And I agree with what Clairobscur said about the difference between deliberate damage and that the baby just is deaf because of genetics. She just said it better than I could :).
I agree that “maiming” is the wrong word to use to describe the kid’s conception, but isn’t refusing to give the kid (who is not profoundly deaf, as they are) a hearing aid a form of maiming? It’s neglect at the very least; they’re cutting off the slight possibility that he may learn to recognize speech and form speech of his own. His ability to make speech will degrade with every year he goes without a hearing aid, and with it will go his ability to function normally in society. This is medical neglect, and while I don’t think it should be illegal (and it isn’t), it’s certainly unethical.
Also, clairobscur is a guy. I was surprised at that too!
A really good book, facinating through and through, is Oliver Sack’s Seeing Voices. The movie The Sound and the Fury is an intersted look at some of the controversies in deaf culture.
I think we’re talking past each other and coming from different paradigms.
My claim is that, no matter what sperm actually made it to the egg, it is ‘that baby’ because it is born nine months after conception, even if another sperm had fertilized the egg. I suppose we could debate essence, and such, but if it’s born as a result of that conception, I think we can safely call it the baby which results from that conception. And that title and definition would transfer to any baby which was born from that conception, whether a different sperm was implanted in the egg or not.
In additon, I don’t see why changing the genetics would be different from changing the chemical nature of the womb via thalidomide. In both cases we are looking at a situation where if a deliberate action was not undertaken, the physical reality of the-baby-who-would-be-born is different. Why is the ‘essence’ of the baby who will be born different if they have X% of different alleles, but not if their body is X% affected by a drug?
It seems a rather hollow argument to say that one can deliberately induce a birth defect since if they hadn’t, the baby wouldn’t have had the birth defect. That’s the point of the issue, after all.
But he doesn’t just “happen” to be deaf. He was deliberately made deaf. If the parents hadn’t done that, the baby would not have deliberately been made deaf, and likewise could have been born without the disability.
Why the difference between genetics and chemical action? Why does one alter the ‘essence’ of the child, but the other does not? That child would not have had a high risk of birth defects if either of the deliberate actions were no undertaken.
But that’s the whole point, the baby would not have been deaf “regardless” of what you do. The baby, at the very least, would have had a higher percentage chance of not being deaf if the deliberate action had not been undertaken.
Every analogy deals with different scenarios. If they were the same scenario, there would be no need for an analogy.
None of that has anything to do with the fact of it harming the child. These are two seperate issues. They are both harm done to the child even if, in your view, one places the child in a different dynamic.
Besides, most of the distinctions you’ve drawn aren’t meaningful if addressing the point of the analogy, namely that in both cases harm is being deliberately done.
All of your examples present the deaf baby as having profound disadvantages. Lacking communication with the outside world. Requiring a special school. Communication problems. Etc… Why does it invalidate the analogy if, by your logic, being deaf is more of a disadvantage? Does that mean thalidomide is no longer harmful, and if wilfully taken it is no longer deliberate? If not, then the analogy stands and both are harmful and wilful actions undertaken.
Or, in a nutshell: does the fact that different diabilities cause different problems mean that they’re not both disabilities?
And how about when it comes time for that child to have his own life and maybe leave home?
Moreoever, I’d like to get a cite from someone as to the nature of these deaf communities. Where they are, what their sizes are, what their social services are like, etc… Are they isolated towns? Are they just deaf people who live in a several block radius in a town? What sort of community are the parents limiting the child to for what might very well be the rest of his natural life?
Are you arguing that ease of rasing a child for about 18 years negates a profound disadvantage that he would have for the rest of his life?
What role do you view intention playing? Any? None?
I’m dyslexic, if I have children, I will accept the risk that my genes will be passed down. You view that as functionally the same, in all respects, as if I specifically sought out a surrogate mother who would maximize my chance of having a dyslexic baby?
You honestly don’t see a difference betwen trying to have a baby, and trying to have a deaf baby? Can you at least agree that the intent is different?
Besides, I don’t need to convince you. This is a GD after all. I just have to debate you 
Can you give us some quotes/figures/stats if you’ve got the book on you?
I found the PBS page, but it doesn’t seem to have the info I’m looking for. Can you elaborate?
Even though I agree with you about it being immoral, I think there is a difference. Deafness is a part of the gene package the kid came with; it’s as tied to him as having a certain hair color, or height, or eye color. If the women tampered with genes so as to give deafness to whatever random sperm they used, that would be more similar to the thalidomide example since they would be changing the package. In this case, they chose a defective package, but they didn’t choose to GIVE a defect TO the package. I think there is a difference.
