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Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

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Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#401

Post by smeej »

inglor_cz wrote: post #228
smeej wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Are you talking about real, live people with Down Syndrome? Surveys have consistently shown that they and those who live with them (which is no safari) are happier than everyone else. That wouldn't make much sense if "most" of what they bring to the world is "unpleasant interactions."

There must be some selection effect at work. "Those who live with them" are the ones who have chosen to live with them, which excludes: a) all who have learnt about the situation before birth and chose abortion, b) all who gave the kid away to some institution. A N == 1 case from my life. My classmate had a Down kid at 20 - very rare, as Down is not typical in young mothers. She seems to be happy, even though she sac…

Of course there is, but when the perspective being asked is, "What's it like to raise a child with DS?" the only people who validly have an opinion are parents of kids with DS.

A different N==1, a friend and coworker of mine had a son with DS at 23. He's now the oldest of six children. They're doing great, and he's a terrific big brother.

I think the studies matter because N needs to equal more than 1 to get a sense of how it goes for the people who do it.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#402

Post by derektank »

calf wrote: post #296
derektank wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correcting what is essentially a developmental defect (albeit a defect that occurs in the germ cells rather than in the womb) isn't eugenics. It's not caused by any genes carried by the parents, it's caused by a failure in the development process, specifically meiosis. Would preventing fetal alcohol syndrome be eugenics? It's caused by changes in gene expression from alcohol exposure after all.

Using a loaded term such as "defect" is exactly eugenics sophistry.

If you want to call it an error, or simply a change, I'm happy to make the argument on those terms. Changes in the development process that leave a child disabled for life, but which can be prevented, such as FAS through alcohol abstinence, spina bifida through folic acid intake, and (if this research can be translated into a treatment) Down Syndrome through the targeted removal of the superfluous chromosome, should be prevented. And don't tell me kids with these conditions aren't disabled, because that dog won't hunt.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#403

Post by esseph »

bpt3 wrote: post #375
potato3732842 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, for all their ills at least the historical communists meant well. Sure, some of them were pretty f-ing brutal but at least they tried to make their societies better, tried to make their countrymen richer and more prosperous. The comparable people today telling us we have have to live under constant surveillance and be subjugated by all powerful governments and government intertwined institutions and organiz…

Who is this imaginary "historical communist" you mentioned? You're claiming Mao killing millions with idiotic policies (not to mention all the scapegoats he killed intentionally) was okay because he was "trying"? Or are you talking about Stalin, Lenin, or Castro? Who is telling you that you "have to live under constant surveillance" and so on? You'd rather have someone run the country into the ground while lying to y…

"Who is telling you that you "have to live under constant surveillance" and so on?"

I was born in the US, didn't have a choice!

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#404

Post by esseph »

phs318u wrote: post #82
hilsdev wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough

Yes, and there will be others rolling their eyes and calling out all this "woke" acceptance. On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.

New bigots and racists are made every day.

Nothing went away, it just got hidden under a thin veneer.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#405

Post by somenameforme »

mathgeek wrote: post #391
somenameforme wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this follows globally - fertility is one of the most interesting and critical issues of our time. It's going to change the future in ways most absolutely do not appreciate. On this topic most people see the world as inevitably becoming more secular because that's how society has trended during most of our lives, so it seems almost like a natural law. Yet even fertility alone means that society will almost certain…

> It'll be a local max, not a global max. There really isn’t any way to know this for a fact. The future could hold technology that allows us to expand far beyond the current population, but it also could lead to setbacks that the population never recovers from. It is reasonable to guess it’s a local max.

I think this argument would make more sense if it were external constraints that were driving a declining population. But the population is only decreasing because the majority group of people stopped having children. So they will remove themselves from the gene pool, the minority will become the majority, and away we'll go again.

As an interesting factoid the Roman Empire, which for many people of the time would have had some analogs to 'the world', also had a fertility collapse prior to its end, that they tried to combat with quite strict laws, but ones which were ultimately ineffectual. Of course that was hardly the end of the story!

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#406

Post by chongli »

somenameforme wrote: post #350
chongli wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story is trying to paint this as a revival of Christianity but looking at the Pew report and the data paints a different picture. Conservative Muslim countries show a pattern of overwhelming male dominance in religious service attendance. At the same time, over half of the Muslims in the US are recent immigrants [1]. This raises the question to me: is the resurgence in religious service attendance among men driv…

I'm not a huge fan of Axios, but chose to link to them for two reasons. (1) They leave their stories bullet pointed instead of feeding them into an LLM, or a human LLM, to add 5,000 words of fluff, and (2) they use extensive citations. Here [1], for instance, is a recent Pew study they linked to. All the studies have Christianity as the driver. And FWIW church itself is not a neutral term. Church => Christian, Mosque…

I do appreciate their citations but the spin is a bit much. I’m still very skeptical about the interpretation of a “return to religiosity” rather than religious immigrants continuing their religious observances in their new home countries.

