heard about this in school a while back.
The deaf person will argue up and down that deafness is NOT a disability at all!
They are wrong and horribly selfish of course =D
the thought of one having almost total control over what one's child is going to deal with for the rest of their life makes me very uncomfortable. this sort of thing opens up a huge can of worms.
This isn't the first time I've heard of this sort of thing. There was an identical case in Washington some years back - which I think is why legislation is being drafted, after they got away with it because there was no law saying that they couldn't.
I don't see how any doctor could say that they're upholding their Hippocratic Oath by deliberately engineering a child to be born with a disability - and the ultimately selfish wishes of a couple of parents who ultimately want to make their own life easier rather than their child's should make no difference.
Such a child will be a minority. Such a child will be excluded from the activities of most of their peers, require extra taxpayers' money, specialist tuition, diversion of resources from other children...
Forcibly indoctrinating a child into your mandatory "community" by robbing them of one of their senses without giving them a choice is bull - are they so afraid of their parenting skills that they can't make their own child a part of their social lives without it?
Personally, I get uneasy at the whole idea of this "Deaf community" (capitalisation belonging to a magazine programme shown here specifically for it) in the first place, in the same way that I don't like the idea of any group that hammers on about discrimination and equality suddenly circling the wagons and voluntarily differentiating itself from everyone else.
Disgusting.
People like this. That is to say people that think their kids should have the same hardships as them. Should somehow be barred from having kids.
I've hard all kinds of arguments, the most common of which is the "character building" argument. Still bullcookie, it's selfishness and nothing more. The moment you start forcing a kid into one path of life, you become a bully.
I guess the silver lining to this is that the victims of this I know broke out the moment they graduated and continued on to be loving and understanding parents. They didn't repeat the vicious cycle.
~Tobe
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Still bullcookie, it's selfishness and nothing more.
QFT
Anybody who would want to have the hardships they faced to be visited upon their children as well are monsters. Cold, selfish, horrible monsters. I wouldn't wish deafness or blindness on my worst enemy, and yet these fiends would wish it upon their own offspring. Why? So they won't feel alone? What, they're so repellent to others that they need to engineer a companion? Selfish twats, the lot of them.
And forgive me for being insensitive, but what cultural identity do the deaf have? I honestly fail to see what cultural identity there is to a life where music cannot be heard, the supreme vastness and beauty of nature exists only in silence and 95% of the people encountered in life cannot be talked to. Hardship does not a cultural identity make.
It's wrong and unfair. If anything, i would think having a child that can hear AND do sign language is more successful at life than one just born deaf. Pretty selfish.
That's the most disgusting thing I've seen in a while. I hope to hell this isn't allowed, because that kid will live one sad life if it does. Horrible.
lol, I hate the trying to genetically engineer a person regardless... this just takes the freaking cake though
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That's the most disgusting thing I've seen in a while. I hope to hell this isn't allowed, because that kid will live one sad life if it does. Horrible.
As I said last night: the US already set a precedent. It's just a question of wheter the UK'll follow - and, given our lack of a written constitution, we at least have some wriggling room over it.
At the US Story: You know, I have to wonder if the deaf child could sue the parents for child abuse once she got old enough. Seeing as the kid was born in 96, anyone else besides me having a mental image of this child in a lawyer's office in about 7-10 years?
At the UK Story: Did it ever occur to these morons that a hearing person can also learn sign language?
I don't think it's messed up at all really. People abort children all the time for being differently abled, so whats the diff with aborting healthy ones? I understand the whole idea that genetics = bad, but it's not like they're trying to pick out a blue eyed, blonde haired baby because they're neo-nazis or something.
Watch "The Sound and the Fury". It's a pretty frustrating movie because it's two hours of family fighting, but it really made me think about deaf culture in ways I didn't think about before. One person's "disability" is another person's completely normal lifestyle with its own special nuances and daily activities. Deaf people argue that their culture is being destroyed by ocular implants being used immediately on children by their able-bodied parents instead of teaching them sign, so they get pretty touchy about the idea of medicine making everyone "able".
I think intentionally trying to make your baby one way or another is stupid, but I also think that people should stop viewing disability as either a horrible afflication or a badge of courage.
Ultra: Yes, but it's different with able-bodied kids learning sign. Deaf children who receive ocular implants/hearing aids (most today do) are rarely, RARELY taught sign, because doctors think it interferes with the child's ability to learn spoken language.
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I don't think it's messed up at all really. People abort children all the time for being differently abled, so whats the diff with aborting healthy ones?
Must...not...make...argument...
Okay I'm done. We've been over this particular angle five million times. But I digress.
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but I also think that people should stop viewing disability as either a horrible afflication or a badge of courage.
I personally think disabilities can be viewed either way or neither at all. Depends on the severity. Missing limb =/= autism or Down's Syndrome.
But I wouldn't know how to classify Tourette's. o.o
I happen to have a cousin on my dad's side who is deaf. All of her children are able to hear, and they don't have any problems.
I fail to see what good could come out of knowingly and deliberately creating a deaf child simply because the parents are selfish.
They could always choose to adopt a deaf orphan. 😛
Exactly Erika. Don't genetically search for a defect. There are plenty that struggle trough this. Take one that is deaf if yer gonna do it, don't add to the populous and think its friggin ok :O.
I'm not saying deafness is not a defect. I'm saying, if they're here, then that works.
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Missing limb =/= autism or Down's Syndrome.
Autism is not a disability. If I had kids I would want them to have something that would make them more intelligent.
I am about to condemn the parents, but can I, after saying that? Yes. Not being able to hear is not an advantage. They can learn sign language.
There is a certain logic to saying that it's no different from gender or race, but, no, it's defined by a disability, as in depriving of an essential ability.
Here's a bomb of devil's advocacy though.
Can it be considered cruel to intentionally have male offspring who can't give birth?
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Can it be considered cruel to intentionally have male offspring who can't give birth?
The only case I'd see someone wanting that would be to prevent the passing on of genetic diseases that occur within a family.. but at that point the parents themselves would choose not to have children, wouldn't they? >>"
I wouldn't deem it as "cruel", but I think it'd be a wrong thing to do.
After all it's a reduction of the child's possibilities, he no longer will be able to choose whether he wants to generate children or not..
That's not very nice. I bet that kid will punch his parents in the face!
I'd rather they do this through a safe legal route though, rather than being disallowed and deciding to knife the kid in the ear or something.
