Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uoregon!stevev From: stevev@uoregon.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Gene pool Message-ID: <3741@uoregon.uoregon.edu> Date: 8 Feb 89 08:24:33 GMT References: <674@intvax.UUCP> <9091@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1755@tank.uchicago.edu> Reply-To: stevev@drizzle.UUCP (Steve VanDevender) Organization: University of Oregon, Computer Science, Eugene OR Lines: 91 In article <1755@tank.uchicago.edu> ogil@tank.uchicago.edu (Brian W. Ogilvie) writes: >In article <9091@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth Gordon) writes: >> >>BEING DISABLED IS *NOT* IMMORAL. >> >>Therefore, >> >>BEARING CHILDREN WHO ARE DISABLED IS *NOT* IMMORAL. >> >>: Seth Gordon / MIT Brnch., PO Box 53, Cambridge, MA 02139 > >This doesn't follow. While it is not immoral to be blind, it is immoral >to blind someone. > >I'm not certain whether bearing children who will be congenitally blind >is immoral or not, but my gut feeling is that yes, it's just the same >as blinding someone who was formerly sighted. One can argue that the blind >child will not have an unblinded state to which to compare his blindness, >but that argument seems specious. > Hoo boy. I never would have thought this argument would get this interesting. I personally would not put bearing a congenitally blind child on the same moral plane as blinding someone. It seems much less desirable than bearing sighted children, but you are definitely not taking the capacity and experience of sight away from such children _after_ they have experienced it. A crude analogy is the difference between robbing someone and underpaying them. You may consider the argument that a congenitally disabled child will not have the experience of being not disabled is specious. I do not, and I feel I can speak to this from personal experience. The closest I have ever come to walking was taking steps while holding onto a couch, which I kept doing until I was about six, at which point I gave up, because too often I would fall down and break a leg doing so. As a result, I have no desire to walk at all, and have no envy of all you people who do. Of course, I also get around faster in my 'chair than anyone who walks, and often faster than some people who are running. (Or I can get in my racing 'chair and get around faster than most people who run, for that matter.) At the very least, I think this invalidates the idea that not having a particular capacity is inherently undesirable and unpleasant. (If anyone out there was wondering about the odd quote I have in my .signature, perhaps the above will make it more understandable.) >A congenital condition which results in the child undergoing excruciating >pain seems to definitely support this position. Pain is pain regardless of >whether one can compare it to not-pain; neurology backs me up here. To >knowingly bear children who would suffer this pain would be immoral. > You are now saying something that I can agree with. As I stated earlier, I don't want to have children of my own because most likely half of them would inherit osteogenesis imperfecta from me. As a result they would probably suffer multiple broken bones during childhood and a much greater risk of bone breakage throughout life. I'd rather not be responsible for them going through the experience, even though I have come through it well enough. (I have OI because of a spontaneous mutation, and therefore my parents had no idea this would happen.) However, many disabilities are not physically painful to experience, and therefore your argument does not apply most of the time. (Do we want to argue about psychological pain? I really think it's as impossible to avoid as some physical pain in even the most normal childhood. Neither can I blame any psychological difficulties of growing up with a physical disability on the disability itself--mostly they are all the result of other people's attitudes and reactions to the the disability, and can be avoided or dealt with.) >Correctable disabilities are perhaps not immoral to propagate (obviously >myopia; phenylketonuria presents some problems). But making grand >moral pronouncements from on high without considering their implications >is no way to decide moral issues. > I'm not sure that Seth was pronouncing from on high, although he did not back up his arguments. His opinion isn't far from mine, though-- I agree that disability is not itself immoral, and bearing disabled children is not necessarily immoral. In some cases bearing a disabled child may be difficult for the child and the parents, but if it is not done callously or unthinkingly it is hardly immoral. >-- >Brian W. Ogilvie / ogil@tank.uchicago.edu >"Cartesianism is the most popular 'popular science' ever invented." > --Noel Swerdlow -- Steve VanDevender stevev@drizzle.cs.uoregon.edu "Bipedalism--an unrecognized disease affecting over 99% of the population. Symptoms include lack of traffic sense, slow rate of travel, and the classic, easily recognized behavior known as walking."