Comments on: I’ve got your missing links right here (24 December 2011)

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:14:30 +0000

Hm, what to make of that argument, MattK? How about, I can kill someone at age 50 because they’ve already lived longer than most people in human history? Or I can allow someone to be born who will die horribly because they’ll get to live longer than most people in history?

Yotebeth is right. Having a child when you know the odds are they’re going to die a horrible death is very very selfish. Yes, many families in human history had lots of children, knowing some or most would die, but in those cases the children were the insurance to look after the parents when they were old.

You want a child that bad, adopt. But perhaps in his defence he didn’t know or didn’t know the details, and if he could go back in time, he’d not have children. Hm, if that was me, I think I’d be doing some dangerous work myself…die by explosion or gunfire rather than a long terminal disease.

By: MattK

MattK — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:59:18 +0000

Yotebeth, I see your point. But, food for thought: consider that the life expectance of a child, born in a 1st world country, of someone carrying the Hunnington’s gene probably has a higher life expectancy at birth than most infants for most of human history. Make of that what you will.

By: Yotebeth

Yotebeth — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:25:44 +0000

I guess this is going to make me a jerk, but I read the story about the reporter with Huntington’s disease, and I just RAGED at the end of it.

This guy goes on about how it is the worst thing ever, and I don’t agree with him. But how selfish do can you be to have a kid when you know you have this condition? It’s like have a kid, flip a coin, and it’s either healthy, or going to die of the condition you just spent 8 paragraphs lamenting about.

I’m very, very relieved to hear that his daughter doesn’t have the condition, but I just couldn’t get past the fact that he was willing to do that to a child. But at some point in time you have to make the conscious choice to say “I’m going to have a kid, and I just might kill it in the most horrific way that I can think of.”

I don’t know. I just….It really bothered me.