I guess I just don’t see a difference between ‘tampering’ with the specific genetic package and going out of their way to find a genetic package that doesn’t need that tampering because it already has that defect.
Well, if they picked a different package it would have been a different kid. Sure, you could say that before conception all potential children are equally valid, but I don’t think it’s maiming (a word that you and several other posters have used) to choose a certain possibility. There was never any chance that this specific child would have had good hearing, even if some potential child might have.
Well, if we’re stuck on terminology, what word would you use for intentionally causing a birth defect? I know that maiming might not seem to work, although it does in my view… what term could we agree upon?
I’m looking at it from the point of view of the viable pregnancy, which would have had a higher chance of being born without birth defects if they hadn’t been deliberately selected for. I do think that the potential matters, in this case.
Breeding?
Artificial selection?
I suspect that’s what’s actually making people nervous - the idea that this is a “designer baby” designed with characteristics they don’t like. Technology works both ways.
Neither captures the fact of the matter: intentionally causing a birth defect.
It has nothing to do with characteristics that people “don’t like”, but with an objective disability and birth defect that would entitle someone to protection under the ADA.
So far I’ve found this cite which, I believe, deals with something which is somewhat apropos. However, I also believe that about.com isn’t a totally authoritative cite. So maybe it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, judging from the little I’ve been able to gather via my google-fu, it seems that there are no autonomous deaf communities, at least none that I can find. Those websites for or discussing deaf communities all seem to place them in the context of larger cities.
I did, however, find cites such as this, and while it’s only a brief blurb about the book, the research conducted leads them to state
Although, to be fair, since we don’t have the text of the book those statements too must be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps, however, Ms. Geer’s statements may be taken as an expert’s, and perhaps Ms. Mather’s as well as Mr. Mather’s.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. If it’s chosen characteristic *singled out * for supression, the resultant child may well end up deaf but the deafness does not constitute a “defect” in the minds of those parents. Also, not in the minds of the community the parents want the child born into. Also, very probrably not the child, ultimately: children born with limitations accept them as natural for them. They fit right in.
So what to call deliberately maximizing the chances of deafness among the children of deaf parents? “Audio negation,” maybe. “Planned hearing loss.”
You can bemoan the loss of what you fear the child may suffer from the sensory loss all you want, but the point is moot if the procedure is legal and the fetus has no legal standing anayway, and the fetus has no say in who their parents will be or the fetus has no way to express what s/he wants.
Society may step in and deny deaf parents the options of planning children like them, though. I hope not.
In the kingdom of the deaf, the hearing man is too aware.
It’s still an objective lack; they are less capable than they could be. You yourself just called it a limitation.
How about “treating your child as a toy” ?
The child ( and later,adult ) will; what will you say if in fifteen or twenty years there’s a news story about this kid beating his parents to death in revenge ?
Personally, I think they belong in prison for this.
How can one be “too aware” ?
Sorry, but that’s undeniably a belief system about what a human “should” be like, not an objective idea. Only if you are religious and believe that there is some sort of “ideal” around which humans are intended can you really think there is such a thing as an objective “proper” way for a human being to be and what capacities it will have.
Granted, this belief system (a form of the ever-misleaidng doctrine of essentialism) can be a useful fiction, but in terms of the fact that we live in a world where there are all sorts of beings with all sorts of different capacities, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to refer to one as the “maimed” form of another, especially given that it, from it’s inception, never had those capacities in the first place.
As I noted in another thread: we bring dogs into the world all the time. Dogs are in many capacities, “inferior” to humans. Isn’t that wrong? That’s an extreme example, since dogs are radically different from humans, but it roughly cuts to the same chase. If (or rather, when) we are better able to genetically enhance beings, let’s say we create a dog that is ALMOST as intelligent as a human being… but not quite. Was it wrong not to go the extra mile? How about if we can genetically engineer human beings to be smarter. Aren’t we “maiming” everyone that we dont’ enhance?
It is, of course, very very hard to make your argument without deaf people are inferior to hearing people and, all things being equal, shouldn’t have been born as they are if someone had the choice. We already have the technology to abort most forms of fetus deafness, as wlel as down syndrome and so on. So why not go ahead and start doing it?
This implies that it was ever “abled” in the first place, and then taken away. But that isn’t the case.
Yes, which is just another way of saying that they chose to induce a birth defect.
Irrelevant. Their view doesn’t alter reality. There is both a medical and legal reality that being deaf is a disability. Do you suggest that it be taken off the list of the ADA? If so, what other recognized disabilities should be removed from protection under the ADA because of personal point of view?
