The "right" to have retarded children?
 

was listening to an interview with a university professor who had spent quite a few years studying this issue.

basically, fundamentalist mormon groups (some) keep inbreeding and passing a gene that causes a disease that results in severe mental retardation of the child. in addition to that, the children need considerable medical care which comes of course, largely at the cost of the state and tax payers.

its an interesting ethical issue... should you have a child if you know it will be severely retarded? should you do it at the expense of tax payers?





Fumarase deficiency is extremely rare. Until roughly 18 years ago scientists knew of only thirteen cases worldwide . However, recently twenty additional cases have been documented in the Arizona/Utah border towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah These two towns constitute a closed and controlled community, and were settled in the 1930s by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is a breakaway sect now unaffiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, many of the surrounding communities refer to this disease as "Polygamist's Down's"

Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated some of the sect's affected residents, has been quoted as estimating the IQ of these patients as around 25. Tarby was treating a child with undetermined developmental difficulties when he learned there was a sibling with what was being described as cerebral palsy. Upon examining the other child, he sent off urine samples for definitive testing only to learn that his patients had a disorder so rare that only 13 other current cases were known. Assuming these numbers are correct, the new cases Tarby uncovered now account for approximately 60.6% of all known cases of Fumarase deficiency.

The fumarase deficiency allele has become very common in this community due to the practice of endogamy. It is believed that Joseph Smith Jessop, one of the founders of the communities, and his first wife carried the mutant allele. According to the Phoenix New Times, the rare disease appeared when their 12th child, Martha Jessop, married her second cousin, John Yeates Barlow, in 1923.. The same article states that some 20 cases have now been documented and that further intermarriage between the Jessop and Barlow families will surely result in more afflicted children. There is the possibility of perhaps hundreds of new cases in future generations if preventative measures are not adopted by the group members who are suspected carriers of the allele. More alarming still is the recent development of a satellite community in Eldorado, Texas, where a temple has been built by FLDS Church members. This new community is populated with many members of these two extended families who can be presumed to be potential carriers of the recessive allele.

The populations of Colorado City and Hildale could be considered examples of the founder effect.

Now that's a post!

;)

I think people that know they will have a severely mentally handicapped child should only have it if they have the means to take care of it themselves.

There was an article I read about years ago where a couple that had three kids taken away from them (it's not the same exact situation as the thread topic but close) They couldn't take care of them because of their mental handicap. Even after extensive training and classes they just couldn't get it and have had all three of their kids taken from them. At the time of the writing they thought she might be pregnant again because they don't use birth control so that will be kid number four taken away and there is a good chance any or all of these kids will have the same handicap as the parents.

Call me heartless, but I think people like this shouldn't be allowed to have kids. For that matter I think any parent should have to take classes before having kids because there are a lot of parents out there and they have no handicaps to speak of.

[QUOTE=Pleasurepays;14119418]was listening to an interview with a university professor who had spent quite a few years studying this issue.

basically, fundamentalist mormon groups (some) keep inbreeding and passing a gene that causes a disease that results in severe mental retardation of the child. in addition to that, the children need considerable medical care which comes of course, largely at the cost of the state and tax payers.

its an interesting ethical issue... should you have a child if you know it will be severely retarded? should you do it at the expense of tax payers?

.[QUOTE]

how about someone on welfare that has generations of parents on welfare that has never had a job.. should they have kids for us to pay for?

this guy was saying that when they had first started to educate them about it and make them aware of the issue... the overwhelming response was simply "if god chooses to test us in this manner, for whatever reason, then it's his will and as such, our obligation to ........"

[QUOTE=bm bradley;14119439][QUOTE=Pleasurepays;14119418]was listening to an interview with a university professor who had spent quite a few years studying this issue.

basically, fundamentalist mormon groups (some) keep inbreeding and passing a gene that causes a disease that results in severe mental retardation of the child. in addition to that, the children need considerable medical care which comes of course, largely at the cost of the state and tax payers.

its an interesting ethical issue... should you have a child if you know it will be severely retarded? should you do it at the expense of tax payers?

.Kids like me?

its the parents choice, once others get involved its a slippery slope.

i don't think so.... but the welfare system has been reformed quite a bit, since the days of the welfare queens.

i think all of these issues are interesting to consider. i often ponder these things.. what are your obligations in society towards others besides simply "not breaking the law"?

should those who are more productive support those who aren't?

can we blame every person who is less productive than others and hold them 100% accountable?

when is someone responsible? when aren't they?

the discussions are basically trapped in a near infinite loop of circular logic where emotion usually grinds reason into submission and the lowest common denominator seems to win most of the time.

either way.....they will get their rights sooner or later......for shorter or longer period of time

Take a trip to Goodwill and you will find many mentally disabled people working their asses off, enjoying it, and in general being good, friendly people. Go anywhere else in the city where "regular" people work and see what kind of response they give you.

