Beeson & Singer/ prenatal diagnosis

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Aug 10 10:37:27 PDT 2001


Marta wrote:


>kelley wrote:
> > the hostility is a little misplaced. i disagree with the way you portray
>> people's decision to have abortions in general (from quotes of 1998) and i
>> disagree with you that many many people abort at the sign of a club foot.
> > if there is empirical evidence otherwise, i'd love to read it.
>
>Here is one for cleft lip.
>The birthrate of babies with cleft lip fell between 1982-1992 from
>820 to 464 per year and the birth of babiese with Talipes (legs are
>not straight) fell from 2041 to 747. Both characteristic are
>correctable Dept. of Health (UK) Health and Personal social service
>statistics for England 1994 Edition Table 4.3: 24. London HMSO
>Priscilla Alderson p. 65 in Linda Ward ed Considered Choices British
>Institute of learning Disabilities 2000
>A study from Israel found that the prenatal termination rate for
>Cleft lip was 95.8% (23 of 24 Foeten) if cleft lip was detected
>between 13-16 week of pregnancy Blumenfeld Z, Blumenfeld, I.,
>Bronshtein M; (1999) The Cleft Palate Craniofacial journal 36(2) p
>105-107

However, if pregnant women refused to abort fetuses with cleft lip and/or Talipes & had the impairments "corrected" after birth, wouldn't you still have a problem with their action, since you object to the idea that curing impairments is desirable?

At 1:43 PM -0700 8/8/01, Marta Russell wrote:
>Over the years medicine has convinced many people that "normal" is
>preferable over
>"abnormal." It is horse shit. These concepts also developed with
>the rise of industrial capitalism - as you know, it is my theory
>that capitalist production is the backdrop for these medical
>attitudes.
>
>What many doctors really can't stand is when they cannot cure
>someone. That is so upsetting to the power/ego it bursts the blood
>vessels in the brain. Disability is not curable, nor should we be
>subjected to the notion that we need to be cured.

Or are cleft lip & Talipes the kind of impairment that it is OK to "correct" according to the health norms set by society, unlike impairments like deafness, which you suggest it is ablist & paternalist to try to "correct"? You've mentioned the distinction between illness & impairment:

At 5:28 PM -0700 8/8/01, Marta Russell wrote:
> > I don't agree with Peter Singer, and you know that, if you remember
>> LBO discussions of his work. To attempt to prevent an impairment of
>> oneself and/or others is not at all the same as thinking that
>> "disabled people's lives are not worth living." Take an example of
>> an HIV-negative gay man lovingly practicing safe sex with an
>> HIV-positive gay man, both partners trying to keep the currently
>> HIV-negative one from being infected. Does that mean that they think
>> that the lives of HIV-positive & people with AIDS (& those of the
>> disabled in general) are not worth living? No.
>
>Yes I am so pleased that you do not agree with Peter Singer. Still we
>are crossing in our communication... No impaired person wants to
>become ill with HIV either. So perhaps some separation between
>impairment and illness is in order. Generally when I speak of
>impairment it means being deaf, blind, mobility or otherwise impaired,
>or developmentally disabled. These are fixed impairments which we do
>not consider "diseases." Of course people with AIDS do eventually
>become impaired, they may need to use wheelchairs, may require an
>attendant, etc. But there is a distinction in my thought process here
>and I hope this helps to clarify.

It appears, however, that the line between impairments that are "diseases" and those that you ask us not to regard as such is not easy to draw.

Yoshie



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