And I would have to wonder as to whether or not those who claim that it isn’t a disability benefit from the ADA. For instance, they’re protected against employment discrimination. Do you advocate removing that protection, since they claim that they’re not disabled, and thus shouldn’t be on the list of those protected by the ADA? Would the parents, do you think, be at all annoyed if they were denied a job simply because they were deaf?
You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s a recognized disability and they deserve legal protection, or it isn’t and they don’t.
Children do? So children aren’t ever pissed off and consider these disabilities to be bad things? And do you think this child will be happy to learn this his parents did this to him, on purpose? I’m sure the teenage years will be wonderful, boy howdy.
“Planned hearing loss” = “Planned birth defect”
And if this hearing loss was planned for after delivery of the baby, it’d still be immoral, right? I mean, one of your arguments is that the child would grow up like that, so since a child wouldn’t remember the hours after being born, would it be okay?
And what other birth defects are okay to deliberately cause? People with Downs Syndrome are often rather happy and innocent, from what I understand, is it okay to induce that as well, on purpose? Why or why not?
My OP didn’t ask what the legal situation was, but what the moral situation was. We shouldn’t conflate the two.
But this isn’t just a fetus. It’s planned on being brought to term. Does the fact that it can’t object mean that parents can do whatever damage they like to it, on purpose? Or are there only certain types of damage which are allowed?
And as you point out, the child cannot consent or refuse this procedure, is it really right to do it? (let’s not get into a debate about non-disabilities like having your hair cut.)
This has nothing to do with ‘being like them’. If they want children like them, they are free to educate them with their values, philosophy, religion, politics, etc…
This is about wilfully disabling a part of their child’s anatomy.
And in the real world, being deaf is both a disadvantage and a legal/medical condition which qualifies one for protection under the ADA.
As I’ve asked others, then do you support eliminating protection for the deaf under the ADA? Or eliminating the ADA itself? Or maybe just eliminating its protections for those whose ‘belief system’ says it’s not a disability?
Dogs are not inferior to dogs. Your example breaks down. There is no analogy to be drawn. Now if you were talking about breeding dogs to purposefully increase the chance of disease and disability, then the analogy would stand.
No. But if you deliberately attempt to make your child as stupid as possible? Then yes.
That’s a different question. There is a difference between breeding in order to have a child and then accepting the result, and breeding in an attempt to have a deaf child and being most happy with that result. In one case you want a child, in the other case you want a child who is inflicted with a disability.
What semantic mincing shall we use, then, to describe the fact that if the parents had not deliberately selected for a birth defect, it would have been much less likely? Can one do anything they like in selecting their child’s genetic father, then? Could you deliberately select for any number of birth defects, heriditary predispositions, etc? Where is the line drawn between what you can inflict upon your children, and what you cannot? Can you select for someone who’s an alcoholic, because you believe that fighting addiction builds character? Or someone who’s manic because you believe that their emotional life would be that much richer?
You seem to be proceeding under the assumption that since the parents made their selection that’s the way it is, or perhaps has to be. But that ignores the fact that they made that selection in the first place. They had a choice, and if they had chosen otherwise, their baby most likely would not have been born with a birth defect.
Just like if the parents have a choice to use thalidomide or not, and if they choose not to, their baby will most likely not be born with a birth defect.
Why is one okay, but the other is not? Why does deliberately inducing a birth defect via genetics change the ‘essence’ of the baby such that it could not have been anthing else, but deliberately inducing a birth defect via chemistry does not change the ‘essence’ of a baby such that it could not have been anything else?
Sorry for a tripple post, but I’m trying to pin this debate down some, so I have an important questions that I’d appreciate if folks could answer who say being deaf isn’t a disability:
-Should deafness be removed from inclusion in the ADA for everybody who is deaf and/or for those who are deaf and don’t believe it’s a disability?
These are pragmatic questions of how best to structure our society. They don’t really directly bear on the question of what sort of people should be permitted to exist in the first place.
Though when I am finally recognized as being so genetically superior to you in intellect as to almost be a different species, I will assure you that I will consider some form of special agency devoted to caring for the results of your inferiorities.
Ah the fresh breath of a quasi-religious essentialism! Tell us more about these ideal types and how they are incomparable and have nothing to do with each other!
I don’t see it as much as an analougy as I do all on the same continuum. Deaf people lack something that hearing people have. Dogs lack MANY things that humans have. If we shouldn’t create deaf people, then why should we create dogs?
Look at it from my perspective. By failing to enhance you all genetically, your parents DID make you, at least in comparison to myself, about as stupid as human beings could possibly be. At least now that I’ve set this new standard of human potential.
Nonsense. We can rid ourselves of deaf people and mentally diabled people right now and NOT decrease the birth rate. All we’re doing is culling the herd of possible babies that eventually come into being. Why not do it (and that’s not a rhetorical question: maybe we SHOULD do it, for all I know).