If you want to start whacking people that aren't "productive", why don't you start with the people that actually have the ability to be productive and yet they still sit on their asses all day versus the people that don't have a choice.

And by "you", I don't specifically mean you. ;-)

But should it be? If you live next door to someone and you decided to build something in your backyard that they will be required to either help maintain or at the very least pay some money towards should you not at least ask their opinion about whether or not you should build it? Or should you just build it then walk over and tell them you will need $30 a month for their part of it?

To me it is the same thing. I got in an argument with a woman in a grocery store once over welfare (well more like it was me asking questions and her screaming). We are waiting in line because the register was down and they were fixing it. There was a woman behind me who was pregnant and had another kid that was around 3-4 years old with her. She is talking to her friend about how tight things are right now, but when the baby comes her check will go up and that will help. Eventually she says something like, "My welfare will almost double when I have the baby which is nice but the section 8 will go up a little and I might lose a little in food stamps so it is actually more like my check will go up about 60%." I say nothing because I don't know her or her situation, maybe her husband/boyfriend just walked out on her or something and she is stuck. Then she starts explaining to her friend that they can't find the father of the 3-4 years, but she wanted another baby so this kid will have someone to play with and won't be an only child so she met a guy and he knocked her up then disappeared.

I couldn't bite my tongue anymore so I simply asked her, "Do you think it was a wise choice to have another kid when you can't afford to the take care of the one you have?" She got pissed and told me she takes care of her child. I responded, "Well, you said yourself you are on welfare, section 8 and food stamps and that you don't work. We are all paying for your kid. If we are paying for you to stay home and do nothing I think we should have a say in whether you have another one or not." She lost it and started screaming at me that I couldn't tell her how to live her life and I had no right to say these things. She starts yelling for the manager. I shut up and just stood there. When the manager got there everyone in line took my side, thought I made a good point and asked a valid question and she flipped out so he took her aside and made her calm down.

It was kind of sad to me. But I guess I think if we the tax payers are going to pick up the check for raising a kid, we should at least get a say in either how the kid is raised or whether the kid is born at all.

I certainly understand your frustration. Every tax payer shares the same frustration when they hear about tax money going somewhere that they don't agree with. The fact is, you are never going to agree with every location that tax money is spent. Wanting to decide who can and cannot have children because of one thing or another is a very, very slippery slope.

How exactly do you determine something like that? Can you imagine the people getting caught up in red tape? More bureaucracy doesn't seem like the answer.

For the situation you speak of, possibly something like term limits or educational requirements or job requirements or something like that would be an answer. It's tough. Generations built on getting "free money" while regular Joe's that work hard and pay taxes have a difficult time paying for their insurance... definitely something wrong with that.

I agree. Everyone has some pet peeve about where and how tax money is spent and anytime you start messing with deciding who should be allowed to do what it can be a slippery slope.

To me the welfare thing is pretty simple. I understand that shit happens and guys are assholes and leave girls after they get them pregnant or walk out on their families and the women need some help and welfare can provide that help, but I think it should be kind of like unemployment where it is a temporary fix. What I think should happen is p this: If you are on welfare you should be required to be on birth control. You get the shot of the implant (no pills or patches because you could skip or miss them) No proof from the doc that you are on birth control, no check. You can feel free to have as many kids as you want, when you get off of welfare. I also think there should be a max amount of time you should be allowed to be on welfare and that if you are on it you should be required to be getting some kind of job training/education. I think people would rather pay for someone to go to a couple of years of college or a trade school and learn to do something while on on welfare then get a good job and make something of themselves and provide a good life for the kid, than just let the mom collect checks for 18 years and watch TV all day long.

funny you say that. i whacked 18 people i didn't like last week.


i was lucky enough to grow up in Alaska in the fishing industry. most seafood processing plants are staffed almost entirely with Mexicans and Filipinos and people who come from similarly poor countries.

When i would see someone complaining or when i would listen to 2 Pac rap to me about how whitey doesn't give him a choice but to go out and rob, deal drugs and shoot people... I would stop to look around me at all the people who crossed the world to work and build a life for themselves from absolutely nothing... many of them risking their lives just for the right to come and live 15 to a house and save up enough money to bring family, buy cars, buy homes and so on. I was always intrigued by the notion that a crack dealer doesn't have a choice and that a gangster can't leave east LA for a better life.

I always thought it to be extremely ironic that people who actually were "disadvantaged" in every sense of the word, could cross the globe, make money, save and build a life and someone in Detroit or Brooklyn needs a handout and blames me for it.

