Except society doesn’t entirely disagree with you. For example, screening of high risk mothers for a fetus with Down’s Syndrome is routine in our society, and it’s almost expect that if detected such a fetus will be aborted unless the parents are right-to-life. That is, in fact, eugenics. It’s not called eugenics by most people, but that’s what it is.
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I think it was your link that said their fingers were fused together? By more than skin then?
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Fused skin but also fused bone, missing bone, deformed bone… no, it’s not fixable. Surgery might be performed to make their hands and feet more functional, but no, it’s not correctable.
For the past few centuries observers have marveled that people with this condition are still remarkably adept – things like handwriting, sewing, manipulation of tools, etc. are no worse than that with normal people. As I said, the main problems seem to be societal attitudes, wearing rings, wearing gloves, playing certain musical instruments, and finding a shoe that fits a deformed foot. As disabilities go that’s not too bad. It’s still not normal, and anyone with the syndrome has a 50% chance of passing it to his/her offspring.
Yes.
Yes.
All true.
So they can get into the Dor Yeshorum database. If you aren’t in the database the gene-checking of prospective mates in much more difficult. It should be fairly obvious that the system works best when it’s easiest to use.
It depends on what your goals are. For some, simply avoiding manifestations of a genetic disorder the goal. For others, nothing less than the elimination of the bad gene itself will do.
Personally, I find the latter attitude unacceptable both because of how many people it would lock out of having children, and because in some cases the “bad” gene in a half-dose is actually more beneficial than not having it at all. The best known example is the sickle-cell trait: carriers have significantly improved resistance to malaria. Since malaria still kills millions of people every year, and causes both short and long term disability in millions of others, in malaria-prone parts of the world it still might be a good idea to maximize carriers if we can avoid people getting a double-dose as carriers are healthier in that environment than non-carriers.
There is some evidence that Tay Sachs carriers have improved resistance to tuberculosis, and carriers of Cystic Fibrosis have improved resistance to diarrhea inducing types of diseases, both of which conditions also used to kill millions yearly and are still serious problems in some places. The evidence for this is nowhere near as strong as for sickle-cell/malaria, but it does make me think that we shouldn’t be too hasty about eliminating “bad” genes before we really understand how they came to be so common in some populations.
And this gets back to allergies in that, as mentioned some pages again, people who are prone to allergies also seem more resistant to parasites and their effects, and also seem less likely to have certain types of cancers. Are the beneficial effects something we want to reduce or increase?
More and more we seem to find that some genes are good or bad only in an environmental context. For something even more common – dark skin is protective near the equator but greatly increases one’s risk of vitamin D deficiency near the poles, which is linked to rickets, osteoporosis, and susceptibility to both depression and certain cancers. On the flip side, pale skin is good thing near the poles as it facilitates vitamin D production with minimal sunlight which is good for bone health and various other things, but near the equator puts you at risk of skin cancer and folate deficiency (and folate deficiency in women is a risk for neural tube defects which aren’t genetic but environmental defects which range from asymptomatic to catastrophic). Is a particular skin color good or bad? It all depends on where you live.
Here’s the problem:
If a mutt is healthy you imply it is riddled with hidden defects. If it’s not healthy you automatically assume it’s a genetic problem and not environment. If a purebred dog is healthy you imply it’s because the dog has clean genes. If the purebred isn’t healthy you say it must be badly bred. That all-over No True Scotman’s Fallacy and that why you come across as an idiot to many.
Yes, they do. Healthy dogs can get infected cuts and scrapes. They can get food poisoning. Both humans and dogs can get hookworms and pass them back and forth. Samonella is another one humans and dogs can share back and forth. Leptospirosis, MRSA, strep throat, ringworm, roundworm and scabies are more of the same. Please, you were looking intelligent for awhile there, don’t ruin it by saying something as stupid as healthy dogs can’t get sick.