Again, I would like you to at least acknowledge that “birth defect” implies some quasi-religious idea of what an ideal human being is like. From my perspective, anyone that doesn’t have a humungous mega-brain like I has a birth defect. Try to see it from my perspective (to the extent that you are capable of doing so without actually HAVING as huge and powerful a brain as I).
I don’t know the answer to these questions, really. The problem hinges on the fact that personal identity requires existence, and that doesn’t, well, exist before the baby has even come into being. Is it wrong to bring someone into the world when their life will be marked by suffering? Perhaps (though I don’t think anyone here has succeeded in supporting the idea that the lives of deaf people are, in fact, worse off than hearing people. Some would even contend that they are emotionally superior and in a better position to enjoy life.) I think we are going to be facing this problem more and more as genetic testing becomes more and more powerful, and designer babies more and more possible. But I don’t think there is any glib obvious answer to the question, as you seem to think. And fancy semantic rhetoric like “maiming” isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Your birth defect is their culture, in their view of things. It’s one thing to say that deaf people objectively lack a capacity that hearing people have. But calling it a defect is another matter entirely: a defect is a judgement call, and one that, obviously, appears to be in the eye of the beholder in this case.
Because were trying to parse out some concept of personal identity that may have outlived their usefulness. At best, I can say that in terms of the strict genetics, there is no real objective thing as a “defect.” There is only the particular genes creating the particular sort of being they are capable of producing.
With chemical damage, we can at least say that real changes are being made to the existing capacities of developing being. Sure, the deaf person would not have been deaf if not concieved that way… but then wouldn’t exist AT ALL had they not been concieved. Given the choice between existing at all, and existing deaf, is existing the wrong choice? In the case of the chemical damage, we have an existing developmental process that we are monkeying with to produce a different result than could have been acheived in the first place.
But I agree: that answer isn’t 100% satisfying. But then, that’s how I feel about the question too.
We’re not discussing who is or is not ‘permitted’ to exist. I do not support eugenics and that’s not in the scope of the OP (that deals with deliberately causing birth defects.)
The impact of the question of the ADA is to try to pin this down to some sort of objective metric. Some have claimed that being deaf isn’t a disability, or that it isn’t if the parents say it isn’t. I want to know if people support the implications of that statement, as well.
Erunh?
Saying that a dog is a dog and thus can’t be inferior to itself is quasi-religious essentialism?
If you insist…
How on earth you get from the position “It is wrong to intentionally cause a birth defect” to “any animal that lacks full human abilities shouldn’t be allowed to breed” is beyond me.
It has nothing to do with failing to enchance, but deliberately inflicting a birth defect. I’ve not said that parents have an obligation to genetically enhance their children, merely to not cause birth defects on purpose.
~looks high~
~looks low~
Nope, nothing to do with my argument at all, and certainly bares no resemblance to anything I said. Who ever said antying about ‘ridding’ ourselves of anything or anyone? The question is not about that, but whether or not we should deliberately cause birth defects.
Why would I do something like that? Quasi-religious? All of modern medicine is now quasi-religious? I’m more than willing to stick with the medical and legal definitions. Extreme postmodern relativism brings us nothing.
Do doctors and the law agree with you?
What if you set out deliberately to cause that suffering?
Ah yes, I bought it on Rodeo Drive, I’m glad you noticed.
As I said, if the word ‘maim’ disturbs you, ‘intentionally inflicted birth defect’ fits in with medical and legal terminology quite well.
If you want to argue that there aren’t even such things as birth defects, I think you’d have something of an uphill battle with the medical community at the very least.
Birth defects are physical/chemical/what have you, and not how you’re raised. As should be obvious, you do not get your culture until after you’re born, so it is physically impossible for it to be a birth defect.
You dodged the question the last time I asked it, but there are legal and medical guidelines to determine disability. In this postmodern world you envision, are these guidelines gone?
There are pragmatic ramifications of something being a disability or not.
So a particular set of genes which yields an inviable and/or soon-to-die being isn’t a defect? This is postmodern revision of the language gone wild.
Nope. Not if they’re started before the being even develops. And isn’t it “quasi-religious essentialsm” to define what the existing capacities of a developing being will be?
Fallacy of false dichotomy.
Once the parents decided to get sperm from a sperm bank, they had a choice.
The wrong choice? I have no way of knowing, having never not existed.
A fallacious set of choices? Yes.
Likewise, in the process of selecting a sperm donor we have an existing selection process which we are monkeying with to produce a different result than could have been achieved in the first place.
Fair 'enough. Shall we put up our rapiers and go at it for another round?