I don’t think you understand the family history of addiction thing. We aren’t talking about people who smoke or eat too much. Some families have such a strong history of addiction (think the Kennedy’s) that each generation finds out independently as they get caught in a deadly cycle that always ends in wrecked lives and sometimes kills them. Drug and alcohol addiction affects roughly half the members in my immediate and extended family going back as far as the records. This isn’t some white trash family either. We are talking about people with Ph.D.'s, authors, successful businesspeople and politicians. Each person fell into the trap somewhat on their own too because the other active alcoholics in the family were pretty careful to hide what they were doing.
There heritability of alcoholism is strong and well-studied especially in males. It runs about 50% for the sons of male alcoholics and can be worse with a more extensive history. These odds even apply to adopted children that never knew their biological family. At the least it will ruin a part of a person’s life. There is a good chance that it will ruin many lives and may end in death for that person and others. Some of the other inherited diseases aren’t that bad in comparision.
I understand it just fine. And your statement supports my stand that addiction in families does not mean it’s a bad idea to have children. Your Ph.D.s, writers, successful businesspeople and politicians are productive members of society. We have probably a higher percentage of substance abusers in my family than you do in yours. Some people recover, some don’t. It’s not like inheriting a disease that offers no hope of recovery. Hell…you’re not even sure it’s going to rear it’s ugly head in your children. And if it does, you don’t know to what degree they’ll be affected or if they’ll recover.
I don’t know a single family that doesn’t have some mental illness or substance abuse in their lines. Do you?
Cystic fibrosis keeps being mentioned in this thread, so I thought I’d explain the genetics of it for those who may be reading who are wondering.
The disease is caused by mutations in one specific gene. The problem is, there are literally thousands of mutations that have been documented. If you have one mutation, you’ll be fine. But if you inherit two mutations - one from each parent - you will be affected. Current testing methods will pick up a panel of about 30-something of the most common mutations, which account for something like 80-90% of the mutations out there in the world. Most of those thousands of documented mutations have only been seen once or twice. There is also fetal testing available.
My husband has CF in his family. My mother-in-law lost two siblings to it. I’m pretty sure there’s no history in my family for it, but if and when we decide to have children (not planned, at this point), we’ll be taking the precautions mentioned.
My husband has a hereditary form of rickets: it’s X-linked dominant, so any girls we have would be affected. The only way we will ever have children is if we did sex-selection through IVF: none of the other methods are reliable enough to risk passing on the disease. It’s not fatal, but it is disfiguring and is getting increasingly painful as he ages.
I’d be interested to know if any of you who decided to forego a biological child to prevent passing down your genetics decided to adopt instead? My genetics is one of my many reasons for not wanting to create a child, but I wholeheartedly want to adopt.
By the way, I was interested in a guy about 2 years ago who is slightly(?) crippled by FSH MD and who vehemently disagreed w/ avoiding his own reproduction even though the outcome was pretty easily foreseen. He reasoned that the disease made him a better and stronger person for however long he got to live. I did not agree, and we did not go any further. He’s not disabled yet;he swims and teaches some crazy heavy math full-time @ a university in Montreal. Has to use crutches to get around on good days, but I wouldn’t consider him disabled b/c he can still work and do most usual things that physically stronger folks can do.
My husband’s genes are pretty rotten, while mine are so-so on one side and spectacular on the other.
But even if I wanted kids (which I don’t), I wouldn’t have them because I don’t have the time to dedicate to a child. My husband is disabled and takes every ounce of my almost non-existent nurturing supply.
Yep - that’s what PGD does (see my earlier post). There are other ways to do gender selection, but they don’t have as high a success rate as PGD. It also screens for CF, as I mentioned before…