Is it wrong to select a deaf embryo?
By Clare Murphy
Health reporter, BBC News
New fertility legislation will make it illegal to use embryos with a known genetic abnormality in IVF treatment when ones without the same defect are available.
Some deaf activists contend they do not have a disability
For a long time, the debate about the genetic testing of embryos has focused on whether we should stop people creating the "perfect" person: blonde, blue-eyed, with athletic prowess and a high IQ.
The Nazi spectre of eugenics has frequently been invoked.
Now a deaf couple have turned this on its head: far from wanting a flawless child they actively want a baby which suffers the same hearing difficulties as they themselves.
The couple have become icons in a deaf movement which sees this impairment not as a disability but as the key to a rich culture which has its own language, history and traditions: a world deaf parents would naturally want to share with any offspring.
Moreover, they argue that to prefer a hearing embryo over a deaf one is tantamount to discrimination.
But to others - both those who can hear and those who cannot - deliberately bringing a child with a disability into the world when one without could be born verges on the morally repugnant.
Slippery slope?
Tomato Lichy and his partner already have one deaf child, for which they are profoundly grateful. Despite the fact that over time we have seen more and more rights for disabled people they are now seeking to establish a legal principle that deaf people are inferior
But they may eventually like another - and IVF, given the mother's age, may be the only option.
Yet if the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill goes through as it stands, their chances of having a deaf child would be small.
If they produced only deaf embryos, they would be allowed to implant one of these. However it would be highly unlikely that there would not be one without one of the deaf genes.
If they chose to have their embryos screened, they would be obliged to to pick the embryo without the abnormality over the others. The screening would not however be obligatory, and they could take their chances in the hope that a deaf one is chosen.
But the fact that they cannot give the deaf child preference over the hearing, Mr Lichy contends, suggests that his life as a deaf person is not one worth living.
"The core issue is that the government is saying deaf people are not equal to hearing people," he told the BBC via an interpreter. (Ironic or what? Duh!! Hearing people do not need an interpreter Tomato!!)
"Despite the fact that over time we have seen more and more rights for disabled people they are now seeking to establish a legal principle that deaf people are inferior - and there may be more laws once this gap opens."
What message does it send to their deaf daughter, he asks, whom later they will have to tell: "We had a deaf embryo but the government said we were not allowed to have it".
What right do they imagine they have, legally or morally, to increase the possibility of a child being born with an impairment however minor it might seem to them? More worryingly, why would you want to?
They seem to have a hangup with their deafness that is overriding their good sense. Pretty ironic and bizarre that they chose to make the point so forcefully this morning on a medium (radio) that their disability prevents them from utilising anyway. They seem quite happy to use IVF to overcome one physical issue yet are reluctant to take it further by using it to increase their prospective child's chances of a full and healthy lifestyle. Selfish in the extreme and just highlights the huge chip they have on their shoulders.
And another thing, who calls their child Tomato FFS??
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