I'd be interested to hear about your proposal to give tax payers a say "whether the kid is born at all."

There are barbaric connotations to your suggestion, such as "at risk" women undergoing a forced abortion where they are arrested, drugged and their baby killed. Only a minuscule percent of tax payers would support this.

this is sort of odd... this idea that society owes someone assistance, yet they are not obligated to society to not abuse it or to act ethically and responsibly. i kinda agree with you... if someone wants to be on public assistance for any reason other than being the victim of an act of god, it should come with some significant strings attached. someone gets struck by lightening, house gets burned down in a freak accident.. by all means, i think we should help. they keep cranking out kids as if they're hamsters... hm... maybe they shouldn't be allowed to be parents to begin with. why have we decided as a society that you can be dead broke, no education, have 5 kids and have a target goal of 10?

sadly, the very idea of welfare is predicated on the notion that there is a victim (real or perceived) ... this makes it hard to make the argument that this person should endure additional hardships to receive needed financial assistance, although it would certainly reduce the occurrences. at some point, society as a whole will need to stop the PC BS and start calling it like it is, or there is no real hope for any improvement until things get much worse.

but i think there are quite a few restrictions on welfare now. Clinton signed The Welfare Reform Act which put a lot of limitations and restrictions on how a person can claim benefits.

i can't believe a guy can make a tv show (Maury) based on women having no idea who the father is of their kid... and even to the point that they are accusing a 1/2 dozen or more guys. i think they world was a better place when a woman was considered a whore for having a kid out of wedlock. not saying its ideal... but on the whole, families have eroded along with traditional family values. eroded to the point that kids are parenting themselves for the most part.

I was just watching Law and Order and it was about that.

jesus

insane much?

I guess I mis-spoke. What I meant to say I actually better articulated in a different post. By this I mean that I think women who are on welfare should have to be on birth control as one of the provisions of being on welfare. This way we at least have some say and know that she won't be getting pregnant again while she is on welfare.

Much of what you say I agree with fully. I think sometimes shit happens. If a woman is married and has a couple of kids and her husband wants her to be a stay and home mom, great. Then if one day he walks out on them and she has no job, no money and two kids to take care, I think it is okay for the state/gov to step in and give her a hand up. But I think it needs to be made plenty clear that this is not a lifelong thing and that she is going to have to work towards getting a job and providing for those kids. It sucks that her husband walked out on her, but she can't expect everyone else to pay her way just because her husband was a jackass.

What amazes me is the mindset of some people. A friend of mines wife worked at a grocery store for several years. There was a woman who came in who had 6 kids all from different fathers and she was proud that she had been on welfare for 20 years. She had a daughter who was 18 and knocked up and she was actually bragging that she was going to be on welfare too. To them it was the same as if mom was a doctor and her daughter went on to be a doctor too. It is sad when people are being raised with the idea that they can't achieve nothing so they might as well accept that they will be poor and living off the system.

I know there have been a lot of welfare reforms, but I think a lot of it is still controlled on the state level. I live in a very liberal state. If you a single woman and you are pregnant you can get welfare, food stamps, housing assistance and health insurance without lifting a finger. You don't even need to be single. A guy a friend of mine knows quit his job so that his wife could get on the oregon health plan and it would pay for their second child to be born because it was cheaper than using his work insurance.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

inbreeders, hah!

i think if it can be determined you have a very high risk of making a retarded baby, it's akin to premedited murder... or whatever the charge would be if you beat someone into permanent stupor/disfigurement

The thing is if I KNEW that if I had a child with my wife that there's a very high chance that the child would be mentally retarded, I would NEVER think about bringing it into the world and have it suffer like that it's whole life.

it's not uncommon in LA to see an illegal immigrant selling oranges on one corner while a balck man begs on another. -bmb

you probably don't wear special magic underwear either...

Eugenics is the slippery slope towards genocide. Ask the Germans.

i agree

i think in this case, its quite easy to test for this gene and know the probability of person X and person Y getting together and having a child that will have this disease.

but... can you tell them its not the will of God? does the state have the right to say "god isn't doing this to you... you are doing this to you" - basically they defy many laws under the broad umbrella of religion.

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"The count of children in custody rose again Friday after CPS determined that 25 girls who claimed to be adults are actually minors, said spokesman Chris

Van Deusen. That group may overlap with the 20 listed in the court document as pregnant or as mothers, he said.

"The only thing we can say is we're aware of 20 young girls who became pregnant when they were between the ages of 13 and 16," Van Deusen said. "That's not to say that there are 20 now, but at the time they conceived they were 13, 14, 15, or 16. "That establishes that there was some sexual abuse here," he said."