APA Newsletters

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2

Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine

Papers, Poems and Narratives

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A Modest Proposal: Redux

Mark Oshinskie, J.D.
New Brunswick, NJ

Scientists and journalists recently heralded the mapping of the human genome as a great advance for humanity. While any gene-based therapies are reportedly decades away, the use of genetic testing to screen defective fetuses already occurs and will sharply increase as genomic interpretation advances. I wonder if this is such a noble enterprise.

Years ago I worked in a bottling factory. Several white-coated quality control women wordlessly roamed the noisy production floor. They took bottles from the end of the line and ran a series of inscrutable tests to determine which bottles to put out to the public and which to reject. If defects were suspected, they'd mark the lot with a big X. The foremen would angrily instruct me to take the rejected bottles to the Dumpster, where I would smash them with a sledge hammer so they could not be salvaged.

Although, as Neil Holtzman observed, predictive interpretations of genetic profiles are often wrong-and will inevitably continue to be. Yet, genetic testing will be used to evaluate unborn people like commodities.

Despite all of the uncertainties attendant to genetic interpretation, this is a society that plays the percentage. Even a study of unknown methodology about dietary fat mentioned on the radio while we butter our toast causes people to feed the toast to the birds. Given this proclivity, probabilistic suspicions about genetic influences on human development will prompt some in our freedom-oriented culture to terminate fetuses who have some slight genetic risk of disability. In a real life interpretation of Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," parents can breed perceived defects out of the human race by purging the defective.

Of course, many view a society free of people with disabilities or other imperfections as desirable. But what is the existential impact on all individuals when-as eugenic abortion takes firmer hold-disability becomes ever more stigmatized, ever more broadly defined and, ultimately, ever more of an abstraction? Will the joy of everyone's existence diminish when we believe we are not meant to be here in some larger, metaphysical way but, instead, here simply because we met a quality-control inspector's standards? In this kind of world, what child will be able to believe in a parent's unconditional love?

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APA Newsletters

Spring 2001 Volume 00, Number 2

Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2