To show a proper “return to religious observance” (any religion, not just Christianity) means showing a large number of people who attend religious services regularly but whose parents do not.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#407

Post by lurk2 »

margalabargala wrote: post #389
lurk2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it gradually northern to our current state where it is legal to kill your own children any time before they turn 18. They’re trying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcHzaWyB21A

That video is about abortion. Before birth. So no, they're not trying.

In the video they are discussing the prospect of aborting the pregnancy as the child is being born.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#408

Post by bpt3 »

therealpygon wrote: post #366
jabjq wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to ask everyone else to support your financial decisions.

It’s also very easy to expect the poor to subsidize your lifestyle by making $7.25/hr. Everything has perspectives.

That's not how subsidization works at all.

Until people like you figure that out, you're going to continue to be sorely disappointed with your political progress, because your "perspective" is not remotely logical.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#409

Post by lurk2 »

bloqs wrote: post #248
lurk2 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, that is a legitimate argument to make in a cruel, uncaring (most of the time) world. No, it isn’t. “I wish you didn’t exist because your existence inconveniences me,” is a step away from “I should be able to kill you because you inconvenience me.” You will likely think that I am being hyperbolic (“We’re just talking about if it was a good idea for these people to exist, not saying we should be able to kill the…

what is your opinion of the state assisting people to survive when their caregivers die? and what of thr caregivers who cannot work, or cannot afford care?

Primary care duties and costs should remain with caregivers except in cases of neglect or deprivation. Additional healthcare burdens (e.g. development psychologists, medication, etc.) should be covered by the state. When caregivers die, the subject is assigned a social worker to ensure his wellbeing. If no other caregiver can be found, he becomes a ward of the state.

Socializing the costs this way has its own ethical problems, especially where the parents continue to reproduce after learning they are carriers; I’ve simply concluded that the costs of care are completely negligible when you contrast them with the loss of human dignity that results from valuing an individual human on the basis of economic cost or contribution.

Re: Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome

#410

Post by ryandv »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #266
reissbaker wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, this is the least empathetic message in this thread. You're also wrong: there were plenty of "anti-war protestors" during the Holocaust, who lost, and were wrong; plenty of radical feminists who were (and are) anti-trans; and the idea that the American Revolution was primarily about maintaining slavery has been debunked — for one thing, it was often led by Northeners who had already banned slavery. (The 1…

It seems to me there are two types of conservatism: concern about a change to society that does not have a clear evidential basis (which I'll call "small-c conservatism"), and a desire for other people to not have nice things (which I'll call "capital-C Conservatism"). If you read early radfems' complaints about trans women, you'll see concerns about men infiltrating the burgeoning movement to subvert or destroy its…

> It seems to me there are two types of conservatism: concern about a change to society that does not have a clear evidential basis (which I'll call "small-c conservatism"), and a desire for other people to not have nice things (which I'll call "capital-C Conservatism").

False dichotomy [0]. Basically a bunch of sophistry to say "all conservatism is bad."

> the existence of trans people "erases differences" (Galatians 3:28),

You can't just quote the Bible without providing a translation, and I can find no translation with this wording. I would suggest that you refrain from commenting upon other cultures that you are ignorant of, as this is a form of cultural appropriation at best, and active bigotry at worst.

Same with your supposed "quotations" of Genesis 2.

> Capital-C Conservatism is about denying resources and happiness to perceived enemies,

Apply principle of charity [1].

> [...] while harming them as much as you can rationalise while still calling yourself a good person.

> Many "progressives" are actually capital-C Conservative, with a different – but no less harmful – idealised-state-of-nature: many modern-day eugenicists work in autism "charities", promoting "progressive" torture "therapies".)

On this we can agree - I don't actually see much difference between progressives and conservatives; they all fall prey to religious and superstitious thinking. All this self-aggrandizement about how diverse and inclusive one is, all the moralizing and ethical high-horsing, is really just a series of magic incantations the progressive chants to themselves to "psychologically manage the results of living in a materially deeply unequal society," [2] without actually needing to do anything about the material reality. Not so different from the way the sinner takes a dunk in a bathtub of water and is now "born again, free from sin," doesn't take the Lord's name in vain, uses gender-neutral pronouns, and wears a crucifix or a Pride flag - take your pick of religious idol.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[2] Liam Kofi Bright, "White Psychodrama." https://philpapers.org/archive/BRIWP.pdf

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