<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>Marta writes:
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">> Yes, I do draw a line -- at conditions that would result in death in a
<BR>> short time, say two to three years.
<BR>> As for the genetic screening angle -- shall we get rid of all the
<BR>> invisible disabilities, that is the fetus which may develop prostate
<BR>> cancer at age 50-60? You see the absurdity of tinkering with this.
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<BR>I am sure that you have gathered I would draw the line at a very different
<BR>place. I don't know that there is any definitive argument to decide where the
<BR>line should be drawn. It strikes me as being analogous to age of consent
<BR>laws: very few people would deny the need for some sort of law to protect the
<BR>young from sexual predators, but there is no way to establish exactly what
<BR>would be the best point, ensuring that the law does not impinge upon young
<BR>people who are fully capable of consenting to sexual relations with each
<BR>other. And the law is such a blunt measure, with a single standard, when we
<BR>know that there are vast differences in the psycho-sexual development of
<BR>young people.
<BR>
<BR>My problem is that your line is so close to one extreme that it constitutes
<BR>virtually no line at all. Your last comment seems to confirm that, in a
<BR>reductio ad absurdum: if we screen for any genetic disease, even the most
<BR>debilitating, then we will end up screening for a propensity to get prostate
<BR>cancer. [BTW, it is my understanding that all men get prostate cancer; some
<BR>of us just die from other causes before we get it, and some of us have a form
<BR>of prostate cancer which is so slow that we just die of another disease
<BR>first.] This is a suggestion that a line can not be really drawn.
<BR>
<BR>A real life example: my sister had a still birth, at 5+ months, of a pair of
<BR>girl twins. It turns out that they shared an ambiotic sac, rather than having
<BR>separate ambiotic sacs which is the normal physiological development for twin
<BR>[or any multiple birth] fetuses. The doctors, in what I consider medical
<BR>malpractice, did not pick up this fact, and so never told my sister that a
<BR>miscarriage/still birth was almost a certainty, and that the even with a live
<BR>birth, the physical state of the children would be such that painful death at
<BR>an early age was the prognosis. Without this knowledge, my sister and her
<BR>partner went about doing what every expectant parent would do, collecting
<BR>clothes for twins, etc. At 5 months, she began to collect huge amounts of
<BR>fluid in her legs, went into the hospital, where they attempted to delay
<BR>labor until her rising blood pressure threatened her own life, and then had a
<BR>very traumatic still birth. With the appropriate knowledge, she and her
<BR>partner could have been spared some of the worst of that experience, by
<BR>having an abortion; and if she chose not to have an abortion, she would have
<BR>gone into the experience knowing full well what to expect. It just seems to
<BR>me that such experiences don't figure in the lines you draw.
<BR>
<BR>Leo Casey
<BR>United Federation of Teachers
<BR>260 Park Avenue South
<BR>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
<BR>
<BR>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
<BR>It never has, and it never will.
<BR>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
<BR>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
<BR>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
<BR>lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
<BR><P ALIGN=CENTER>-- Frederick Douglass --
<BR>
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